Advocate for homosexual behavior tells students not to use Scripture
The Layman Online, November 29, 2005
Jesus and John Lennon had it figured out, all you need is love, a Presbyterian minister who was defending the practice of homosexuality recently told students at Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash.
Paul G. Rodke speaks to Whitworth College studentsThe Whitworthian, the student newspaper at the PCUSA-related school in Spokane, Wash., said the speaker, the Rev. Paul G. Rodkey, shunned Biblical passages about homosexuality because, he said, those passages have already been discussed at length in the debate within the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Besides, Rodkey told about 150 students, “I believe that all human beings are slaves to their bias and prejudice” and, therefore, specific Scripture should be omitted from the discussion about homosexuals.
The Whitworthian reported that some of the students seemed to agree with Rodke, but that others didn’t.
The paper quoted sophomore Cole Casey as saying, “I would say that he had no supporting evidence to which he was making claims. He dodged more questions than I have ever seen in my life. He did not confront, he retreated.”
His address did spark a reaction from Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a widely published writer who is an ardent defender of Biblical theology. He answered Rodkey in a column titled “How not to talk about homosexuality.”
Mohler said Rodkey’s comments about the irrelevancy of Scripture in the debate over homosexual behavior was “an amazing admission. Rev. Rodkey acknowledges that he can claim no Scriptural support for this position, and he doesn’t even attempt to deal with the Biblical passages that speak to homosexuality. Instead, he simply embraced hermeneutical nihilism. It may be true that all human beings are infected with their own interpretive bias, but that hardly allows for an argument to abandon the Bible altogether. No doubt, his argument would be severely undermined if those ‘specific’ biblical texts were acknowledged.”
Rodkey, a member of the Presbytery of Olympia, is the stated supply pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Spokane.
Stated clerk takes on McDonald’s
First, it was Taco Bell. Now, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick has taken aim at the largest fast-food chain in the world: McDonald’s.
Cliffton Kirkpatrick led demonstration against Yum! Brands.Repent, he has ordered the chain, of the practice of paying skimpy prices for hand-picked tomatoes – or else. Once again, Kirkpatrick has taken on an assignment as a spokesman for labor. That’s not an unexpected segue from his role as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, where he endorsed an anti-capitalist resolution.
Kirkpatrick said in a Nov. 23 statement that workers who pick tomatoes in Florida for McDonald’s still earn just 40 cents to 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick and haul – the same wage they received more than 25 years ago. He called on “McDonald’s to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to directly increase workers wages and to put an to end human-rights violations in the fields.”
McDonald’s doesn’t buy its tomatoes directly from the Immokalee workers. But Kirkpatrick wants the corporation to ante up more for the tomatoes and put pressure on the producers to pass that along to the workers.
Kirkpatrick led a similar strategy with Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and is headquartered in Louisville near the denomination’s Presbyterian Center. He has said he was successful in convincing Yum! to go and do likewise in its tomato purchases.
The big event in his anti-Yum! campaign was a demonstration outside the corporation’s headquarters. PCUSA staff members toted signs (“Yum! is dumb” was one) and one protestor was dressed up like a cartoon chicken. The next demo? Kirkpatrick and Ronald McDonald?
Presbyteries continue to violate constitution
The most controversial recommendation of the denomination’s Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity is No. 5 – the proposed authoritative interpretation that would allow presbyteries to determine whether G-6.0106b, the constitutional “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard, is an essential requirement for church officers.
But some presbyteries and sessions, the two ordaining bodies in the Presbyterian Church (USA), are already deciding that the prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals is not an essential, despite three referendums and several court orders to the contrary.
The Presbytery of Redwoods in California became the most recent case in which a minister who is open about his homosexual practice was approved to accept a call. It was pointed out that the pastor, the Rev. Dr. John Gerity Scott, was ordained in 1978, but there is no statute of limitations on the issue.
The presbytery voted to approve Scott as the pastor of San Geronimo church after several members of the congregation made pleas – some with tears – on his behalf.
Scott declared as evidence of his fitness for office, “I have come to believe that Jesus will ‘adopt’ any of us who care to be adopted into his family of passionate justice and healing love. My own adoptive family taught me to trust the worth of self and of everyone who drifts into the family; we are all ‘adoptable.'”
Earlier this month, the Presbytery of Hudson River ordained Ray Bagnuolo, who has repeatedly and publicly stated that he is a practicing homosexual and that he will not submit to G-6.0106b. Bagnuolo accepted a call to serve in Palisades Presbyterian Church in Palisades, N.Y.
Presbyterians have made their case for the ordination standard. The presbyteries voted in 1997 by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent to add G-6.0106b to the Book of Order. They reaffirmed that decision in 1998 by a margin of two-to-one and in 2001 by a margin of nearly three-to-one.
In 2000, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Council, the highest court in the denomination, issued an order that said governing bodies and individuals 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 in Londonderry v. the Presbytery of Northern New England.