Motion to have presbytery court moderator step aside is denied
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 21, 2002
ORLANDO – The opening volley in the Feb. 20 trial of a session that adopted a Confessing Church resolution was a motion that the moderator of the church court step aside because he had allegedly told some Presbyterian elders that they had a “moral duty to vote for Amendment 01-A.”
“I challenge your presence,” Christy Wilson III told Dale Heaton, moderator of the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Central Florida. “You were training a group of elders to vote in favor of Amendment A. You said it is their moral duty.”
“I did not tell them it was their moral duty,” Heaton responded, without denying that he had encouraged them to vote for Amendment A. The commission, after meeting in executive session, voted to allow him to continue serving in the case.
Alan Pickering, a member of committee of counsel that represents the complainant against First Presbyterian Church in Sebastian, Fla., argued against Christy’s challenge.
“Amendment A is unrelated to the issue before this court, since Amendment A failed as of yesterday,” Pickering said.
Amendment A was a proposal to delete from the Book of Order a constitutional requirement that prohibits ordaining practicing homosexuals from being ordained as ministers, elders and deacons. As of Feb. 21, the vote against the proposal was 91 to 40 – with 70 percent of the presbyteries affirming the current “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard.
Although Pickering argued that Amendment A was irrelevant to the Sebastian case, court documents and the previous finding of the court seemed to suggest otherwise. Two parts of the Sebastian resolution address the issue.
The resolution states: “God’s people are called to holiness in all areas of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate.”
And it urges “sessions and presbyteries to affirm these confessions and to declare that they will not ordain, install or employ in any ministry position any person who will not affirm them.”
Furthermore, the presbytery court itself, in an earlier ruling signed by Heaton, sent the Sebastian session a letter requesting that it “delete the entire item” about not employing people in ministry or ordaining officers who will not confine their sexual activity to marriage.
“I think this does relate to the issue,” Wilson told Heaton. “I would respectfully request that a vote be taken.”
Heaton himself announced the outcome of the vote with a single word: “Denied.”