Missionaries: Amendment A would isolate Presbyterians
The Layman Online, Posted Wednesday, December 12, 2001
More than 100 current and retired missionaries say that the Presbyterian Church (USA) would “put our partnerships with sister churches around the world in profound jeopardy” if the denomination terminates its “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard.
“Partners within the two-thirds world have already signaled their concern,” the missionaries said in a letter to the denomination. “Many have indicated that they would have to review their relationship if our denomination were to depart from Biblical, historic, and confessional standards in favor of an accommodation to the culture and lifestyle of our western society.”
They warned that approval of Amendment 01-A, the proposed constitutional amendment that would allow presbyteries and sessions to ordain self-affirming, practicing homosexuals and adulterers, would “indicate that we are continuing that attitude of cultural arrogance and superiority that has been so much a problem as the global church has emerged in the last three centuries.”
They noted that only about a half dozen of the world’s 34,000 Christian denominations and other Christian groups have taken steps to approve homosexual lifestyle.
“We are all distressed by the current talk of ‘schism’ within our church,” they said. “We should remember that our vote could result in global schism, separating us from Christian communities that we have long supported and in some instances helped to evangelize. We urge you and your presbyteries to defeat this amendment and so to maintain faithful and obedient relationships with our brothers and sisters in the church universal.”
The letter added that Christians around the world “struggle with the negative impact of the exportation of Western sexually explicit materials in every form of media. They are aware of the breakdown of marriages and families in our culture, the high rate of babies born out of wedlock, and our widespread tolerance of and even condoning of undisciplined sexual activity.
“If we make this proposed change in our Book of Order, they will see it as a compromise with cultural pressures that replaces the Biblical definition of what it means ‘to live our lives worthy of the calling to which we have been called.’ Confronted with such an act, many of them will be compelled to practice whatever form of fraternal church discipline is possible – in many instances, it will mean that our formal ties will be broken.”