The thoughts and discussions are coming now at a regular clip. I will be editing this as the blogosphere continues to multiply this story.

The official PCUSA release can be found here. Homosexuality and ordination standards were obviously not the only topic of conversation during the week long event. There were other decisions rendered such as interfaith relations with Muslims and the adoption of the Belhar Confession which came out the apartheid struggle in South Africa.

What is clear and needs to be emphasized is that these decisions were not without controversy and not without often strong disagreements from the floor.

The most press and discussion will follow the discussions regarding the status of the ordination of homosexuals. To wit, I am looking to track this discussion here. If you have posted or know someone who has posted regarding this issue on either side, please let me know and I will include a link here in order to follow the conversation and log it to the best of my ability.

I would hope that we can reach an understanding of why this is deeply concerning for some and deeply relieving for others. If we do not allow ourselves to experience the “other side” I fear that the directive to converse and discern at our local presbyteries will be sabotaged before the process even commences from now through June 28, 2009.

Some have been positive affirmations of the vote:

• Tony Hoshaw says, “Unity cannot precede justice - unity must be funded by the holy, other God - who rejects heterosexism and homophobia - as a cursory reading of the Gospels reveals.”
• John Shuck places it in the context of a litany. “I love the sound of that. “No further force or effect.” Say it with me, “No further force or effect.”
• Identity Mixed simply says, “Well finally…”
• Michael J. Adee writes, “There is clearly a sea-change in our Church, society and world as more people are letting go of the old beliefs and prejudice about homosexuality, same-gender loving persons and embracing what it means to recognize Christ and the divine image within all of God children, no exceptions.”
• AlanLK says, “We’ve been here before. The GA has voted to repeal the ban three times before, and three times it’s been sustained by the presbyteries. So, there’s plenty of work to do over the next several months. But, it is a hopeful sign, nonetheless.”
• Adam Copeland closes his astute summary with this statement that summarizes the directions that local presbyteries should now take, “We’re all a bit unsure about the future of the denomination, as some uber-conservative churches have or do threaten to leave. The trick moving forward will be to discuss the proposed changes in presbyteries kindly, faithfully, and humbly. Unity in the midst of our diversity is one of the denomination’s best qualities, but it ain’t easy.”
• Doug Hagler discusses the language that is resulting from the decision here. “Because of a 55/45 split on amendment b and homosexual ordination that we’ve known was there for 30 years at least, suddenly the loyal opposition seems to be lamenting in sack-cloth and ashes.”
• Iris follows with a note of caution and apprehension at how the church will actually work toegther and move beyond positions in the issue. “So, I am feeling torn between cautious optimism that we may soon rectify what I believe to be a grave injustice to our LGBT brothers and sisters and really and truly feeling the pain of those who believe that the church (small “c”) is moving away from them.”]
• Mark Smith urges us to play nice. “I urge my fellow progressives not to celebrate too loudly. Your cheers and in some cases jeers are painful to conservatives. Be a good winner. I also urge my conservative peers not to give up. You are doing what you believe to be the most faithful thing right now (as are the progressives). Don’t take any hasty actions. Take time to hear God’s call for you. Then do what you need to do.”
• Heather Reichgott offers sound advice. “What this means, for me and many others, is that we will be able to be ordained in a year if a majority of the presbyteries agree.  What this also means is that it’s time for as many people as possible to start conversations in presbyteries. Study the Bible together. Find out what people’s disagreements and obstacles are, and talk about them as genuinely as possible. And be in prayer.”
• I urge you to read Ray Bagnuolo’s affirmative and pastoral reflection here. “(W)e share joy with others for the chance to create a more just, inclusive, and loving church, acknowledging that these proposals have at the same time, created terror for others who believe these changes will mark the end of their beloved church.”

This concern is not without merit.

