QUIPS
AND QUOTES
On the General Assembly’s Open Meeting Policy
The Open Meeting Policy
is “asperational.”
• Mark Tammen, Associate Stated Clerk, General Assembly
"One cannot
read the arguments of the leaders of the dissents and protests against G-6.0106b
without raising the question: 'Is this an effort not to "reform...according
to the Word of God," but rather, to reform out from under the authority
of Jesus Christ, the Word of God as the Scripture bear witness to him, and
out from under the confessional standards?' One might also ask, as to church
officers and ministers, '[is it] out from under the solemn vows of ordination
and installation?' To the degree that there continues to be a clamor for
ordination with regard to fidelity and chastity, dissent becomes disavowal....When
matters that lie at the core of the PCUSA are opposed, circumvented, or
simply ignored, the issue ceases to be G-6.0106b. The issue becomes the
commitment to historic Presbyterianism of persons who are or would become
deacons, elders and ministers of the Word and Sacrament of the Presbyterian
Church (USA)."
Julius
Poppinga, elder, Prosecuting attorney in the first (1992) Jane Spahr case
On the PUP
Task Force Report
PUP task force
members Mike Loudon, Mark Achtemeier, Barbara Wheeler, commenting on the
recommendations of their report at the May 10 interview by members by the
Presbyterian Coalition.
"Last Saturday
(Feb. 11), at the stated meeting of Tropical Florida Presbytery, an overture
to GA was approved to strike Recommendation 5 from the PUP report. It was
passed overwhelmingly. I am sure that many other presbyteries are going on
record prior to GA to make it clear that G-6.0106b is not optional or seen
as non-essential to us, so that if GA goes ahead with this the reactions cannot
be said to be a surprise."
Rev. W.B.
Arnold, Tropical Florida Presbytery
"We now
see, in several denominations, a new strategy to win the church’s affirmation
of homosexual acts. This new strategy is less direct. It is offered as a “compromise,”
a “third way.” Yet the effect would be the same…. The essence
of the new strategy is this: to leave in church law books the orthodox standards
calling Christians to fidelity in marriage and sexual abstinence in singleness,
while inventing procedural devices permitting church bodies and officials
to disregard the standards at will."
From
a statement signed by 26 renewal leaders from eight mainline Protestant denominations
in the U.S. and Canada
"Is it legal
under our Constitution for a General Assembly to decide via authoritative
interpretation alone, without proposing an amendment to the Book of Order
which is subsequently enacted by affirmative vote of a majority of the prebyteries,
that a provision of the Book of Order which describes itself as a 'requirement'
for officers may be declared by a governing body to be a 'non-essential' of
polity?"
From a letter
to the Advisory Committee on the Constitution, from pastors Winfield R.
Jones and M. Douglas Harper, Jr.
"A specific
standard for officers of the church (deacons, elders, or ministers) that the
Form of Government of the Book of Order singles out from amongst other confessional
standards, explicitly labels a requirement, or associates with mandatory practice
by the use of 'shall' language or its equivalent shall be deemed by ordaining
and installing bodies to be an essential of Reformed faith and polity for
officers of the church."
From the overture
adopted by Pittsburgh Presbytery on Feb. 9 that seeks amendment to G-6.0108b
of the Book of Order.
"It shall
not be deemed reasonable or responsible for an ordaining/installing body to
fail to maintain any standard stipulated in the Book of Order."
From the overture
adopted by Philadelphia Presbytery on Feb. 9 that seeks to amend the recommendations
of the PUP Report.
“The Authoritative
Interpretation in Recommendation 5 would allow sessions and presbyteries to
decide whether mandated sections of the Book of Order (those that include
the words 'shall' or 'is to be/are to be') are essential or not. This would
produce the absurd result of allowing sessions and presbyteries to decide
that there are nonessential requirements in the Book of Order when examining
a candidate for office.”
Overture passed by Philadelphia Presbytery, 2/9/06.
"A standard
is no standard if it is not standard; optional requirements are nonsense."
Jim
Berkley, in "Notes on the Theological Task Force Report"
The church … cannot
surrender the distinction between the norm and behavior that departs from
that norm.
Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound
by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm
of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism. If
a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat
homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized
homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage,
such a church would stand no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal
witness of Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
From “Revelation
and Homosexual Experience,” by Wolfhart Pannenberg, professor of systematic
theology, University of Munich, translated by Markus Bockmuehl for the Church
Times
"If I profess with
the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God
except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that
moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing
Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved,
and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace
if he flinches at that point."
Martin
Luther
•
Tricia Dykers
Koenig, National Organizer for the Covenant Network, the principal advocacy
group for removing the “fidelity and chastity” standard for ordination,
in a workshop at their fall 2005 conference said that if the PUP report passes,
“…it would still be a huge step forward because a lot more ordinations
[of Presbyterians in homosexual relationships] would be happening. We would
be doing it all over the place.”
Quoted
by Leslie Scanlon in The Presbyterian Outlook, Nov. 28, 2005
•
At the October
16, 2005 meeting of Shenandoah Presbytery, during the public question and
answer period, Pastor John Sloop asked task force member Frances Taylor Gench:
“Is it your understanding that the Book of Order currently prohibits
the ordination of self-affirming, practicing, unrepentant, homosexual persons?”
Gench answered, “Yes.”
Sloop then asked, “Am I correct that should the PUP report pass, it
will be possible to ordain self-affirming, practicing, unrepentant homosexual
persons?” Gench answered, “Yes.”
Reported
by Pastor John Sloop
•
Barbara Wheeler,
president of Auburn Theological Seminary, member of the Covenant Network board,
and on the PUP task force, thanked the Covenant Network board for encouraging
overtures to change the ordination standards, but commented that the small
steps of the PUP report “make the PC(USA) safer for gays and lesbians
and more open to change. ‘They’re not large leaps,’ but
they’re better than the all-or-nothing wars, Wheeler said.
“She cautioned that if the assembly defeats the task force report, the
future doesn’t hold quick victory for gays and lesbians, just more fighting.’”
From Leslie
Scanlon’s report of the fall 2005 Covenant Network conference, in
The Presbyterian Outlook, Nov. 28, 2005
“Unless
you preach chastity, and not the easy chastity of sex governed by commitment
and love but the hard chastity taught by St. Paul, you will fail to meet the
moral challenge of evangelism in this post-modern age.”
--R.R. Reno,
In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished
Christianity (Brazo Press, 2002).
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