Commissioners question essentials, Scripture and personal relationships
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, January 28, 2008
EDINA, Minn. – Before voting on a declared scruple to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s ordination standard, commissioners in the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area raised questions concerning essentials, Scripture and personal relationships.
More than 350 people were in the sanctuary of Christ Presbyterian Church as commissioners voted that a declared scruple to the “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard in the Book of Order is not an essential of Reformed faith and polity. The scruple was declared by Paul Capetz, an openly gay former minister in the PCUSA.
Before the vote, commissioners were allotted two minutes to speak to the issue. One woman asked if Capetz could “clarify the nature of his departure, which is not clear to me.” She then asked, “If he is restored, will he refrain from intimate sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman?”
Capetz, referring to materials he provided to the presbytery and a presentation he gave during a morning executive session, said, “I have already answered the question. I refuse to take a vow of celibacy.”
‘I believe Scripture trumps all’
Another man, an elder, questioned something Capetz said that he called “a bit dismissive of the importance of Scripture. I believe Scripture trumps all.”
Capetz replied by saying that, “I certainly didn’t mean to sound dismissive of Scripture. What I’m opposed to is an idolatrous use of the Bible in Protestant usage and ethics as if we didn’t need to reflect in a rigorous method and manner what Scripture teaches … that all we have to do as disciples of Christ is to abide by Scripture. I think that runs dangerously close to idolatry.”
“This is a denomination that prides itself on a very high level of theological education. Theology matters,” he said.
Capetz then used an analogy about a minister during the American Revolution who said he personally believed that slavery was wrong, but that he wouldn’t publicly oppose it. “God,” he said, gave that minister “a conscience to determine what is right and wrong and he abdicated his conscience.”
Another commissioner, who supported the motion, said that, “20 years ago I would have voted against restoration. The issue was so uncomfortable for me.” Since then, she said, she’s read, listened and investigated the issue. Now, “my mind has changed and my heart has been changed by the Holy Spirit.”
“Who did Jesus spend time with,” she asked. “Always the people on the margins. So I asked myself, ‘Who are the marginalized in my time?’ The gays and lesbians.”
Another man, explaining that he’s spent the past year-and-a-half in a “life-changing experience” battling cancer, said that, “when you have cancer, your life does change.”
“Two thousand years ago, I would be an outcast,” he said. “Orthodoxy doesn’t want you around. There are servants that Christ calls to be a part of His Church who are those who the orthodoxy doesn’t want, those who the orthodoxy calls sinners. We can no longer keep people out. We’re all sinners.”
What’s essential
Another commissioner said the vote comes down to “what’s essential and what is not. What is essential,” she said, “has to do with a commitment to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments.”
She said she based her opinion on Calvin’s The Institutes of the Christian Religion. “That is what is essential and that is what Paul Capetz has committed himself to. Calvin said that Scripture without the Spirit is simply a dead letter. It must involve the Spirit within the texts and the spirit of the believer and the church.”
Another commissioner said he would have voted against Capetz’s restoration 20 years ago. “But God has changed my heart and God has changed my mind.”
Another commissioner said “one of the essentials is total depravity. Much that is in us is not of God. We need the Word of God as an external standard to ourselves.”
“To call what God has called sin, I cannot do,” she said. “I must vote no against restoration.”
A woman, describing herself as an evangelical who had been attending presbytery meetings for 22 years, said she long has found the meetings “to be alienating, troubling, discouraging and depressing. I constantly don’t feel like I fit in and am not accepted.”
Then, comparing her “personal pain” with that expressed by Capetz, she said that “standards for ordained office are about more than that” and, consequently, she “cannot in good conscience affirm same-sex relationships.”
Another commissioner said that “what we have to do is go deep down to what is sin. … Homosexuality is not a sin – it is sin to deny calling forth a people, sinful to deny ourselves of who we are in loving relationships.”
Those who vote against restoration, he said, “are saying to someone else that we are choosing to say ‘No.’ If we do that, we will limp into the future. We will not do it as a whole body.”
The comments about Scripture, relationships, personal pride and so on led one commissioner to ask, “Does this departure from essential tenets get a few whiffs of red herring in this room? That’s not unusual at presbytery.”
“I’ve come to this conclusion,” he said. “There is no place in the Gospels where I am told to detest or despise somebody for whom they love. I no longer believe that a committed, sincere love between two consenting adults is in itself a state of sin. Period. Call it a scruple.”
Celibacy
Another woman minister, referring to the “fidelity/chastity” clause, said that, “this amendment is not about homosexuality, but about celibacy. It’s about anybody who is not in a marriage cannot be ordained. We don’t talk about that. It’s absurd for us to sit around and talk about Paul Capetz when there are a whole bunch of ordained heterosexuals having sex before marriage.”
“I’m tired of being the Bride of Christ,” she said, to laughter from commissioners. “If the way of marriage was open to me, I’d go there. I didn’t get into this to be a nun. If I wanted to do that, I’d have become a Catholic.
“What we do has such broader implications,” another commissioner said. “My nephew is gay. I want to be able to tell him that the church loves him. He’s attempted suicide four times in the past year because he knows that so much of the church does not love him. I’m in favor of the motion.”
Another commissioner talked about the need for consistency in the use of scruples.
“We must seriously considering the scrupling of congregations seeking to leave with their property,” he said, “if we are going to scruple ordination standards.”
Another man reminded commissioners of what the Head of the Church said – that, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now, we’re hearing if you love me, you don’t have to keep my commandments. That’s not what the great Head of the Church said. If we approve this, we should tell our elders to put their Bibles in a drawer.”
Craig M. Kibler is the Director of Publications and the Executive Editor of The Layman and The Layman Online. He may be reached at cmkibler@www.layman.org.