Andrews wants local option on gay ordinations
The Layman Online, May 20, 2004
General Assembly Moderator Susan R. Andrews says regional presbyteries and local church sessions should have the right to decide whether they will ordain practicing homosexuals as ministers, elders and deacons.
She repeated her advocacy of ordaining homosexuals during an interview with The Toledo Blade, which published her remarks on May 19. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) prohibits ordaining homosexuals who are not celibate.
A former director of the Covenant Network, from which she resigned after she was elected moderator, Andrews has used her office to try to muster opposition to the church’s law. The law has been sanctioned in three national referendums, including by nearly 75 percent of the denomination’s presbyteries in 2001.
Andrews appointed Chris Glaser, a homosexual writer, to be one of the preachers at the meeting of the 216th General Assembly. Although Glaser is a Presbyterian elder, he failed to gain ordination as a minister because of his open commitment to a homosexual lifestyle. He currently works as the spiritual director of a non-Christian religious group in Atlanta and serves as editor of a quarterly Web publication by More Light Presbyterians.
In her interview with The Toledo Blade, Andrews said she favors a policy that would allow a presbytery that objected to ordaining homosexuals for Biblical reasons to continue its policy but also allow presbyteries that favored ordaining gays to do so.
Historically, the PCUSA, as a connectional denomination rather than a congregational network, has followed the principle that the church’s constitution applies to all.
United Methodists to boycott some cities
Delegates to the 2004 United Methodist General Conference rejected the use of Native American names and symbols for sport teams, calling the practice dehumanizing and a blatant expression of racism.
They said United Methodist agencies and other organizations are not to conduct meetings or hold events in cities where professional sports teams use Native American mascots.
The action came May 7 at the church’s top legislative gathering, held every four years.
Normally, Methodists and Presbyterians and their mainline partners in the National Council of Churches chart similar courses on social issues – Taco Bell, pickles, war in Iraq, etc.
But the Presbyterian Church (USA) is breaking ranks. Its 216th General Assembly on June 26-July 3 will be held in Richmond, Va. – home of the Richmond Braves, the Triple-A farm club of the Atlanta Braves.
Even so, the PCUSA may move ahead of the game on the Native American, nee-Indian, situation. The General Assembly will receive a report proposing that the denomination cease using “Native American” and begin using “First Nation.”
Is denominationalism dead?
A spirited debate is taking place in the United Church of Christ, a mainline denomination that is shrinking nearly as fast as the Presbyterian Church (USA). The question is whether denominationalism is dead.
The responses are being posted on a UCC Web forum – and they are about what you would expect in the PCUSA: Yes-no-maybe.
Lutherans review screening candidates
The criminal sexual misconduct of a former pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has led the church to take a closer look at the process it uses to screen candidates for its lay and ordained ministries.
The former pastor, Gerald P. Thomas Jr., was found guilty of sexual assault against children in a criminal trial last year in Texas and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in state prison.
Fourteen plaintiffs affected by Thomas’ criminal behavior sued the ELCA churchwide organization and several other church organizations and leaders. The churchwide organization settled with the plaintiffs and their attorneys on March 27 for $8 million.
“This case is witness to the brokenness of the human person and of the systems designed by humans to assist and build up. The system failed; it deserves attention,” the Rev. Mark R. Ramseth, president, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, wrote in a May 7 memo to ELCA bishops and seminary presidents.
Baptist leader raps IOC on transgendered athletes
Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville (just down the street from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary), has termed a recent decision by the International Olympic Committee one of the “latest signs of sexual insanity.”
Mohler was responding to the IOC’s sex-change policy that will allow surgically transgendered athletes to compete in the summer Olympics in Athens.
The “sex reassignment (male to female and vice versa)” guidelines were adopted by the IOC on May 17. Mohler said the decision coincided with “a week already infamous for sexual confusion.”