PUP: What’s the big deal? Defiance occurring now
The Layman January-February 2006 Volume 39, Number 1, January 23, 2006
Some of our readers have informed us that members of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity made presentations at their presbytery meetings. Nothing surprising about that. They’re trying to drum up support for their recommendation that the denomination keep its ordination standards on the books but allow presbyteries and sessions to ignore them.
What is unusual is that during several of those meetings, PUP representatives have essentially asked, “So, what’s the big deal?” They point out – correctly – that the ordination standards are already being ignored, as if that were justification for continuing to defy the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Some of the people who heard those admissions say they were shocked.
Well, we’re not shocked by the revelation. For years, The Layman has reported that many presbyteries and sessions, the ordaining bodies, have ignored the constitutional requirement. Even more shocking, the stated clerk of the General Assembly, who is bound by his oath to preserve and defend the constitution of the denomination, has repeatedly declared that it’s not his job to enforce the prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals.
To a limited degree, he’s correct. If a synod determines that a presbytery violated the constitution by ordaining a practicing homosexual as a minister of Word and Sacrament, it’s the synod’s job to intervene. Likewise, if a session ordained a practicing homosexual as a deacon or elder, it’s the presbytery’s job to enforce the church law.
But the clerk has responsibility greater than anyone else’s in the denomination. And he is vested with the moral authority to encourage – or prod – governing bodies to comply with the constitution.
He certainly uses his bully pulpit to rail against capitalism, U.S. government policies, Taco Bell, McDonald’s and the federal government’s attempts to keep a pseudo-religious group from juicing up its meditations with a dangerous, hallucinatory drug. And he uses the power of his office as a bludgeon to try to prevent local congregations from keeping their local property when they assert that the PCUSA is no longer faithful to its tradition as a People of the Word. But there is rarely a peep from Louisville when a presbytery or session promotes outright defiance of the constitution’s ordination requirements.
Fortunately, one synod – but only one – has taken its responsibilities seriously. The Synod of the Mid-Atlantic courageously voted to require the Presbytery of Baltimore to reconsider its approval of a homosexual pastor in a validated “ministry” that has a single purpose: to undermine the constitutional prohibitions against ordaining practicing homosexuals and “marrying” same-gender couples.
The essence of the PUP recommendation is to keep the law but ignore it, and the rationale being offered on the PUP stump is that’s OK because Presbyterians are already doing just that. There’s an old word for such duplicity: antinomianism, meaning lawlessness. The Old Testament put it more bluntly: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” and ignored the timeless truth of God’s commandments. Jesus added a greater understanding, classifying as blasphemy assertions that evil is good.
Fortunately, some Presbyterians have heard first-hand from the PUP heralds about this infestation of giving lip service to God without listening to his truth. Let’s hope that continuing shocking revelations will prompt the commissioners to the 217th General Assembly to declare that no sinful practice, however frequently it occurs, justifies declaring the taboo obsolete.