By Jeff Gissing, Juicy Ecumenism.
According to the Religion New Service, global Presbyterian denominations continue to distance themselves from the Presbyterian Church (USA) in response to actions of its General Assembly to permit the ordination of practicing homosexuals (2011) and to redefine Christian marriage to allow, but not mandate, same-sex weddings (2014). The Presbyterian Churches of Brazil and Peru join the Presbyterian Church of Mexico who, in 2011, ceased its mission partnership with the PC(USA).
Representatives of the PCUSA–including the denomination’s highest elected official Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons–contend that the disagreement is simply about the extent to which the Christian church should endorse LGBT people in their sexual identity: “Some think they should be loved and changed, and some think they should be loved and accepted.”
The churches of the Global South don’t quite see it that way. In their letter announcing the break, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil stated that the PCUSA’s position goes, “against the principle of the authority of Scripture over the life and faith of the Church.”
As a result, partnerships in Brazil—such as ones that provides continuing education for Brazilian pastors and missionaries and plants new churches—will cease in 2016. However, the PCUSA continues to maintain links to the United Presbyterian Church of Brazil, a younger and smaller denomination that separated from the Presbyterian Church of Brazil in the 1970s. Work will also continue in Peru, though through other Presbyterian denominations in that country.
These rifts are tragic given that American Presbyterianism has a long history of significant global mission work—including starting virtually all of the denominations that have now distanced themselves from the PCUSA.
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Theology in and of itself has little to do with the current collapse of the PCUSA. As in all aspects of the denomination its all about money and power. The PCUSA is run and operated by and for the benefit of 3 classes of people. Tenured academics, careerist church bureaucrats, and the alphabet soup of various special interest groups usually organized around identity based and tribal ideologies.
What they all have in common is that they very little interest or care about the health or welfare of the local church or people in the pews, save whatever money they can extract from the system. The hyperbolic call from the Moderator to “reform” the church was not out of some deep desire to reform the church, but because the PMA is running out of money and they need squeeze whatever they can get from those remaining.
The local church and its people could vanish tomorrow, as long as the cash kept flowing upstream to Louisville and its minions, all is well. Well, the steam is dry, the people dead and gone. Too little, too late.
PCUSA’s promotion of sympathy for the devil is driving people away. If the leaders had a sliver of concern for the damage they have done, they would resign and ask forgiveness.
Well said SBaker and Peter Gregory!! Unless the PCUSA changes it current course, it will ultimately die! My next concern is the direction our Country is going! Has the Lord withdrawn his blessings on the USA and given us up to our depravities?