Earlier this month, two members of the presbytery’s Permanent Judicial Commission decided not to bring charges against Stroud in response to a complaint filed by Virginia lawyer Paul Rolf Jensen, upholding the decision that a presbytery investigating committee reached earlier this year.
At the Nov. 21 meeting, the presbytery was asked to consider an overture, submitted by the sessions of five congregations, calling on the presbytery to “commit itself to upholding the entire Constitution” of the PC(USA) and saying it should “enforce the Constitution wherever noncompliance is an issue,” working both administratively and pastorally with those unwilling or unable to comply.
That overture was defeated, as was a substitute motion, presented by the pastor of Brown Memorial Park Avenue church ‹ a More Light congregation ‹ which called for the presbytery to enforce the Constitution in its entirety, and which referred to another section of the denomination’s Constitution, which states that it’s the responsibility of the governing body that a person serves to determine whether that person has departed from the essentials of Reformed polity and faith.
The presbytery did ask its stated clerk, Charles Forbes, to place into the minutes a statement from Terry Schoener, a spokesperson for the Baltimore Presbytery Council, regarding the overture submitted by the five sessions.
That statement says, in part, that “25 years of wrangling, legislating to excise the opposition, and now charges which call for judicial proceedings prompted by provocative public defiance have left our denomination weakened and polarized. While some see this as a defining struggle and constitutional crisis, most of the church does not consider the issue so central to our faith as to demand the enormous distraction of time, energy and resources averting our attention from more central issues and proclamation. The Council understands that, while many individuals sincerely believe they have a word from the Lord (and in fact they may have), the church as a whole has not received a clear word. And so the church waits and seeks, while the poles (who each believe they have that word) war with each other.”
The statement says the council “would like to meet with both those who are proclaiming defiance, and with those who are bringing charges. This would be to request, on behalf of the presbytery, that we live with this question without presuming we have the answer until it is a God-given answer recognized by the broad church. And we will report to the presbytery the responses to that request, in order that the broad center of the church may join the dialogue.”
