Task Force says 1729 Act basis for ordaining gays; Digest about act disagrees
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 18, 2006
One of the major disputes in the debate over the final report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity revolves around a 277-year-old on-again, off-again Presbyterian practice called scrupling.
American Presbyterians in the then-British colonies approved the Westminster Confession and its catechisms as their standards for the faith as part of what was known as the Adopting Act of 1729. But they also allowed ministers to take a slight deviation from those standards – namely through objections (scruples) to sections of two chapters dealing with the relationship of the church to civil magistrates.
The task force, in calling for the approval of a proposed authoritative interpretation that would allow ordaining bodies to shun G-6.0106b – the “fidelity/chastity” ordination requirement in the Book of Order – has proposed the reinstitution of scrupling and a broad interpretation of what they apply to.
In effect, the task force declares that there is no essential polity or theology in the PCUSA and that ordaining bodies ought to be allowed to ignore mandated constitutional requirements.
But is that a fair reading of the Adopting Act of 1729?
One of the best summaries of what happened in 1729 is contained in chapter II of Samuel John Baird’s Digest of the Acts of and Deliverances of Assembly. That chapter is posted on the historical Web site of the Presbyterian Church in America. Baird was a prolific archivist of Presbyterian polity.
His Digest traces the evolution of the Adopting Act. The proposal was first considered in 1728. But “the Synod, judging this to be a very important affair, unanimously concluded to defer the consideration of it till the next Synod, withal recommending it to the members of each Presbytery present to give time of notice thereof to the absent members.”
The 1729 synod resumed the consideration. Baird quotes from the synod minutes about an action taken before the vote on adopting Westminster and permitting scruples. That required that any candidate for the ministry “declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscribing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such Minister or candidate for the Ministry shall think best.”
But the synod also required that should any candidate have a scruple “with respect to any article or articles of said Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his making said declaration declare his sentiments to the Presbytery or Synod.” The presbytery or synod would decide whether scrupling candidates were “erroneous in essential and necessary articles of faith.” If so, the synod or presbytery “shall declare them uncapable of Communion with them.”
The task force the Synod of Philadelphia intended that scrupling be allowed – as Baird’s record of the synod minutes might suggest – “with respect to any article or articles” of Westminister.
But Baird’s record also shows that the final approval of the Adopting Act permitted scruples only on issues raised in the 20th and 23rd chapters of Westminster. The issue in the 20th chapter was in section 4 and addressed people who publicly ranted or published against the church of Christ. The original 1647 text of Westminster said “they may be proceeded against by the censures of the Church, and by the power of the civil magistrate.” In 1729, many Presbyterian ministers did not believe their creedal standard should accord civil magistrates that kind of power. (The current Westminster text that the PCUSA uses does not include the reference to civil magistrates.)
Some ministers in 1729 objected to the section 3 of the 23rd chapter, which said, “”The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church; that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed, for the better effecting whereof he hath power to call Synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.”
In short, they were objecting to calling on civil magistrates to be arbiters of theological disputes.
The current language of section 3, chapter 23, has been modified extensively. It declares that, “no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief” – far from the 1647 Westminster view that the civil courts should decide religious issues.
Seven years after the Adopting Act of 1729, responding to arguments about what scruples applied to, the synod adopted an explanation emphasizing that they were applicable only to the sections about civil magistrates in chapters 20 and 23. That explanation said the 1729 synod had adopted Westminster “without the least variation or alteration” other than to allow scrupling on the two clauses about civil magistrates.