Now's as good a time as any for a
fight, liberals say
Until disputed amendment is gone, foes say, there
will be no peace
by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
[10-31-01]
LOUISVILLE - 30-October-2001 - Some Presbyterians ask: Why now?
Other Presbyterians reply: Why not?
Those who advocate the removal of a constitutional
provision forbidding sexual activity by gays and lesbians and other
unmarried leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) say they were as
surprised as everybody else when the 213th General Assembly (GA) voted
last summer by the biggest margin ever - 60 to 40 percent - in favor of
striking G-6.0106.b from The Book of Order and referred the matter to
the church's 173 presbyteries for an up-or-down vote.
It's an issue the presbyteries have voted on before -
twice, in fact, in just the past four years. The first time was in 1997,
when the presbyteries voted 97-74 to add the controversial amendment to
the constitution. The second was in 1998, when an attempt to repeal it
failed by a vote of 114-57.
So why is the matter still unresolved? Because in both
of those campaigns, many presbyteries went one way or the other by
narrow margins - of 25 votes or less.
So the debate, of which both sides are weary, goes on.
And on.
The seemingly endless fighting has so frustrated the
Presbyterian Coalition, an evangelical group formed in 1993 to oppose
the ordination of gays and lesbians, that half of the people at its
national gathering last month said leaving the denomination is an
option. They are tired of fighting over what seems so obvious to them:
Scripture's condemnation of homosexuality.
There is another church debate that seems never to
end: that over abortion. The denomination votes on it yearly, too -
whether to oppose late-term abortions, whether to reexamine the church's
cautiously pro-choice position. A database maintained by the Office of
the General Assembly shows that the GA has considered 20 pieces of
abortion-related legislation in the past seven years.
But that doesn't seem to raise the ire of the
conservatives, since it involves only policy, not proposed changes to
the constitution. The liberals say conservatives are willing to continue
re-considering the abortion issue because in that case, they are the
ones pushing for change.
It is the constitutional debate that has raised
hackles on both sides. And the ante went way up this year. Why?
Removing G-6.0106b would put ordination matters in the
hands of presbyteries and congregations - the very people, say those who
want G-6.0106b deleted, who know the candidates best, person-by-person.
Defenders of the amendment say that eliminating the categorical
prohibition would violate the connectionalism that binds the
denomination together. (Both groups argued just the opposite way on the
hard-fought decision to ordain women.)
The disputed amendment says: "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 or
chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any
self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be
ordained or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and
Sacrament."
Those who would strike G-6.0106.b say its categorical
prohibitions are not in keeping with what is historically the
Presbyterian way. Those who defend it say that's an oversimplification -
that the national church has never hesitated to comment on the character
required of its leaders.
So why revisit the issue now?
"There's never a good time to do anything,"
says the Rev. Gene Bay, pastor of the 3,500-member Bryn Mawr
Presbyterian Church in suburban Philadelphia. He's a soon-to-be
co-moderator of the Covenant Network, the largest organization of
Presbyterians working for the deletion of G-6.0106.b. The group was
formed, in fact, to do just that.
"Why is it a good time now?" asks Bay, whose
own Philadelphia Presbytery voted to put the clause in the constitution
in 1997.
"My own sense is that many in the church feel
that G-6.0106.b has not brought peace to the church, has not brought
unity to the church. It really has only served to create more disunity.
... Even if folks happen not to agree on homosexuality or ordination, we
have a chance to return to the traditional Presbyterian way of doing
things. ... Congregations and presbyteries are in the best position to
determine who qualifies for ordination."
Bay says weariness is no reason to stop. He says being
faithful often means doing things that are tiring.
"We get tired, loving neighbors who are not very
lovable," he says. "We get tired doing a lot of things. But
this issue is not going to go away as long as G-0106.b is in The Book of
Order, as long as this issue is facing the church. The quickest way to
get people to stop talking about it is to get it out of The Book of
Order."
Bay says people may soon tire of asking candidates for
ministry, as well as deacons and elders, about their sexual lives.
What is different about this year's debate, at least
among the liberals, is this argument: The way out of this conflict is
letting church polity solve the problem, rather than wrangling for
another decade about the interpretation of Biblical texts or scientific
data on homosexuality. In other words, return decision-making on
ordination to the presbyteries - where some will choose to ordain gays
and lesbians who have accepted calls within their boundaries, while
others never will.
Otherwise, the fight may go on for a long, long time,
the liberals say, because they are committed to battling on until
G-0106.b is gone.
Elder Michael Adee of Santa Fe, NM, a field organizer
for More Light Presbyterians, a network of churches that support gay
ordination, insists that "we are going to be faithful to bring a
call to justice to the church every year until it happens."
