In an article that appeared over the weekend, the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Gradye Parsons, comments on an on-going case in which the congregation and its leaders are barred from making public comment.
Parsons told the reporter that, “The way we got here is the way America got here. People suddenly met their gay fellow Presbyterians, their gay children or grandchildren and realized that false dichotomy — that a person couldn’t be Christian and gay — it just wasn’t true.”
Parsons here admits that the decision of the denomination is purely sociological, based upon a sudden discovery of same-sex attracted people in our midst. He admits that the basis of the decision was human rationalization and not God’s Word nor God’s design. The person charged with upholding the constitution of the denomination, which includes the church’s theological Confessions, makes no reference to Scripture nor theology.
Parsons’ assertion that the PCUSA has recently discovered gay people is, on its face, a direct contradiction to what he said earlier in the same article. He admits that the PCUSA has been at this for 40 years. The truth is, the denomination has been actively engaged in this internecine struggle since the mid 1970’s. The 1978 Definitive Guidance on the subject aligned the denomination with the Biblical prohibitions against same-sex intimate acts. The “fidelity in marriage between one man and one woman or chastity in singleness” requirement for those in leadership stood from 1997-2010. The reality of same-sex attracted people and the denomination’s acquiescence to those demanding the church change to accommodate their desires is not new for Presbyterians.
Parsons comments also imply that those who do not agree with him and the trend of the denomination away from Biblical standards on LGBTQ issues are somehow not in contact with LGBTQ people. Again, this could not be further from the truth. Local church ministry, including the local church under discussion in the article, is done with real people, broken by real sin, in the context of the real world. That means that everyone in ministry in the 21st century is in contact with people faced with temptations of all kinds, including sexual anarchy. The question is not relationships, but the response to the condition of the person with whom we are in relationship. Do we speak the truth in love to them or do we fall into the error described in Romans 1. Knowing God’s righteous decree, do we not only fail to speak the truth but approve of those who practice any form of sin?
When God’s Word speaks about homosexual practice it speaks with one voice and that voice is never affirming of the activity. So, has God, as Parsons says of the PCUSA, suddenly discovered same-sex attracted people? Is God’s view evolving on the subject or are there now those who claim to know better than God on the subject?
Just because we feel something, even passionately, does not make it right. God alone has the authority to determine what is right or righteous and what is wrong or sinful.
By grace, God has a redeeming plan for all who acknowledge that our lives are broken by sin and in repentance, turn to Jesus Christ in full submission to His Lordship. And yes, that includes our sexuality. There’s no part of life that is excluded from Christ’s reign.
There’s nothing in the article about God’s power to transform a person. Instead Parsons draws a false parallel to slavery and women hoping to bully those who believe what the Bible says about homosexual practice into standing down. Then, after making direct reference to two justice issues upon which there is no room for divergent views (race and gender), Parsons says that on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion “the church still loves and affirms those people who think differently,” he said. “We want to be a church where both sides of the issue can live together.”
Doesn’t that sound fun? After being told that you’re wrong, unaccepting, unloving and behind the times, you can stay — but you should know that you’re going to be subjected to serious efforts at re-education.
To help Lehigh Valley churches embrace inclusivity, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center will host a December conference, according to Adrian Shanker, the organization’s founder and executive director. The event’s keynote speaker will be Alex McNeill, executive director of More Light Presbyterians and a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Notably, Alex is also transgendered. I’ve attended and written about workshops that Alex has led. I expect that he will be persuasive to those in Lehigh presbytery and elsewhere who fail to recognize the very real spiritual battle being waged for the future of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and every member of it.
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In my military career I lived and worked in many countries with an official “state” church, or state favored church. Norway, England, Greece, Spain. All or most are just empty shells, the people have deserted them, and in some cases in Germany and Finland the building are supported by local secular taxation as historic structures.
Such is the fate of the American secular state favored churches, the PCUSA, ECUSA, UCC. Most or all more or less mouth or bless the actions and policies of the secular state and most if not all favor or endorse the policies of those politcis currently in power, and most if not all more or less function as religious arms of the secular state.
