Richmond meeting will feature acute debate - of chronic issues

by Jerry L. Van Marter, Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE - April 20, 2004 - Issues that have roiled Presbyterian waters for years -- abortion, sexual standards for ordination, Biblical authority and "family values," among others -- will take center stage when the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) convenes in Richmond, VA on June 26.

The 2004 renewal of the top policy-making body of the 2.5 million-member denomination also will feature contested elections of a stated clerk -- the church's top ecclesiastical officer -- and of a new moderator to preside at the Assembly, then serve as the church's chief spokesperson and good-will ambassador for two years.

After the Richmond meeting, the PC(USA) will no longer schedule Assemblies annually, as it has since 1779, but have such national meetings only every other year.

In a time of worsening financial stress, commissioners to the Assembly will be asked to approve a Mission Work Plan -- the latest attempt to prioritize the corporate work of the denomination, which has an annual budget of about $125 million.

For at least the fifth time since 1996, when the Assembly enacted a constitutional ban on the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians -- section G-6.0106b of the Book of Order -- opponents of the provision will try to have it rescinded. The presbyteries of Baltimore, Western New York and Twin Cities Area have submitted overtures that would repeal the provision.

Detroit Presbytery has submitted a related measure that would overturn a 1978 "authoritative interpretation" of the PC(USA) constitution that also forbids the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals. Church courts have ruled that both G-6.0106.b and the 1978 interpretation would have to be reversed to remove the prohibition.

Two previous attempts to delete G-6.0106b have been approved by Assemblies but failed in ratification votes of the denomination's 173 presbyteries. Last year's Assembly referred the matter to the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church, a group charged by 2001 Assembly "to lead the PC(USA) in spiritual discernment of our Christian identity" and to address contentious issues of "Christology, Biblical authority and interpretation, ordination standards, and power."

The task force, which is to finish its work by 2006, will make a progress report to this Assembly.

Amid continuing fallout from the war in Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, two presbyteries -- Eastern Oklahoma and Hudson River -- call for a re-examination of PC(USA) policies on relations with Jews and Muslims.

On abortion, always a controversial subject, three presbyteries -- Upper Ohio Valley, Charlotte and Beaver-Butler -- propose an outright ban on "late-term" abortions. The Upper Ohio Valley measure would add such a prohibition to the church constitution.

Last year's Assembly upheld the current policy, which stipulates four circumstances under which abortion of a viable fetus is permissible: "when necessary to save the life of the woman, to preserve the woman's health in circumstances of a serious risk, to avoid fetal suffering as a result of untreatable life-threatening medical anomalies, or in cases of incest or rape."

A controversial policy paper on the changing nature of American families, which failed to win approval during last year's Assembly, is coming back this year in an extensively revised form and with a new title. The document once known as "Living Faithfully with Families in Transition" has become "Transforming Families."

The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy has reworked it in response to charges that last year's version diminished the importance of traditional two-parent family structure and elevated non-traditional families, including those involving unmarried and same-sex relationships, to moral equivalence.

The General Assembly Council, the elected group that oversees General Assembly mission programs between Assemblies, will ask the commissioners to approve a new Mission Work Plan that prioritizes church tasks in four broad categories -- evangelism and witness, justice and compassion, spirituality and discipleship, and leadership and vocation -- and creates 24 concrete objectives reflecting those priorities.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, who as stated clerk is the denomination's top-ranking church officer, is standing for re-election to a third four-year term. He is opposed by three conservative-evangelical challengers who have criticized him for failing to act against Presbyterian officers who they say have "defied" the constitution by ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians or conducting same-sex "marriages." Kirkpatrick argues that Presbyterian polity assigns such matters to church courts, sessions and presbyteries, and that the clerk's proper role is not to pre-empt their work but to facilitate it.

Three candidates are running for moderator: the Rev. K.C. Ptomey of Nashville, TN (Middle Tennessee Presbytery); the Rev. David McKechnie of Houston, TX (New Covenant Presbytery); and elder Rick Ufford-Chase, who works in border ministries along the Mexico-Arizona border in de Cristo Presbytery.