The tactic this year, however, is urging their
opponents to set the matter aside for the sake of denominational peace,
rather than trying to convert them to the liberal point of view.
"Frankly, that's different from the way we and
others had been presenting the argument," says Pam Byers, executive
director of the Covenant Network, who traces the change in tactics to
this year's GA. "We're not asking the church to change its teaching
on homosexuality. We're not asking people to change their minds on what
they think the Bible says. We're just pointing out that half of this
denomination disagrees with the other half. And the only way to have
peace is to get off the subject."
Byers adds that PC(USA) polity puts the decision into
the hands of "properly elected governing bodies who've been
ordained to the task of discerning what God is doing in people's
lives."
In other words, she says, deleting G-6.0106.b would
neither prevent a church from ordaining a gay person, nor require a
church to do so. She and many others of like mind are calling this
"a middle way."
Would it mean that some presbyteries would ordain open
gays and lesbians while others wouldn't? Yes. Would it mean that openly
gay and lesbian candidates would be prudent to seek ordination in some
presbyteries and not in others? Yes. Would some churches have gay
deacons or elders, while others would never think of ordaining a gay
person? Yes.
The liberals point out that presbyteries and churches
already vary greatly in their handling of calls to serve.
"This is not an essential (tenet of the
faith)," Byers says. "The redemption of the world in Jesus
Christ, God's sovereignty over the world, the fact that God came into
the world in the person of Jesus Christ, that Scripture is divinely
inspired ... (These are essentials.) We don't have to agree on whether
gays and lesbian people can be ordained."
Of course, church conservatives don't' see this as a
middle way at all. They say it's the "same old way," local
option framed in new language.
"The question is not whether some will ordain and
some will not," says the Rev. Jerry Andrews of Glen Ellyn, IL, one
of the co-moderators of the Presbyterian Coalition. "The question
is whether the church will ordain. 'Some' don't ordain; the church does.
You can't just say, 'How about letting some of us do it, or not?'
"The whole church participates," Andrews
says.
If Chicago Presbytery starts ordaining gays over his
objections, he says, he will still be a participant in that action, even
if he walks out in protest, because he is a member of that body.
Andrews says he doesn't want to see this matter fought
over in the presbyteries, candidate-by-candidate. He contends - like
many in the Coalition's ranks - that liberals have shifted the debate to
polity because they know they can't win it theologically, or
Scripturally.
Some react more viscerally.
During the Coalition's annual meeting last month, the
biggest-ever gathering of PC(USA) evangelicals, one pastor, the Rev.
David Henderson of West Lafayette, IN, warned his audience of about
1,300 people during an open-microphone time that the church's foundation
is "severely compromised," like that of a termite-infested
house. He suggested that the church's liberals - and gays and lesbians -
are pests that must be "stomped on" and "sprayed"
until evangelicals manage to "get rid of the problem."
That kind of talk has prodded the Rev. Chris Iosso, of
Scarsdale, NY, to search for what may be a 'third way' out of the
quandary. "Are we going to split our church over a yes/no
argument?" he asks, having watched his own presbytery, Hudson
River, get tangled in judicial wrangles on the issue. "Boy, I hope
it is not that simple."
Iosso's idea is to broaden the conversation to include
the "whole Gospel," not just isolated texts cited in support
of a particular point of view.
As a spur to fresh dialogue, he is coordinating a 'Third
Way Project' conference at Stony Point Conference Center in
February, a celebration of the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the
Confession of 1967. The conference, funded by seven churches of Hudson
River Presbytery, will look back at what the church stood for in 1967
and seek ways in which it might move out of its current gridlock.
He says he doesn't want folks to feel bound to the old
litigious or legislative method, in which liberals consider themselves
harbingers of justice and conservatives consider themselves defenders of
Biblical integrity.
But for the moment and for the near future, litigation
and legislation are the order of the day.
Byers notes that 29 presbyteries sent overtures to the
last GA to rid the constitution of G-6.0106.b, an indication that
dissatisfaction with it is widespread. "It is an experiment that
didn't work," she says. "Definitive guidance and authoritative
interpretation (constitutional interpretations issued by General
Assemblies between 1978 and 1993) didn't work. Putting it in The Book of
Order didn't work."
Bay agrees. "This (debate) is not going to go
away until G-0106.b is out of The Book of Order," he says, arguing
that the overall quality of a candidate's life should be decisive in
whether he or she may be ordained.
And if his side loses again in the current voting, he
says, there's always tomorrow.
"People are slowly changing their minds," he
says. "No doubt the church will change its mind - just as it did
with slavery and with the question of women's roles."
