The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Office of Theology and Worship has declared the denomination “agnostic around issues of homosexuality,” in its response to the recently released Nashville Statement.
Screenshot of the article posted on the PCUSA web site.
Written and signed by more than 150 evangelical Christian leaders, the Nashville Statement upholds the Biblical standards that marriage is between one man and one woman and “homosexual immorality” and “transgenderism” is sinful. It has been published and promoted by The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
In its response, the PCUSA’s Theology and Worship wrote in part:
“Coverage in the popular media, as is often the case, presents a binary alternative: one either affirms the Nashville Statement or strongly disagrees with it. However, the PCUSA has resisted this binary alternative with respect to sexual ethics, particularly concerning ordination and marriage. We have said that it is faithful for church councils to use their judgment in ordaining people absent a national standard on sexuality, and we have said that congregations and ministers can faithfully choose to celebrate same-gender marriages or not to. One way to put it is that, as a denomination, we have become agnostic around issues of homosexuality. At one level this is a sea change as that is has allowed for a recognition of faithful practices that would have been out of bounds previously. At the same time, we have not required that leaders or bodies within the church adhere to any particular stance. We have chosen a more challenging way.” [emphasis added]
‘Agnostic?’
Carmen Fowler LaBerge, president of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and host of the Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge radio program, questioned the use of the word “agnostic” in describing the PCUSA:
“The idea that a denomination which claims to be Christian would say that it is agnostic on an issue of human identity, sexuality and marriage reveals just how far the PCUSA has wandered away from God and God’s revealed nature and will. To be agnostic is to believe that nothing is known or can be known about the subject at hand. To be classically agnostic is to deny that God Himself can be known. An agnostic is a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. For the PCUSA to openly acknowledge that it is now agnostic confirms what others have been observing for many years. To say that the PCUSA has become agnostic around issues of homosexuality is to admit that as a denomination there is no sense of knowing God nor God’s will. Indeed, a church in name only, having lost all connection to its foundation in Christ, the Scriptures and God Himself.”
Pro-LGBTQ supporters in the denomination have also condemned the use of the word “agnostic” in the PCUSA’s response. An I-Petition, which has gathered 454 signatures as of Sept. 14, stated “We understand that your response is an accurate representation of our polity, but we are appalled by the lack of pastoral sensitivity exhibited in the framing and phrasing.”
The petition continued: “Saying about the Presbyterian Church (USA) that ‘we have become agnostic around issues of homosexuality’ communicates that while so many of us in the LGBTQI+ community have put our heart and faith and call into the Presbyterian Church (USA), the church does not have faith in us. It is an insult to suggest that the ambiguity of our denomination’s theological response to the lives and call by God of people of faith is a ‘more challenging way.’ Instead it is a way that allows the denomination to make no statement at all.”
Transgender Persons
Concerning transgender issues, the Office of Theology and Worship wrote that the articles of the Nashville Statement “go beyond anything the PCUSA has officially taken a stand on.” It continued that the PCUSA has “taken a pastoral stand on all issues around sexuality, and that particularly is important in relation to transgender persons. The Nashville Statement with its emphasis ‘self-conception’ does not do justice to the experiences of transgender persons. Nor does the experience of transgender persons neatly fit with issues around persons with same gender attraction.”
Article 10 of the Nashville Statement stated:
WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.
The Denver Statement
Toward the end of its communication the Office of Theology and Worship quoted from the Denver Statement, written by “some of the queer, trans, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, gender-queer, asexual, straight, single, married image-bearering Christians at House for All Sinners & Saints,” in Denver, Colo., in response to the evangelical’s statement.
The pro-LGBTQ supporters signing the I-Petition also protested its use by the denomination:
“Ending the letter quoting the Denver Statement on sin in our lives suggests that the Office of Theology and Worship still thinks about people in the LGBTQI+ community in the context of sin. We are all of us people who sin, accountable to the saving grace of God. But lifting up this particular section– using the language of sin which has so often been used as a weapon against us– especially after expressing the church’s agnosticism about us: that is a painful and unfair use of the Gospel.”
Quotes from the Denver Statement’s preamble, and its articles include:
“.. Many deny that God created all human beings for God’s glory, and believe that God’s good purposes for us are limited to those whose personal and physical design is cis-gendered, heterosexual, and socially acceptable expressions of male and female. However, many Christians now understand that binary and backwards thinking excludes a large and important part of God’s beautiful plan for God’s people. The pathway to full and lasting joy through God’s good design for God’s creatures is clearly inclusive of a variety of identities of gender and expressions of sexuality that have previously been denied by shortsighted and limited thinking, teaching and preaching that has ruined lives and dishonored God.
WE AFFIRM that God has created humanity out of love and for the purpose of love. WE DENY that God intends marriage as a gift only to be enjoyed by those who happen to be heterosexual, cis-gendered and fertile.
WE AFFIRM that the glorious variety of gender and sexual expression is a reflection of God’s original creation design and are aspects of human flourishing. WE DENY that such variations are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.
WE AFFIRM that sin distorts all aspects of human life. WE DENY that human beings can escape sin by simply upholding a particular doctrine or lifestyle.
WE AFFIRM that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, and while we believe in the full inclusion of all people into the body of Christ (here we stand we can do no other), we cannot bind the conscience of other Christians. WE DENY that it is sinful to approve of queer identities and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.
