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Presbytery rejects church’s call of openly lesbian minister

The denominational battle over ordination standards came to Rockville church, Rockville, Md., when the church's Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC) decided to call Alice Anderson as pastor.

On Wednesday, Jan. 29, National Capital Presbytery's Committee on Ministry (COM) said it could not confirm Anderson's call because of a "significant" minority opposition within the 241-member congregation to calling the openly lesbian minister.

Voices

Invading Iraq: Is It Justified?

Whether the United States will actually go to war against Iraq is still unclear at the present time. What is clear is that preparations for the war are proceeding apace. The preparations have been both ideological and military. On the ideological front, the Bush administration has been readying the American public for a "pre-emptive" attack on Iraq ever since Sept. 12, 2001 – a media blitz that continues right down to the present day.

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Louis Zbinden, pastor of First Church, San Antonio, announces retirement effective June 1

SAN ANTONIO — Louis H. Zbinden Jr., 66, senior minister of 3,066-member First church, San Antonio, since 1971 and a leading figure among conservative evangelical Presbyterians, has announced to his congregation that he will retire effective June 1, 2003. His last Sunday in the pulpit will be May 25.

Zbinden told the session of the church about his retirement at its monthly meeting Monday night, Jan. 27. The church mailed a letter to the congregation that same day.

Editorials

The Time Between the Times III

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is entering a critical period in its history: life-and-death decisions must be made. The future shape and form of our denomination, its very existence, is in the balance. The PC(USA) will not cease to exist altogether. We know that because there is enough strength for some remnant to last indefinitely, as witnessed by smaller Presbyterian bodies that continue to endure with limited numbers.

Voices

Worsh-o-tainment: A Needed Neologism?

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Rowan Williams, is a highly intelligent man. In his most recent book , Lost Icons he discusses the function of "play" in Western society. "Games," he writes, "are unproductive." By this he means that the purpose of a game is not to manufacture a product. Its goal is not "competition for limited goods."

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Moderator Abu-Akel says he will not call 214th GA into special session

LOUISVILLE — Saying he wants the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to focus on mission and ministry, Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the denomination's 214th General Assembly, announced Monday morning that he will not call the Assembly back into session.

He told a news conference that 13 commissioners who signed a petition asking the Assembly to reconvene — six ministers and seven elders — indicated they wanted their names removed.

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Four Former Moderators’ Open Letter to the Church

An Open Letter to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

A recent statement declaring intent to take the Moderator of the General Assembly to civil court for impeding progress toward a called meeting of the commissioners to the 214th (last year's) General Assembly is deplorable. It constitutes not merely a threat but a defamation of character. Fahed Abu-Akel was not only elected by the church but shaped by life history to be a voice of reason, tolerance and forbearance. That any Moderator would be so treated is unthinkable.

Book Reviews

When Religion Becomes Evil

By Charles Kimball
HarperSanFrancisco. 2002. 256 pp. Pb. $21.95. ISBN 0-06-050653-9

— Review by Gerald A. Butler, Eureka, Ill.

Religion can nurture and lead people closer to God. It can also destroy body and soul. Charles Kimball deals with that paradox in this book, which is timely, informative and easy to read.

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Alex Metherell’s letter to Fahed Abu-Akel

Delivered by hand.

The Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel, Moderator
214th General Assembly
Presbyterian Church (USA)
100 Witherspoon Street, Room 4631
Louisville, KY 40202-1396
Dear Mr. Moderator:

Because I am disheartened at the disappointing responses from you and from the Stated Clerk to my delivery to you in Louisville on January 14th of the written requests of more than the minimum number of commissioners for you to reconvene the 214th General Assembly into special session, I am taking the liberty of writing you one last time to outline my position, and in the hope of avoiding litigation in the secular courts.

Book Reviews

Searching for Home: Spirituality for Restless Souls

By M. Craig Barnes
Brazos Books. 2003. 191 pp. $17.99

— Review by John A. Dalles, Longwood, Fla.

 In a society in which almost everyone is from somewhere else, and where they are likely to move on again before very long, how does one combat or respond to a profound longing for home? This is the problem M. Craig Barnes addresses in this timely book.

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214th Assembly will not be recalled until names on petition are verified

LOUISVILLE - Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which met last summer in Columbus, Ohio, still has not issued a call for that Assembly to come back into session.

Alex Metherell, a physician and elder from California, on Jan. 14 presented Abu-Akel with 57 signatures from commissioners asking that the Assembly reconvene to address issues of defiance of the denomination's constitution, apparently enough signatures under the rules to make that happen.

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Moderator asks petition signers to reconsider

LOUISVILLE — In a letter 214th General Assembly Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel is sending to the 57 commissioners who signed a petition asking that the Assembly be called into special session, the moderator asks that they reconsider their decision.

The five-paragraph letter composed on Jan. 14 ends as follows:

"I implore you in the name of Christ and for the good of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to reconsider your decision."

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‘We Believe’ curriculum ready for sale

LOUISVILLE — The first quarter’s lessons of the PC(USA)’s latest curriculum offering, "We Believe," are ready for sale, publisher Sandra Moak Sorem said Wednesday, Jan. 15.

