From the age of ‘unless’ to the inevitable ‘until’
By John H. Adams, February 19, 2008
The highest judicatory in the Presbyterian Church (USA) has ruled that you can’t have the constitutional ban on some kinds of sexual behavior and a loophole, too.
For the time being.
In straight talk, that means presbyteries and sessions are not allowed to approve married candidates who are involved in extramarital dalliances and single candidates who practice fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, bestiality, etc.
Is this the final say on this issue that has plunged the denomination into dark times economically and spiritually? Don’t bet on it.
Truth be known, the liberal majority of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission probably prefers scuttling G-6.0106b. There seemed to have been a hint of that persuasion in a single word of the court’s ruling.
“The fidelity and chastity provision may only be changed by a constitutional amendment. Until that occurs, individual candidates, officers, examining and governing bodies must adhere to it,” the court said (our emphasis).
Why would the members say “until” instead of “unless?” Ernest Cutting, the court’s clerk and one of its finest thinkers, surely knows that “until” implies a certain inevitably after a period of time. “Unless” requires a change of circumstances.
The court’s language echoes the same sentiments General Assembly Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick offered in a letter to the presbyteries in 2001: “I am well aware that there is considerable debate about the wisdom of this provision in our Constitution in light of our historic Presbyterian polity.”
3 votes on ‘fidelity/chastity’
From 1997 – when G-6.0106b was inserted into the Book of Order – through 2001, the denomination was in the “unless” time zone. There were three votes on the issue. The first affirmed the “fidelity/chastity” clause with a 55 percent margin; the second with 67 percent; and the third with nearly 75 percent.
But the “until” age has taken over since 2001. That was the year that the General Assembly elected Jack B. Rogers as its moderator. Before he ran for the office, Rogers had endorsed “committed” homosexual partnerships and same-sex marriages. Not surprisingly, he helped convince the commissioners to appoint a task force to make a recommendation on G-6.0106b to the General Assembly. Then he played a major role in ensuring that the task force would include a majority who favored repealing the ordination standard.
PUP task force report
After five years of deliberations at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the PUP task force produced a duplicitous report that 1) affirmed the ordination standard and 2) winked. It dug up an 18th-century Presbyterian fossil – the scruple – and suggested that presbyteries might approve candidates if they determined that the “fidelity/chastity” standard was not an essential.
Outnumbered three-to-one by liberals, the task force’s seven professed evangelicals voted with the majority to approve the report. Thus, unity (not the Lordship of Christ, Scripture or theology) became the stuff that bound together a tattered denomination.
After the 2006 General Assembly approved the task force’s proposed authoritative interpretation, the intra-denomination battle got messy. Membership losses skyrocketed. Entire congregations began bailing out via the New Wineskins Association of Churches and the linkage with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Unless there’s a final surge, evangelical presence at the 2008 General Assembly will be overwhelmed by those who wait until this moment before shoving the Presbyterian Church (USA) off the wall. And none will be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
John H. Adams, a longtime observer of the Presbyterian Church (USA), retired in 2006 as the editor of The Layman.