(1)Even if the PC(USA) is to begin ordaining LGBTQ persons this very moment, there is no church anywhere in the denomination which would be forced to accept any particular LGBTQ pastor, Elder or Deacon against its will.(2) It is the Presbytery’s function to examine candidates for Ministry of Word and Sacrament, and that will continue without interruption when G-6.0106b is erased from the Book of Order.(3) The fact is that G-6.0106b does not protect anyone from anything. All it does is ensure that people who are demonstrably called to pastoral ministry are not allowed to live that calling out, and churches in need of pastoral leadership are unable to find it.(4)
Commmentary
1. This was one claim that we made which Rev. Tom Hobson called dishonest, but in our response to him we demonstrated very clearly why this is the case, and will be the case for the foreseeable future.
2. This is not, nor ever has been, an issue of somehow forcing squirming Presbyterians to accept ministers, Elders or Deacons their congregations and Presbyteries do not choose. That is absurd, as well as beyond the scope of Amendment 10A.
3. As we said earlier, G-6.0106b adds nothing whatsoever of value to the Book of Order, and in losing it, we lose nothing but a shackle on the Gospel.
4. What we have in our current system is the enforcement of a particular stance on a non-essential in the Reformed faith. Intelligent, faithful people of good conscience can and do disagree on LGBTQ ordination. For this very reason, we should expunge G-6.0106b.
11 comments:
This argument has never made any sense to me.
As a commissioner to Presbytery, I've voted on any number of candidates for ordination as MoWS. No one has ever asked me why I voted for or against someone. Ever. In our congregation, I've voted on any number of candidates for Elder, and no one has ever asked me why I voted.
The Anti-Gay folks like to bring up the Kenyon case, yet in every vote for female candidates for MoWS in our Presbytery, no one has ever been polled as to whether they voted no because the particular candidate was a woman. Ever. I'd wager my pocket change that has never happened in any other Presbytery either. Ever.
Funny how the anti-gay agenda deems women's ordination as an incorrect analogy to LGBT ordination, except when they want to use it as an analogy to LGBT ordination.
What I find telling about this sort of objection is the language in which I have seen it expressed from more than one conservative source: that LGBT ordination will be "forced down our throats." Homophobia, anyone?
Alan,
I believe that it's exactly analogous to the debate over women's ordination. (As Vicki Gene Robinson recently taught a group of Romans about the pathway to non-repentant homosexing clergy, get women ordained first.) Both are clear departures from the universal and uncontested practice of the church, and both acts accelerate decline.
Remember Alan, Chris doesn't think women are people. Well, they're *kind of* people; pseudo-people if you will; people who don't deserve equal rights compared to men.
Clearly, that was Jesus' agenda. Sexism is core to the gospel message. We clearly see that in women being in positions of influence and authority throughout the NT, in direct and consistent contrast to the culture around them.
It isn't that society was and is sexist and misogynist, and it corrupted the church until recently, and corrupts much of it still. Not at all.
Church authority is a tree-house, and "No Girls Allowed" is clearly painted on the side.
Really, Chris, if we aren't supposed to ordain women or give them any authority, how can we let them vote? You should get on that anti-suffrage movement as quickly as possible - time's a-wasting.
You also may be intrigued to learn, Chris, that correlation does not imply causation. So your statement:
"both acts accelerate decline" has no support whatsoever.
I could just as easily say that mainline decline comes entirely from the abandonment of a radical, liberal commitment to change society for the benefit of the most vulnerable among us, and that when we retain that (gospel) commitment, we will see growth.
Also unfounded, but at least it's not sexist.
Your clericalism astounds me, Doug. So personhood is not conferred unless one is an ordained minister? Or is it just if they are ordained as a PCUSA minister?
Help me follow your logic, here. Does that mean that the men in the congregation who are not ordained are also not persons?
Is this the reason that prenatal infanticide gets a pass? Because the fetus hasn't been baptized or ordained, and thus isn't a person?
Was Jesus being a sexist when he chose only men to be apostles? Just where did His divinity run into the brick wall of cultural acclimation? I want to know so I can ignore whatever isn't really of divine origins.
Here's the sum total: no one has a right to be ordained. NO ONE. It's not a right to be denied or withheld. It is a gift that is given by Christ through the Holy Spirit and mediated through His church, under the regulative witness of Scripture. (Thus St. Paul and St. Peter's regulation of the offices in their letters.)
And of course I know that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy. However, what I am saying is that the abandonment of orthodoxy and the normativity of Scripture (as seen since the fundamentalist / modernist controversy) is the root cause of church decline. The ordination debacle is a symptom (and an inevitable result, given our 'rights' centered ideological climate)...it is not a root, though it is an accelerant.
"Both are clear departures from the universal and uncontested practice of the church, and both acts accelerate decline."
Blah, blah, blah, Chris. Even someone as dim as you should know by now what I think of your opinions. Don't bother wasting the electrons.
"Remember Alan, Chris doesn't think women are people."
Obviously. The key part of that sentence is that Chris doesn't think. Post hoc reasoning, strawman arguments ... if his continued moral lapses weren't enough reason to know he never should have been ordained, his inability to think or reason would be. Fortunately the PCUSA dodged that bullet. Unfortunately, his pathological obsession with the PCUSA seems neverending. All that blathering and he can't even address the topic or come up with one cogent argument against what you've written.
I didn't realize the University of Phoenix had an MDiv program.
Alan,
Since I'm a Southerner, I'm just going to respond with what we call an ad hominy:
Bless your heart.
Alright, ad hominy is actually pretty funny. There's still that.
Jeez. I went out for lunch and I came back to 17 comments mostly Chris and Alan going round in circles. I hope everyone is laughing at their keyboards because it has been ridiculous. Do we have to put you in the corner or something?
"I hope everyone is laughing at their keyboards because it has been ridiculous."
Of course. Any series of comments in which I get to quote Weird Al Yankovic is made of win. :)
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