Moderates and conservatives won some and lost some important issues and votes in their most recent showdown with liberals at the 210th General Assembly of the 2.6-million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at Charlotte, N.C.
With little discussion, the commissioners (delegates from presbyteries) rejected by a vote of 412-92 a bid by the Milwaukee Presbytery to make ordination standards more palatable for homosexuals. They also turned down a denominational committee's proposal that would have led to rewording the Heidelberg Confession, part of the PCUSA's doctrinal standards. The editing would have omitted a reference to "homosexual perversion" as one of the sins God condemns. Also, they voted 322-185 to require abstinence teaching and an emphasis on sexual purity in PCUSA youth education materials. A substitute motion that would have replaced the word purity with responsibility was rejected 261-246. However, moderates failed 265-264 in an attempt to inject a stronger biblical emphasis in pre-school sexual guidelines for parents and congregations.
Sent back to committee was a controversial study paper on social witness, "Building Community Among Strangers." Among other things, it contained universalist concepts of salvation. The commissioners ordered a rewrite centered on confessional and biblical teaching, with Christ portrayed as Lord of all the world and its only hope of reconciliation.
The assembly sent to churches two new catechisms designed to introduce basic doctrinal teachings of the Christian faith to 10- and 11-year-olds and to older youth and adults who may be biblically and theologically illiterate. Liberals complained they are a return to outdated pedagogical methods and are too centered in the New Testament.
After twice voting to withdraw PCUSA sponsorship and funding from the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, commissioners succumbed to a carefully choreographed floor demonstration and emotional appeal from the podium, restored about $50,000 for another year, and ordered a committee to analyze the NNPCW's programs, content, and resources, and report back at next year's assembly. The NNPCW, tied closely to homosexual interests, claims to have 250 representatives on some 80 campuses but attracted only 17 people to its first national conference; fewer than 40 are expected at this year's event.
Troubling to many moderates and conservatives was the 355-179 adoption of an "authoritative interpretation" of the PCUSA constitution to "consider the lives and behaviors of [ordination] candidates as individuals ... and not to exclude anyone categorically [such as for sexual orientation]." Ostensibly aimed at distinguishing between homosexual proclivity and homosexual practice, it nevertheless seems to open the door to off-center constitutional opinions by gay-friendly church courts.
"Over the last year or so, we have been successful in putting the doctrine of Jesus Christ-Christology-at the center of our [denominational] conversations once again," Pittsburgh Seminary professor Andrew Purves told a breakfast gathering sponsored by Presbyterians for Renewal. "This renewed interest in doctrine is a watershed event."
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Issue: "Larry Woiwode: By the book"
July 04, 1998
No pious baloney