The I-Petition lifted up the Sarasota Statement, a confessional statement released by NEXT Church, a network of leaders across the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Read the entire statement by the PCUSA’s Theology & Worship:
LOUISVILLE – On August 30, a number of Evangelical Christian voices released The Nashville Statement. Because of the amount of news coverage this statement has generated, Theology and Worship, a ministry of the Presbyterian Church (USA), thought it would be helpful to clarify how the Presbyterian Church (USA) has considered the issues discussed by the Nashville statement. Here are some thoughts which might help clarify the position of our denomination:
- The statement emerges from The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This organization was organized to oppose feminism in ways that are not consistent with the Presbyterian affirmation that “women and men are called to all ministries of the church” and that all people are equal before God and should have the same human and civil rights. Presbyterian theology and polity affirm the fundamental equality of all persons before God and one another.
- The 222nd Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly (2016) stated that “actions we and our members have taken over the years have at times led God’s beloved children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning to feel that they stand outside the grace of God and are unwelcome in the PCUSA. We deeply regret that, due to human failings, any person might find cause to doubt being loved by God. We affirm the God-given dignity and worth of every human being, and renew our commitment to ‘welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed [us], for the glory of God.’ [Romans 15:7].”
- Coverage in the popular media, as is often the case, presents a binary alternative: one either affirms the Nashville Statement or strongly disagrees with it. However, the PCUSA has resisted this binary alternative with respect to sexual ethics, particularly concerning ordination and marriage. We have said that it is faithful for church councils to use their judgment in ordaining people absent a national standard on sexuality, and we have said that congregations and ministers can faithfully choose to celebrate same-gender marriages or not to. One way to put it is that, as a denomination, we have become agnostic around issues of homosexuality. At one level this is a sea change as that is has allowed for a recognition of faithful practices that would have been out of bounds previously. At the same time, we have not required that leaders or bodies within the church adhere to any particular stance. We have chosen a more challenging way.
- In terms of the Nashville Statement, it would seem that one could be a faithful leader in the PCUSA and affirm aspects of the Nashville Statement such as believing that marriage is between a man and a woman.
- There are other articles, particularly those around transgender persons, that go beyond anything the PCUSA has officially taken a stand on.
- We have taken a pastoral stand on all issues around sexuality, and that particularly is important in relation to transgender persons. The Nashville Statement with its emphasis “self-conception” does not do justice to the experiences of transgender persons. Nor does the experience of transgender persons neatly fit with issues around persons with same gender attraction.
In response to the Nashville Statement, some Christians at House for All Sinners & Saints have written the Denver Statement. Two affirmations from this latter statement may have particularly resonance in this discussion:
WE AFFIRM that sin distorts all aspects of human life. WE DENY that human beings can escape sin by simply upholding a particular doctrine or lifestyle.
WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ is sufficient for this day. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is something that must be supplemented by works, piety or doctrine.
In a season of the tragedy of Tropical Storm Harvey and the racism that has become ever more obvious since the events in Charlottesville, issues of sexual integrity remain significant.
If it would be helpful for you to connect with Theology and Worship to learn more, please contact Cheri Harper.
4 Comments. Leave new
If one is going to say they are ‘agnostic’ about X, then X first must need to exist to be agnostic about. The fact of both polity and practice since the removal of the chastity and fidelity clause, all in the service of the LGBTQ establishment, is that for the PCUSA a sexual ethic, policy on sexual conduct and practice does not exist. PCUSA clergy currently exist in sex policy-free zone in terms of the current BOR, where one is free to engage in, hook up, partner up as they deem fit and what works for them. Outside of vague and muddled language about love, commitment, inclusive, compassion , and so on. Clergy are free more or less, to conduct their lives as one desires. So in essence the message of PCUSA to its clergy and officers is that both sexual orientation and external behaviors are not only irrelevant to the sense of call and or fitness for office, but exist in a “no-go” zone for even inquiry. As the old don’s ask-don’t tell of the military. Having served on a number of COMs and PCOMs in multiple Presbyteries over the years I can with confidence one’s sexual behaviors, history of, one’s sense of how their sexual behaviors and faith intersect is never asked and falls outside the bound of acceptable behaviors for any board.
So for the at least the Administrative State PCUSA, LGBTQ, bi- trans-, gay, straight is not a matter of agnosticism, as it is irrelevant to who and what people are. As if God in creation does not really care how He made us, nor should it be a factor in the fitness for ordained office. Much like Gnostic heretics of old, flesh and soul and indeed separate matters of creation and one does not speak to the other. That whatever drive, compulsion, desire, lust, urge is somehow not related to their overall spiritual, emotional, mental health and balance or fitness for office. Good luck with that PCUSA, and hope most if not all employing churches have their liability, conduct policies paid in full.
In the Denver Statement’s preamble: “We are all of us people who sin”, does not distinguish between those that acknowledge their sin repenting and those that claim it as an acceptable life style.
Would the Office of Theology and Worship (completely captured by the LBGTQI community) been better off to possibly just ignored the “Nashville Statement” altogether rather than delineate just how much the denomination has wandered into apostasy? “Agnostic”? This piece just reinforces that THERE ARE NO STANDARDS FOR ANY OFFICERS in the PCUSA.
This is just one of many subjects the PCUSA is agnostic about