wfn.org | Now's as good a time to fight as any, liberals say

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Note #6922 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

30-October-2001
01405

Now's as good a time to fight as any, liberals say

Until disputed amendment is gone, foes say, there will be no peace

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Some Presbyterians ask: Why now? 

Other Presbyterians reply: Why not?

Those who advocate the removal of a constitutional provision forbidding
sexual activity by gays and lesbians and other unmarried leaders of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) say they were as surprised as everybody else when
the 213th General Assembly (GA) voted last summer by the biggest margin ever
- 60 to 40 percent - in favor of striking G-6.0106.b from The Book of Order
and referred the matter to the church's 173 presbyteries for an up-or-down
vote.

It's an issue the presbyteries have voted on before - twice, in fact, in
just the past four years. The first time was in 1997, when the presbyteries
voted 97-74 to add the controversial amendment to the constitution. The
second was in 1998, when an attempt to repeal it failed by a vote of 114-57.

So why is the matter still unresolved? Because in both of those campaigns,
many presbyteries went one way or the other by narrow margins - of 25 votes
or less.

So the debate, of which both sides are weary, goes on. And on.

The seemingly endless fighting has so frustrated the Presbyterian Coalition,
an evangelical group formed in 1993 to oppose the ordination of gays and
lesbians, that half of the people at its national gathering last month said
leaving the denomination is an option. They are tired of fighting over what
seems so obvious to them: Scripture's condemnation of homosexuality.

There is another church debate that seems never to end: that over abortion.
The denomination votes on it yearly, too - whether to oppose late-term
abortions, whether to reexamine the church's cautiously pro-choice position.
A database maintained by the Office of the General Assembly shows that the
GA has considered 20 pieces of abortion-related legislation in the past
seven years.

 But that doesn't seem to raise the ire of the conservatives, since it
involves only policy, not proposed changes to the constitution. The liberals
say conservatives are willing to continue re-considering the abortion issue
because in that case, they are the ones pushing for change.

It is the constitutional debate that has raised hackles on both sides. And
the ante went way up this year. Why?

 Removing G-6.0106b would put ordination matters in the hands of
presbyteries and congregations - the very people, say those who want
G-6.0106b deleted, who know the candidates best, person-by-person. 
Defenders of the amendment say that eliminating the categorical prohibition
would violate the connectionalism that binds the denomination together.
(Both groups argued just the opposite way on the hard-fought decision to
ordain women.)

The disputed amendment says: "Those who are called to office in the church
are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the
historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the
requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage
between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to
repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin
shall not be ordained or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the
Word and Sacrament."

Those who would strike G-6.0106.b say its categorical prohibitions are not
in keeping with what is historically the Presbyterian way. Those who defend
it say that's an oversimplification - that the national church has never
hesitated to comment on the character required of its leaders.

So why revisit the issue now?

"There's never a good time to do anything," says the Rev. Gene Bay, pastor
of the 3,500-member Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church in suburban Philadelphia.
He's a soon-to-be co-moderator of the Covenant Network, the largest
organization of Presbyterians working for the deletion of G-6.0106.b.  The
group was formed, in fact, to do just that.

"Why is it a good time now?" asks Bay, whose own Philadelphia Presbytery
voted to put the clause in the constitution in 1997.

"My own sense is that many in the church feel that G-6.0106.b has not
brought peace to the church, has not brought unity to the church. It really
has only served to create more disunity. ... Even if folks happen not to
agree on homosexuality or ordination, we have a chance to return to the
traditional Presbyterian way of doing things. ... Congregations and
presbyteries are in the best position to determine who qualifies for
ordination."

Bay says weariness is no reason to stop. He says being faithful often means
doing things that are tiring.

"We get tired, loving neighbors who are not very lovable," he says. "We get
tired doing a lot of things. But this issue is not going to go away as long
as G-0106.b is in The Book of Order, as long as this issue is facing the
church. The quickest way to get people to stop talking about it is to get it
out of The Book of Order."

Bay says people may soon tire of asking candidates for ministry, as well as
deacons and elders, about their sexual lives.

What is different about this year's debate, at least among the liberals, is
this argument: The way out of this conflict is letting church polity solve
the problem, rather than wrangling for another decade about the
interpretation of Biblical texts or scientific data on homosexuality. In
other words, return decision-making on ordination to the presbyteries -
where some will choose to ordain gays and lesbians who have accepted calls
within their boundaries, while others never will.

Otherwise, the fight may go on for a long, long time, the liberals say,
because they are committed to battling on until G-0106.b is gone.

