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Loading ...Presbyterians explore civil unions
02.12.2009 3:16pm EST
(New York City) The Presbyterian Church (USA) has appointed 13 members to special committee to study the issue of Civil Union and Christian Marriage.
The Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of the denomination, made the selection.Last year, the church’s General Assembly voted to create the special committee, “representing the broad diversity and theological balance.” Reyes-Chow acknowledged this week in announcing the members that some church members may question the selection.
The committee has five main issues to report on: The history of the laws governing marriage and civil union, including current policy debates; how the theology and practice of marriage have developed in the Reformed and broader Christian tradition; the relationship between civil union and Christian marriage; the effects of current laws on same-gender partners and their children; and the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community.
Of the 13 on the special committee, three are under 36 years of age, three are 36-45, six are 46-55, and one is over 55.
Reyes-Chow said that in determining who should sit on the committee he had extended an “open invitation to submit names — promising to select people that I believed could bring passion, thought, intellect, experience, foresight, and vision” to the task.
Reyes-Chow said, “Those who have been chosen have a deep commitment to the church, a deep love for Christ, and are seeking and yearning for a way to be church in new and discerning ways.”
The special committee is to make its report to the 219th General Assembly next summer in Minneapolis.
The denomination already allows ministers to bless same-sex unions, but the ceremonies can’t mimic marriage ceremonies.
Last year’s General Assembly voted 54 percent to 46 percent Friday to drop the requirement that would-be ministers, deacons and elders live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”
The proposed change to the church constitution requires approval from a majority of the nation’s 173 presbyteries, or regional church bodies – a yearlong process that has proven to be a barrier to similar efforts in the past.
The denomination has 2.2-million members across the country.
Hey, this, in the real world is progress. And i thought this was the more conservative branch of the Presbyterian church.
Gonna take time folks. But all of this, especially the “The denomination already allows ministers to bless same-sex unions, but the ceremonies can’t mimic marriage ceremonies.” is big time progress. Ultimately, we’ll have most of the Jewish Reform and conservatives, UU, MCC, UCC, Episcopal, Evang. Lutherans, Presbyterians on the side of Justice in one form or another.
And the Catholic monstosity in Rome (lots of Cath churches support gay people quietly), the Mormons, and the worst of the worst – the southern baptists and their fascist non-denominational christian ilk will be the talk of the town. While hopefully their membership will decline, decline decline.
“Civil Union” by definition has nothing to do with religion. As per usual, some religious folk are seriously confused.
Civil marriage is nothing but a legal contract back up by the secular laws of the state.
People are free to choose who marries and them and where. A justice of the peace, mayor and/or others authorized and empowered by the laws of the local state works for some. A church, synagogue, etc is preferred by others but not necessary.
Religious organizations have no business “debating” or “studying” CIVIL marriage. It’s none of their BUSINESS. Let them decide whether or not to bestow the blessings of the RELIGIOUS Sacrament of Matrimony on their members, or not, but that SHOULD have NOTHING to do with the STATE’S function as the registrar of CIVIL marriages.
To do otherwise is to FURTHER entangle the State in Church-State relations. I don’t think the Catholics and the Mormons want to see SECULAR laws regulating THEIR *other* “sacraments.”
Although … *I’d* vote for a law barring Mormons from posthumously baptizing the ancestors of people now living who DON’T want them posthumously baptized, like Jews who died in the Holocaust. That is CREEPY, not to mention a slap in the FACE to observant, believing Jews.
lets make marriage legal for everyone