Sessions, presbyteries ignore PCUSA ordination standard
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 29, 2002
Local church sessions and, in some cases, entire presbyteries continue to ignore the constitutional standard that requires fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness for officers in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
One of the latest to join that league was the Presbytery of Yellowstone, which refused to take action against First Presbyterian Church of Anaconda, Mont., which is in open defiance of G-6.0106b, the ordination standard.
The presbytery recently voted down a recommendation by a two-person pastoral committee that would have resulted in having an administrative commission try to persuade the session of the Anaconda church to modify its statement of defiance.
The executive of the presbytery is the Rev. Paul Peterson, who is also co-pastor of the Anaconda congregation.
Peterson and members of the Anaconda session have signed what they call a “statement of conscience” that declares “we are compelled to reject any interpretation of G6.0106b that would categorically exclude persons from ordained service solely because they are in a relationship other than a civil contract between a man and a woman.”
The ordination standard was approved in a national referendum in 1997-98, affirmed by a 2-1 margin in a 1998-99 referendum and reaffirmed by nearly 3-1 in 2001-02.
Furthermore, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission – the highest court in the denomination – issued an order in October 2000 that said governing bodies did not have the right to defy the ordination standard.
“A formal declaration by a governing body whose members have taken the vow ‘[to] be governed by our church’s polity,’ and ‘abide by its discipline’ not to comply with the express corporate judgment of the church in an explicit constitutional provision exceeds the constitutional bounds of freedom of conscience and therefore requires a response on the part of the governing body exercising oversight,” the court said.
Yet, the very presbytery that was involved in that case – Londonderry v. Christ Church in Burlington, Vt. – has taken no steps to require the session of Christ Church to abide by the constitution. The court issued its order in October, 2000.
Also, the sessions and pastors of 16 congregations in the Presbytery of Hudson River have made public statements that they are defying or will defy G-6.0106 and the presbytery has taken no action requiring them to submit to the constitution.
And one court, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Pacific, has dismissed two complaints saying that the Presbytery of Redwoods in California was wrong to ordain the Rev. Kathleen Morrison, a lesbian who says she is in a sexually active relationship.
Morrison is a national representative for More Light Churches, an organization that wants the Presbyterian Church (USA) to ordain homosexuals, lesbians, people who have changed their sex and people who have sex with both males and females.