Gay activist group cites ‘abusive power’ in attacking report of PUP task force
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, September 7, 2005
A gay and lesbian advocacy organization is attacking what it calls “abusive power” in the report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church and vowing to seek the repeal of the “fidelity/chastity” clause in the constitution.
“Peace, purity, and unity can only be achieved when the doors in this church are taken off their hinges and opened widely so that all may freely serve,” That All May Freely Serve says.
The 10-page response to the task force’s 39-page report is posted on the Web site of the group, an organization that describes itself as “working for ordination of qualified gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender candidates in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as Elders, Deacons, and Ministers.” Its leader, lesbian activist Rev. Jane Spahr, is facing an October 26 pretrial hearing by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of the Redwoods for performing a same-sex marriage service in Canada in defiance of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In its statement, the group said that “abusive power is the underlying, often covert, dynamic at the root of the unjust discriminatory standards of G-6.0106 b. and ‘definitive guidance,’ [and] we consider it very disappointing and regrettable that the Task Force chose not to deal with the issue of power openly and head-on. Instead, power is contained in the Task Force’s discussion of polity in such a ‘nuanced’ manner that it is not obvious that the issue is even being addressed. Such a low key and less than forthright discussion of power does not adequately take into consideration how insidiously LGBT people perceive that power is used to leverage privilege in order to deny us equal access to power.”
The group echoes the task force report’s recommendation (#2) to engage in “intensive discernment through worship, community-building, study, and collaborative work.” The group says that, “We welcome and invite full and open dialogue with our brothers and sisters who may share different views. However, we ask all to hear us when we say there can be no pause in our work until G-6.0106 b. is deleted from the Book of Order. We are bound by our conscience, our calls, and the lives of those we serve to reject any moratorium in the furtherance of this mission.”
“There can be no rest for us until our LGBT family worships and works in this church with the same rights as our heterosexual sisters and brothers. Peace, purity, and unity can only be achieved when the doors in this church are taken off their hinges and opened widely so that all may freely serve.”
A recommendation by the task force that the 217th General Assembly “adopt no additional authoritative interpretations, to remove no existing authoritative interpretations, and to send to the presbyteries no proposed constitutional amendments that would have the effect of changing denominational policy on any of the major issues in the task force’s report, including Christology, biblical interpretation, essential tenets, and sexuality and ordination” also came under fire. The group said that, “We affirm and commend to all who seek justice and full inclusion for LGBT members in the church the wise use of Presbyterian polity that provides a means for redress of grievances and reform of injustices through the democratic legislative ‘process of overture, amendment, and vote of the presbyteries.’ This process is one of the limited ways whereby LGBT people and our straight allies can access power in order to challenge the church in obedience to Jesus Christ ‘…to reform itself in life and doctrine as new occasions … demand….’ We believe it would be negligent and unfaithful of us if we were to abandon this legislative process and did not continually encourage presbyteries to make the General Assembly aware of the need to be just and fully inclusive of LGBT people by calling for the deletion of G-6.0106 b.”
“We believe the church has had ample opportunity for discernment during the past twenty-seven years,” the group says. “From the time ‘definitive guidance’ was promulgated by the 190th GA (1978) to the time of the 1997 ratification of G-6.0106 b., the PCUSA has consistently refused to be engaged in discernment about the issues that the presence of the real lives of faithful LGBT Christians raises for the church. The arbitrary legalism of G-6.0106 b., rooted as it is in cultural fears and hostilities toward LGBT people, fails to seek the will of Christ for the church to be rooted in covenantal grace. This failure to engage in discernment about the destructive effects of the church’s treatment of its LGBT members has ruptured the peace, unity, and purity of the church.”
The group says that G-6.0106 b, “more than being simply an embrace of aberrant polity, is an embrace of a distorted theology that damages the very soul and conscience of the church,” adding:
“The PCUSA as an institution has become oblivious to and thus adjusted to its abuse of power that violates the full equal humanity of its LGBT members. This abuse of power in turn distorts the whole church’s ability to act humanely and it becomes the enemy of the very people it is called to serve.”