Faced with a special committee report that recommends a permissive “mutual tolerance and forbearance” (p. 23) of differing views on marriage and homosexuality, the 2010 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will have an alternative that reaffirms the denomination’s confessional teaching on these matters.
A minority report from the PCUSA Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage was released and posted in March. This minority report proclaims in its introduction: “It is the intent of this report to represent the church’s biblical, historic, and confessional position that, among all varieties of sexual relationships, only marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God and blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ” (p. 1).
At the assembly July 3-10 in Minneapolis, what was the minority view on the special committee will have the opportunity to become—actually, to remain—the official policy of the denomination. Commissioners will consider the minority report on an equal basis with a committee majority report that declines to take a position for or against church blessings for same-sex couples. The committee report suggests that each local session and presbytery adopt its own policy on “the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community” (pp. 22, 29). It rejects “coercive ways of achieving uniformity” (p. 25) that would require ministers and churches to adhere to the denomination’s constitutional understanding of marriage.
By contrast, the minority report puts the constitutional understanding up front. “In our confessions,” the report says, “marriage is consistently defined as a lifelong covenant between God, a man and a woman, and the community of faith” (p. 1). It then quotes the PCUSA Book of Order definition: “Marriage is a civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians, marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship” (W-4.9001). The minority notes that the 2008 General Assembly explicitly instructed the special committee not to change this definition.
The minority report locates marriage within God’s providence in creation. “Humanity is created male and female,” it observes, “and the sexes complete and complement each other” (p. 10). It explains: “God’s gracious intent for our sexuality is that we would find the one who 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 sexual activity outside of marriage violates this beautiful intention of God” (p. 10).
“Our bodies are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit,” the committee minority affirms. “We must use our bodies within God’s design.” Opposite-sex or same-sex friendships “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,” it says. But relationships “that although committed and caring, which are outside of God’s design of sexual expression, cannot be encouraged or blessed.” According to the report, “[p]astoral care must be extended to all people within the body of Christ”; however, “[s]uch care should always conform to the standards of the confessions” (p. 8).
The minority report would “invite all people to be transformed by the radical redeeming love of Jesus Christ.” It declares, “We are to proclaim without exception the all-encompassing power of Jesus Christ to deliver us from any sin with which we struggle. This journey will have times of difficulties, and we will all fail, but the church should be a place of grace, repentance, and restoration, as we seek to be molded into the image of Christ” (p. 10).
The report refers to the denomination’s 1978/1979 policy statement that attempted to strike a balance, finding the practice of homosexuality to be contrary to God’s will while urging that homosexual individuals be afforded “the basic requirement of human existence” (p. 2). But, according to the report, more recent advocacy for granting marriage-like status to same-sex couples has upset the balance: “… [W]hen the General Assembly began to move toward advocacy for the couple, the strands became disconnected for many members in the PC(USA). It seemed contradictory to encourage public favor and subsidy for a behavior that the church had found to be outside of God’s design. Or, from the other perspective, it seemed contradictory to demand equality in society that was denied within the church” (p. 3).
The minority locates the root of the contradiction in “variant interpretations of Scripture” (p. 3). It contrasts a “traditionalist” approach with a “progressive” approach. For example:
- “Traditionalists tend to focus on specific biblical commandments that appear to prohibit same-sex relations categorically. Progressives tend to focus on broader principles of love and justice that they regard as more important than the specific commandments” (p. 3).
- “Traditionalists tend to see the biblical writers, and the church through its history, as elaborating a consistent strand of teaching on marriage, under divine inspiration. They believe that the church can apply that teaching directly today, despite the differences and even injustices of the societies in which it was formed. Progressives tend to stress contradictions between various biblical passages and church attitudes toward marriage over the years. They view the biblical authors as captives of limited cultural perspectives prevalent in societies deformed by patriarchy and other injustices. They are reluctant to apply sexuality standards originating in the ancient Near East to a modern society that has more scientific knowledge about sexuality” (p. 4).
- “Traditionalists tend to see God’s commands as offering clear choices between limited options. For them, marriage is the single norm for human sexual expression. The ways to God’s blessing are two: either fidelity in marriage or chastity in singleness. Progressives tend to be open to other kinds of covenanted sexual relationships” (p. 4).
“The ongoing controversy around this issue and others will not be resolved until consensus is reached on the interpretation of Scripture,” the report says. “Unity cannot be achieved through polity inventions. Unity will only be reached through common affirmation of truth” (p. 3). It implicitly rejects the committee majority’s call for “mutual tolerance” of conflicting views of marriage. “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,” the minority states.
“As we work through our disagreements,” the report advises, “we recognize that church teaching and church policy are still set by the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)” (p. 6). It quotes nine passages from the Book of Confessions and Book of Order, such the Westminster Confession’s definition of marriage as a “spiritual and physical union [of] one man and one woman” (6.131). The report also cites a 2008 Permanent Judicial Commission ruling that stressed, “Officers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) who are authorized to perform marriages shall not state, imply, or represent that a same sex ceremony is a marriage” (Jane Adams Spahr v. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through the Presbytery of Redwoods, quoted on p. 7).
The minority, like the committee majority, offers a covenant to “[l]ove one another even when we disagree.” But the minority’s covenant notably omits the last point of the majority’s covenant, a confusing pledge to ‘[h]onor who we are as Presbyterians by respecting the fallible discernment of the body, bearing in mind that individual conscience, held captive to the Word of God, cannot thus be bound.” On the contrary, the minority report reminds church officers of the Book of Order provision that their consciences are to be “captive to the Word of God as interpreted in the standards of the church” (emphasis added, G-6.0108, quoted on p. 7).
The minority report contains a “commentary” section that has much in common with the body of the committee majority’s report. Like the majority, the minority offers a “Biblical and Historical Summary” of teachings related to marriage, a discussion of “The Relationship between Civil Union and Christian Marriage,” and a survey of “The Effects of Current Laws on Same-Gender Partners and their Children.” The difference between the majority and minority versions of these sections are subtle but significant.
The minority quotes prominently and directly from key biblical and confessional passages such as Jesus’ remarks on marriage in Matthew 19/Mark 10 and the chapter on marriage in the Westminster Confession. The majority merely lists chapters and verses, leaving readers to look the passages up if they are so inclined.
The minority observes that the marriage of man and woman “is almost universal among human societies. It appears as an already existing institution in the earliest records of civilization” (p. 15). The majority never takes note of the universality of marriage, but rather emphasizes diversity of marital customs—as if marriage had no core meaning across the various cultures.
A chart in the majority report mentions only two differences between traditional civil marriage and redefined civil marriage: that the former unites a man and a woman whereas the latter may join any two persons, and that the former is recognized in all states and the latter only in some states. The minority report notes two other major differences: that civil marriage is “traditionally consummated by male-female intercourse,” whereas same-sex marriages involve other sexual acts; and that traditional civil marriage often involves “the expectation of children resulting from the sexual union [of husband and wife],” whereas children in same-sex marriages all have at least one “biological parent outside the household” (p. 23). The majority report would make it appear that these sexual aspects of the marital relationship were of no consequence.
The minority report is being presented by three members of the Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage: Elder Lisa Van Riper of Greenville, S.C.; the Rev. William Teng of National Capital Presbytery; and the Rev. Tracie Mayes Stewart of Salem Presbytery in North Carolina.
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