c. 1996 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) After three years of keeping the volatile issue of homosexuality off the agenda of the national church, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) next week faces another critical decision point on the role of gays and lesbians in the denomination.
When the 568 elected commissioners, as delegates are called, gather in Albuquerque, N.M., for the June 29-July 6 annual gathering of the 2.7 million-member denomination, they will face at least 45 resolutions dealing with the issue. At least two dozen of those resolutions will seek an absolute bar on any ordination of gays or lesbians as ministers, elders or deacons.
In addition, the 208th General Assembly will face potentially controversial decisions such as filling key leadership posts, constructing a budget in the face of declining giving by congregations, and voting on recommendations that would draw the denomination into closer ties with other mainline Protestant churches.
The most heated debates are likely to come on the homosexuality issue.
Although the General Assembly has been on record since 1978 as being against the ordination of”self-affirming, practicing homosexuals,”that prohibition has never been officially placed into the church’s constitution, known as the Book of Order.
Instead, the Book of Order continues to give congregations the responsibility to ordain elders and deacons as they so choose and gives to presbyteries _ jurisdictions similar to a Roman Catholic diocese _ the power to ordain ministers.
Church officials said that some 75 congregations have declared that they are willing to ordain gays and lesbians.
Until Wednesday (June 26), every challenge to such ordinations has been turned down on the grounds that the Book of Order is permissive on the issue.
On Wednesday, however, Reuters reported that the Judicial Commission of the Cincinnati Presbytery, in a 4-3 vote, has annulled the ordination of a layman as an elder because he is gay.
The Rev. Lloyd Dunavent told Reuters that the layman, whom he would not identify, was an elder at Knox Presbyterian Church of Hyde Park, one of the most influential congregations in the presbytery, which consists of 86 churches in southwestern Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeast Indiana.
The ruling, and the closeness of the decision, is likely to add fuel to next week’s debate.
Of the 45 resolutions on the issue coming before the Albuquerque meeting, 24 call for amending the Book of Order to make the ban on gay and lesbian ordinations explicit at the national level and 20 favor letting congregations and presbyteries continue to make their own decisions about whom to ordain. One resolution asks that the three-year study period now ending be extended and no action be taken either way.
Delegates will also face the challenge of dealing with a proposed budget for 1997 of $113.8 million at a time when giving by congregations to the national church is down and projections point to a continued decline.
During the past year, the church was forced to cut $1.2 million from the budgets of its three ministry divisions.
Unrestricted giving by congregations and presbyteries to the national church has been declining at about 5 percent per year for more than a decade and currently represents less than 20 percent of the national church’s mission budget.
Delegates will also elect a new moderator, a largely ceremonial post, to replace journalist Marj Carpenter of Big Spring, Texas, whose one-year term ends at the Assembly.
More importantly, commissioners will also elect a new stated clerk, the top ecclesiastical official in the church. The incumbent clerk, the Rev. James E. Andrews, who has held the office since 1984, has announced his retirement.
Other issues on the agenda include:
_ Voting on a set of amendments to the Book of Order designed to facilitate the denomination’s participation in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), the effort by nine mainline Protestant denominations to forge closer ties without organic merger. At issue in the debate is the creation of the office of”representative bishop”_ an office alien to Presbyterian tradition _ designed to enable Presbyterian cooperation with denominations that do have bishops.
_ Voting on amendments to the Book of Order that would allow”commissioned lay pastors”_ those with theological training but without a seminary degree _ to perform baptisms and marriages.
_ Approval of a policy statement,”Hope for the Future: Toward Just and Sustainable Human Development.”Four years in the making, the 100-page statement sets out church views on international economic policies and such problems as overpopulation, overconsumption, world poverty, pollution and the inequitable distribution of the world’s resources.
MJP END ANDERSON
