No ‘witch hunt’ planned on conference programs
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, November 6, 2000
PITTSBURGH – Peter Pizor, chairman of the General Assembly Council, told the Covenant Network Conference on Nov. 2 that a task force to review conferences sponsored by the Presbyterian Church (USA) will not conduct a “witch hunt” or bring disciplinary action against people involved in past gatherings.
A few days before Pizor’s comments to the Covenant Network, John Detterick, executive director of the council, told the Presbyterian Coalition that the Rev. Dirk Ficca’s “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” speech at the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference “conflicts with a basic tenet of the church’s faith” and was “out of bounds.”
Pizor told The Presbyterian Layman that he agreed with Detterick, but that his task force would not “look back” and consider action against the Peacemaking Conference leaders or Ficca, a Presbyterian minister who heads an inter-faith organization in Chicago.
The issue of the Peacekeeping Conferences also was addressed by John Buchanan, co-founder of the Network. Buchanan expressed dismay that the PCUSA “is becoming a different church. We are hearing words like heresy for the first time. The orthodoxy of speakers at official events is being challenged.”
Buchanan urged the Covenant Network supporters to give the Network money for its campaign against Amendment 00-O, which would prohibit ministers from conducting same-sex unions.
Robert Bohl, also co-founder of the Network, said those on the other side of the issue have “questioned some of the sacred principles” of the Presbyterian Church such as inclusiveness and God alone being lord of the conscience.
Bohl charged that “extremism and strongheaded absolutism” have had the upper hand in votes by presbyteries in 1997 and 1998 that, first, adopted the constitutional ordination standard, G-6.106b, and, second, affirmed that standard by voting down an alternative.
Bohl, who spoke at the opening of the conference, set the stage for its theme, “Biblical Authority and the Church.”
“Throughout all of its history, the Bible, which has been a wonderful gift of God, has been used as a weapon … to support slavery … to prevent women from a rightful place in the life of the church,” he said.
In sharp contrast to a speech that he gave recently at Union Theological Seminary in New York – in which he declared “Damn them!” and “I wish they’d leave” about conservatives – Bohl this time called for civility.
“There must be a delicate balance between authoritarianism and liberalism,” he said. “It is better when liberals and conservatives will meet with civility.”