Sad Irony
This past Tuesday, delegates to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) cast votes on two important issues. By an overwhelming majoring (81% to 19%), the delegates voted to keep in the PCUSA constitution amendment G-6.0106b:
Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament.
Liberals proposed an overture to remove this section so as to allow homosexuals and lesbians in committed relationships to be legally ordained in the PCUSA. Their attempt failed. So, this is good news, right?
Seemingly so—until you read about the vote taken right before this one. In a historic vote, the delegation voted by a margin of 57% to 43% to accept what is known as local option. This means that a local church and presbytery (geographical association of Presbyterian churches) has the right to deem which ordination standards are essentials and which ones are not. The end result is that a presbytery can deem the above amendment as a ‘non-essential’ ordination standard and thus allow homosexuals and lesbians (or anyone refusing to repent of a certain sin) to be an official Minister of Word and Sacrament.
It takes little commentary to see the hypocrisy in all of this.