The material, designed for use in fall 2003, was prepared at an estimated cost of $270,000, but it was the quickness in which it was prepared that elicited comments during the Congregational Ministries Publishing Committee meeting at the Presbyterian Center.

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Petition to recall 214th Assembly raises many logistical questions

LOUISVILLE – When Alex Metherell dropped his paper bombshell on Jan. 14 – presenting the signatures needed to call the 2002 General Assembly back into session – that raised a pile of logistical questions.

When would the Assembly meet? The 2003 General Assembly is scheduled to convene in Denver on May 24. If commissioners from the 2002 Assembly must be given a 120-day advance notice, as the Office of the General Assembly contends, that puts the starting date for their recalled Assembly at mid-to-late May.

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Council to struggle with more than $4 million in budget deficits over next two years

LOUISVILLE – The budget numbers rolled through the room, like first rumblings of not-so-distant thunder signaling a deluge on the way.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a projected deficit of $1.53 million in the 2003 budget – meaning more changes need to be made to balance the budget for this year, despite having already cut 66 jobs from the denomination's national staff last spring. No additional layoffs are anticipated to balance the budget for 2003.

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Petition calling for special session of 214th GA presented to Moderator Abu-Akel

LOUISVILLE – For the first time ever, a General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is being called back into session.

Alex Metherell, a silver-haired elder and physician from Laguna Beach, Calif., who unswervingly led a drive to call the 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) back into session to deal with constitutional defiance, now says he has enough signatures to do so, and he formally presented a list of 57 names on Tuesday to Fahed Abu-Akel, the moderator of the 214th Assembly.

Editorials

The Time Between the Times II

Last week in this space we began the New Year with a reflection on the biblical and theological concept of the time between the times, that is, between the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and his second coming, as promised in Scripture. The question raised was whether there will be a Presbyterian Church as we know it 30, 40, 50 years from now, and in connection with that question, what God's will for this church in terms of its life and mission might be.

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After enthusiastic endorsement by Assembly, Mission Initiative’s success not ‘a sure thing’

For commissioners to the 214th General Assembly, supporting the Mission Initiative, the PC (USA)'s plan to raise $40 million over the next five years for evangelism in other countries and for domestic new church development, was sort of like offering cocoa to children with fingers like icicles on a cold night. They voted 97 percent in favor of it and pulled dollars from their own pockets to jump-start the campaign. In a denomination that badly needs something to cheer for, who could say no?

Movie Reviews

The Pianist

'The Pianist' is the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Polish pianist who was just entering his prime in the ill-fated year of 1939. The German blitzkrieg began there, in September, and Poland fell in a fortnight. Then it was the occupation, with the gradual encroachment of civil rights. Jews had to wear armbands with the star of David. Jews couldn't be seen in public parks or on public benches. Jews couldn't walk on the sidewalk. Jews had to have a work permit. Jews had to relocate, in a narrow area known as the Warsaw ghetto. And the once-proud and prosperous Szpilman family, mother and father and sisters and brothers, were crammed like beggars into a dirty hovel where even the rats cannot survive because there is no food.

Movie Reviews

‘Catch Me if you Can’

In 1963, Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo De Caprio) was a normal 17-year-old high school kid. Then his world fell apart. His father, owner of a small printing business, and recent honoree of the local Rotary club, runs afoul of the IRS. Suddenly banks will no longer lend to him. The family has to sell their nice house and their late-model car, and downgrade to a lowly apartment and a rattle trap used auto.

Editorials

The Time Between the Times

The church has just celebrated Advent and Christmas and now looks toward Easter and Pentecost.

In terms of the triune God's grand plan of salvation, we who belong to Christ are living in the time between the times, between the already and the not yet. We know, by faith, that Christ stands at the beginning and ending of all that is, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the meantime God's glorious plans for the creation are unfolding inexorably in human history.

More specifically, God's raising of Jesus from the dead is the center of history, and the beginning of the end of history. As we speak of the time between the times, more properly we are speaking of the time between God's self-revelation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the inauguration of the kingdom of God (coupled with the extension of the Incarnation, the birth of the church at Pentecost) and Christ's second coming, which will bring to conclusion God's plans for the whole creation.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), like all parts of the universal church of Jesus Christ on Earth, lives in this time between the times, as historically understood. And yet there are an infinite number of far more limited times between the times in the life of the Christian Church down through the ages.

The first decade of the 21st century is just such a time for the Presbyterian Church, a critical time in which life-and-death decisions will need to be made.

This more limited understanding of the time between the times, in the first decade of the 21st century, has at least two facets:

(1) the time between old age and death for the denomination if current trends continue; and

(2) the time between the situation of theological/confessional uncertainty in which we find ourselves today, and a clear affirmation — by most of the Presbyterian Church's ordained leadership — of the foundational convictions of the historic Christian movement.

The latter includes reaffirmation by the ordained leadership of the church of biblically and theologically rooted views of human sexuality, which are the norms according to which the community lives its life together in the world. Widely divergent views on this topic have been the occasion of enormous internal turmoil for several years.

To address the first issue: the time between now and the prospective death of the Presbyterian Church, the question must be raised as to whether this be inevitable, 30, 40, 50 years from now, as suggested by some?

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