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San Jose, CA., Jul 8, 2008 / 11:57 pm (CNA).- Reaction continues to the decisions of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), which took place between June 21 and June 28. The assembly nullified proscriptions against sexual behavior outside of marriage and called for a vote to delete the church’s constitutional standard requiring fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness. It also initiated a process that could remove mention of the Bible’s prohibition against homosexuality form the Heidelberg Catechism. The moves are seen by some as an attempt to clear a path for the eventual ordination...

The Episcopal Church has been at the forefront of baptizing active homosexual lifestyle as God-blessed. Since 1960, that denomination has decreased in membership by 48%. The United Methodist Church has been roiled by those adamant on establishing homosexual lifestyles as Christian legitimate. In the fight for one side or another that denomination has decreased in membership by 25%. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has likewise been embroiled in the tussle. That denomination has decreased in membership by 44%. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has also been riddled with in-house fighting over homosexual lifestyles as anti-God or pro-God. That denomination's membership...

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The nation's largest Presbyterian denomination on Friday (June 27) cracked open the door to ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy, though the decades-old fight is far from over. Delegates at the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting here voted 54 percent to 46 percent to remove a clause in their constitution that requires clergy to be either married and faithful or single and chaste. But the action still needs approval by a majority of the denomination's 173 regional bodies, called presbyteries, and similar moves in recent years have twice failed to win ratification on the local level. In...

PALO ALTO, Calif. — As their biannual meeting concluded last week, Presbyterian Church leaders took some actions that irritated Jewish groups, but steered clear of the talk of divestment from Israel that ignited a firestorm in Presbyterian-Jewish relations in 2004. On Friday, the church's general assembly, in a 504-171 vote, approved a resolution endorsing a proposal for Middle East peace crafted in Jordan last year. Known as the Amman Call, the plan includes a "right of return" for Palestinian Arabs that Israel has rejected because it could produce a wave of immigration that would mean the demise of Israel as...

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s highest governing body voted Friday in favor of a proposal that would allow for the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians. The 218th General Assembly, meeting in San Jose, Calif., this week, voted 380-325 to send the overture – that would delete the requirement that clergy live in "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between and a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness" – to the denomination's 173 presbyteries for approval. Adding to the blow to conservatives, the Assembly also adopted a supplementary authoritative interpretation of the PC(USA) constitution that would allow gay and...

Two years ago, American Jewish community relations groups were busy patting themselves on the back for achieving a signal victory in turning back the attempt by anti-Israel radicals to hijack the Presbyterian Church USA. After the Presbyterians became the first Protestant church to embrace divestment from companies doing business in Israel in 2004, Jewish groups worked hard to overturn the decision. When the church voted to back away from this stand in 2006, it was rightly seen as a triumph not just for friends of Israel, but for the tactic of outreach itself as years of tenacious diplomacy paid off....

The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 57,572 members in 2007, the worst decline in decades, according to the official statistics released by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick on Saturday. That leaves the denomination with 2,209,546 members, 2 million fewer than the number of Presbyterians who were members of the predecessor denominations in 1965 that merged in 1983 to form the PCUSA. Kirkpatrick's office projects even higher losses in 2008 and 2009.

Many of American Jewry's largest religious and advocacy groups have lashed out in the past few days at the Presbyterian Church USA for a new document published by the church that warned against anti-Jewish bias in the church's pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace. The new document "does more to excuse anti-Semitism and foster anti-Jewish motifs then it does to dispel them," according to a strongly worded letter to church leader Rev. Cliff Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church, from Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue...

The regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and representatives of the Stow Presbyterian Church have reached an agreement that allows the local congregation to keep the church property. The pact comes after 18 months of discussions between the Stow church and the Eastminster Presbytery, according to the Rev. Dan Schomer, who leads the Mineral Ridge-based presbytery, which includes 55 churches in Summit, Portage, Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties. ''The action to dissolve the congregation effectively severs the ties of the church to the denomination and permits it to continue its ministry as an independent congregation,'' Schomer said in...

United Methodists declared Monday a "banner day" as they approved a full communion agreement with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The new relationship between the two major Protestant denominations is not a merger but a recognition of each other's ministry and mission. Full communion recognizes that each church has "the one, holy, catholic and apostolic faith" expressed in the Scriptures and confessed in historic creeds and the core teachings of each denomination. The two churches also recognize the authenticity of each other's baptism and eucharist and the full interchangeability of all ordained ministers. "It's not merger," said Bishop Melvin...

