But the court also determined that Stephen Van Kuiken was wrong to claim that he had the right to follow his conscience in performing same-sex “marriage” ceremonies.
The PC(USA) Constitution affirms freedom of conscience, but also states there are bounds to that freedom, the judicial commission ruled. And it’s up to the governing body — in this case, Cincinnati Presbytery — to determine whether a person has “departed from the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity,” or has overstepped those bounds.
“The term ‘essentials of the Reformed faith and polity’ is vaguely defined,” the judicial commission ruled, in a decision that was dated April 30 but released publicly on Monday, May 3. “Some in the church would say that the prohibition of same-sex marriages is an essential of the Reformed faith, while others would strongly disagree. Thus it is left to the governing body (in this case the presbytery) to decide whether an officer of the church holds views which are outside the parameters as the particular governing body sees them.”
The judicial commission’s vote on both those points — whether a minister could be disciplined for performing same-sex “marriages” and whether Van Kuiken had the right to follow his conscience on this matter — was the same, 6-4, although the four dissenters were different in each case.
The ruling was issued in the well-publicized case of Van Kuiken, a Cincinnati minister and the married father of two, who has taken an intentionally public stand that the PC(USA) is wrong to prohibit same-sex unions and that he will, as a matter of conscience and a believer in the teachings of Jesus Christ about love for all people, continue to perform them.
That stand last summer cost Van Kuiken his ordination, although it has since been restored, and his job as pastor of Mount Auburn church, a congregation that has declared itself to be welcoming to gays and lesbian.
In its ruling, the judicial commission removed the presbytery’s formal rebuke of Van Kuiken. But it disagreed with his argument that the presbytery was being selective or discriminatory in taking action against him.
“This argument is tantamount to an argument that the prosecution of speeders is selective and discriminatory, simply because not all who speed are apprehended and prosecuted for the offense,” the commission ruled, unanimous at least on this point.
In a brief interview, Van Kuiken said he considers the ruling to be “very positive. I think it’s good news for the Presbyterian Church, I think it helps put the church on the right track.”
But after the decision was made public, Van Kuiken issued a press release saying he was leaving the PC(USA) to minister to a non-denominational congregation he has been leading since last summer.
“It is with great sadness that I have decided to resign as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” said Van Kuiken in the release. “Cincinnati Presbytery has left me little choice.”
He added, “When I was unfairly removed from office and terminated from my position of pastor at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church, a group formed a new congregation called The Gathering. This group includes former members of the Mount Auburn Church that, with love and support, have stood by my family and me. … The Presbytery of Cincinnati has forced me to choose between being a Presbyterian minister and serving The Gathering. I choose to stand by The Gathering, as they have stood by me.”
HOW IT GOT TO THIS POINT
Van Kuiken’s case, with all its twists and turns, has been closely watched within the PC(USA), and has brought tumultuousness to the Mount Auburn congregation.
On April 21, 2003, Cincinnati Presbytery’s Permanent Judicial Commission determined that Van Kuiken was guilty of performing same-sex “marriage” ceremonies in violation of the PC(USA) Constitution. Van Kuiken was rebuked and ordered “to perform marriage ceremonies only for 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 Cincinnati judicial commission ruling stated.
But four days later Van Kuiken appealed his conviction to the synod judicial commission. And he later notified the presbytery that on May 17, he had performed another same-sex marriage ceremony.
On June 16, 2003, Cincinnati Presbytery revoked Van Kuiken’s ordination, determining that in continuing to perform same-sex ceremonies after having been rebuked and told not to, he had renounced the presbytery’s jurisdiction.
On July 3, Van Kuiken filed a remedial complaint, alleging the presbytery had acted improperly.
And on Feb. 6, 2004, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Covenant restored Van Kuiken to the ministry, ruling that Cincinnati Presbytery had made procedural mistakes in the way it handled the case — in part, by removing him from the ministry before his appeal had been heard.
The judicial commission ruling released Monday was based on Van Kuiken’s appeal in April 2003 of the Cincinnati Presbytery judicial commission ruling.
Last June, during an intense, three-hour meeting, Cincinnati Presbytery voted 119 to 45 to declare that Van Kuiken had renounced the jurisdiction of the PC(USA). Some said during the meeting that the presbytery had no choice — Van Kuiken had continued to perform same-sex ceremonies even after being rebuked by the presbytery for doing so, and he told the presbytery that night that he would continue to follow “the highest jurisdiction,” Christ’s teachings to love all people, even if it meant violating the PC(USA) Constitution.
Bruce Archibald, who was of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, told people not to feel guilty, because Van Kuiken had chosen to take “a path of defiance.”
But one after another, gays and lesbians went to the microphone and told of how much it had meant to them to have their unions blessed by the church — as one man put it, “the doors of the church were essentially closed to me as a gay man” before he met Van Kuiken at Mount Auburn.
