The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) has recommended the overture “Beyond Changing Families: Flourishing Relationships and Belonging” (GEN-09) for approval by General Assembly 227. It directs Presbyterian Life and Witness to fund and develop new studies and theological frameworks that align current Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) policies with previous General Assembly decisions on sexuality, gender and relationships.
The three sections of the recommendation – addressing human sexuality and gender; the nature, purpose, and gift of flourishing, life-giving relationships; and the Christian vocation of family – have several sub-recommendations that warrant enumeration to understand the full context of the overture.
1: Fund and develop a comprehensive theological framework document and study guide that addresses human sexuality and gender
1.a: The guide reflects and supports the PC(USA)’s commitment to full inclusion of all people
1.a.i: The guide would be used to help the PC(USA) to live into that commitment more fully.
(This commitment includes but is not limited to):
1.a.i.1: theological and biblical foundations
1.a.i.2: ethical considerations regarding power, discrimination, and misconduct
1.a.i.3: guidance for the use of inclusive and non-binary language
1.a.i.4: recommendations for action regarding previous policies or documents that need to be updated or rescinded
1.b: This work continues the work of GA 223 (2018) and its approval of “On Affirming and Celebrating the Full Dignity and Humanity of People of All Gender Identities.”
2: Fund and develop a comprehensive theological, biblical, and ethical framework document and study guide that addresses the nature, purpose, and gift of flourishing, life-giving relationships. (This guide includes but is not limited to):
2.a: God’s intentions for human relationships
2.b: relationships in marriage and family, the church, the workplace, and society in general
2.c: accountability, mutuality, consent, dignity, fulfillment, and care
2.d: the dynamics of power in human relationship
3: Fund and develop a policy and study guide on the Christian vocation of family that serves to:
3.a: update and broaden previous guidance related to the Christian vocation of marriage
3.b: include[s] multiple forms of family life and human calling into familial relationship
The overture’s rationale points to “Transforming Families,” the last major study and guidance issued by the General Assembly, which was approved by GA216 in 2004.
The rationale continues by saying subsequent General Assemblies have recognized the need for updates to this guide, as significant cultural shifts have occurred. ACSWP ultimately recognized that the scope of the work authorized by GA226 in 2024 could not be completed with a simple update to the Transforming Families document and has since called for the creation of the three documents as outlined in GEN-09.
Making the circle wider
Yet for some, the updates called for in GEN-09 can’t address harms already experienced in the church during their change of family situation.
Graduates of Columbia Theological Seminary, classmates Dan and Rose McCurdy married shortly after graduation in May 2012. Dan took a call to congregational ministry, and Rose would eventually be ordained to hospice service. Their daughter TB was born in 2016.
Dan received a call to serve a congregation in John Knox Presbytery in Southwest Wisconsin, and the family moved there in August of 2021. A few days after TB began kindergarten, Rose’s mother fell in Texas and nearly died; Rose left Wisconsin to care for her.
Rose and Dan had both been part of online gaming platforms throughout COVID, and Rose joined in again to pass the time and be in community as her mother convalesced. Through these interactions, she met Del, a woman living in Australia whose mornings aligned with Rose’s evening hours online.
As their friendship grew, Rose says she wrestled with feelings about her sexuality. She’d felt attracted to women before, but this time was different. By October, Rose asked Del if “there was a mutual experience happening?” Del affirmed there was.
A week after Thanksgiving in 2021, Rose told Dan of her feelings for Del, that she was a lesbian, that she loved Dan but could no longer be his lover, that she thought divorce was the best resolution, and that she wanted to keep caring for TB as a couple together. The couple decided it was best to remain under the same roof for the sake of their daughter, agreeing to a time of ethical non-monogamy.
Dan continued his congregational ministry, and Rose received a call to a local LGBTQIA+-welcoming Lutheran congregation in July of 2022. The congregation was aware of Rose’s family dynamic. However, when the Lutheran bishop reviewed the call, they denied the call and reported Rose to John Knox Presbytery in August of 2022 for sexual misconduct based on her and Dan’s non-monogamous relationship.
Outed as a lesbian to her presbytery without her consent, Rose was accused of “misconduct of a sexual nature,” and an investigative committee was formed in January of 2023. On Ash Wednesday of that year, Dan took Rose to the hospital for safety monitoring after a suicide attempt. It was the first of three suicide attempts she’s made since these charges were brought.
Rose pleaded her case to the presbytery, not “to have her ordination on the line” for the investigative committee to merely talk about the issues of her sexuality, her family, and her commitment to try to serve the church. The charges were dismissed by the end of April. Rose was then hired by the presbytery the next month as the Committee on Ministry coordinator, a role she held until she took a congregational call in January of 2024.
Rose and Dan’s divorce was finalized in December 2023.
Although her case was never formally brought to trial, the damage was done. Rose subsequently left her next two calls within a year, eloped with Del, relocated to Australia, and is currently not serving in a ministry capacity. Dan continues to serve in congregational ministry and has primary custody of their daughter in Wisconsin. TB spends her summers in Australia.
Rose hopes she can return to ministry, possibly as a spiritual director “for people who the church has damaged and destroyed, yet they have a desire to chase what is holy.”
Rose questions the ethical consistency applied to cases of sexual misconduct and who is punished more frequently.
“Adultery [by male clergy] is often ignored or pushed aside, but when a mom comes out later in life and tries to keep her family together for the sake of her child’s development, what vow is being tested?” she asks. “Her ordination vow? Her marriage vow? The vow she took to raise her child in the faith?”
Though not as connected as she once was to the PC(USA), Rose has many friends throughout the denomination and is aware of the study being urged by ACSWP that may shed light on situations like hers in the future.
“I’m sure a theological study might have given some foundation for what to bring to [my] trial and what not to bring,” she says, hopeful that GEN-09 will provide guidance to future presbytery staff and church leadership, so others don’t experience what she did.
“We believe God is capable of a great many personal and communal loves,” she says, citing examples of parents loving more than one child and other people as forms of expansive love. “Why not believe in our capacity to love greatly as well? Why not believe God has the ability to make the circle wider for us all?”
Responding to the needs and the times
Three comments have been added to the overture as of this writing with advice and counsel noting approval from the Advocacy Committee for Women and Gender Justice (ACWGJ), the Racial Equity Advocacy Committee (REAC), and the Advocacy Committee on LGBTQIA+ Equity (ACQ+E).
Of note is the advice and counsel from REAC, which encourages an implementation of the study that “addresses the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and economic justice.” It should also provide resources to equip congregations to engage these materials with courage and pastoral sensitivity, provide training that moves beyond awareness toward transformation in culture and practice, and center belonging not as invitation alone, but as shared power and mutual accountability within the body of Christ.
Jacob Douylliez, pastor at Eatonton Presbyterian Church in Georgia and a member of ACSWP, helped to shape the overture and agrees with the comments offered by the advocacy committees. He believes a theological basis for broadening the family is needed for contemporary ministry.
“When I read ‘Transforming Families,’ I see my own family structure reflected in its work,” he says of the previously approved framework. “But I can only see my family. The church has already adopted a more expansive understanding of what makes a family in practice. The work proposed in ‘Beyond Changing Families’ enriches that understanding with a theological footing so that others might find their own families reflected in policy.”