Tiburon, Calif. (AP) -- The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has found that a Northern California minister did not violate denominational law when she officiated at the weddings of two lesbian couples. The ruling announced Tuesday by the Louisville, Ky.-based court overturns a decision against the Rev. Jane Spahr last year. A regional judicial committee had found Spahr guilty of misconduct and gave her a rebuke — the lightest possible punishment. The church's high court found that the ceremonies Spahr performed were not marriages, so she did not violate the church's constitution. The panel reiterated the church's position...

A judge ruled April 8 in favor of the motion for a summary judgment filed six months earlier by First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., which had been seeking quiet title to its property, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief, since March 2007. She also ruled against a competing motion for a summary judgment filed by the presbytery. *** "If you saw from the decision of the court, under California law, trusts are presumptively revocable unless the trust instrument makes them expressly irrevocable," he said. "And in the plain language, as we argued to the court, the plain language...

Several U.S. mainline Protestant denominations are about to face their latest showdowns on one of the most vexing issues since slavery: whether to break from biblical morality as traditionally understood to allow clergy with homosexual partners and to sanction blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. "Mainline" groups (predominantly white, with early American roots, and affiliated with the National Council of Churches) contain vocal, well-organized liberal and evangelical combatants. The resulting dispute "certainly has taken a big toll," says Jack Haberer of Presbyterian Outlook, an independent magazine that airs varied views. "For some, it's the total compromise of all things moral. For...

Divestment: Coming to a Denomination Near You   By Dr. Earl TilfordFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, April 03, 2008 For a generation after World War II, particularly given revelations of the Holocaust, most American Protestant denominations embraced a more tolerant attitude toward Jews. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a marked shift, evident in the anti-Israeli positions adopted by more liberal denominations like the United Methodist Church (UMC); the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA); the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA); and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA).At its April meeting in Fort Worth, the National Conference of...

-snip- Tissues will be needed Sunday when the north Oak Cliff church, known for community service, closes after 118 years. -snip- Trinity has struggled for years as an aging, predominantly Anglo church in a neighborhood turned largely Hispanic. Average Sunday attendance has dwindled from 100 to 40 in the last decade...Indeed, about a third of Trinity's faithful now live at Grace Presbyterian Village, a seniors community in east Oak Cliff. -snip- In the last few years, Trinity tried various strategies, including advertising that it is openly welcoming to gay people. But nothing reversed the decline.

FLOWER MOUND, Texas -- The cemetery next to the Flower Mound Presbyterian Church was a peaceful, well-kept place until Tuesday night. An overflow of voters trying to join the caucus next door ended up leaving muddy tire tracks through the cemetery. One vehicle's tire actually got stuck in a recently filled grave. Many voters parked on the shoulder of a gravel road winding through the cemetery, right next door to the church where the voting was taking place. One witness says motorists either didn't notice -- or didn't care -- they were parking just a few feet from buried bodies....

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Presbyterian Church (USA) is anticipating annual membership losses will reach 46,544 in 2008, growing to 50,000 in 2009, and another 43,436 members expected to leave the denomination in 2010. Those projections of 139,980 members leaving the PCUSA in the next three years follow on actual membership losses of 91,649 over the past two years - 43,175 in 2006 and 48,474 in 2007, according to a report released Feb. 13 at a joint meeting of the General Assembly Council and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly.

A legal complaint pitting a Mississippi congregation that left the Presbyterian Church (USA) against the Presbytery of Mississippi has been returned to state court by a federal judge. Grace Chapel Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Madison, Miss., is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Mississippi Presbytery from violating a final declaratory judgment that resolved a property ownership lawsuit that the church brought against the presbytery in March. Mississippi Presbytery moved the church's request to U.S. District Court within 30 days of its Aug. 29 filing, saying there was a federal question about the free exercise of religion under the First...

CANONSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Washington Presbytery officials are expected in court on Friday to contest a claim to church property by a western Pennsylvania congregation that voted to leave the national church. A property dispute arose after members of the Peters Creek Presbyterian Church voted in November to leave the Presbyterian Church USA and join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church based in Livonia, Mich.

Two of the largest churches in Sacramento Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will leave the denomination with their properties for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church on Jan. 1, now that their dismissal requests have been approved. Presbytery commissioners agreed at their stated meeting Dec. 4 to dismiss Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Fair Oaks, Calif., the presbytery's largest with 2,286 members, and First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., the presbytery's third-largest with 1,143 members. The vote totals were 146-18 for the Fair Oaks Church's dismissal, said Bill Cole, an elder and spokesman for that church, and 153-11 for the Roseville...