To: thames_sider who wrote (33116 ) 10/15/2001 11:03:56 PM From: briskit Read Replies (1) | Respond to Man O man, did I come back to find my inbox full or what!! I am not an expert on anything anywhere, and the point I was making was pretty specific, and it wasn't about gays, per se. Maybe my claim of tolerance rests on this one case, I hope not. But since you asked I will try to address the questions. Grounds for or against ordaining homosexuals vary between groups, so I can speak to what I think about Presbyterians. But I don't have "the short answer" for you, sorry to say, so you might be snoring before the end. Women are ordained, btw. Presbyterians ordain homosexuals. While we don't distinguish much between members, there is a fundamental distinction between members and officers. ( That's not true, say, for Methodists or Baptists, for whom membership is enough to be an officer.) About homosexuality, to date many Presbys make a distinction between self-understanding and behavior. It is not about identity, but practice. In candidating to become an officer one chooses to exercise freedom of conscience within certain bounds. May sound paradoxical--freedom and bounds. In this particular tradition those bounds include the Bible, confessions, and church governing documents. Presbys do not feel free to declare on their own authority what is o.k. or not o.k., to speak untechnically. Rather, they intend to be faithful to what they understand about God from the main source taken seriously to have a claim to authority on the subject. In this sense this church is not about a popular vote, or a consensus of the people, but it has a sense of responsibility to a higher authority, as best as can be determined. Maybe that is enough of a start for now. Put simply the church is loath to endorse behavior specifically seen as problematic in the Bible. A practicising thief, liar, whatever, will not be ordained. Homosexuality shows up in those contexts in the Bible. Half the Presbyterian church has developed explanations granting ordination of practicing homosexuals. The other half asks itself, on what authority it would contradict those direct statements about practicing homosexuality, not just as endorsement of the behavior, but ordination. It finds it does not wish to assert itself as authority above its understanding of God's word (to describe it as self-understood by that half of the church).