• Toby Brown has several posts, but one simply says, “My grief is too deep for words.” And he did start blogging again today.
• John “Stushie” Stewart writes, “We are a bunch of narcissistic hypocrites looking to justify our politically correct ways and cultural orientations. We cast aside our allegiance to Christ because we don’t want to submit to Him.”
• Chris Larimer is succinct. “I think conservative Presbyterians should rush in droves to join the Covenant Network.” (Note: Not the Covenant Network of Presbyterians).
• Reformed Pastor has numerous posts on the GA. This one is in keeping with the general theme. “Once again, whether the proposed repeal of G-6.0108b happens or not, the PCUSA is now officially in the camp of gay-approving denominations, along with the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ.”
• John Erthein writes, “Well, the General Assembly has placed a spoiled cherry on the rancid sundae of these past several days.”
• Bill Crawford says, “(T)he PCUSA has once again opened the door to the ordination of non repentant sinners.”
• Deutero Q uses what might be a consistent metaphor, “Many different words and metaphors come to mind as I continue to process the lunacy that characterized the GA meeting. Pardon my bluntness, but the crap coming out of the PC (USA) colon stinks to high heaven. (I’ve used that metaphor quite a bit lately, but I think it is a fitting one.)”
• From Adel Thalos, “In my opinion the PCUSA is no longer part of the larger body of Jesus Christ, but has separated itself becoming just another “church of what is happening among cultural progressives now,” like the Episcopal Church and the UCC.”
• The title alone from the Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) press release is clear enough, “Presbyterians Plant Seeds of Self-Destruction”.
• The Presbyterian Global Fellowship from the “pen” of Vic Pentz says, “San Jose offered an unconditional invitation for the “outside” to come in without asking the “outside” to be transformed by “inside.”  Anything inside (confessions, Scripture, Book of Order) that did not fit comfortably with the outside was asked to leave. Or as I heard someone say, “The Bible got voted off the island.”

The motion from the Committee on Church Orders and Ministry passed to remove “Amendment B” from the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Book of Order - the denomination’s constitution.  Here is the previous version in the PCUSA Book of Order:

“Those called to office in the church are to lead a life of 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 (W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.” (Book of Order, G-6.0106b)

Here is the amended version that just passed this afternoon:

“Those who are called to ordained service in the church, by their assent to the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003), pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, striving to follow where he leads through the witness of the Scriptures, and to understand the Scriptures through the instruction of the Confessions. In so doing, they declare their fidelity to the standards of the church. Each governing body charged with examination for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240 and G-14.0450) establishes the candidate’s sincere efforts to adhere to these standards.”

This repeals an authoritative interpretation that was passed in 2006 and will give more flexibility for local presbyteries to discuss and now vote on their position regarding ordination standards.  Today marks a very palpable moment of possibile change and transition for the PCUSA.  No matter where you stand on the issue, pray that the people of the PCUSA will be able to discern God’s call in their communities.

UPDATE: Reported by The Presbyterian Outlook here.  Ratification will now occur over the next year requiring a majority vote of the PCUSA’s 173 regional presbyteries.

(T)he Assembly’s vote on the new amendment also included the directive to rescind all Authoritative Interpretations to the Constitution, dating back to 1978, that have stated that homosexual practice is not compatible with ordained service in the denomination.  The elimination of this interpretive language does not overturn the prohibition; that would take effect only if the proposed amendment gets ratified.  But the authoritative interpretations provided much more specificity to the constitutional policy.

The New York Times released a short piece here.

The full article from the AP is here.

It could very well be.  Out of committee the proposed amendment has to be approved by a majority of the presbyteries of the denomination.  This is unlikely, but this is getting farther into the heat of the General Assembly than some previous years.

SAN JOSE – A committee is recommending that the 218th General Assembly approve a constitutional amendment to strike from the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) language that restricts ordination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single.

Instead, the committee – approving an overture from Boston presbytery – voted 41-11 on June 24 to replace that with a provision that those being called for ordained service “pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, striving to follow where he leads through the witness of the Scriptures, and to understand the Scriptures through the instruction of the Confessions. In so doing, they declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church.”

Each governing body examining candidates would need to establish “the candidate’s sincere efforts to adhere to these standards,” the overture states.

The committee also is recommending that the assembly pass an authoritative interpretation declaring that interpretive statements the assemblies of the northern and southern branches of the Presbyterian Church made in 1978 and 1979 regarding homosexuality “and all subsequent affirmations thereof have no further force or effect.”

This is not a new thing and has been under scrunity as “Amendment B” for the past 10 years.  What is new is that other presbyteries than Milwaukee and San Francisco are challenging it and presenting overtures to amend it, or remove it from the Book of Order, the PCUSA constitution.  This could be sign of an increasing trend to change this part of the consitution.

Jim West found it and quotes it here.

Right. It is an agenda. It is an agenda to have equal protection under the law regarding the civil contract of what marriage guarantees. The problem is that this rather reasonable agenda is cast in conspiratorial terms that somehow gays want to rule to country at the expense of other groups’ equal protection under the law (e.g. religious organizations) which is a far cry from the case.

With regard to the responsibility of the state, there is not a single legal argument to maintain the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman unless you rely on extra-legal foundations such as religion or outmoded understandings of tradition. Note that I am not talking about how votes have been cast in the past. Just because you vote for something does not mean that it is constitutional, correct, or even ethical.  I am talking about formulating a legal argument that makes the definition of marriage as between man and woman necessary.

