Now It's the Presbyterians' Turn to Wrangle Over Gays and the Church

[CShine]

Deep rifts over homosexuality have worsened among Episcopalians and United Methodists over the past year, and now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is getting ready to continue its divisive debate over gay clergy. The 2.4 million-member church's weeklong national legislative assembly begins Saturday in Richmond, Va., where liberals will take up new attacks against the church's strict law barring actively gay clergy and lay officers.

Conservatives will defend that law and, frustrated because some ignore it, seek a clampdown and new church leadership.

Gay activists and their allies have three proposals regarding the ban:

-A third attempt to repeal the 1997 law requiring officeholders to "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness."

-A rewrite of that law to replace the man-and-woman phrase with "a covenanted relationship between two persons."

-A proposal backed by the Covenant Network caucus to drop another piece of church law that reinforces the prohibition on gay clergy.


http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBCHPAJWVD.html

[Snow]

1. Hmmm. These are the Southern Presbyterians,

like many other denominations, a split one as a result of slavery and so on. I'd be amazed if they do anything other than toe the conservative line.

[El Supremo]

3. May I correct you?

PCUSA was created in 1983 from the merger of the northern United Presbyterian Church and the southern Presbyterian Church in the US. We put aside our Civil War differences that had caused the split. There have been many other divisions and unifications throughout our history.

The Presbyterian Church in America is perhaps the most conservative branch. They don't even allow the ordination of women.

http://www.pcusa.org/

[HereSince1628]

4. Presbyterians have the capacity to believe much...

As a child of the 60's, I am suspicious of a church whose name means "the elders."

On issues of your mortal soul (on edit: apparently the concept of souls is so abhorent I left it out in a Freudian moment) you should consult your own conscience and NEVER trust ANYONE over 35. If you did that you'd never trust Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Powell, Tenet, etc. etc. etc.

[El Supremo]

5. Haw!

But you don't have to be elderly to be an elder.:-) And the congregation elects the elders and deacons. They have limited terms of office. Even the Moderator of the General Assembly has very little power. We have no Bishops, Cardinals, Popes or anything resembling them.

[Snow]

6. Ooops, indeed you may.

my erroneous assumption. should've researched it a bit better, but I was remembering from my days as a presbyterian (30+ years ago)

[El Supremo]

2. We've been "Wrangling Over" this issue for many years.

I was at last year's General Assembly (as an usher) and the new Moderator, who is in favor of ordaining homosexuals, decided to drop the issue for a while because we were not getting anywhere.

Most of us consider it less important than work to end war and poverty and wish it would just go away. Maybe a "don't ask - don't tell" policy would be best. We have had many pastors, elders and deacons who were gay or lesbian, but they are not supposed to be one, officially.