Our moderator was kind enough to recognize my point of personal privilege.
With no prefatory statement at all, I read what I posted here last Friday and sat down. I had intended to request that my remarks be "spread upon the minutes" but I forgot to do so. The silence was broken by a very modest applause offered by fewer than a dozen commissioners - most loudly, and most importantly, by my 29 year old daughter. It was over. I had done it. It felt right.
The statement basically said, given the change in our Book of Order, I needed to quality my answer to the ordination vow I swore to when ordained and, subsequently transfered to this presbytery. The vow states that I would be a colleague to all my fellow ministers, working with them subject to God's will. I cannot consider an unrepentant sinner to be my Christian colleague in ministry. As a Christian, we are each obliged to confess and repent of our sins. Church leaders ought to be examples of that pattern.
It meant very little to any one but me. I am not sure, nor does it matter much to me, how it was received. I am not sure what precisely happens when a conscience is cleared, but this act in fact cleared my conscience. I did not want to remain in an ordination covenant that was based on deception.
My guess is nothing will happen now. What could happen now? I could be disciplined? A case could be made that I, de-facto, denounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (USA). It would not be successfulness, however, because a minister or elder or deacon must specifically renounce the jurisdiction of the PC(USA) over their ministry. It can not be done by implication but only by expressed desire.
A disciplinary case charging me with falsely avowing my ordination promises, I suppose, could be put forward. This is not likely because the conditions at the time I made them held a different fact set.
It could be argued that I refuse to except a change in my denomination that was lawfully enacted. In such a case, an honorable person should protest this change for a short while, then either passively submit or peacefully withdraw. I have for a long while insisted that the homosexual rights revisionists should follow this honorable pattern. They should either, after a short (I'd say no more than two years) try to correct what has grieved them. Then, after this effort fails, they should either passively and quietly submit to the will of the the Church or peacefully withdraw.
That, I suppose, is what I should do. Try to change the error, then, after a short while, either passively submit to it or peacefully withdraw from the PC(USA). Had the Revisionist followed this honorable tradition, consider where the PC(USA) would be today.
5 comments:
Gary,
You are the most courageous Presbyterian minister I have seen in the last few years. You have expressed in your testimony what so many of us are feeling at this moment. I too have been in this denomination for 50 some odd years, and this action has literally taken the wind out of my sails. I am an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament and cannot for the life of me understand how educated, intelligent Presbyterian clergy and lay persons can justify what has happened. The PCUSA has thumbed its nose at God's Word. As an aside, would by any chance the "Dr. Mark" be Judas Iscariot Actemeier whose mother would roll over in her grave if she knew the damage that her son has caused her beloved denomination? If not, fine. I thought that I would ask. You outshine him and all of the rest of the academics who, like the Pharisees, proudly stand and cheer for what has happened - the destruction of a once grand and mighty witness to the world for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May God have mercy on the PCUSA and on those who are responsible for its demise.
GW,
Doesn't a request for a scruple need to be acted upon by the presbytery? Otherwise it would seem to be a request with no action taken---sort of like a motion without a second. I do think this is very possibly a good way to go and many of us may follow this lead but . . .
God's blessings to you,
Matt
For a certain purpose, yes, I would have had to arrange for someone to second it and then the matter would have been properly before the presbytery for its vote. I reconsidered this approach because I know my presbytery well enough that this would have thrown them into a tizzy.
So, I declared a scruple but left it to them to act or not act upon it. Just I suspected, they had no idea what to do with it. As it stands, my statement is on the record with nearly seventy-five witnesses and a written report left for everyone's information.
Hi Gary: Ever since you were posting at GWMILLER at PresbyNet, I've been used to you seeing clearly things others had trouble perceiving. And you have done it again.
For the past two decades, the respectable evangelical leadership has been trying to find way that everyone could get along, for everyone to be able to follow their own sense of what Jesus calls us to do. Was there a strong More Light presence at PCUSA Youth Connection events? Not to worry, there are the alternative PFR Fun in the Son events. See we can make space for each other and all get along. We can have peace and unity and not have to talk too much about purity. Too much talk about that leads to divisive fundamentalism.
Yet your brave statement shows that hope for a live and let live solution to the moral question is just a chimera. Being a connected church means the action of one presbytery to approve a minister is the action of all; the action of one Session to approve an elder is the action of all. That's why the promise to welcome all presbyters as friends and colleagues and partners in the gospel of Jesus Christ makes sense. That's why the national standards were applied to restrain Pittsburgh Presbytery in the Kenyon situation -- progressives cheered that application then.
This, if I recall correctly, was the issue about Kenyon. He really wasn't going to be a "friend" to women ministers, so he couldn't really be a "friend" in ministry, so he couldn't really answer "yes" to that ordination question. And, for all the words the Peace Unity and Purity group spilled looking for a way to make space for individual conscience in the PCUSA, they never directly overturned that precedent. It is only a matter of time until it gets applied again…
This will not be a painless path as the PCUSA sorts out this realignment -- just as it has not been painless for the Anglicans and Episcopalians. But I pray your witness will shine a light on the choices ahead.
I imagine this action made your Staed Clerk have kittens right there on the floor of presbytery. What I would have gien to see Dan Hignight's face when you read this at the presbytery meeting.
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