An Overture to the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
The Presbytery of Chicago respectfully overtures the 217th General Assembly (2006) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to do the following:
1. Direct the Stated Clerk to send the following proposed amendment to the presbyteries for their affirmative or negative votes:
Shall G-6.0106b be stricken?
2. Approve the following authoritative interpretation, which shall take effect immediately upon the affirmative vote of the 217th General Assembly (2006):
"Interpretive statements concerning ordained service by homosexual persons by the 190th General Assembly (1978) of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the 119th General Assembly (1979) of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, and all subsequent affirmations thereof, shall be given no further force or effect."
Rationale
The impact of G-6.0106(b) in its application has been far greater than simply excluding some from ordained office. It has allowed a class distinction to be constitutionally enshrined, creating two classes of baptized Christians—those who are eligible for ordained office in the church, and those who are not.
Not since the now-abandoned prohibitions on divorced officers and clergy in our predecessor denominations has one class of members been singled out in a Presbyterian constitution for automatic disqualification from eligibility for ordained office.
The automatic exclusion of such persons from eligibility inexcusably divides the body of Christ. In the second letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul reminds us:
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-- and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body... The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."
But G-6.0106(b) does precisely that. One class of Christians is effectively being told, “the body has no need of you.” This communicates to those same children of God that in our denomination, they are not part of One Body, but are foreign, to be isolated and treated differently from all others. Such a position puts the lie to what scripture says about baptism, what we say active membership means (G-5.0202), and what we say is the relationship between membership and ordained office (G-6.0102).
Though its proponents argue that the measure deals only with conduct, in reality, G-6.0106(b) and its predecessors in our polity are statements by one portion of the baptized body of Christ to all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, whether partnered or not, sexually active or not, that in the Presbyterian Church (USA) their “membership” in the body is at best second class, and, at worst, neither desired nor honored as equal with all other members. This is a scandal to the gospel of Jesus Christ and has no place in the Constitution of the PC(USA).