After a heated two-hour debate, the Mission Presbytery voted June 9 to direct the St. Andrews Church in Austin, Tex., to remove self-professed atheist Robert Jensen from its active member rolls and to move him to their baptized member rolls. In a surprise move, near the end of the two-day meeting, the presbytery also voted to issue a 45-day stay of implementation.
To be moved to the rolls of baptized members would make Mr. Jensen, who is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, equivalent to a child who has been baptized but has not made a profession of faith.
Those urging the stay said that doing so would allow time for anyone considering filing a complaint against the presbytery to think through that possibility, and it would allow some time for the congregation and others dismayed by the decision to come to terms with it. “Those that were, at the moment, hot and bothered by this, wishing their position had prevailed, could have time to file a complaint,” Stated Clerk Terry Nelson explained. Also, the promoters of the stay were saying, “Let’s be pastoral in this and slow down the implementation … [so the presbytery can show] diligence and care for all involved.”
The actual stay calls for a 45-day minimum or “until all appeals to the Synod of the Sun’s Permanent Judicial Commission and/or General Assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission have been addressed.” Normally such stays are extended by a member of the Synod’s PJC after receiving a request from a complainant wishing time to file an appeal. This stay was issued by vote of the presbytery, which was done after many commissioners had left the meeting. It utilized a process little used and little known in the church.
Larry Coulter, chair of the COM’s listening committee, told the Outlook, “One of the goals of the committee was to keep this out of the judicial process.” It looks like that is exactly where it is headed.
The original action of the presbytery was to approve by a vote of 156-114 the recommendations of the Committee on Ministry: 1) to declare the reception of Robert Jensen onto the church’s active rolls ‘out of order’ and thus void; 2) to add Mr. Jensen to the rolls of baptized members (Mr. Jensen was baptized as a child in a Fargo, N.D. church); 3) to direct the Session of St. Andrews Church to be instructed by the Committee on Ministry on a process for receiving new members, and 4) if Mr. Jensen desires, for the Session to re-examine him “about his personal profession of faith and ‘trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.'”
