I don’t know how “freedom of conscience” played out in other
presbyteries, but in National Capital Presbytery for many often awkward and
never enlightening months it mean “playing political football” with
individual’s ordinations. Some members of the body, apparently feeling called
to force a crisis, questioned every candidate for ordination or installation in
the presbytery to endure pointed questioning about their personal compliance
with G.6-0106b.
Every candidate became a pawn in a proxy fight between the
opposing sides of the larger ordination question. Having endured my own
inhospitable inquiry years earlier in Pittsburgh Presbytery, I vowed early on
never to use someone else’s ordination or installation for my own purposes so I
sat out the ugly proxy battle.
The only good thing to emerge from the ugliness of those
days was a deeper, richer and entirely more positive process that NCP’s
committee on ministry now uses to engage candidates in the presbytery. While we
certainly don’t pretend to reach the depth of discernment that the PUP task
force members did in their years of meetings, I believe we are honoring their
recommendations for deeper discernment of gift and call in the process of
determining whether or not individuals who come before the body should, in
fact, become members of the presbytery. (Not that “full disclosure” matters
much on a blog, but I’ll note that I have served for the past three years as a
member of one of the COM exam teams, and it is far and away the richest service
I’ve tendered to any presbytery.)
As we lived with less than grace into the post-PUP era, More
Light Presbyterians remained unalterably committed to removing “b” from the
Book of Order. Again the session at Clarendon sent an overture to presbytery,
again NCP endorsed it, and again it joined a significant handful of other
overtures to the 218th General Assembly that gathered in 2008 in San
Jose, Calif.
That summer was certainly a watershed moment in American
political life as the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama for president. GA
made a slightly less historic pick, electing the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow as
moderator. Moderatorial elections often signal the mood of an entire assembly,
and Bruce’s election was a decent predictor as the assembly endorsed the effort
to delete “b.”
The overture approved by National Capital was answered by
one from Boston Presbytery that deleted “b” and replaced it with language that
called on those in ordained office to “live lives in obedience to Jesus
Christ.”
However, though the vote was closer than previous ones, this
effort to delete “b” also failed to pass in more than half of the presbyteries.
Though more than half of the presbyteries voted against the change, those that
voted for it represented more than half of the membership of the denomination,
and that demographic fact underscored the rapidly shifting cultural terrain
that is the broader context for the changes the church was living slowly through.
By the time the 219th assembly met in
Minneapolis, public opinion on GLBT rights had shifted dramatically. For
example, in polls taken in 2004, more than 60 percent of respondents opposed
same-sex marriage. By 2010 opposition was less than 50 percent.
Once again, in 2009, the session at Clarendon endorsed a
measure to delete “b” and National Capital passed it to GA. Months prior to the
presbytery meeting, the local MLP board, of which I was co-moderator at that
point, convened a drafting team that met several times to work on language for
an overture and for its rationale. Though the assembly in Minneapolis
ultimately chose one of the half dozen or so alternatives aiming at the same
end, I am still quite proud of the language we used to describe why we believe
God is calling forth something new.
You can find our lengthy theological statement buried in the
minutes
of the 219th General Assembly (pages 472-475). It stands up
well, and if you want to understand fully why I’ve worked so long on these
issues, well it’s all in those words.
I attended the 2010 assembly as an overture advocate on both
the ordination overture and a pair of overtures related to same-sex marriage.
That assembly was the first that had a separate committee to address marriage
and civil union issues, and it was a great privilege to work with fellow
advocates from another half-dozen presbyteries on our presentation.
While sitting in the committee room in Minneapolis I heard
an opponent of the measures I was advocating for complain that “GA has become
one big gay party.” I thought, “how sad that he’s missing out on the joy.” I
was struck while waiting to testify, perhaps the same day, in the church orders
committee by how tired and dispirited the opponents of change seemed to be. All
of the energy was clearly on the side of change, and the committees endorsed
overtures to delete and replace “b” and to open space for Presbyterian clergy
to perform same-gender weddings.
The assembly as a whole was not ready for that move, and
Roberts Ruled it into submission. However, they did endorse the change in
ordination standards, and thus launched another round of voting by the
presbyteries.
I recall praying, watching and waiting as presbyteries
voted, and feeling the ground shift as presbyteries in Alabama voted for the
change. They were, indeed, harbingers, and late in the spring of 2011, the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) formally endorsed the change that allows all
members of the denomination to serve freely as ordained officers if they are so
called and qualified.
We organized a worship service of celebration and
remembrance at Western Presbyterian Church that summer, and I can vividly
recall long-time advocates of justice and change standing up in the sanctuary
to speak the names of those now in the great cloud of witnesses who did not
live long enough to see the change, but whose lives were lived faithfully
working for it. Somewhere, over the rainbow, they celebrate in the church
triumphant.