Just because something is so, does not therefore mean it must be so.  The challenge for those who oppose a gender neutral definition of marriage is to argue why marriage must be so.  So far the courts are ruling that marriage as between man and woman proponents are not doing a good job with this argument and I whole-heartedly agree.

My suggestion is to stop whining about meritless and speculative conclusions that the man/woman qualification of marriage will destroy society, marriage, religion, etc.  Make the case with a solid argument built on solid legal foundations or the man/woman definition will continue to crumble as perhaps it should.

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory…

…The long-awaited court decision stemmed from San Francisco’s highly publicized same-sex weddings, which in 2004 helped spur a conservative backlash in a presidential election year and a national dialogue over gay rights.

Read the complete story

It is the only correct legal position to take. However, marriage in the eyes of the state remains to be a civil contract between two people and nothing more. There is no legal reason why it must be defined as a union between a man and a woman. None of the arguments to the contrary are at all convincing. Thus the fall back is to define the civil law in terms of the desires of religious groups who forbid marriage to be defined any other way than between a man and a woman.

If there is a secular legal reason why marriage cannot be defined as a gender free statute, I have never heard one. Religions can maintain their doctrinal stance regardless of what the state confers in its marriage licenses. But the idea that a gender-free definition of marriage will destroy a foundation of our society is not only a ridiculous conclusion, but the current data on marriage does not support this notion since half lead to divorce anyway. Arguing on these grounds is about as rational as arguing that a black person is 2/3 of a person and therefore they cannot vote! Or the argument that women have a naturally weaker physical and psychological makeup that prevents them from voting or serving in the military. Not to see the clear lines of similarity between these equally absurd assumptions about the constitution of human beings is to remain mired in absurdity and a retarded sense of equal regard under the law for everyone regarding with whom they wish to spend their lives in a civil union with all rights and responsibilities thereto.

Beacon Broadside has a nice piece to discuss some of the conclusions and speculations that are false if we assume a data driven posture. See what Massachusetts has learned.

Other comments on the California decision can be found here, here, and here.

Update: Julie continues with a discussion of the overturning of inter-racial marriage as a precedent used in the case. Americans United for Separation of Church and State also weighs in.

Update II: A really nice article on Get Religion asks some important questions in the debate this issue raises with choice and religion among others.

PROPOSAL

Narrative

I have been involved in and witnessed many debates over homosexuality not only in the forum of its relationship to society in general, but its characterization and association in the life of the Church. Scholars on many sides have presented careful expositions of their own positions in relation to Scripture and the various traditions and theologies within the history of the church.

However, many of these studies are rather ignored in water cooler talks and in often whispered breaths in our congregations. This does not mean that people do not read them. It means that even when read, the conclusions are often ignored due to a personal discomfort with the outcomes. It also means that one’s own experience often trumps whatever those conclusions might be.

The result is that in most debates, one’s personal commitment intervenes and effectively blocks an objective engagement of the arguments. What I have witnessed are a lot of dishonest conclusions even when plausible objections are rendered against a certain view. The debate is then cut off due to altogether irrational reasoning strategies that result from personal adjudication rooted in experience rather than evidence.

What we often do not do from various personal motivations is test our own often deeply personal assumptions and boundaries about reality and engage such processes with the willingness to change. Or, if we are not willing to change at a given moment in time, we tend not to be honest with the reasons why. Often this is because the “other side” whichever it is, places an unfair demand on the opposition to capitulate. The message is that if you do not change now, then we should go our separate ways. Or you could take Brian McLaren’s strategy of not talking about it for a while. But if one thing is clear about McLaren is his intentional lack of clarity as somehow inherently a good we need to observe. I find that has little to no use.

For instance, the idea of two men having sex is gross to many people. It is hard to get past that image no matter what any other evidence is presented. On the other side two people who are even in a monogamous same sex relationship cannot see past it if Scripture and the intent of the passages that deal with same sex relations clearly forbid it. For the former, the argument will usually boil down to “scripture is clear” even when it is not. For the latter, the argument comes down to “scripture does not address our situation” even if it very well might.

Intent

I would like to do something different here. I would like to propose hypotheses related to this issue where we do not look at it with personal interest or experience as a motivation at all, but bracket out personal commitments on either side of the issue and engage it on as rational a basis as possible. What I would like to do is propose hypotheses from the perspective of affirming homosexual relationships and see where the debate comes out. It might end up at stalemate and that should be OK since we are not here adjudicating polity. The reason for coming at it in this direction is that the affirmative hypotheses are the source of the discord which is a fact regardless of one’s position in the matter. It is the affirming position that is new in the church.

