A paper on interpreting the fidelity and chastity language, written by lawyers Peter Oddleifson and Doug Nave and passed out during workshop sessions at the Covenant Network’s recent national meeting in Minneapolis, said that after “fidelity and chastity” was put in the Constitution, “conservatives began telling ‘the great lie,’ that it bars all gays and lesbians involved in relationships from being ordained.
Instead, the paper argues, sessions and presbyteries need to focus on the questions raised by such relationships, “while fulfilling their historic responsibility to decide those questions in individual cases.” It argues that the “fidelity and chastity” language “gives us flexibility to be an inclusive church if we are willing to do the hard work” of interpreting what the language in the Constitution really means.
That’s obviously a conclusion that would be quickly disputed by those who say the church’s position could not be clearer, that the PC(USA) has spoken forcefully and repeatedly on this issue, and that the Constitution reflects what they say the majority of the church believes: that the Bible does not allow the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians.
But the Covenant Network legal strategists see room for maneuvering where others may not.
In the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission rulings to date, the “losses” from the Covenant Network’s point of view all come from cases involving statements of noncompliance, not where a session or presbytery has ordained or installed someone and been ruled in error, Nave said. That’s a sign of encouragement, he said, to sessions and presbyteries that are making what he called a “good faith effort” to understand and interpret the constitutional language.
“My personal view is churches should stop adopting statements (of defiance) and start ordaining and installing,” Nave said. “Those statements attract lawsuits. You can ordain and install now and really get somewhere.”
And Oddleifson said that the ruling of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission in a case in which he was involved — a ruling in July 2000 regarding the session of Christ church, Burlington, Vt., a church whose session had passed a statement of dissent in 1997 saying it could not comply with the fidelity and chastity requirement — has what he termed “a silver lining.” The GA PJC ruled that “It is not within the power of any governing body or judicial commission to declare a properly adopted provision of the Constitution to be invalid.” The Christ church session, facing the prospect that the General Assembly might be poised to find the session’s compliance inadequate, last summer set aside its statement of noncompliance.
But the GA PJC also pointed out in that case that it’s not unusual for a document such as the Constitution, parts of which were written at different times in history, “to exhibit tensions and ambiguities in its provisions. Nevertheless, it is the task of governing bodies and judicial commissions to resolve them in such a way as to give effect to all provisions,” not to declare any part to be simply invalid.
Taken as a whole, Oddleifson said, the PC(USA)’s Constitution is “very inclusive and very affirming.”
Some Presbyterians have publicly said they’ll defy the “fidelity and chastity” clause, and “My heart goes out to them, I don’t want to comply with it either,” Oddleifson said. But outright defiance may produce the same result from the church courts that he got in the Christ church case, he said — suggesting that a better approach might be to “take the offensive” and say “we are the ones who are complying” with the entirety of the Constitution.
