Objections to 6.0106b: What Really Is the Issue? By Julius B. Poppinga Elder, Montclair, NJ November 2000 One after another of the objections leveled against G-6.0106b, the “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard in the Book of Order, has fizzled. Early on, there was the specter of inquisitions and witch hunts with pulpits and sessions depopulated. None of this came to pass. Then the assertion surfaced that only saints and seventh-graders could qualify for church office under 6b, ignoring the efficacy of repentance and its pivotal place in the wording of 6b. Another tack was to cite a tiny number of the sins mentioned in the confessions and to ridicule 6b for including them in its sweep. But this approach faltered when one asked questions such as, Do you really want to elect an elder who puts Sunday football ahead of church? Is something missing in the theology of a pastor who thinks the risen Jesus can be portrayed in a picture? Should leaders in the church have no conscience as to usurious interest rates? Still another common error has been to overlook the plural use of the term “confessions” in 6b. By citing only one reference, critics of 6b have ignored qualifying terms found in parallel references. For example, the Presbytery of Northern New England in its recent General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission brief cited the Larger Catechism (7.227), proscribing certain activities on Sunday, but failed to take into account the parallel provision in the Shorter Catechism (7.061), where the word “unnecessary” limits the proscriptions. Again, frequently exegetes of 6b fail to apply the elementary principle of constitutional construction which prefers a reading that furthers the intent of a passage to a reading that frustrates that intent. Applying that principle to a reading of 6b requires one to take into account the use of the term “standards” in the two opening sentences, and to relate its use there to its use in G-6.0108b, recognizing that 6b and 8b both relate to the qualifications of persons for church office. Doing that, and applying the plural of “confessions,” leads to two conclusions: To give the words “practice the confessions call sin” in 6b an effect that invokes in isolation each and every act mentioned in any one confession violates both the text and the underlying intent of 6b. 6b should be read as applying to conduct that contravenes standards derived from Scripture as expressed in the historic confessions of the Church. An intelligent application of these two interpretative guidelines eliminates virtually all the strained objections that have been raised against the wording of 6b. Still, the crusade for the removal of 6b continues. What then is the real objection to 6b? Why are some, a few, but some, persons so determined to expunge it from the Book of Order? The answer is revealed in the position advanced (unsuccessfully) by the Presbytery of Northern New England (“PNNE”) and, separately, by the session of Second Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida (“SPC”). The former has run the gamut of the full judicial process, culminating in the May 2000 decision of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission. The latter is the subject of a recently filed complaint pending before the PJC of the Presbytery of Tropical Florida. Were one to read the record at the synod level in the PNNE case, one might think that the objections there were perceived inconsistencies between 6b and the inclusiveness provision of the Book of Order. But if one were to read the full record, including the briefs filed at the GA PJC level, one would see that the “inconsistencies” argument went nowhere. What surfaced instead is a mindset that PNNE has in common with SPC and that underlies all the criticisms of 6b: An unwillingness to be bound by a standard that relates sexual intimacies exclusively to marriage between a man and a woman. The session of SPC in its statement of dissent is fairly clear. It protests against “A standard for sexual behavior which precludes all but one possible model for appropriate and responsible sexual expression, or which focuses solely on fidelity and chastity.” The Presbytery of Northern New England was more explicit. In its brief before the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission it argued that in filling the offices of deacon and elder and in ordaining and installing ministers of the Word and Sacrament, churches should be free to include “heterosexual persons who live, without repentance, in an intimate relationship outside of marriage [and] self-affirming practicing homosexual persons” (PNNE Brief, p. 7, and see p. 9). There you have it. What the hard-core opponents of 6b really want is to throw off the moral constraint of the Judeo-Christian standard of sexuality. They see defeating 6b as a means of accomplishing that. Never mind that Scripture teaches uniformly that God’s blessing on human sexuality is linked exclusively to marriage between a man and a woman and that the standard of chastity and fidelity invoked in 6b is solidly grounded in the confessions. The advocates of sexual libertarianism know that as such, theirs is a losing issue. But by keeping up a drumbeat attack on 6b they hope to enlist the support of unsuspecting persons in the PCUSA sufficient in number to remove first the obstacle of G-6.0106b. Next will be the confessions, and then Scripture itself.

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