Spahr award rescinded: Decision being challenged
by Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, April 21, 1999
The final decision on whether “lesbian evangelist” Jane Spahr will receive the Women of Faith Award will be made this weekend at the regular meeting of the General Assembly Council executive committee, according to Internet sources.
Internet reports also say that Spahr, one of three women selected to receive the award and whose selection was later rescinded, will meet with National Ministries Division Director Curtis A. Kearns Jr., and General Assembly Council Executive Director John Detterick on Thursday, April 22.
According to the Presbyterian News Service, Kearns asked for a review of the selection committee’s decision because Spahr’s ministry is not in keeping with the policies of the PCUSA. The NMD steering committee reversed the decision to present Spahr with the award. “To recognize her would appear to endorse the position for which she’s been advocating,” said Kearns.
The PCUSA holds that homosexual behavior is contrary to Scripture and prohibits the ordination of persons who openly practice it. 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.
At an April gathering of That All May Freely Serve, Spahr said she and the organization are “using a grassroots approach to convince moderate Presbyterians that the church -– by voting G-6.0106b (the fidelity and chastity) into The Book of Order – has given an exclusive interpretation to an inclusive gospel.”
Lobbying for Janie
“One way or another, Janie Spahr will get the Women of Faith Award – we’ll just give it to her ourselves on behalf of the whole of God’s creation,” said homosexual-activist Howard Warren in an e-mail to the More Light Presbyterian Internet discussion list.
“It appears that the sticking point being used is that she is too much a symbol – that is the key word – a symbol of the cause of opening ordination to gays and lesbians,” said Gene Huff of San Francisco. “This episode could well be a watershed moment regardless of which way it finally goes.”
Huff sent a list of the GAC executive committee voting members, their home addresses and phone numbers to Hesed, the More Light Presbyterian list and Presbynet discussion groups.
“I really do not think there is anything wrong or risky about making contact with them. …Have at it,” said Huff.
Lawrence A. Reh of More Light Ministries in Alameda, Cal., said, “Lacking a prophetic, spirit-led champion with authority to do the right, perhaps the most realistic hope is for members of a committee to collectively share the responsibility for a different outcome. I’m still praying for both – the prophetic champion and the collective conscience of the committee.”
Other award recipients
Jane Dempsey Douglas, 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 ReImagining conference, held in Minneapolis, Minn., Nov. 1-2, 1996, 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.
Douglas 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.
The crux of the matter
“The nominating committee was terribly unwise to propose someone whose nomination they surely must have known would cause further division in our church. It was, very simply, ‘in your face’ to the majority of us Presbyterians who have consistently said, ‘No’ to gay ordination. In a sentence, it was an open challenge to the peace, unity and purity of the church,” wrote Sylvia Dooling of Voices of Orthodox Women in an editorial posted on VOW’s website.
In a second editorial, Dooling wrote, “Here’s the crux of the matter. [Spahr and Russell], who teach and advocate aberrant ideas and behaviors that have been found to be ‘out of bounds’ by our church, are being elevated by the Women’s Ministries Program Area as examples of what it means to be a woman of faith at the end of the 20th century.”
The selection committee
The Women of Faith awards are presented annually at a breakfast sponsored by the Women’s Ministries Program Area of National Ministries Division during General Assembly.
According to the Presbyterian News Service, the members of the selection committee represented constituencies within the 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.
The panel chose the three recipients after reviewing more than 80 forms nominating 59 different women.
Presbyterian News Service quotes Barbara E. Dua, associate director for Women’s Ministries in the National Ministries Division, as saying the Women of Faith awards are intended for “women who sort of push the boundaries.” The committee, which she said was “not staff-driven but constituency-driven” unanimously chose the three recipients after a process in which, according to the selection committee members, “the cream rose to the top.”