The Stated Clerk of the PCUSA can easily be dismissed as a unimaginative and doctrinaire partisan for the secular left. A tool used by others, all true. But it is not what he or the Moderator says, but what they do not say that is most telling.
In their continued silence and consent to the industrial meat processing of human flesh by Planned Parenthood for commerce, they present themselves as not immoral or unethical, but a-moral, a-ethical. Empty shells that others pour their ideas into. And in that sense, yes the USA does lead the PCUSA, For the PCUSA is nothing more than an empty caracas, a boutique entity that is up for grabs at all times by all types of folks. This is who they are, this is what they do.
My enduring commentary about the PCUSA remains, the unconverted preaching to the unconvinced or disinterested. Well done PCUSA.
The pcusa’s new Holy Bible is the “the Holy Book of Church Order” book marked to the trust clause page.
Rev parsons has given his own prediction of the PCUSA.
“As Goes the USA, so goes the PCUSA”. God’s judgement will be on both and God will not be mocked. Stories in scripture tell of wayward people giving their own pronouncements that are prophetic in the direction
their circumstances will take. Grady Parsons predicts just what will happen to the PCUSA……sadly this maybe true. God will deal with “shepherd” leaders who lead people astray.
Meanwhile, there are hurting people who needs God’s saving grace and repentance…….healing from sin…….hope to move forward.
Sadly it is not coming from the PCUSA.
It is an interesting sociological question as to why opinions in the USA changed so quickly, but few would say they never met a gay person until recently (had candidate Obama never met a gay person in 2008?).
Pop culture certainly also played a role, but the greater accessibility of pornography is likely another big contributor. In the past, there was an “ick factor” that made many people very uneasy with talking about homosexual acts; with pornography now being so widespread, there is so little capable to shock people.
Hopefully, America will find its way, regardless of what the PCUSA does or does not do. Ironically, the agenda of removing the influence of the main line from America’s spirit conscience may actually help the nation find its way back, having done away with those nuisance philosophical debates fostered by McCormick Seminary and the rest.
As the church goes, so goes the nation. Our marching orders as elect believers in Christ is from the Holy Bible not wall street or any street. We follow Christ revealed to us from the Holy Bible.
As far as the gays, one may try to say, “I am a Christian and gay.”” Biblically, wrong.
As an elder in this denomination (at least until we finish ‘discernment’), I demand this man resign his position for flagrantly contradicting his vows. He is an overgrown adolescent who evidently is not too bright either. Someone in the know explain how such a dud could have attained that position in the first place.
Let’s just hope the USA doesn’t go the way of the PCUSA!
Where ever did I get the idea that Jesus Christ is the head of the PCUSA and the Holy Bible is our authority for faith and practice?
The statistics on the total membership of the PCUSA at the end of 2014 should be published soon. I imagine that at least 100,000 have vanished in the past year and the membership is now about 1,600,000.
One wonders how many parents want to expose their children to a church environment in which homosexuality is glorified. More membership losses may be anticipated as the PCUSA is increasingly viewed as the gay church.
The 2014 membership numbers were reported in May, and the membership at the end of 2014 was 1,667,767.
Insider politics.
Interesting thing I just saw. For the last decade the average membership loss in the PCUSA is 3.4% per year. The average decline in infant baptisms for the same period is a shocking 6.3% per year. The average age in the PCUSA is about 67 years but in the USA it’s 37.
In the USA, whites are 77.7% of the population while in the PCUSA whites are 91.3%. African-Americans are 12.6% of the USA but only 1.1% of the PCUSA. Hispanics are 16.4% of the US but only 1.5% of the PCUSA. Asians are 4.7% of the US but 2.7% of the PCUSA.
A denomination of old white people should not expect to be indicative of a country it in no way resembles.
This is nonsense! The sooner the PCUSA implodes, the better off Protestant Christianity will be. Any denomination who gives in to the world and disavows God and His Word deserves anything it gets. Good bye PCUSA. God is already dealing you your death blows.
