It was not, as retiring moderator John Conner had been telling United Presbyterians for several months, a one-issue General Assembly. Attention just seemed to be focused on the big issue: whether or not to ordain admitted, practicing homosexuals. The United Presbyterians’ highest governing body had a clearly negative answer for that question, but in reaching it the assembly also had to take at least implicit stands on biblical interpretation, civil rights, the connectional system of church government, pluralism in the denomination, ecclesiastical discipline, and other issues (See news story, page 38).
William Lytle, the new moderator, will no doubt be telling audiences during the next year what he said repeatedly during the meeting in San Diego: The conservatives did not win; the liberals did not win. He and vice-moderator Patricia Metcalf worked hard during the debates to keep down applause and other “victory” demonstrations. Evangelicals who had labored hard and well to defeat proposals that would permit homosexual clergy wisely counseled each other not to gloat.
Despite the new moderator’s hope that there be no winners or losers in San Diego, there were victories and defeats. He admitted as much in the closing minutes of the meeting; he acknowledged that there had been a lot of “hurting” during the assembly. Nobody got all that he wanted, however, and many issues were settled by compromise. Advocates of various causes will be back next year to try again to get what they failed to get in 1978.
In the forefront of those people promising to return in 1979 for more assembly sympathy are the homosexual activists. The 1978 meeting of the United Presbyterian governing body spoke up for the civil rights of homosexuals, for ministries to them and church membership for them, for discussion with their groups, for their admission (when otherwise qualified) to seminaries, for the rejection of homophobia, for more study of homosexuality, and for more discussion of the question of whether homosexual behavior is sinful. Even with all of those gains, the activists did not win the main prize they were seeking. They wanted the denomination’s top judicatory to agree with them that homosexuality is a “gift from God” and that those who practice it should be eligible for ordination as ministers (teaching elders), ruling elders (who comprise the governing boards of local churches), and deacons.
The statement finally adopted by the assembly was not a simple yes or no to one side or the other. It was twelve typewritten pages and as many-faceted as today’s whole debate on sexuality and the Christian attitude to it. The document was adopted by a large margin, but the vote was uncounted. Assembly veterans estimated the ratio all the way from five to one up to twenty to one. Those who opposed it (for whatever reason) were clearly a small minority. Some of the minority identified themselves in a protest, which they filed. It said they would “return to our communities and congregations committed to work for liberation, continuing to struggle together with our gay sisters and brothers, ordained or not, who are already ministers of Christ with us. We join hands with them and with all others who are the victims of injustice and ostracism at the hands of the powerful.”
Their objections were lodged against such forthright statements in the assembly action as these: “We conclude that homosexuality is not God’s wish for humanity.… Even where the homosexual orientation has not been consciously sought or chosen, it is neither a gift from God nor a state or a condition like race; it is a result of our living in a fallen world.… Jesus Christ calls us out of the alienation and isolation of our fallen state into the freedom of new life. This new life redeems us as sexual beings but is impossible without repentance.… We deny that this new life liberates us to license and affirm that it frees and empowers us for lives of obedience whereby all of life becomes subject to his lordship.”
Perhaps the passages that were most objectionable to the losing side were these: “Homosexual persons who will strive toward God’s revealed will in this area of their lives, and make use of all the resources of grace, can receive God’s power to transform their desires or arrest their active expression,” and “… the New Testament declares that all homosexual practice is incompatible with Christian faith and life.” Signers of one protest claimed that “the principle of scriptural interpretation adopted in the statement on homosexuality violates our conscience.” Their interpretation of the Bible, they said, led them to deny that “responsible, loving expression” of homosexuality is sinful.
On the question of ordination, the statement of the majority of the Assembly indicated that only the repentant homosexual should be considered. The document said, “For the church to ordain a self-affirming practicing homosexual person to ministry would be to act in contradiction to its charter and calling in Scripture, setting in motion both within the church and in society serious contradictions to the will of Christ.”
In choosing to give “definitive guidance” to its regional and local bodies, the assembly avoided taking the hard line sought by some conservatives. It could have initiated a constitutional amendment that would have contained explicit prohibition of ordination of the unrepentant. It did not even consider this option seriously, even though it did initiate an amendment to require all local churches to elect women elders. It could have issued an authoritative interpretation of the constitutional provisions that apply in this area, but it chose not to do this, either.
Presbyteries have now been given guidance, and the next time a practicing homosexual applies for ordination, the presbytery will have to decide whether to follow it. If an unrepentant homosexual is ordained, the action will no doubt be challenged in the courts of the church. How the United Presbyterians handle such a challenge on the district level will indicate more about the denomination’s stance than the passage of the 1978 statement.
The forces for biblical authority and discipline dare not relax in the wake of the actions taken at the General Assembly. Some battles have been won and lost at San Diego, but the war is not over.
