Spahr will get Women of Faith award
Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, April 27, 1999
“Lesbian evangelist” Jane Spahr will be one of three women receiving the Women of Faith award.
Following a 9-2 secret ballot vote, the General Assembly Council executive committee reversed the decision by the National Ministries Division steering committee, which had overturned Spahr’s selection on the grounds that her ministry opposes the policies of the PCUSA.
“To recognize her would appear to endorse the position for which she’s been advocating,” said National Ministries Division director Curtis A. Kearns Jr., who requested the steering committee’s review.
The PCUSA holds that homosexual behavior is contrary to Scripture and the PCUSA constitution prohibits the ordination of persons who unrepentantly engage in such behavior. Spahr says that her lesbianism is a “gift of God,” and she insists that persons who engage in homosexual behavior should “freely serve” the PCUSA as ministers, elders and deacons.
Spahr is employed by Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y., as a “lesbian evangelist” for That All May Freely Serve, an organization devoted to the ordination of gay and lesbian Presbyterians as church officers.
Red flag
The selection committee that originally chose Spahr represented constituencies within the National Ministries Division’s Women’s Ministries Program Area, including: Presbyterian Women, the Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns, the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, the National Association of Presbyterian Clergywomen and the Association of Presbyterian Christian Educators.
Kearns said the selection committee followed past procedure when they selected the Women of Faith award recipients. After the selection committee notified the three women, they then notified the National Ministries Division (NMD).
“After NMD was advised, a red flag went up for me,” said Kearns. “The concern that promoted the red flag to go up was, where did the ultimate accountability for the selection lie? I think that in the church at large the ultimate accountability lies with the organization that sponsors the award, and clearly that’s Women’s Ministries and NMD.”
Because the red flag went up, Kearns consulted with the NMD steering committee, made up of General Assembly Council (GAC) members.
‘The right thing’
“Curtis did exactly the right thing,” said John Detterick, GAC executive director. “He raised the issue in the right place.”
Following three conference calls, the steering committee decided to overturn Spahr’s selection because presenting Spahr with the award would “make it appear that an entity of the General Assembly was endorsing a position that runs counter to existing General Assembly policy.”
The steering committee continued, “Entities of the General Assembly are obligated to uphold the policies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and should not be put in the position of appearing to compromise them in any way. The determination of the steering committee was that presenting this award to Dr. Spahr placed the division in conflict with that obligation.”
Pressure tactics
The steering committee’s decision to rescind the award resulted in a flurry of Internet outrage by pro-gay-ordination activists.
For example, Gene Huff of San Francisco said in an Internet message, “This episode could well be a watershed moment regardless of which way it finally goes.”
Huff also sent a list of the GAC executive committee voting members, their home addresses and phone numbers to various gay/lesbian activist groups.
Even more scathing was a Internet posting by prominent gay activist Chris Glaser who said, “Kearns should resign or be removed as director of the National Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church (USA). By his display of bigotry and sexism and an authoritarian management style, he has spiritually humiliated himself and our denomination and has severely diminished any spiritual authority he may once have had to serve as a Presbyterian leader.
“Presbyterian clergy, laywomen, and laymen not employed by the national church should interrupt the award breakfast to present Rev. Spahr with the award. The other recipients of the award, I believe, would applaud such an action.
“Supportive national staff members should consider a one-day sick-out during the busiest weeks prior to the upcoming General Assembly to protest Kearns’ action, if it is not reversed.
“Supportive Presbyterians should consider participating in a deluge of letters, e-mails, and phone calls to Kearns and other national church leaders demanding the reversal of this precedent-setting decision.”
Process trumps content
The steering committee had requested that the GAC executive committee affirm its decision and proposed press release.
Rather than focus on the substantive issues raised by the steering committee and its critics, the executive committee focused exclusively on the mechanics of the selection process.
Executive committee member Jinny Miller said it’s been “very clear this has been a women’s ministry award.”
“We recognize that there isn’t in place policy and procedure on how awards are given,” said executive committee member Donetta Wickstrom, who is also a member of the NMD steering committee. “We were stepping into a situation that we didn’t have a manual or procedure. There was a concern to be faithful of the obligation we have that we can delegate a task – we can delegate the selection process to a committee – but we can’t delegate our responsibility to be respectful to the policy of the GA.”
