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Note #8531 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04461
October 14, 2004

Listless

Theological Task Force eschews laundry list of ordination standards

by Jerry L. Van Marter

CHICAGO - Though they have yet to take a vote on the controversial issue of
ordination standards in the Presbyterian Church (USA), a clear majority of
the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church appear
unwilling to propose a "list" of qualifying criteria for church officers.

	Led through a discussion of two internal documents - "fidelity and
chastity" and "essential tenets" - by task force member and Princeton
Theological Seminary professor Stacy Johnson, the group agreed on the need
for greater clarity and understanding in the church about the doctrinal
standards for ordination. But only the Rev. Mike Loudon of Lakeland, FL,
voiced support for a list of essentials to which officer candidates would
have to subscribe.

	Responding to a comment by Union Theological Seminary professor Joe
Coalter that "ordination standards are not unified nor clear in our Book of
Confessions." Loudon said, "A lot of people would be surprised to know that,
and they are hungering for a concrete list of essential tenets."

	The PC(USA) ordination questions include "Do you sincerely receive
and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the
confessions our church...?" But the General Assembly has never identified
what those essential tenets are.

	Task force members had in front of them a list of six "essential
tenets" and seven "Reformed distinctives" adopted last year by San Diego
Presbytery. But the Rev. Jack Haberer of Houston said, "I don't like the idea
of a set of supra-standards that are held to be higher than our confessional
standards."

	"The church has had the chance to do a list and never has," Coalter
said. "We need to find a process of deriving clarity . . . but 'essential
tenets' sounds too much like 'law.' "

	The Rev. Victoria Curtiss of Portland, OR, insisted that "a list is
not the solution to our hunger for clarity." Johnson agreed. "A laundry list
will increasingly be viewed simply as a hoop that must be jumped through
rather than a dynamic process of examining faith and doctrine."

	The Rev. Mark Achtemeier, a professor at Dubuque Theological
Seminary, asked, " 'Essential' for what? Essential for salvation? Essential
for continuity with the Reformed tradition or Christian orthodoxy? What?"

	Johnson said a list would change the whole dynamics of candidate
examinations. "There's a huge difference between a candidate presenting a
statement and the ordaining body deciding if it fits or not, and an ordaining
body presenting a candidate with a statement and asking if the candidate
agrees or disagrees."
	Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New
York, said she sees two issues: What are the standards and where do they come
from? and What is the church supposed to do with them? "What I hear," she
said, "is the call, not just for clarity, but for loyalty and adherence to
the standards."

	This is especially true, most task force members agreed, of the
highly charged question of sexual ethics. For many, standards of sexual
conduct for ordination are black-and-white. "By definition, anything outside
the bounds of faithful, heterosexual marriage is promiscuity," Loudon
insisted. "There's a constituency in the church who believe that to even talk
about this is unfaithful," Achtemeier said, responding to Loudon. "We need to
acknowledge [that belief] and address it."

	Johnson said that "the idea that there is a Biblical and a
non-Biblical way to look at (the morality of same-gender relationships) is a
tautology that gets us nowhere."

	Wheeler said, "This gets us back to our earlier discussion of
Biblical interpretation - can people who disagree on what's Biblical still be
grounded in a Biblical faith?" When Loudon responded, "Yes," Achtemeier
suggested that "maybe the way out is to look at self-understandings of people
holding different views rather than standing above the fray with this
tautology of right or wrong."

	Resolution of these thorny questions is pressing on the task force,
which meets here through Friday evening and then has just two more scheduled
meetings - in March and July of next year - before the scheduled release of
the preliminary draft of its final report in the fall of 2005. The task force
makes its final report to the 2006 General Assembly in Birmingham, AL.

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