Court asked: Don’t let gay remain candidate for ministry
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 22, 2000
BALTIMORE – The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly, the highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA), has been asked to order a presbytery to strike the name of a gay man from its roll of candidates for ministry.
In an appeal from a ruling by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast, complainants said the fidelity/chastity ordination standard in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) applied during candidacy as well as ordination and that the Presbytery of West Jersey erred when it accepted Graham Van Keuren as a candidate.
However, the presbytery argued during an appellate hearing in Baltimore on May 19 that a person could remain a candidate while stating his intent to violate the constitution although he would not be eligible for ordination unless he changed his mind.
Synod court upheld candidacy
The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast agreed with the presbytery. Complainants appealed the case to the highest PCUSA court.
Gary Griffith, a Presbyterian elder and an attorney representing the complainants, told the General Assembly commission that if it did not order Van Keuren’s name stricken from the candidacy roles:
“You license his intent to practice homosexuality … you set an example that homosexual practice is not sin … you set an example that the constitutional documents in our church may be ignored.”
Van Keuren, who has received his master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, told the presbytery’s committee on preparation that he was gay and that he intended to live in a committed relationship with another man in a “fully sexual” relationship.
Griffith said the language in the Book of Order and the Book of Confessions – the two documents that comprise the denomination’s constitution – is clear. “This language is not to be taken lightly,” he said. “In this particular case, the candidate says, ‘I don’t care what the language is.'”
‘Rejected … standards of the church’
Griffith built his case from sections of the constitution that require candidates for ordination to practice chastity if they are single and fidelity to their spouses if they are married. He said the presbytery had failed to make clear to Van Keuren that he was required to do one or the other.
“He has openly rejected, and by his example calls for all others to reject, the standards of the church,” Griffith said. He declared it a “silly position” that the presbytery would consider Van Keuren as a candidate for ordination to an office for which he would be ineligible.
Griffith also pointed out that the committee on ministry must ask a candidate, “Do you promise to maintain a Christian character and conduct?” And he said that since Van Keuren has declared his homosexuality “a good gift from God,” he had in effect repudiated Christian character and conduct with his intent to have sex with another man.
Presbytery: Intent is not issue
John Reisner, an elder and an attorney, spoke on behalf of the presbytery. He said Van Keuren’s intent to practice homosexuality was not the issue, that that would be dealt with by the committee on the preparation for the ministry when ordination was at hand.
At that time, he said, if Van Keuren still insisted on having sex with another man the presbytery would declare him ineligible for ordination.
During its oversight of Van Keuren, Reisner said, the committee “inquired about his behavior and found no practice of homosexuality … The stage where one becomes a candidate is not the place where the church is to impose the strict compliance of the constitution.”
Van Keuren was accepted as a candidate by the presbytery on March 16, 1999, the same day he told the committee on preparation for the ministry that he was “called into a monogamous same-sex relationship.”
‘What if’ questions
Griffith suggested that the presbytery would have had an altogether different attitude if an applicant for candidacy status had declared: “I’m not going to ordain any woman; I’m not going to ordain any black men; I’m not going to ordain any minorities.”
Reisner said the committee on the preparation for the ministry accepted Van Keuren as a candidate because he was “exceptionally well motivated and qualified ….”
He was asked by the court whether Van Keuren had exhibited any change in attitude about homosexual practice.
“Not to my knowledge,” he answered.