Court Clears Minister Who Wed Lesbian Couple
PCUSA OKs Changes to Faith Document, Removal of Gay Condemnation
"Three years after conducting a wedding ceremony for a lesbian couple, the Rev. Janet Edwards was acquitted Thursday on charges of violating Scripture and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s constitution.
"A 2000 decision by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the denomination's highest court, held that clergy could conduct services blessing same-sex couples but could not present them as marriages and that the services should not resemble weddings.
"Although the charges against Edwards contended she "knowingly and willfully" performed a ceremony that was "contrary" to the PC(USA) constitution, Pollock of the regional PJC said the prosecution offered no evidence that Edwards violated Scripture when it listed eight biblical passages defied."
Can anyone answer this question: "Why would a religious order have a Judicial Commission to decide whether secular laws were broken?" If secular laws are broken, is it not the business of the secular admisistrators of law to bring action?
"The Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) of the Pittsburgh Presbytery ruled unanimously 9-0 to clear the minister on the grounds that she could not have performed the ceremony since the church and state define marriage as between a man and a woman."
It was not just the Presbyterian Church's Constitution the Commission considered, but also the definition of marriage as presented by the state. Since the state does not define marriage as anything but between a man and a woman, the Rev. Edwards "could not have performed the ceremony."
At the same time, "PC(USA) commissioners and delegates at their biennial General Assembly went into nearly seven hours of debate on overtures, or resolutions, that called for changes to the 1962 Miller-Osterhaven translation of the [16th Century] Heidelberg Catechism. Much of the controversy revolved around a reference to 'homosexual perversion' that is not found in the original German text. Opponents of the current translation say the original text and all subsequent translations do not contain any reference to homosexuality and are seeking for a more historically faithful and accurate translation.
"Question 87 in the 1962 translation reads: Can those who do not turn to God from their ungrateful, impenitent life be saved?
A. Certainly not! Scripture says, 'Surely you know that the unjust will never come into possession of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God.'
"Three professors – Bruce L. McCormack, E. David Willis, Michael D. Bush – from Princeton Theological Seminary and Erskine Theological Seminary, issued a statement saying those proposing for changes fail to understand how the Book of Confessions function.
"It is not the Latin and German texts from the sixteenth century that guide our Church, but rather it is the English texts adopted by the deliberative assemblies of the Church and published in the Book of Confessions by which every officer of our Church has vowed to be guided," they said."
To translate that into the vernacular of religious-speak, it means the English changed the original German to suit their homophobic agenda, and now that someone has called their bluff by pointing out the dishonesty of the translation, and its original context, ideology, and history, the current homophobes are the reactionaries.
Those who have been the carriers of any conventional wisdom, for a period long enough to cause non-historians to forget who carried the conventional wisdom in the first place, do not like being displaced. They do not like it when history is recalled accurately, and old forgotten texts are honestly translated.
"These English versions have been responsibly translated and carefully chosen as 'faithful expositions of what Scripture teaches us to believe and do," say the defenders of the homophobic agenda. Do the Presbytes make the claim that "the Scriptures are inspired and they are in their original autographs without error," as do some denominations? If so, this necessarily means the Americans believe the German Bible is not in its original autograph and/or has errors; or that the Heidelberg Catechism is false.
"Meanwhile, William J. Weston, a sociology professor at Centre College in Danville, Ky., believes no one even makes anything serious of what the Heidelberg Catechism says. He went further to say that the Book of Confessions has become merely advisory and is ignored, according to his blog post Tuesday.
Thus, he argues, 'The whole Heidelberg translation issue is not really about changing a serious or effective part of the Presbyterian constitution. It is a symbolic feint in the ideological struggle over normalizing homosexual practice.
"'What the church really needs is a confession it actually confesses. Then we can have a serious discussion of how, exactly, it is worded," Weston added. Condensed from both and http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080624/pcusa-oks-changes-to-faith-document-removal-of-gay-condemnation.htm
Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC
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