Sister Carmen (wish I could still call you a Reverend and colleague), you seem stuck in your definition in what kind of transformations God may desire among us. What if the transformation that God desires of us is to accept the full diversity of the human family that God created within us?
Carmen, I’m sorry you have taken such a strident form of opposition to the historic expression of the Scottish Reformation in America – but the Reformation continues even 500 years later – and we will continue to be reformed by how the Spirit encourages us to read anew, especially in the original languages. Spirit encourages us to look anew at words like malakos and arsenekoitai in 1 Cor. 6:9 (a word only St. Paul used in antiquity) and struggle with whether they should be interpreted together or separately since there is no punctuation in Greek. Is the “soft” of malakos (the only way Jesus himself uses the term) about living in soft clothing (the gospel context) sometimes mistranslated effeminate, or should it be translated with the male+bed+verb formation of arsenekoitai? If separate, then it could be translated as a pushover, and then perhaps someone who beds their slaves. Either is seen as an idolater in the Greek world (from which the list of sins refers). If together, it could be translated “a man who lays around in soft robes being served in his bed all day.”
As the RSV mistranslated it “homosexual” – a term invented in Germany in 1868 and was imputed into that translation and the Heidelberg Catechism in later translations that we were only recently able to correct in our Book of Confessions. (Please note, that the ECO will keep these mistranslations from the German translation rather than the original in your flawed Book of Confessions.)
Despite all of these disagreements, I wish to offer one more word of humble suggestion.
In this article, you referred to my brother Alex McNiell as being “trangendered.” The last time I talked to him, a Certified Candidate for Ministry in the PCUSA, he described himself as a Trans Man. This identification may change in the future. I happen to be male – I have never been “maled.” I trust that you identify as a woman – have you ever been “femaled?”
Why must you be so crass as to call our brother “transgendered” as if it happened to him? Geneticists confirm that between 1 in 1000 and 1in 2000 people are born with ambiguous genitalia, non XX or XY genetics, or people who experience the natural hormonal differences during puberty that expresses forms of the opposite gender. My Rabbi friends remind me that the ancient Jews included up to six or seven genders in the Mishnah and Talmud. Attempting to impose your medieval cultural standards on the church is not only unscientific, it is ahistorical and without support from the ancient traditions in which Christianity was born.
Aquinas once said, “If you make a mistake about creation, you will make a mistake about God.” You may have heard such a term as “transgendered” used before in certain circles, but God doesn’t make junk. If you make a mistake about human nature and the diversity among the human family, you are making a mistake about God. This is as true about evolution, as it is about racial diversity, sexuality and even the doctrine of “original sin” that so much of our Western theology is based upon. Interestingly, Eastern Christianity and Jewish theology are devoid of the theology of “original sin.” Perhaps your theology has become so enamored by this doctrine that it has clouded your conception of human diversity and what God truly desires for each of us – human freedom to live out our lives without secrets and being able to tell the truth about ourselves.
I would not have been able to be transformed into the Every-Gender-Loving Teaching Elder I am today if it weren’t for God’s grace, and the power to stop bearing false witness against myself and others. I continue to love and express my faithful love to my wife, but I cannot stand by while you continue to bear false witness against my siblings in Christ, whatever gender expression or identity they have been liberated by Christ to accept and claim. I can only pray that you will become open enough to the whole of humanity that God has created us to be that you will recognize that targeting the current and future leaders of the church you have left not only denigrates their humanity, but yours as well.
Rev. Will McGarvey
Nurture Committee
More Light Presbyterians National Board
Pastor at Community Presbyterian Church of Pittsburg, CA
PCUSA & UCC
200 E. Leland Rd.
Pittsburg, CA 94565
The idea was two fold. One, seize the money, positions, and prestige of the Presbyterian Church. Two, remove the influence of the main line churches from American life and ideals, as in government ideals. Note, now what would be an awkward silence over the direction America is heading, 70% disapprove, that silence is filled with rantings on emotional issues, sodomy, abortion, racial differences, legal drugs, and any number of red herrings. The left is good at that.
