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Presbyterian Panel Votes to Bar Ministers |
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Written by Don Lattin (San Francisco Chronicle Religion Writer)
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The committee's recommendation, which came on a 25-to-22 vote, now goes before the entire General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has gathered 558 voting delegates in Long Beach to set national policy for the 2.5 million-member denomination.
Presbyterian debate over same-sex blessings intensified last month when the denomination's highest court ruled that pastors and churches can perform the controversial ceremonies -- as long as they are not patterned after traditional marriage vows.
Yesterday's committee action approved a proposal by the Presbytery of San Joaquin, a regional church body in California's Central Valley. It seeks to amend the national church constitution and flatly prohibit "holy union'' ceremonies in all of the denomination's 11,300 local churches.
The proposal, called an "overture'' in Presbyterian parlance, prompted hours of sometimes intimate testimony by witnesses and those sitting on the 47-member committee designed to deal with same-sex blessings.
Committee membership at these annual church conventions is chosen randomly by computer. That led delegate Daniel Stoepker of Detroit, a gay man partly disabled by AIDS and cancer, to wonder if it was just a coincidence that he found himself on a committee hearing testimony on homosexuality and disabilities.
'GOD MADE ME GAY'
"God made me a gay man because he loved me," said Stoepker, who credited his survival to the unconditional love shown by members of his church. "Jesus died for my sins, too."
Equally personal testimony was given by the Rev. Charles Castles, pastor of Woodlake Presbyterian Church, the conservative congregation southeast of Fresno that sponsored the San Joaquin overture to outlaw same-sex blessings.
Castles told a packed convention ballroom of the "promiscuous life" he once lived and of his wife's involvement in a lesbian relationship. Then, nearly 30 years ago, he said, they became born-again Christians, and he became a Presbyterian pastor.
Much of yesterday's debate centered around his overture. The denomination, it said, already teaches that members should "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or in chastity in singleness." His proposal seeks to forbid all church officers or property from being used for "any ceremony or event that proposes blessings or gives approval" for any other kind of sexual relationship.
MISSIONARY WORK AT RISK
Castles was one of several speakers who said church sanctioning of homosexual unions will set back the work of Presbyterian missionaries abroad and make it harder for the denomination to attract Koreans, Latinos, African Americans and other minorities to its ethnic churches in the United States.
"If we approve same-sex unions, we harm our relations with them," he said.
Speaking on behalf of same-sex unions, the Rev. Tricia Dykers Koenig, pastor of Noble Road Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, urged the committee to adopt an overture that would give local ministers the option to bless gay relationships.
"Freedom of conscience is a valuable part of our tradition,'' she said. "We should trust our pastors, not control them.''
But the committee rejected Koenig's overture on a vote of 26 to 20.
The entire Presbyterian convention is scheduled to vote Friday afternoon on the committee's recommendation. If it passes, the proposal to amend the church constitution then must be approved by a majority of the 173 presbyteries across the country.
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SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle (06/28/2000)
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