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Holy Week resources and reflections

Three marriage/civil union committee members issue minority report

Three members of the General Assembly Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Unions and Christian Marriage have written a minority report making it clear their view that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should not support committed same-gender partnerships.

The PC(USA)’s standards for ordination require monogamy within marriage between a man and a woman or chastity outside marriage, the minority report states.

And relationships, “whether same or opposite gendered, that although committed and caring, which are outside of God’s design of sexual expression, cannot be encouraged or blessed,” it states.

The minority report states that the denomination has debated matters of human sexuality for three decades –and a majority of the 173 presbyteries has repeatedly declined to change the current ordination standard. “If this standard is considered serious enough to bar ordination, then the church in good conscience cannot encourage behavior or relationships that violate this standard,” the authors write.

At its last meeting in January, the special committee voted 8-3 to approve its final report, including recommendations that encourage the development of resources to help presbyteries and congregations know what they are and are not allowed to do in the complicated areas of civil unions and gay marriage, and in ministering to gays and lesbians and their families.

The committee did not recommend any change in the definition of Christian marriage currently in the PC(USA) constitution. That definition – that Christian marriage is between a man and a woman – was off-limits to the committee, according to its mandate from the 2008 General Assembly.

The three members of the committee who voted against that final report — Tracie Mayes Stewart, a pastor from South Carolina; Bill Teng, a pastor from northern Virginia; and Lisa Cooper Van Riper, an elder from South Carolina — now have written a 30-page minority report for the 2010 General Assembly to consider as a substitute for what the committee itself approved.

“ We are called to offer the Gospel’s grace to a hurting world full of people who desperately need to know God loves them and they can be freed of the things of this world that so easily enslave us,” the minority report states.

“Love is never about license and, for too many years, the PC(USA) has been silent as the carnage of sexual hedonism engulfs our culture. Let us boldly proclaim that God has a place for sex: It is within marriage between a man and woman and that commitment is for life. Let us work to support, encourage, and nurture those who are not married and help them know that God’s plan for them is just as important as God’s plan for married people. Let us honor celibacy and those who practice it as engaging in a profitable spiritual discipline which may be life-long or for a season of life.”

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