Presbytery decides against endorsing call to lesbian
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 21, 2003
After a congregational vote on Jan. 12 at Rockville (Md.) Presbyterian Church, in which an estimated 35 percent of the members opposed calling a lesbian as the church’s pastor, the National Capital Presbytery decided it no longer favors supporting the Rev. Alice V. Anderson for the call.
The presbytery based its reversal on a Book of Order provision that says the call to a minister can be withdrawn if a “substantial minority” is opposed to the call. The Book of Order does not specify what constitutes a “substantial minority.”
Before the congregational vote, Anderson had told the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry and the Rockville Pastor Nominating Committee that she had “lived in a committed lesbian relationship for 14 years” with Georgeann Wilcoxson, a lesbian activist.
Wilcoxson, a former national youth director for the Presbyterian Church (USA), was one of a number of homosexual activists and their allies who interrupted a meeting of the General Assembly in 1993 to protest the denomination’s prohibition on ordaining self-affirming, practicing homosexuals.
Wilcoxson joined others who carried a large wooden cross and shouted to drown out the prayers of the 1993 General Assembly Moderator David Dobler, who sought to restore order in the building.
Anderson is a former associate pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., which was made famous by the evangelical preaching of Dr. Peter Marshall in the 1940s before he became chaplain to the U.S. Senate.
Today, New York Avenue, like Rockville Presbyterian, is affiliated with More Light Presbyterians, a movement that seeks the repeal of the “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In a Nov. 25 letter to the congregation, the eight-member nominating committee said, “Rev. Anderson has lived in a committed lesbian relationship for 14 years with Dr. Georgeann Wilcoxson. They met at a Presbyterian conference and entered a life partnership based on their shared faith.”
The presbytery’s committee, in a letter also dated Nov. 25, strongly supported Anderson as a candidate for the call but also warned that, in this “‘judicial season,’ complaints could be filed against the presbytery or against Alice, although not against the PNC, session or the congregation.”
Both committees expressed the view that Anderson’s relationship with Wilcoxson did not violate the PCUSA’s constitutional prohibition against ordaining self-affirming, practicing homosexuals.
“We believe that the PNC, the congregation and the Presbytery have acted properly and have not in any way contravened the Book of Order,” the four-member presbytery committee said. “We can assure you that the presbytery will defend any complaint with all the resources at our disposal. We regret that the current reality requires this type of discussion, but we want to be sure that no secrets are kept and that all information is shared openly.”
The nominating committee letter said, “The committee met with representatives of National Capital Presbytery and its Committee on Ministry before enthusiastically voting to select Rev. Anderson as its candidate.”
The presbytery committee’s letter did not mention Anderson’s 14-year relationship with Wilcoxson. It said “Alice’s sexual orientation does not preclude her from serving as an installed minister of Word and Sacrament” in the PCUSA.
But the letter by the nominating committee explicitly addressed Anderson’s live-in relationship with Wilcoxson, who, the letter says, “is eager to be part of the Rockville Presbyterian community.”
Wilcoxson is listed as one of the contributors to a 1995 book titled Called OUT – The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Presbyterians. The book is a collection of “40 LGBT people telling their stories of their lives in, and for some of them, out of the Presbyterian Churches.”
One of the editors of Called OUT is Jane Spahr, a lesbian activist whose call by a Presbyterian church in New York was prohibited and now works with That All May Freely Serve against the denomination’s ordination standard.