Most support for clerk, moderator from opponents of ordination standard
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 12, 2003
The list of groups that have given Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick pats on the back for their refusal to call a special meeting of the 214th General Assembly now includes one synod, two presbyteries and five independent organizations.
All but one of the messages of support have come from middle-governing bodies and organizations that are opposed to the “fidelity/chastity” standard in the PCUSA Constitution. The lone exception is Presbyterians For Renewal, which supports the ordination standard but opposed the called meeting.
The latest addition to the list is the Presbytery of Hudson River in New York, which includes 16 congregations whose sessions have adopted resolutions saying they will not comply with the ordination standard.
Hudson River has been in the spotlight because one of its ministers, with presbytery approval, has conducted numerous “holy union” ceremonies for same-gender couples. Furthermore, that minister now declares that the services are “marriages” – which is contrary to an order by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly.
Hudson River adopted the same resolution that was previously approved by the Presbytery of Palisades, also in New York.
In 1999, 13 of the Palisades congregations joined in declaration that they were a “G-6.0106b-free zone.” G-6.0106b is the constitutional ordination standard.
Also in 1999, Palisades sponsored a controversial overture that would have required that each presbytery send a report to the 2000 General Assembly “disclosing in narrative and/or statistical form how inclusive language is used and/or studied in that presbytery’s churches, in its own worship and proceedings, and in its preparation of inquirers and candidates for ordination as ministers of word and sacrament.” That proposal to police preachers and candidates to ensure that their language was inclusively correct was defeated.
Both Palisades and Hudson River have voted against the ordination standard by overwhelming margins in three referendums. The “fidelity/chastity” standard was adopted in 1997 and last affirmed by a 3-1 margin in a referendum in 2001-02, when Hudson River voted 103-28 and Palisades voted 59-33 to repeal G-6.0106b.
The Palisades-Hudson River resolutions complain of “tactics of personal attack and disinformation used by some to discredit the leadership of the moderator and stated clerk.” They do not criticize the moderator and clerk for saying repeatedly that Alexander Metherell, the leader of the petition campaign, told them that one commissioner’s signature should be removed.
Metherell never said that. After presenting the petition to the moderator on Jan. 14, he received a phone call from one of the signers who asked that his name be removed. Metherell relayed that information to the stated clerk’s office, saying that neither he nor the stated clerk had the authority to remove anyone’s signature.
The other governing body that has adopted a resolution in support of the moderator and clerk is the Synod of the Living Waters.
Besides Presbyterians For Renewal, independent organizations making statements in support of the moderator and clerk are the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, That All May Freely Serve, More Light Presbyterians and the Witherspoon Society.
The Covenant Network was established by two former General Assembly moderators, Robert Bohl and John Buchanan, for the sole purpose of repealing G-6.0106b. More recently, however, the organization announced that it will also promote “progressive theology,” a theological perspective that refutes such Reformed teachings as the atoning death of Jesus Christ and his bodily resurrection.
The Covenant Network has advised sessions and presbyteries not to say openly that they are defying or will defy G-6.0106b, but to defy it by redefinition. Lawyers who are members of the Covenant board are suggesting the tactics of haggling over the nuances of such words as chastity by claiming that the word does not prohibit homosexual ministers and lay officers from being sexually active with same-gender partners.
More Light Presbyterians, the Witherspoon Society and That All May Freely Serve, began working against the denomination’s historic ordination standard long before it was embedded in the constitution.