Presbytery votes 119-45 to oust Cincinnati pastor
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, June 17, 2003
The Presbytery of Cincinnati decided Monday night, in a 119-45 vote, that A. Stephen Van Kuiken has renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (USA) by defying a presbytery court’s order not to perform same-gender “marriages.” That means he is no longer a Presbyterian minister in the denomination.
Also, the presbytery’s ministers and elder commissioners, in a nearly unanimous voice vote, instructed a presbytery administrative commission to continue to work closely with the session of Mount Auburn to bring that body into compliance with church law. A motion to have the commission assume original jurisdiction at Mount Auburn – effectively becoming the congregation’s session – was defeated.
Van Kuiken’s removal as minister of Word and sacrament is immediate, although he does have the right to ask the presbytery’s Permanent Judicial Commission to vindicate him by restoring his office. Previously, the court had rebuked him for violating church law by conducting services for homosexual couples that he described as “marriages.” Even after the rebuke, Van Kuiken conducted, with the authorization of the Mount Auburn session, such a ceremony.
Melissa Sevier, the presbytery’s executive officer, told The Layman Online that a number of church legal questions remained, including whether Van Kuiken may pursue an appeal to the synod since he no longer has standing as a minister and whether he may seek a stay of enforcement in a renunciation case. She said the presbytery will seek the advice of the denomination’s Office of the General Assembly.
Van Kuiken told The Cincinnati Enquirer that he did not know what his next step would be, but that he might file a complaint with the synod claiming he was denied due process because he had an appeal pending on the rebuke. “This is a sad day,” he told The Enquirer. “This is an issue that is going to continue to stay at the surface of the Presbyterian Church.”
Van Kuiken and his attorney were allotted 10 minutes each to plead his case. His attorney called the presbytery’s meeting “a rush to judgment.” Van Kuiken repeated what he has said all along – that the PCUSA’s laws are trumped by the gospel.
After the vote to oust Van Kuiken, Bruce Archibald, chairman of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, said, “Some people will try to make us feel guilty, saying that we have kicked Steve Van Kuiken out of the presbytery. I want you to understand this: We’re not kicking anybody out of the church. We’re finding that this person, through his word and action, has removed himself from our church.”
The Committee on Ministry, after consultation with Mark Tammen and Gradye Parsons of the denomination’s Office of the General Assembly, had proposed the special presbytery meeting to deal with Van Kuiken’s unyielding defiance of church laws.
The debate showed that Van Kuiken, who responded to church court orders with radical acts of defiance, did so without the support of some of the members of his own session.
One Mount Auburn elder, Brittain Harwood, a college professor, told the presbytery’s commissioners that Van Kuiken “has betrayed the opinion of many of us on the session. He said he and other elders want to remain a part of the Presbyterian Church (USA). We want to be a part of this Presbyterian church and did not want to take as radical approach as Mr. Van Kuiken.”
Some of Mount Auburn’s leaders have been in defiance for more than 12 years. A 1991 ruling by the denomination’s highest court, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly, ordered that their defiance end. But until the presbytery vote, the only punishment against one of those leaders occurred on April 21, when the presbytery’s Permanent Judicial Commission publicly rebuked Van Kuiken because he conducted gay marriages.
Van Kuiken’s public defiance – through numerous long letters posted on the Mount Auburn Web site – was unrelenting, but the presbytery took no action for years until after Paul Rolfe Jensen, a lay Presbyterian, filed a complaint in the Presbytery of Cincinnati. Jensen, a lawyer, accused Van Kuiken of renouncing his allegiance to the Presbyterian Church (USA) by repeatedly violating constitutional standards. Van Kuiken never denied any of the charges.
Shortly after that rebuke, which was the mildest punishment he could have received, Van Kuiken conducted another service to marry two lesbians. That action prompted a call for the special meeting of the presbytery to vote up or down on his continued service in the church.
Even though Van Kuiken repeatedly broke church law and Biblical principles, he drew some grudging respect from those on the other side of the issue, including Tom Sweets, an evangelical who is pastor of Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati.
Sweets, who led the 2001-02 campaign against repealing the constitutional “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard, called Van Kuiken “a man of principle and a man of his word. Steve would not play the game most others play when they pretend that when they’re breaking the law, they’re not breaking the law.”
But Sweets said Van Kuiken’s unwillingness to resort to the tactics of others who defy the PCUSA Constitution – for instance, their redefinition of “chastity” to allow homosexual practice – resulted in his becoming “ostracized by his own people.”
At the presbytery meeting, Sweets argued and voted with the majority. At one point, commenting on an unsuccessful substitute motion to postpone action, Sweets asked commissioners, “How many times do you want to come back here.”
Even before Jensen filed his complaint, the session of Madiera Silverwood had proposed that the Presbytery of Cincinnati vote on whether Van Kuiken had renounced the jurisdiction of the PCUSA.
Sweets was pleased with the outcome. He complimented Tammen and Parsons for their advice to the presbytery and said he believes the Office of the General Assembly has apparently accepted the fact that Presbyterians are unwilling to repeal its constitutional standards against ordaining homosexuals and marrying homosexuals.
“There will continue to be problems in the Presbytery of the Northeast and problems in Redwoods,” said Sweets, citing two of several presbyteries that have sanctioned constitutional defiance. “But Cincinnati is representative of what goes on in the whole church. I think that’s a strong statement.”
More Light Presbyterians, a group committed to repealing church laws prohibiting homosexuals from serving as church officers or being “married,” had a contrary view of the presbytery vote.
“More Light Presbyterians is further shocked and dismayed by the apparent precedent set by this decision, which effectively declares the semantic distinction between same-sex unions and marriages to be an essential tenet of the Reformed faith,” the group said. “This should alarm every Presbyterian, for it suggests that any minister who deviates from any jot or tittle in the Form of Government, or Directory of Worship, or any judicial decision is at the same risk as Van Kuiken. The Presbytery neglected its duty to extend mutual forbearance on matters about which people of good characters and principles may differ.”