LOUISVILLE — A controversial
policy paper on the changing American family this week came a
step closer to being finalized, but still isn’t quite ready
for submission to this summer’s General Assembly.
With the clock ticking toward a Feb. 27 deadline, the committee
charged with writing the “Transforming Families” paper
for the Presbyterian Church (USA) approved a “rationale”
for the proposed policy paper during a conference call on Feb.
18.
However, the theological portion of the draft document and the
section listing its recommendations were referred to an editing
team for further revision.
Still, the Advisory Committee
on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) is confident that the report
will be finished on time for submission to this summer’s
Assembly in Richmond, VA.
“I appreciate the paper,” said the Rev. B Gordon
Edwards of Stillwater, OK, a member of ACSWP. “I thought
it read much better, and runs very smoothly.”
Another conference call has been scheduled for Feb. 25. Members
expect to approve the latest changes then.
Wednesday’s conference call was an extension of an ACSWP
meeting last month when committee members gathered at the Presbyterian
Center to wrestle with nuances of the paper’s language and
ordered more revisions to the theological section.
This week the committee members focused on developing a transition
section between the theological context and the concluding recommendations.
The discussion centered on a collection of “affirmations
and recommendations” introduced during the January meeting
by a committee subgroup with the assistance of Alan Wisdom.
Wisdom, a member of the panel that responded to a request from
last year’s Assembly that the theological section of the
draft be strengthened, also helped write a paper put forward as
an alternative to ACSWP’s original.
Wisdom is a representative of Presbyterians in Faith and Action,
a “think tank” and advocacy group that is part of
the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an organization headquartered
in Washington, DC, that describes itself as “an ecumenical
alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches’
social witness in accordance with Biblical and historic Christian
teachings.”
ACSWP members last month called for the inclusion of several
theological themes in the “Theological Context” section.
These included a focus on Reformed views of the Sovereignty of
God, a greater emphasis on sin and idolatry, Baptism, Christian
vocation and families, and justice and social transformation.
“We want to be faithful to those themes … on which
the committee had general consensus,” said the ACSWP chair,
the Rev. Nile Harper, a retired minister from Ann Arbor, MI.
During the conference call, a writing team was appointed to review
a number of comments submitted by ACSWP members and to examine
the affirmations developed at the January meeting.
“The writing team was charged to consider the affirmations
as a possible envisioning transitional bridge to connect the theological
context section of the paper with the concluding policy recommendations,”
said the Rev. Peter A. Sulyok, ACSWP’s coordinator, who
was appointed to work with the writing team.
“The committee felt they had enough material that they
should refer it to an editing committee to examine all of these
good comments and incorporate them into an even better paper,”
Sulyok said.
Joining Sulyok on the writing team will be Wisdom, the Rev. Charles
Wiley of the denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship,
and the paper’s editor, the Rev. Eric Mount, professor emeritus
of religion at Presbyterian-related Centre College in Danville,
KY.
The report already has been revised 18 times.
ACSWP, which develops social policies for GA consideration, had
urged the church in its original 43-page report to commit to being
an inclusive community that values many forms of family. Critics
said that paper elevated non-traditional families, including those
involving unmarried partners and same-sex couples, to moral equivalence
with traditional, two-heterosexual-parent families, in violation
of scripture and Christian morality.
ACSWP’s vice chair, the Rev. Sue Dickson of El Paso, TX,
said she believes the retooled paper faithfully expresses not
only “our Reformed theology, but also the reality of contemporary
family life,” and is confident that it “can muster
broad support throughout the church.”
ACSWP member Ronald Stone objected to the inclusion of a stand-alone
theological section, saying that it should be incorporated as
part of the paper’s rationale.
“The theological
context, which
is basically an
interpretation
of some Biblical
verses and confessions
and some theological
affirmations,
would belong in
the rationale along
with the study
of the cultural
context and the
socioeconomic context,” said
Stone, a retired
professor at Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary
and an elder at
East
Liberty Presbyterian
Church in Pittsburgh. “I
think that’s
the way we tend
to do theology
when addressing
social and cultural
issues.”
Harper, the ACSWP chair, said combining the sections could make
the report “a document that won’t pass in General
Assembly.”
“People are expecting what comes this time will have a
much more substantial theological foundation, and that it will
have a preeminent position,” he said. “I think that’s
just a simple reading of reality.”
The rationale was approved without the theological piece. |
