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Holy Week resources and reflections

Jensen charges Van Kuiken with blasphemy and heresy

Stephen Van Kuiken, the Ohio pastor who was rebuked in April by the Permanent Judicial Commission of Cincinnati Presbytery for performing same-sex unions and who has said, as a matter of conscience, that he will not stop, has been charged with blasphemy and heresy.


Paul Rolf Jensen, the lawyer who’s filed more than 20 complaints in the church courts, filed a new complaint against Van Kuiken on May 30, accusing him of blasphemy and heresy and of renouncing the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for refusing to comply with the denomination’s constitution.

Jensen’s complaint, filed as a disciplinary case in Cincinnati Presbytery, accuses Van Kuiken, the pastor of Mount Auburn church, of blasphemy, heresy and acting in willful violation of his ordination vows.
In its April 21 ruling, the Cincinnati Permanent Judicial Commission told Van Kuiken that the PC(USA) Constitution “does not allow same-sex ceremonies to be called marriages,” and directed him only to perform marriage ceremonies involving a man and a woman. “If you perform services of holy union, you are directed to take special care to avoid any confusion of such services with Christian marriage,” the judicial commission decision stated.

At the time, Van Kuiken indicated that he would not change his mind, and wrote that “I will continue to officiate and participate in services of Christian marriage for same-sex couples.” Indeed, he later sent an e-mail to Presbyweb stating that he’d performed a “service of Christian marriage” for two women on May 17.
Jensen’s complaint accuses Van Kuiken of acting in “willful and deliberate violation” of the Cincinnati judicial commission order.

And it states that on April 6, Van Kuiken preached a sermon calling Jesus “deviant” and “promiscuous,” while quoting from the writings of Robert Funk, a founder of the Jesus Seminar, whom Jensen described in the complaint as “a notorious heretic.”

In that sermon, posted on the Mount. Auburn Web site, Van Kuiken states that Jesus challenged and broke the restrictions of his itme, and quotes Funk as stating: “It is clear from the gospel records that Jesus was a Galilean deviant and was socially promiscuous. His deviation and promiscuity were a part of the kingdom of God, which he claimed his Father had authorized him to announce . . . As a consequence, he ignored, or transgressed, or violated purity regulations and taboos.”

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