PCUSA advisory group opposes overtures backing current ordination requirement
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 25, 2006
While the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity has taken the center stage on the issue of whether to ordain practicing homosexuals, another and possibly more far-reaching effort to dismantle the prohibition will be considered by the 217th General Assembly’s Committee on Church Orders.
The committee will consider a digest of nearly two dozen overtures that call for repealing the constitutional ordination requirement, G-6.0106b in the Book of Order, and the current General Assembly authoritative interpretation that undergirds that requirement.
The committee will also consider the comments of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, which redlines some of the problems of the overtures and sketches out additional steps that the committee may take to render the authoritative interpretation meaningless.
The material that the committee will consider at the June 15-22 General Assembly in Birmingham runs to 22 pages when translated from electronic form to paper. It uses the anti-G-6.0106b and anti-authoritative interpretation overture submitted by Heartland Presbytery as the key recommendation and attaches arguments from 21 other overtures.
The Heartland overture calls on the General Assembly 1) to approve a new authoritative interpretation that would decree that the current statement would “have no further force or effect” and 2) to call for a fourth national referendum in which presbyteries would vote yes or no on the question, “Shall G-6.0106b be stricken?”
The Committee on Church Orders will also consider some opposing overtures, which are not lumped together.
For instance, the Mississippi Presbytery wants the General Assembly to approve an authoritative interpretation that declares that G-6.0106b “plainly prohibits practicing homosexuals, adulterers, or anyone engaged in sexually immoral conduct from being ordained and/or installed to church office whether as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.” The Advisory Committee on the Constitution recommends that Mississippi’s proposal be rejected.
The Presbytery of Pueblo wants the General Assembly to declare that G-6.0106b and the current authoritative interpretation are “faithful and accurate expressions of what Scripture and our Confessions teach about the holiness of life expected of church officers, particularly with respect to marriage and singleness.” Don’t approve that either, the Advisory Committee on the Constitution responded.
The ACC also recommended disapproval for an overture that calls for an amendment to G-6.0106b that would establish a 10-year moratorium on constitutional referendums on the ordination clause.
But the ACC did provide responses that could influence the Committee on Church Orders, if it chooses to go that direction, to approve ways to erase the past record favoring ordination standards.
The ACC’s advice to the committee reads much like a collaboration with the PUP report, particularly in citing non-constitutional documents in its rationale for undoing the ordination requirement. Those documents are the Adopting Act of 1729 and the Swearingen Commission report of 1925.
“In our history, Presbyterians, in the midst of our most serious conflicts have found themselves being reformed according to the Word of God …,” the ACC said, without citing a single verse of Scripture.
As evidence of being Reformed according to the Word of God, the ACC added, “One example is found in the Adopting Act of 1729, which anchored the ordination standards in the essentials of the Reformed faith and allowed candidates to declare differing opinions on matters not deemed ‘essential and necessary.'”
The ACC did not note that the Adopting Act specifically cited only two paragraphs from the Westminster Confession of Faith from which candidates for the ministry could depart. Both dealt with the relationship of the church to civil magistrates and had nothing to do with essential theological questions or sexual morality.
The ACC quoted the Swearingen Commission report, which was not approved: “The Church at large should illustrate, as well as demonstrate, the power of the Gospel to bind up wounds and to soften animosities; and such, we are convinced, was the purpose of incorporating in the Presbyterian Constitution, the obligation [for Presbyterians] to maintain a patient, considerate and [caring] attitude toward each other.”
After suggesting the Committee on Church Orders should esteem those two non-constitutional documents, the ACC advised: “If we desire to resolve our present conflict, we must use the many and varied gifts God has provided.”
Referring specifically to the two-part Heartland Overture, the ACC said, “Adoption of this overture would accomplish its intent to modify the church’s position on ordination standards.”
The ACC also cited an overture from the Cincinnati Presbytery that calls for the deletion of seven sections from 1978 and 1979 General Assembly Minutes. The ACC said approval of the Cincinnati overture alone would not end the prohibition, because it did not call for repeal of G-6.0106b.
Besides, ACC said, “Deletion or correction of Minutes is only appropriate if those Minutes incorrectly reflect the actions taken.”
Instead, the ACC suggested, the assembly, if it agrees with the rationale of Item 04-04, “should approve … an authoritative interpretation finding the specified actions no longer have any force or effect.”
Rather than delete the minutes, the ACC said, the General Assembly could simply declare that they have “no further force or effect.”
For the proponents of Item 04-04, the offending sections of assembly minutes are:
- 1. “We conclude that homosexuality is not God’s wish for humanity. This we affirm, despite the fact that some of its forms may be deeply rooted in an individual’s personality structure” (Minutes, UPCUSA, 1979, Part I, p. 262; Minutes, PCUS, 1979, Part I, p. 203, lines 108-110).
- 2. “In many cases homosexuality is more a sign of the brokenness of God’s world than of willful rebellion. In other cases homosexual behavior is freely chosen or learned in environments where normal development is thwarted” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 262; Minutes, PCUS, p. 203, lines 111-114).
- 3. “Even where the homosexual orientation has not been consciously sought or chosen, it is neither a gift from God nor a state nor a condition like race; it is a result of our living in a fallen world” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 262; Minutes, PUCS, p. 203, lines 114-116).
- 4. “As we examine the whole framework of teaching bearing upon our sexuality from Genesis onward, we find that homosexuality is a contradiction of God’s wise and beautiful pattern for human sexual relationships revealed in Scripture and affirmed in God’s ongoing will for our life in the Spirit of Christ” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 262; Minutes, PCUS, p. 204, lines 174-178).
- 5. “Homosexual persons who will strive toward God’s revealed will in this area of their lives, and make use of all the resources of grace, can receive God’s power to transform their desires or arrest their active expression” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 263; Minutes, PCUS, p. 205, lines 197-200).
- 6. “Yet the New Testament declares that all homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian faith and life” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 263; Minutes, PCUS, p. 206, lines 239-240).
- 7. “On the basis of our understanding that the practice of homosexuality is sin, we are concerned that homosexual believers and the observing world should not be left in doubt about the church’s mind on this issue during any further period of study” (Minutes, UPCUSA, p. 264; Minutes, PCUS, p. 207, lines 324-328).
The ACC suggested that the Committee on Church Orders might consider two more excerpts under the rubic of “no further force or effect:”
- 1. That unrepentant homosexual practice does not accord with the requirements for ordination set forth in Form of Government (Minutes, UPC, 1978, Part I, p. 265).
- 2. For the church to ordain a self-affirming practicing homosexual person to ministry would be to act in contradiction to its charter and calling in scripture, setting in motion both within the church and in society serious contradictions to the will of Christ. (Minutes, PCUS, 1979, Part I, p. 207, lines 294-97).