Executive committee members agreed that the selection process was flawed.
“Should the person recommended be punished because the process is flawed?” asked Executive committee member Atlanta Brown.
“It seems unfair to penalize the selection committee who acted in good faith,” said executive committee member Diane Wheeler. “I don’t see how we can fault their decision.”
Public perception
The executive committee voted 9-2 to “let stand the selections of the Women of Faith awards” and called for the creation of a task force to “review all policies and procedures regarding the full range of awards currently within the scope of the work of the General Assembly Council.”
They also acknowledged that “the executive committee acknowledges that National Ministries Division staff acted appropriately and the steering committee acted decently and in order in carrying out their responsibilities.”
Wickstrom, who is chair-elect of the GAC, expressed concern over “how this action will be perceived by the public, our denomination members. I perceive that those who opposed the action were more vocal than those who concurred with the action of the NMD steering committee.”
Collateral damage
Suggesting that the pressure applied to GAC leaders came from a small segment of the PCUSA population, and that those who agreed with the steering committee’s decision didn’t send e-mails or letters, Wickstrom said, ” I have a concern that there is a silent majority out there who would not be favoring the reinstatement of the award and have not been heard from at this point. I have great concern of what this once again does in focusing on the women’s ministries unit and those who made up part of the selection representation, mainly the NNPCW and the Advocacy Committee for Women Concerns.”
“There is going to be damage and there will be collateral damage,” she continued. “I’m concerned how this action will be perceived by the greater church and how do we address that. Do we say we had a flawed system so we decided to go ahead with it and spend GA money on something when we have other issues where people are saying I don’t want our GA money spent this way and I’m going to be directing my money in a designated and restricted way? I would just ask you to strongly consider what the fallout of this is going to be.”
Executive committee member Peter Pizor shared Wickstrom’s concern that the group was being swayed by a small, unrepresentative, activist group.
Following the vote, Pizor said, “We need to find a way … to be wiser about this in the future. I think it paints a picture of a church at conflict between what we think of our polity and about what small group is doing. …We need to think very carefully and very consistently about how we can be consistent to the whole church.”
Other award recipients
Jane Dempsey Douglass, a retired professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and Letty Russell, a professor at Yale Divinity School, have also been selected to receive the award.
Russell was the keynote speaker at the fourth (1996) Re-Imagining conference, where she was quoted as saying, “In my local presbytery last year, I went to the ministerial relations committee and told them … I was retiring from the presbytery because of the church’s position on the ordination of homosexuals. … As a lesbian, I had decided to use my energy on subversion and not on church committees.”
“I’ve decided … to be in, but not of, the church,” Russell said.
Douglass was a keynote speaker at the Covenant Network’s organizational meeting in 1996. She told her audience that ordaining persons who engage in homosexual behavior is consistent with the Reformed tradition, even though she admitted the Reformers universally condemned such behavior.
Comments on the Women of Faith award
The following comments on the decision to reinstate Jane Spahr’s award are taken from Presbyterian Church USA press releases, letters, pro-gay-ordination Internet sites and discussion groups.
“I’m delighted that our campaign to reinstate Janie Spahr as Women of Faith Award recipient has been successful. …The Layman’s somewhat slanted article [posted 4/27/99 on The Layman Online, www.layman.org] looks like an effort to create a backlash against these awards similar to what they did with the ReImagining Conference.
Barry Smith, Chicago, IL
“First I assure you that the selection committee made its choices solely on the basis of information provided on the nomination forms. They did so without any agenda or even realization that the nominees shared a similar stance on a particular issue. They did so without any intent to promote one ‘side’ or another, but simply and honestly to honor three women of faith.”
Cathy Chisholm, GAC chair
“As one who continues to be transformed and informed by the Living Word, I pray that we as a church will dare to see Christ in the midst of us, face to face, challenging any system, yes even the church, which attempts to exclude its very own children. To dare less is to become implicit in perpetrating violence against those defined as ‘Less Than’ …”
Jane A. Spahr
“The dynamic of the old boys checking the women’s ‘committee work’ is a common thread in this conflict, ReImaging, and NNPCW. The root of the problem is that they assume this position of male authority over our ‘pretty little’ female minds, choices, theologies … whether they approve or disapprove is hardly the point.”
Donna M. Riley, Princeton, NJ