Activist for gays, Re-imagining movement among GAC candidates
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, March 21, 2005
Manley Olson, one of the leaders of the Re-imagining movement that the 1994 General Assembly declared beyond the bounds of the Christian faith, is among four candidates for the top leadership positions on the General Assembly Council.
The council’s nominating committee selected Olson, Frances Irwin, Nancy Kahaian and Paul Masquelier as candidates for chair and vice chair of the council, which will meet March 29-April 2 in Louisville, Ky., the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Kahaian is the current chair of the council and Masquelier is vice chair. They are eligible for second one-year terms.
Council members also will be allowed to nominate other candidates. The council will first select a chair from the field of candidates. The remaining candidates will be on the ballot for vice chair.
Olson, a retired educator and avid bird-watcher, has been involved in two of the most controversial movements in the denomination: the Re-Imagining god gatherings and the effort to repeal G-6.0106b, the constitutional “fidelity/chastity” standard that prohibits the ordination of practicing homosexuals.
Olson, who resides in St. Paul, Minn., helped plan and participated in the Re-Imagining movement’s 10th anniversary celebration in Minneapolis in 2002.
Describing himself as “just one of the girls,” he recounted for the anniversary group the role that Eily Marlow played in rescuing a feminist campus group known as the National Network for Presbyterian College Women from exile from the PCUSA.
The 210th General Assembly (1988) voted to stop funding the network, which promoted lesbianism and, like Re-Imagining, Sophia worship. But, with the help of the General Assembly staff, the network was allowed to stage a demonstration after the vote. The young women and their allies held candles and sang This Little Light of Mine. The General Assembly reconsidered the issue and voted the next morning, adjournment day, to appoint a task force to investigate the network.
“When they started playing This Little Light of Mine, I started weeping, literally,” Olson told the Re-Imagining group at its anniversary. He described how he and Marlow, a lesbian activist who also attended the anniversary meeting, burned the midnight oil to work on a plan to rescue the network from extinction. They succeeded. The 210th General Assembly voted on adjournment day to continue funding the organization, but also decided to have a task force investigate the group.
The 211th General Assembly (1999) approved the task force’s report, placing the network on probationary status and requiring the women’s group to cease distribution of its written materials and, with theological oversight, prepare new materials that were consistent with the Reformed tradition.
Olson, an elder at North Como Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, which is a Covenant Network congregation, has been at the forefront of the movement to get the denomination to repeal its ordination standard. He even contributed a hymn titled We are Here to Stay, sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
One stanza goes: “We’re a rainbow-colored people who accept all who will say,/That the church must be inclusive if it is to be the way./We’re transgender, het’rosexual, bi, lesbian and gay,/And we’re all here to stay.”
Another stanza: “Our critics preach compliance and support for status quo,/they hope we’ll get discouraged and decide it’s time to go./But this church was born reforming and we pledge to keep it so, Thus we are here to stay.”
Olson, who earned a Ph.D. in administration and higher education from the University of Minnesota, retired from a 40-year career in education as dean of liberal arts at Normandale Community College. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Olson was one of the leading rebounders in the school’s basketball history.
Two of the other nominees – Kahaian and Masquelier – are ministers and one – Irwin – is an elder and a businesswoman.
Kahaian is the senior pastor of the 407-member First Presbyterian Church in Michigan City, Ind. A graduate of Kalamazoo, Mich., and Yale Divinity School, Kahaian has served on the Congregational Ministries Division of the General Assembly and as chair of the council’s Mission Work Plan.
Masquelier, a former parish minister who earned his degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, served as executive presbyter of the Presbytery of San Jose for 21 years.
Irwin is a nurse and office manager of Irwin Surgical Group in Merrill, Ore. A graduate of Whitworth College, she is an elder at First Presbyterian Church in Moses Lake, Wash. She is a former moderator of the Presbytery of Central Washington.