In Rejected Motions, the Makings of a Minority Report

Read lead article:
One Committee, Two Reports – PCUSA Marriage Committee Proclaims Unity Amidst Disagreement

Additional side article on the PCUSA Marriage Committee:
An Ironic Covenant

Frequently, the measure of a document is not only what it does say but also what it does not say. The latter becomes particularly significant when the authors of the document have been offered an opportunity to make certain affirmations and have refused to do so. 

Such is the case with the report of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage, approved at the end of the committee’s January 22-25 meeting in Louisville. The report is not striking for its recommendations, which would move the denomination at most a half-step toward acceptance of same-sex relations. It would leave the Book of Order definition of Christian marriage untouched.

What is most disappointing about the report is what it does not say. It does not affirm the church’s confessional teaching on marriage or insist that the teaching holds authority for all PCUSA ministers and sessions. This silence is not a mere oversight. The three dissenters on the committee—Elder Lisa Van Riper of Greenville, S.C.; the Rev. William Teng of Alexandria, Va.; and the Rev. Tracie Mayes Stewart of Salem Presbytery in North Carolina—offered motions that would have made those affirmations.

Those motions were all turned aside—usually by votes of 7-3 or 6-4. The committee majority chose not to say what Van Riper, Teng, and Stewart asked it to say. Now the contents of their motions become the material from which the three can form a minority report to the General Assembly. They can give the assembly the option of upholding marriage in a way that the committee declined to do.

Below are excerpts from those defeated motions. They give us a yardstick by which to measure the committee report, and they illumine the choice that will face the coming General Assembly.

Van Riper offered amendments that would:

• quote directly from creation account in Genesis 2:18-25, where God brings the woman to the man as his “partner,” and the text declares, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.”
• quote directly from the key New Testament passage in Matthew 19:1-12/Mark 10:1-12, where Jesus, questioned by the Pharisees about divorce, responds, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?”;
• note that “[m]arriage, in varied forms, is almost universal among human societies” and that it goes back before the dawn of civilization;
• observe that marriage has traditionally been consummated by male-female sexual intercourse;
• delete a sentence that implies (falsely) that the global Christian community is evenly divided on the definition of marriage and the standards for sexual morality.

Stewart offered a substitute for one section that would have affirmed:

• “We boldly proclaim the power of Jesus Christ to be our peace and to deliver us from all activities and passions that our Bible and Confessions call sin.”
• “Our bodies are precious to God…. The way we conduct ourselves sexually is therefore extremely important, and God in God’s mercy has given us a perfect plan for this.”
• “In Genesis we see that God says it is not good for man to be alone. A woman is made who completes Adam and the two of them become one flesh…. God’s gracious intent for our sexuality is that we would find the one that completes us. Our bodies are carefully designed by the Creator to belong to the one created for us before the foundation of the world was laid. Any sex activity outside of marriage violates this beautiful intention of God.”
• “We falsely believe that there is freedom in doing what feels good and what we want. But like all sin, sexual sins have consequences. God’s beautiful gift of sex wrongly used causes terrible emotional and physical carnage. As the church, we should call our young people to the empowering liberation and freedom of knowing they are far too precious not to wait for the one God designed for them. We should also see celibacy as a gift as Paul did and support and encourage single people.”

Van Riper presented a substitute motion that would have stated:

• “The issue before us is whether this question of covenanted same-gender partnerships is determined by the Word of God or not. The fact that equal sisters and brothers in Christ have differing convictions does not imply that all those convictions have equal standing in the church.”
• “As we work through our disagreements, we recognize that church teaching and church policy are still set by the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Members of the special committee may not agree on civil unions and Christian marriage; however, the constitution has authoritative provisions that bear on these questions. Until such time as the church’s understanding of marriage is changed in the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order, those provisions remain in force. The burden of proof rests on those who would change the teaching.”
• “Regarding marriage, the constitution consistently declares that: God instituted marriage. Marriage is a physical and spiritual union of one man and one woman. Marriage is designed of God to last as long as both husband and wife live. Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for its well-being…. Christians are called to chastity or continence in single life, or complete and inseparable love and faithfulness in marriage.”
• “Our bodies are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We must use our bodies within God’s design. Because God’s design is rooted in creation, this design is not just for the believer but for humanity. Therefore, friendships, whether of same or opposite gender, which do not violate God’s boundaries of sexual expression as defined in Scripture, the confessions, and the Book of Order can be honored and encouraged. However, those relationships, whether same or opposite gendered, that although committed and caring, which are outside of God’s design of sexual expression, cannot be encouraged or blessed. Pastoral care must be extended to all people within the body of Christ. Such care should always conform to the standards of the confessions as the church works to ‘gather and perfect’ the saints.”

Teng proposed a committee report without recommendations. He wished to let the current PCUSA constitutional teaching on marriage stand as it is, without pushing the denomination one direction or the other. Local churches and presbyteries would be free to advocate changes in the constitutional teaching; however, they would continue to be bound by the teaching as long as it remained in force.

This, it appears, will be the clear alternative presented to the General Assembly in place of the more muddled recommendations of the committee majority.