 Elder Michael Adee of Santa Fe, NM, a field organizer for More Light
Presbyterians, a network of churches that support gay ordination, insists
that "we are going to be faithful to bring a call to justice to the church
every year until it happens."

The tactic this year, however, is urging their opponents to set the matter
aside for the sake of denominational peace, rather than trying to convert
them to the liberal point of view.

"Frankly, that's different from the way we and others had been presenting
the argument," says Pam Byers, executive director of the Covenant Network,
who traces the change in tactics to this year's GA. "We're not asking the
church to change its teaching on homosexuality. We're not asking people to
change their minds on what they think the Bible says. We're just pointing
out that half of this denomination disagrees with the other half. And the
only way to have peace is to get off the subject."

Byers adds that PC(USA) polity puts the decision into the hands of "properly
elected governing bodies who've been ordained to the task of discerning what
God is doing in people's lives."

In other words, she says, deleting G-6.0106.b would neither prevent a church
from ordaining a gay person, nor require a church to do so. She and many
others of like mind are calling this "a middle way."

Would it mean that some presbyteries would ordain open gays and lesbians
while others wouldn't? Yes. Would it mean that openly gay and lesbian
candidates would be prudent to seek ordination in some presbyteries and not
in others? Yes. Would some churches have gay deacons or elders, while others
would never think of ordaining a gay person? Yes.

The liberals point out that presbyteries and churches already vary greatly
in their handling of calls to serve.

"This is not an essential (tenet of the faith)," Byers says. "The redemption
of the world in Jesus Christ, God's sovereignty over the world, the fact
that God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, that Scripture
is divinely inspired ... (These are essentials.) We don't have to agree on
whether gays and lesbian people can be ordained."

Of course, church conservatives don't' see this as a middle way at all. They
say it's the "same old way," local option framed in new language.

"The question is not whether some will ordain and some will not," says the
Rev. Jerry Andrews of Glen Ellyn, IL, one of the co-moderators of the
Presbyterian Coalition. "The question is whether the church will ordain.
'Some' don't ordain; the church does. You can't just say, 'How about letting
some of us do it, or not?'

"The whole church participates," Andrews says.

If Chicago Presbytery starts ordaining gays over his objections, he says, he
will still be a participant in that action, even if he walks out in protest,
because he is a member of that body.

Andrews says he doesn't want to see this matter fought over in the
presbyteries, candidate-by-candidate. He contends - like many in the
Coalition's ranks - that liberals have shifted the debate to polity because
they know they can't win it theologically, or Scripturally.

Some react more viscerally.

During the Coalition's annual meeting last month, the biggest-ever gathering
of PC(USA) evangelicals, one pastor, the Rev. David Henderson of West
Lafayette, IN, warned his audience of about 1,300 people during an
open-microphone time that the church's foundation is "severely compromised,"
like that of a termite-infested house. He suggested that the church's
liberals - and gays and lesbians - are pests that must be "stomped on" and
"sprayed" until evangelicals manage to "get rid of the problem."

That kind of talk has prodded the Rev. Chris Iosso, of Scarsdale, NY, to
search for what may be a 'third way' out of the quandary. "Are we going to
split our church over a yes/no argument?" he asks, having watched his own
presbytery, Hudson River, get tangled in judicial wrangles on the issue.
"Boy, I hope it is not that simple."

Iosso's idea is to broaden the conversation to include the "whole Gospel,"
not just isolated texts cited in support of a particular point of view.

 As a spur to fresh dialogue, he is coordinating a 'Third Way Project'
conference at Stony Point Conference Center in February, a celebration of
the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the Confession of 1967. The
conference, funded by seven churches of Hudson River Presbytery, will look
back at what the church stood for in 1967 and seek ways in which it might
move out of its current gridlock.

He says he doesn't want folks to feel bound to the old litigious or
legislative method, in which liberals consider themselves harbingers of
justice and conservatives consider themselves defenders of Biblical
integrity.

But for the moment and for the near future, litigation and legislation are
the order of the day.

Byers notes that 29 presbyteries sent overtures to the last GA to rid the
constitution of G-6.0106.b, an indication that dissatisfaction with it is
widespread. "It is an experiment that didn't work," she says. "Definitive
guidance and authoritative interpretation (constitutional interpretations
issued by General Assemblies between 1978 and 1993) didn't work. Putting it
in The Book of Order didn't work."

Bay agrees. "This (debate) is not going to go away until G-0106.b is out of
The Book of Order," he says, arguing that the overall quality of a
candidate's life should be decisive in whether he or she may be ordained.

And if his side loses again in the current voting, he says, there's always
tomorrow.

"People are slowly changing their minds," he says. "No doubt the church will
change its mind - just as it did with slavery and with the question of
women's roles."
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