A debate that has raged within the Presbyterian Church for more than three decades culminated Tuesday with ratification of a measure allowing the ordination of gay and lesbian ministers and lay leaders, while giving regional church bodies the ability to decide for themselves.
With the vote of its regional organization in Minnesota, the Presbyterian Church USA became the fourth mainline Protestant church to allow gay ordination, following the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran churches and the United Church of Christ. The Minnesota vote was closely followed by one in Los Angeles.
“This is an important moment in the Christian communion,” said Michael Adee, a Presbyterian elder who heads an organization that fought for gay ordination. “I rejoice that Presbyterians are focusing on what matters most: faith and character, not a person’s marital status or sexual orientation.”
[blockquote]This is an important moment in the Christian communion[/blockquote]
There lies a loaded statement. What follows deconstructs the “Christian” part of it.
[blockquote]Ideally, he added, Presbyterians will find a way to get along, in the way that the Anglican Communion has largely, if not entirely, held together.[/blockquote]
I believe that this gentleman has mistaken the leisurely pace of the Anglican disintegration for adhesion.
Faith and character? Character? What? This means….? Character and sexual orientation are not related? Remember those articles about institutionalized adultery that the reporter spoke of in Cal? And if the pastor changes boyfriends after a spell? And then? What egregious nonsense is this? How can anyone be deceived by constructs as dishonest as these?
Larry
The first thing I did today to celebrate my new freedom as a PCUSA elder was to sign up at “Ashley Madison.com” so I can start having affairs behind my wife’s back. I will be “submitting joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ” by sharing my love with multiple women rather than having to follow that stupid requirement that I “live my life in obedience to Scripture.” How old-fashioned, everyone knows that the Bible is just a collection of fables and outdated misogynist moralistic preachings suitable only to oppress women in a patriarchal society. And we know that the Bible actually validates loving polyamory–it was only the later oppressive Catholic church fathers that suppressed sexual expression to consolidate their own power base. (See the growing Presbyterian view that “Scripture does not support heterosexual monogamy,” printed here: http://www.layman.org/LettersToTheEditor.aspx .)
We know Jesus actually taught that you have the freedom to do anything so long as you feel good about it in your heart. That’s what the whole doctrine of grace is about, discarding the old principles of legalism. Jesus would not condemn anyone for carrying out the actions of their heart if they honestly felt that was what their nature was calling them to do.
I know in my heart I was born this way and that God validates and supports my actions of self-expression and self-realization. I praise God for the progressive inclusive revelations of the Holy Spirit in our denomination.
[b][Commenter’s note: this is satire if you haven’t figured it out. Nevertheless, under the Presbyterian Corollary to Johnson’s First Law of Anglican Thermodynamics, expect the polyamory free love movement to show up soon in a mainline church near you, especially in PCUSA which has now totally erased sexual purity from its churches.][/b]
It reminds me of hero Dietrich Bonhoffer’s phrase “cheap
“grace.” Grace can’t get any cheaper than what now is being allegedly handed out today by the Presbyterian church.