If I’m following your thoughts the issue is that those of us who would be described as “traditionalist” are mistaken because of errors in translations from the original languages to English. The “error” therefore would be limited to the Anglo realm. Then the logical assumption should be that those historical denominations who have remained fluent in those ancient languages would not have any “misunderstandings” on the issue of homosexual orientation or practice. Unfortunately the Orthodox brethren are not an appropriate example to prove your hypothesis. They unreservedly define such as sin.
They do differ with the West on the doctrine of Original Sin. They don’t deny Original Sin. They contend we individually are not guilty of Original Sin but that we all do indeed suffer the consequences of Orginal Sin.
Wow….I do believe that your incredible piece of psychobabble could be used to rationalize….absolutely anything!
A simple definition of gays via Scripture, Romans 1 is abomination, or to be practical, Perverts.
“Aquinas once said, ‘If you make a mistake about creation, you will make a mistake about God.’ … If you make a mistake about human nature and the diversity among the human family, you are making a mistake about God.”
This cuts both ways. If you are saying that God “made” men and women with a natural bent toward homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism, when in fact He has not, then you are making God out to be the author of sin.
Likewise, with your specious arguments that in using the reference to arsenokoitai and malakoi in I Cor. 6.9 & I Tim. 1.10 as if Paul were not referring to male homosexuality. Look at the company it keeps: sexual immorality and adultery. Then look at the context of Lev. 18, where the Lord through Moses forbade incest, adultery, male homosexuality, and bestiality—all sexual sins.
No, Mr. McGarvey, your arguments fall short of the truth. What Paul is forbidding is a man who will take to bed another man in the manner in which a man would take to bed a woman (cf. Lev. 18.22). That he is here referring to homosexuality is clear from the words Paul chose. Arsenos is the Greek word for man, and koites is the Greek word from which we get our modern English word coitus, which means sexual intercourse. Yes, koites did mean bed, but it was also meant marriage bed and was used as a euphemism used for sexual intercourse, which is how Paul used it in these two passages.
The Presbyterian Church did not simply roll over in a day. The leftist infiltration has been going on well over 100 years. The idea is to get in there and be obnoxious pests year in and year out, until all the moderates have gone elsewhere. Now the left fully intends to crush religion as a whole.
Theology Matters, a Journal of Presbyterians for Faith, Family, and Ministry, has put out an article (Vol 21 No 2…Spring 2015)
Titled HISTORIC PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH ORDER, What They Say Today.
It quotes 8 historic principles adopted by the first General Assembly in 1788 and incorporated in the Book of Order. These principles are explained and then compared to the current messages coming out of the PCUSA as evidenced by Rev Parsons and others.
The conflict between freedom and restrictions using essentials is ever present through out the history of the denomination and in the problems and divisions today. The issue of conscience for example is being misused, confused, and abused. Yet the underlying meanings of these Presbyterian principals are powerful when lived out properly in community and under the authority of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. This article takes these eight principles of Presbyterian order and gives good explanations to understand the intent.
Mr. McGarvey (I will not call you Reverend, however cheapened the title) doesn’t just throw his velvet-covered bricks through Carmen’s windows. No, that would simply be bad manners. He also throws them through the windows of Scripture, orthodoxy, and virtually all of Christian history, making him not just a theological-hooligan, but a blasphemer.
And make no mistake about it, as soft as his words sound, they are just as pernicious as those whispered by the serpent on the ear of Eve. For all his genteel language about “sisters” and “transformations” and “accepting”, the aim of his diatribe is clear: Carmen should be ashamed for her backwards and ignorant reading of Scripture and her lack of love and nuance in dealing with the whatever-gendered.
To hell with those sentiments, I say.
Those numbers, however, fail to account for any number of inflations and bloated rolls. The real number is undoubtedly much smaller, particularly if we talk about actual and regular attendance. I do not mourn its demise.
Just read Parsons will not stand for a third term, I almost broke out into a happy dance, but then it dawned on me who might replace him.