An Indiana judge upheld the decision of a church congregation to leave the United Church of Christ (UCC) because of the denomination’s official recognition of gay “marriage.”
St. Peter’s First United Church of Christ has been part of the UCC for 50 years, the Indianapolis Star reports. The congregation was concerned, however, when the UCC voiced its official support for homosexual “marriage” in 2005.
At its 25th General Synod the UCC declared that the 1.3-million organization officially supported same-sex “marriage”. According to the declaration the UCC, “affirms equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender and declares that the State should not interfere with couples regardless of gender who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and commitment of legally recognized marriage.”
The concerned congregation of St. Peter’s held some open forum discussion and then decided to hold a vote in September of 2005. The results were 115 to 92 in favor of leaving the UCC. Joanna Kline, Administrative Secretary of St. Peter’s First Church, told LifeSiteNews.com that a couple of church members who wanted to remain UCC then sued the local church council president, Brian Royer, and all his designees, but they did not sue the church itself.
The UCC refused to recognize St. Peter’s decision to leave and joined in the suit. “They had not released St. Peter’s from being one of their congregations,” said Kline. This Friday, however, Special Judge David L. Hanselman Sr. removed the two-year restraining order, allowing St. Peter’s to become independent. Kline added that because the decision is so recent, they haven’t heard back yet from the UCC. She is confident, however, that the organization will respect the court decision.
I can see the personal lawsuits, or even a lawsuit against the incorporated congregation. However, the UCC is congregational; would not their polity preclude such a corporate action?
[blockquote] “They were endorsing something that God has stated is a sin as something that is no longer a sin. For us, it’s not loving someone to tell them that their sin isn’t a sin. The Church is a hospital for sinners, but we don’t tell anyone their sin isn’t a sin.” [/blockquote]
How ironic; the whole point of the UCC, as the successor of the Congregational Churches, is that each church congregation is independent and should have the right to determine what the church does. It’s a voluntary association; you can opt in and you can opt out, which is what a lot of churches have done since the UCC endorsed homosexual marriage, including all of the UCC churches in Puerto Rico: http://faithfulandwelcoming.org/content/show.asp?mne=withdrawn%2Dchurches (list of churches that have left over homosexual marriage). The UCC claims to have offset this by now merging with homosexual churches, although UCC is very careful not to state that they are homosexual churches.
It’s as if there’s a suicide pact, no?
It would appear that one now needs to ask two questions in respect to Bible orthodoxy. The first question is do you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, i.e. are you a revisionist or a true Bible believer; and the second question is to which Denomination do you belong? In the long run, however, only the first question needs to be asked.
H
HowieG, The faithless are clever in their mis-interpretation and application of the Bible. Many are fooled, even those who desire to know the Word of God because we must also understand the apostolic context of the Gospel. This is why it is important to read what the early Church Fathers wrote.
There’s a bit more to the story in the Huntington newspaper:
http://www.h-ponline.com/articles/2007/07/20/news/01stpeters.txt
And the Fort Wayne newspaper notes that the judge ALSO ruled that the regional Indiana-Kentucky conference of the UCC had no claim to St. Peter’s assets. I don’t know what grounds the conference may have thought it had for entering the case. The national UCC was not a party to the suit.
The temporary restraining order had been put in place to give the original judge (who subsequently fell ill) an opportunity to determine whether the business meeting at which the vote was taken was properly called, whether the quorum requirement was met (the church has 526 members; a required quorum of 25 percent was exceeded), whether only a simple majority was required to carry the vote, whether the 26-member Church Council was intact, and so on. Everything was in order, the special judge found.
w.w.
To Alice: Amen. Also, nice blog, thanks for sharing.
H