LOUISVILLE — The
theological section of a controversial paper on the changing nature
of families was to be presented to a committee of the General
Assembly Council (GAC) last week, but it wasn’t quite ready.
The GAC’s Congregational Ministries Division Committee
(CMDC) now expects to formally receive the document when it meets
again in June — although its members are likely to see it
before then.
The Advisory committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) still
plans to finalize the entire report by Feb. 27, the deadline for
presentation to this year’s General Assembly in Richmond,
VA.
The paper was sent back to ACSWP by last year’s Assembly,
which instructed the committee to consult with the Presbyterian
Church (USA) Office of Theology and Worship/Spiritual Formation
(TAW) in re-writing what was then titled “Living Faithfully
With Families in Transition.”
The Rev. Joseph Small, associate director for TAW, told the CMDC
last week that 18 drafts of the theological portion have been
produced, but none has brought full agreement between TAW and
ACSWP.
“We are working on a theological section that is responsible,
Biblically and confessionally, but also lifts up the kinds of
concerns held by the ACSWP,” he said. “This is excruciatingly
difficult.”
John Bolt, a GAC member from Charleston, WV, asked how much freedom
ASCWP would have to edit the theological section. Small replied,
“We are in a process to produce a document that is fully
acceptable to both of us. It would be unseemly to do otherwise.”
The title of the paper has been changed to “Transforming
Families.” It is intended to convey two meanings —
that the church is transforming families and that families are
transforming society.
ACSWP was scheduled to take up the current draft of the families
paper in a conference call on Feb. 18.
Critics of the original 43-page report claimed its authors had
refused to make moral distinctions and placed families headed
by same-sex couples on the same moral plane with those headed
by married heterosexual couples, in violation of scripture and
Christian morality. They prepared a one-page substitute that defined
marriage, as PC(USA) doctrine does, as a union of “one man
and one woman.” Neither version passed muster at last year’s
Assembly.
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA’s) stated clerk,
has put the families paper on his “Top 10” list of
issues coming before this year’s 216th Assembly in Richmond,
VA, which will begin on June 26. |
