Carmen FAQ Video #02: What do we do now that Amendment 14-f has passed?

I’m hopeful viewers of this video will know that the Covenant Network of Presbyterians is committed (to use Carmen’s language) to “you may” not ever becoming “you must”:
http://covnetpres.org/2014/10/statement-board-directors-covenant-network-presbyterians/

We also do not believe a civil case should be brought against a church, or would ever be successful, compelling any worship service (including a same-sex marriage). Churches are free to determine what worship services they do or do not hold.

The video includes advice regarding calling insurance agents and attorneys. Is there a particular case to which you can point where a church or minister has been found liable for refusing to perform a particular wedding (for any couple)? I’m not a lawyer, either, but those I know have not heard of any such case in American history.

As we live into a new day in the church’s life, I hope all in the Presbyterian Church (USA) will seek to find ways for us to be church together, deepening our relationships and mutual understanding, rather than finding ways to grow in fear and frustration with each other. We are eager to be in dialogue toward a stronger church.

Brian Ellison, executive director
Covenant Network of Presbyterians
http://www.covnetpres.org

In the long run, all of Carmen’s advice is moot. When same-sex “marriage” becomes legal at a national level, churches will no longer be able to refuse to perform such ceremonies. The only way out will be for churches to stop performing state-licensed marriages, and to instead have a purely religious ceremony for couples who have already participated in a state marriage at the courthouse. Even then, I’m not sure Leftist activists will leave churches alone.

Don_ I presume you are not a lawyer. I have talked to a lawyer who practices before the Supreme Court and who is a Presbyterian and his considered opinion is that no churches will be required to do gay weddings.
I am a leftist in your eyes. But let me assure you, if you don’t want to perform same sex weddings in your church that is okay with me, and with most liberals like me. Really.

Civil Unions across the board, leave marriage to the churches, it’s the only way that this will ever work for not just the pcusa, but for all churches.

I left PCUSA on this issue and joined PCA. I have never been sorry I did so and I would do the same today. The PCUSA has become an abomination unto the Lord.

Yes, and in 2008 both Barack Obama and Joe Biden assured us they were opposed to gay marriage.

Churches won’t be required to perform gay marriages in the sense of there won’t be criminal penalties, sure. The left doesn’t work in such a blunt fashion.

No, what they’ll do is take away their tax exempt status. Where they control local governments they’ll send in the building inspectors to hassle them. They’ll use the IRS to constantly audit them.

Most of all, though, in true Alinskite fashion they’ll go after individual churches with vitriolic campaigns of hate and intimidation… just as they’re doing now with Memories Pizza, and they’ve done in the past with other people and companies.

As a Hoosier currently going through the mess over Indiana’s RFRA law and seeing the bullying that goes on in the media and our culture in general, I agree that (for now) churches will not be required to do gay weddings, but the the bullies will try to have tax-exempt status revoked for conservative churches, and for church-sponsored schools that do not teach the “diversity” curriculum.

The gay marriage issue is a ploy to splinter the Christian Church. The leftists don’t really care about gays; they care about power and they are militants atheists. They want to destroy belief in Christ because it interferes with control of the masses.

The first call you need to make is with your head bowed. Jesus said he was leaving us with a new commandment. Does all Carmen’s advice and legal poturing resemble that new commandment? Does it even fit any of the original 10?
She is advising from a position of fear and defensiveness. The church is not a business. The same rules do not apply as are applied to businesses. This sounds very chicken little to me, all our worst fears are comming to pass! You can go ahead and build obstacles to your church to defend against imaginary enemies but wouldn’t it be much easier to just not discriminate at all? Leave what is God’s knowing and work to God. Jesus commanded that we love one another. Shouldn’t we apply much more effort to that commandment/task than to barring our church services?

No we really aren’t and we forgive you.

Wrong! The Christians among us care about following through with the teachings, tenents and commandment of Jesus Christ. We care about living and doing the life that he prescribed and made possible. We do care about the rights of homosexual persons because they have been long oppressed. Much like women and people wirh other differences that are inherit to their birth and being. The Christian church has spintered it’s self over gender and race and origin and other pathetic ego driven man made issues for a few centuries now. No outside help is required. The left that has turned away from church, believing it to be corrupted by judgemental hateful people. They simply doubt, don’t believe and don’t care about what you do and say. They generally just ignore the church, religion and resulting noise as they see it. That’s our wrong doing as much or more as their’s.

Wait until the lawsuits are filed against pcusa pastors refusing to marry Gays. Think it will not happen?? Think again!!

I agree. We left after being members for 48 years. Where in the Bible does it say it is ok for same sex couples to marry?

I also left the PCUSA and the point in question was the authority of scripture whether it should or not be our guide. Maybe Berry the next thing you will see is people marrying animals – also something that the church traditionally has viewed as an abomination.

In reply to Robert Berry: Did Jesus say that he didn’t want to discriminate so that the woman caught in adultery should just go back to her lover? Of course not. He instructed her to sin no more. Gay marriage is not a matter of discrimination. It’s an issue of Biblical authority and the human race propensity to sin.

I would be against the same sex marriage in our Presbyterian church because it is wrong in God’s Word and it is an abomination unto the Lord. 1 Corinthians: 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offender 10. nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. It also says a man shall be married to a woman. It does not say a man shall be married to a man and it does not say a woman shall be married to a woman. 1 Corinthians 7 in on marriage. Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of this very subject.

What right does anyone have to engage in activity that is forbidden by God?

The proponents of homosexual activity ignore the statements in the New Testament concerning such, and declare that only the Old Testament declares it forbidden, and that such prohibitions are from an earlier age and have no force today.

What I recommend now is that all who believe the Bible IS God’s word(s), and not just contains God’s word, is to leave the PCUSA. My wife and I are now much happier in the United Methodist Church. If there had been an EOC of EPC church anywhere near we would have joined them. It was leaving the PCUSAS to die of root rot that was the important decision. Even birds nest is live trees.
John Buckingham MD MPH MS MBS.