I want to do this because I think we can work with the issue better. Whatever your take on homosexuality, one thing that we need to agree on is that division in the church is clearly not an effective witness of God’s continuing act of reconciling the world to himself. Laying effective groundwork by being honest is a good way to do this in my estimation.

Format

The primary question is this: On what bases is our position on the affirmation and/or negation of homosexuality made plausible and legitimate?

Here is a proposed format:

1. A series of blog summits following a general agreement on the hypotheses rooted in the above question that will be tested. There will be one of these a month starting the third week of May through the third week of August.
2. The goal would be to have an essay that seeks to affirm the hypothesis and one that seeks to falsify it. In the spirit of fair and balanced dialogue I would recommend that the position you choose to take would be the one that you are most likely to currently disagree with in an effort to try to affirm it.
3. At the close each participant would offer a personal concluding statement that takes into account their own theological, biblical, and traditional assumptions that inform their view with a reflection on how those assumptions are both plausible and legitimate.
4. There would be no attempt to “sway” people to consent to a given view. The goal is an open and honest engagement of the issues in order to lay bare our assumptions for the good of reconciling the church. Moreover, we may not find a hermeneutic that can effectively adjudicate a balance between the two positions. However, an effective groundwork can at least be established.
5. I will post an index of the summits as a separate page unless there are objections.
6. I would also consider the contributions of the summit to send to a publisher if all participants would be in agreement. Lulu.com is also an option for this, but if the contributions are stout enough, I think we might be able to do much better. Naturally this introduces another level of risk, but I think one well worth it for the good of the church.

If you have concerns over copyright we can work something up to establish a good faith agreement to ensure that your intellectual property is protected when your content is posted on this site. (By default, if you post anything to a site for which you have no license, it defaults to a dual ownership between the license owner and the producer.)

Would anyone be at all interested in taking a risk here to engage the debate the summer?  Post your interest here or use the contact form if you wish.

A well done piece here discusses Sally Kern’s new legacy - and her misinformed understanding of the intent behind the 1st Amendment.

“What made us great,” said Kern, “is that we were a nation founded on Christian principles. OK, that’s just the bottom line. If you go to the primary sources and read our Founding Fathers, what they had to say, they gave preferential treatment to Christianity.

“So what’s destroying this nation?” Kern continued. “The fact that we’re leaving the roots upon which we were founded. We are crumbling from within because of the bankruptcy that we have in the moral fiber of this nation and leaving the principles of our Founding Fathers.”

Let’s go to a couple of sources then. The First Amendment has its roots in the Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke where Locke says among other things:

Now that the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to these civil concernments, and that all civil power, right and dominion, is bounded and confined to the only care of promoting these things; and that it neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls, these following considerations seem unto me abundantly to demonstrate.

First, because the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men. It is not committed unto him, I say, by God; because it appears not that God has ever given any such authority to one man over another as to compel anyone to his religion. Nor can any such power be vested in the magistrate by the consent of the people, because no man can so far abandon the care of his own salvation as blindly to leave to the choice of any other, whether prince or subject, to prescribe to him what faith or worship he shall embrace. For no man can, if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of another. All the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing. Whatever profession we make, to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation. For in this manner, instead of expiating other sins by the exercise of religion, I say, in offering thus unto God Almighty such a worship as we esteem to be displeasing unto Him, we add unto the number of our other sins those also of hypocrisy and contempt of His Divine Majesty.

In the second place, the care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, torments, nothing of that nature can have any such efficacy as to make men change the inward judgement that they have framed of things.

The founders did not intend for the civil form of government to give preference to any religion nor did they think it wise or good for a state. Sally Kern missed something in her lesson on the problems the Baptists had in New England who were under the governance of the Congregationalists. As Jefferson’s wrote to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Perhaps she missed the lesson on the plight of the Puritans where,

In 1593, the English parliament outlawed independent congregations. Attendance of English (Anglican) church services was made obligatory. But across the country, groups of Puritans continued to gather.

She clearly is not familiar with Rodney Stark’s work on the very topic of the effects of state religion on religious belief or Chris Eisgruber’s argument that the 1st Amendment protects equal regard for all religions.  She must not be aware that this very principle of equal regard has created an unusual environment in the world where minority religions and sects can flourish since they cannot be oppressed.

If her preference is to turn back the dial of time a few decades if not more in order to live in a more homogeneous Christian nation, then perhaps she would do well to relieve herself of her office. For what good wife of a Baptist preacher would ever serve as a state representative in those days?  Such an idea would certainly be un-bibilical or at least un-becoming of a good wife.