June 19, 2014
Column #1,713
Presbyterian Church USA To Marry Any “Two
People”
By Mike McManus
By a vote of 420 to 175, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) changed the
definition of marriage to be between “two people” rather than being the union of
a man and a woman. That change must be ratified by the church’s 172 regional
bodies known as Presbyteries.
However, the church’s General Assembly also voted 371 to 238 to allow pastors to
marry same-sex couples immediately in the 19 states where gay marriage is legal.
“What concerns me most is that the debate took place without an appeal to, or
seeking the counsel of Scripture,” remarked Carmen Fowler LaBerge, President of
the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative watchdog group.
“The entire debate was couched in terms of feelings or desires. Feelings are a
terrible barometer. This was a General Assembly which said, `We love everyone.’
Unfortunately, when you are making a hard decision, there is a need to reflect
the will and wisdom of God. What God has said is not an affirmation of everyone,
but an affirmation of holiness and righteousness.”
If the Presbyterian Church can marry any “two people,” will it marry a brother
and sister, or a mother and son, or a father and daughter? That’s unclear.
Genesis 2 is clear in defining marriage: “The Lord God said, `It is not good
that man should be alone…I will make a helper comparable to him.’…
”Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,
and they shall become one flesh.”
A Christian denomination which does not consult Scripture before making such a
major decision, can no longer call itself Christian.
The Presbyterian Lay Committee put it more starkly, charging that “the General
Assembly has committed an express repudiation of the Bible, mutually agreed upon
Confessions of the PCUSA, thousands of years of faithfulness to God’s clear
commands…This is an abomination.”
The Presbyterian Church once had 4.5 million members. It began debating the gay
issue in 1978. By 2010 it had shrunk to 2.1 million, as hundreds of
congregations left to form the Presbyterian Church in America in 1973 and an
Evangelical Presbyterian Church was created in 1981. Today those denominations
have a total of a half million members.
In 2010 PCUSA voted to ordain openly gay men and women as clergy, sparking the
creation of ECO – Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, which is moving
toward 100,000 members. Unlike the PCA and most EPC churches, it believes in
female ordination.
“We want to hold onto the core theology, the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ
while making progress on how we respond to the world. We are not changing
Scripture, but changing our strategy, said Rev. Dr. Dana Allin, the church’s top
executive.
By contrast, PCUSA is changing Scripture, but not its strategy.
Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, issued a
statement: “By overturning natural marriage the PCUSA is only accelerating its
already fast-paced demise. It will become even smaller, whiter and older.
“Only declining denominations reject historic Christian standards, and in every
case that rejection reinforces the decline. Who respects a church that only
echoes the secular world?”
In an interview, Tooley added, “They are not redefining marriage, but are on the
path to dissolving marriage. If marriage is everything, it is nothing. Once you
separate male and female, it has no objective purpose left remaining.”
In declining denominations, this decision accelerates the decline. That’s bad
for the church. This choice for sexual inclusion takes priority over the health
of the church and the imperative of the Gospel.
Indeed, for the past two years, PCUSA has lost 200 churches annually and 100,000
members a year, dropping to 1.76 million in 2013. At that pace the denomination
will not exist in 20 years.
The same pattern of decline can be seen in The Episcopal Church which has
plunged from 3.4 million in 1965 to 1.8 million in 2013. The election of Gene
Robinson, an active homosexual, as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 prompted
hundreds of churches to leave. About 800 of them have formed a new denomination,
the Anglican Church of North America, with 100,000 people.
Ironically, Robinson divorced his wife to marry his male lover, and recently
they divorced. So he’s divorced both a woman and a man!
The Biblical call is for a man and woman to marry for life.
Studies prove that those who do so are happier, healthier, wealthier and have
more sex and better sex. Married women live four years longer and men, ten years
longer than the divorced or never-married.
God honors those who honor Him.
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