Posted on 05/12/2011 2:19:50 PM PDT by NYer
.- The Presbyterian Church USA has voted to remove clergy requirements of marital fidelity or single chastity, thus allowing the ordination of ministers and lay leaders who are openly homosexual or living in unmarried relationships.
“This is a lonely day for Presbyterians who believe what the Bible and the Church have consistently taught: that God’s will is that we be faithful in marriage or chaste in singleness. Now we belong to a denomination that is no longer sure it believes that teaching,” said Allan Wisdom, a director of Presbyterian Action at the ecumenical D.C.-based Institution on Religion & Democracy.
Wisdom thought that the change was a separation from the “historic Christian tradition and the vast majority of the global Church.” It means the denomination will not necessarily support its members who struggle to obey Scripture.
“It will not call them to repentance when they fall short of those standards, and it will not offer God’s forgiveness for what it no longer recognizes as sexual sins. In a society where the abuse of sexuality is devastating millions of lives, this abdication by the PCUSA is tragic.”
An amendment to the Presbyterian constitution was ratified on May 10 by a majority of the church’s 173 regional organizations known as presbyteries, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Since 1997 the church’s constitution required those seeking ordination to be living “in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” Now the constitution only requires church officials to examine “each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation and suitability for the responsibilities of office.”
Regional church bodies will still be able to decide whether or not to ordain open homosexuals. However, some presbyteries have already ordained homosexual clergy and lay leaders without approval.
The change could lead some churches to leave the denomination or seek to join presbyteries more aligned with their views.
Rev. Dan Chun, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu, told the Los Angeles Times his church has formally petitioned to move from the Pacific Presbytery, which favors homosexual ordination, to the San Diego Presbytery, which does not. The ordination of homosexuals was a major motive for the request.
He said he feared the vote would be “divisive for our denomination, which has, for the past 50-plus years, been losing membership.”
Michael Adee, a presbyter and executive director of the pro-homosexual group More Light Presbyterians, said the change was an “important moment in the Christian communion.”
“I rejoice that Presbyterians are focusing on what matters most: faith and character, not a person's marital status or sexual orientation,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Knox Presbyterian Church in Ladera Heights, California hosted the Pacific Presbytery meeting.
Linda Fleming, 63, an elder and deacon at the church, said she had changed her mind on the issue because she thought it was “inevitable.”
“I think it's like letting black people come to white churches, or letting women become ministers. It's inevitable.”
Rev. Mark Brewer, pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian and an opponent of homosexual ordination, said he did not think the vote would cause any immediate crisis.
“I think this is a tectonic plate slowly separating, more than a big earthquake,” he said. He thought Presbyterians would “Stay on the same ship” but “live on different decks.”
The Presbyterian Church USA becomes the fourth mainline Protestant church in the U.S. to approve of openly homosexual clergy, after the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches and the United Church of Christ.
If you count all that have ever existed, it's more like thirty. And that's just in the USA.
Count 'em.
11. Eleven. 9+2.
Even a tax lawyer wouldn't be able to follow that flow chart ...
As i have stated from day one. The Real Gay Agenda is to destroy the Church from within . They are getting very close to calling this a Victory.
Unfortunately for anyone trying to be a Christian in PCUSA, the denomination’s method of defending traditional morality (table or return for further study proposals contrary to it, rather than killing them outright and denouncing their advocates as heretics) was doomed to failure by virtue of the “gambler’s ruin” phenomenon. They actually had a surprisingly good run — the “buggery’s not so bad, let’s ordain poofters” proposition had been being brought up and tabled or returned for study for a couple of decades.
“I think it’s like letting black people come to white churches, or letting women become ministers. It’s inevitable.......LOL!!!!!
I would agree with you, with the only caveat being that the only sacred traditions are those commanded in scripture.
When Tradition sound doctrine accompanied by holy living is not present in a church, this is exactly what happens, (fixed)
The Catholic church has no shortage of traditions. Would you say there is also no problem of homosexuals in the pulpit?
Those churches have abandoned the teachings of Christ and the apostle Paul and have adopted the book of liberalism where what is forbidden is subject to popular opinion.
Great googly moogly! I think I popped a blood vessel trying to read that chart. Who came up with that crazy thing?
Nah, I’ll decline, as I’m generally not interested nor inclined to get into denominational type discussions. All I’ll say is that it suffers from the same type of degenerate leadership, and is a domino waiting to fall. I certainly hope it doesn’t happen, but I’m mentally prepared for it, as I’ll immediately sever my lifelong, forty-year ties with the church then and there.
Once you severe branch from the tree, you never know what will grow.
It was perpetrated by the Presbyterian History Society of Philadelphia PA.
Clearly they don't have enough to do.
Funny that Wiki (ahem) pedia has the same chart I found. I got it direct from the Presbys, though. It's an interesting website if you like church history. I wrote an article for the Alabama Historical Review on the history of Baptist congregations in SE Alabama, it actually was kinda fun sorting out all the various dissolving and recombining associations and groups. If you're obsessive/compulsive, maybe. :-D
<< unbelievable - anything standing in the way now of any of the above?? >>
Nothing.
Once you get rid of chastity, all bets are off.
Isn't it adorable?
Absolutely. LOL! It's simply fantastic.
Churches that celebrate sin, PING
Their reasoning on behalf of “teh gays” doesn’t explain why they would also support letting single male ministers bang a different woman every week with no hint of scandal.
I understand that. Neither is this the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). Both PCA and OPC broke off when the Gramscian Marxists infiltrated PCUSA. While PCA and OPC are separate denominations, they still fellowship and have stayed with scripture.
I have a different belief than most on this because I was raised Presbyterian. Presbyterians don’t like to be told who they can’t hire as a pastor. They resist central office type rules regarding their church.
But the liberals have been running the church for years and I’m surprised the PCUSA hasn’t started installing bishops.
This is a joke, right?
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