TULSA — Some say that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has historically permitted freedom of conscience within certain bounds.
But the presbyteries never intended the denomination’s ordination standards regarding sexual behavior to be anything but required and compulsory, contends Robert Gagnon, a New Testament professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
Those standards — which limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they are single — should mean the PC(USA) won’t ordain sexually active gays and lesbians, and will not countenance what Gagnon calls “serial unrepentant sexual immorality.”
Gagnon (pictured at left) spoke July 20 to the New Wineskins convocation in Oklahoma — and his remarks drew a sustained standing ovation.
Gagnon said the “fidelity and chastity” standard was always intended to be a mandate — something required — and he says the General Assembly’s recent action to approve the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the PC(USA) unquestionably undercuts that. Now, a candidate for ordination could declare a conscientious objection or “scruple” to the “fidelity and chastity” standard — and could be ordained if the presbytery or session involved determined that the departure from the standard did not involve an essential matter of Reformed faith or practice.
Gagnon told the New Wineskins session that everyone understood the “fidelity and chastity” language to be mandatory — even the liberals working so hard to get it taken out of the PC(USA) constitution — and to say otherwise involves a sudden “massive memory loss.”
Why have the “fidelity and chastity” opponents fought so vigorously, “if it was simply non-essential from the beginning?” Gagnon asked them. “No one understood it that way,” he said, and to violate the accepted understanding now “is to violate trust.”
Gagnon said he expects the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GA PJC) will be asked to rule whether the PC(USA)’s ordination standards involving sexuality are essential — and he says while it’s possible the church’s highest court will find that the current standards are essential and must be followed, he doesn’t consider that likely.
He said the assembly’s action regarding the task force report will “destroy our connectionism,” create more conflict in presbyteries and on sessions, and “ultimately it will torment people’s souls,” if their presbyteries or sessions ordain sexually active gays and lesbians in conflict with what they believe the Bible teaches.
So what should evangelical Presbyterians do?
“Whatever we do must be done together,” Gagnon said to clapping and shouts of “Amen!”
Evangelical Presbyterians must stick together in strategy, he said, or “otherwise we shall all surely fall.”
And Gagnon argued, “We owe it to wait on the GA PJC. I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely for the GA PJC to rule correctly here … but it is still possible.”
When will that be, a woman shouted out — in essence asking, `How long will they have to wait?’
“I suspect it will be within a year, two years at most,” he answered — a response that may not please some of the New Wineskins crowd, since some of them contend that the time to act, and perhaps leave the denomination, already has come.
