Pennsylvania session severs communion with 10 presbyteries
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 27, 2004
The session of Beverly Heights United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh has voted to sever communion with 10 presbyteries that seek to repeal the “fidelity/chastity” ordination requirement in the Book of Order and to nullify the General Assembly’s authoritative interpretation that declares homosexual behavior sinful.
The Beverly Heights resolution, the first of its kind during the current controversy in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said the 10 presbyteries continue “to offend the Peace, Unity and Purity of the denomination by forcing their heretical views upon the greater church.”
The resolution also said the 10 presbyteries have caused “grief and embarrassment to their brothers and sisters through their public display of the abandonment of the tenets of the Reformed faith;” were promoting schism; and had “entered into a protracted course of unrepentant sin.”
Because of those offenses, the resolution said, “We shall not be found in fellowship, courts or councils with, nor shall we share the Lord’s Supper with, nor shall we offer expressions of common unity, nor acknowledge any sympathy for, nor shall we communicate any compromising reconciliation with the offending Presbyteries or act through any third party, except through private prayer conducted in a place apart from them.”
“We shall not accept any compromise short of a reconciliation fulfilled in the light of Scripture and the traditions of our Reformed faith, in which these offending Presbyteries recant their heresy, repent with an act of contrition, and request our communion. At that moment our communion shall be fully and completely restored with absolute forgiveness and with celebration.”
The resolution was proposed by the congregation’s six-member Denominational Issues Task Force.
“We believe that our proposal is both necessary and regrettable,” the task force report said. “It is regrettable because we are firmly convinced that it would not have been necessary had the Stated Clerk [Clifton Kirkpatrick] exercised leadership over this denomination. The climate he has engendered by failing to unequivocally defend the Constitution has been, in our opinion, the pivotal cause of schism arising from attempts to replace our scripturally based ordination standards with no standard at all. As a direct result of his failure to stand firm for our Reformed faith, membership has continued to flow from our denomination’s ranks.”
The task force added, “To the extent that the Constitution of the PC(USA) is a contract that binds us as Presbyterians, he has breeched it, both by not enforcing it and also by invoking its authority inconsistently. While perhaps an improperly enforced constitution can still be effective, an unenforced constitution simply ceases to exist. Instead of lifting up those things of the Kingdom of God that promote the peace, unity and purity of the Church, he has spent his words on secular trivialities.”
Kirkpatrick, who is sworn to “preserve and defend” the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has insisted it is not his duty to enforce the rulings of the courts or to take disciplinary steps against church officers who are openly defying the constitution.
But he has sent mixed signals on constitutional obligations. Although declaring that sessions and presbyteries do not have the authority to ordain practicing homosexuals, he has frequently commended their piety and suggested that the gay-ordination issue has not been settled – despite three denominationwide referendums to the contrary.
On the other hand, Kirkpatrick has warned church officers who advocate withholding or redirecting per-capita apportionments that they are in violation of their ordination vows – even though the denomination’s highest court says sessions can neither be compelled to remit their per capita nor punished if they decline to do so.
The session of Beverly Heights included with the resolution a news release describing the four overtures that will be considered by the 216th General Assembly that the 10 presbyteries either introduced or concurred with:
- Overture 04-04, Presbytery of Baltimore, asks the General Assembly to schedule yet another national referendum on repealing G-6.0106b. Previous referenda were held in 1997 and 2001.
- Overture 04-01, Presbytery of Western New York, would revise G-6.0106b as indicated with deletions lined-out and additions in bold: “Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman (W-4.9001) a covenanted relationship between two persons where a lifetime commitment is intended, or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin does not conform with this discipline shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.”
- Overture 04-27, Presbytery of Detroit, seeks to declare that previous definitive guidance, a.k.a., authoritative interpretations, by the General Assembly on homosexual behavior “shall be given no further force or effect.”
- Overture 04-52, the Presbytery of Hudson River, would allow candidates for office and elders and ministers serving on ordaining bodies to follow their own consciences rather than Scripture or church law.
“A majority of Presbyterians consider these proposals egregious in degrees varying from sinful to heretical,” the session said in its news release.
The news release also cited the “courageous acts of The Most Reverend Peter J. Akinola, D.D., Primate of Nigeria, the largest Anglican Diocese, and at least one U.S. Episcopal congregation, in severing communion with heretical Anglican provinces over the same issues.”
Noting the pressure on poor Anglican communions, such as those in Africa, to endorse the ECUSA’s actions or lose much-needed financial support, Akinola said, “If we suffer for a while to gain our independence and our freedom and to build ourselves up, I think it will be a good thing for the church in Africa. And we will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation.”
The Beverly Heights session is sending letters to the sessions of other Confessing Churches, suggesting that they may wish to take similar actions. It has also written letters to congregations of like-minded churches in the 10 presbyteries in which “we asked their understanding, and expressed the hope and prayer that this action will somehow benefit them and provide them a redoubled incentive and encouragement to confront the heresy both in their own presbyteries and within the larger denomination,” said the Rev. Dr. Richard G. Wolling, pastor of Beverly Heights.
“Our resolution does not question the right of these presbyteries to bring overtures to the General Assembly,” Wolling said. “What the resolution highlights is something much more fundamental than that, namely, the appropriateness of continuing attempts to amend the constitution on a point that is founded upon over 3,000 years of Biblical interpretation and, more recently, three nationwide votes by PCUSA presbyteries that affirmed, by ever-increasing margins, the inclusion of the ordination provisions known as G-6.0106b.”
Letters advising of the session’s action have also been sent to Kirkpatrick, Bishop Akinola, all relevant executive presbyters, affected Confessing Churches, and other relevant parties.
The resolution, supporting Scripture and other details have been posted on the Beverly Heights Web site.