After the presbytery’s vote last June 16, Mount Auburn ended its employment of Van Kuiken, giving him a severance package. So even after the synod reinstated Van Kuiken’s ordination in February, he did not return as Mount Auburn’s pastor.
Mount Auburn now has an interim pastor, Edwin Dykstra.
WHAT’S AHEAD
The latest ruling is not likely to bring any more peace to a denomination that some already see as heading toward possible schism over whether to ordain gays and lesbians.
Part of the debate likely will focus on how much freedom of conscience should be tolerated in a denomination with a connectional form of government — and who should make that determination.
Then there’s the question of what the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the PC(USA)’s highest court, really meant when it issued its ruling in 2000 regarding same-sex unions, in the Benton et. al. v. Presbytery of Hudson River case.
In the Benton case, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission ruled that the denomination’s ministers and sessions couldn’t use liturgies for Christian marriage to perform same-sex union ceremonies and that church property couldn’t be used to hold ceremonies for same-sex couples that were the same as marriage ceremonies. That ruling also upheld the definition of marriage in the denomination’s Constitution as being between a man and a woman.
But the judicial commission in the Synod of the Covenant has its own view of the Benton case.
It has determined, in this new ruling, that the Benton decision, “while stating that same-sex marriages are impermissible,” also “avoids an outright prohibition by using the words `should’ and `should not’ in guidance for sessions and ministers which the Preface to the Book of Order defines as `highly recommended.’ Likewise, the 1991 authoritative interpretation upon which the Benton decision is based uses the words `would not be proper,’ ” the synod judicial commission ruling states.
“Thus, both interpretations fail to define the performance of a same-sex marriage by a minister as an offense subject to a disciplinary trial,” the Synod of the Covenant judicial commission ruled. “To interpret the 1991 authoritative interpretation and Benton otherwise requires a new authoritative interpretation or constitutional amendment.”
And the ruling goes on to say that “at issue is the existing tension in the Book of Order between the spirit and letter of the law. The spirit of a wide gracious welcome of all people, encouraged by the Book of Order, is in tension with the specified limitations on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Presbyterians, preventing their full and complete participation in the life of the church. This tension reflects the church’s current place in history and its ongoing struggle with the issues of human sexuality. May we all pray . . . that these matters of controversy, in God’s own time, will `be finally decided by the collected wisdom and united voice of the whole Church,’ ” quoting there from the Book of Order.
That part of the ruling was supported by six of the 10 judicial commission members — Peggy J. Schmitz, William R. Newcomb, David A. Van Dyke, Mary M. Waterstone, William MacKay Taylor and John V. Folkers.
That interpretation didn’t sit well at all with the four dissenters — John William Becker, Ross B. Jackson, Ken Hook and Richard Shipley. In a dissenting opinion, they characterized the majority’s ruling on this point as “being an improper and unjustified attempt to rewrite the clear and unambiguous meaning” of the section of the Book of Order that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The result the majority reached, the dissenters claim, “can only be accomplished by a legislative amendment to the Book of Order.”
The synod judicial commission does not have the authority to reverse the 1991 authoritative interpretation on which the Benton ruling is based, the dissenters argue, and the underlying disagreement is “with the General Assembly’s interpretation of the will of God.”
The dissenters argued that the majority’s ruling ignored the “plain meaning” of the PC(USA) Constitution, “that Christian marriage is between a man and a woman.”
And the dissenters state that “it is not the role of an appellate court such as this PJC to `fill in the blanks’ in the Book of Order. One does not properly go to the Book of Order looking for what it does not say and then assume that silence is permission to do what one wants to do. If the church wishes for PJCs to decide cases with the understanding that same-sex marriages are a regularized part of Presbyterian marriage practice, that church should provide clear, positive Book of Order language that says so.”
But four others on the commission dissented from the part of the ruling that determined that Van Kuiken didn’t have the right to follow his own conscience in performing same-sex union ceremonies.
Those dissenters — Schmitz, Taylor, Van Dyke and Waterstone — pointed out that the session of Mount Auburn church, where Van Kuiken was pastor, had adopted a policy requiring equality and stating that Christian marriage services would be held in the church for both homosexual and heterosexual couples.
That policy, which Van Kuiken followed, was not determined by Cincinnati Presbytery to be a departure from the essentials of Reformed faith and polity, the dissenters said. After the presbytery judicial commission determined in April 2003 that Van Kuiken and Mount Auburn had incorrectly interpreted the Constitution regarding same-sex unions, Cincinnati Presbytery had the responsibility of determining whether the issue of same-sex marriages rises to the level of being an essential element of faith and polity, the dissenters contend.
That didn’t happen, and “this omission is especially significant in a situation which sets a literal reading of certain passages of the Bible against portions of the Book of Order regarding love and inclusion, and where there is a significant lack of unanimity on the provision among members of the church,” the dissenting opinion states.
