Tuesday, June 16

By Parker T. Williamson
The Presbyterian Layman

Douglas Oldenburg
General Assembly Moderator

Robert Bohl
Covenant Network Co-Moderator

CHARLOTTE, NC - At a breakfast gathering sponsored by Presbyterians for Renewal, General Assembly Moderator Douglas Oldenburg disputed an inaccurate report released by the Presbyterian News Service. Reporting on a June 16 meeting of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, the News Service said that when Oldenburg brought greetings to the group he indicated that he would "sign on" to the network's "Call to Covenant," a declaration that encourages defiance of the Constitution's ordination standards.

Oldenburg said that he had made no such pledge to sign the Covenant Network's statement and that he would not sign it. Apparently assuming that the Presbyterian News Service had gotten its information from officials of the Covenant Network, Oldenburg said that he was asking the network to issue "a retraction."

"I want to be the moderator of the whole church," said Oldenburg, who has invited James Mead, the man whom he defeated in the moderator's race, to be his Vice Moderator.

It was an off the cuff announcement by Covenant Network Co-Moderator Robert Bohl that apparently caused the confusion. Bohl asked all former moderators in the room to stand. Then, after boasting that 16 former moderators had signed his covenant statement, Bohl quipped: "Now that Doug [Oldenburg] has won the election he is free to say what he believes …; so that makes 17!"

Katie Geneva Cannon

CHARLOTTE, NC – Introduced as a "denominational prophet," Katie Geneva Cannon addressed a breakfast rally of Voices of Sophia, a Presbyterian group that grew out of the 1993 ReImagining God conference. Cannon is associate professor of religion at Temple University and author of Black Womanist Ethics. In a speech titled "Faithful Living in the Public Domain," she called on her audience to rekindle its commitment to overthrow the oppression of "paralyzing uncertainty."

Cannon said America’s moral environment has been polluted with an increase in hate crimes and the rise of groups like Promise Keepers. She said the danger of living in a polluted environment is that people adapt downward in order to survive within it. She suggested that her audience learn the lesson of Israel when it won the battle against Jericho but lost a subsequent war because its leaders acquired booty from those whom it had conquered. "We’ve been messing with the enemy’s stuff," she said. "The people of God should not attach themselves to anything that belongs to the enemy."

"As voices of Sophia, the personification of God’s wisdom in the world, we must be conscious of those with whom we travel," she said. "We must not march to the drumbeat of the moral majority."

Cannon offered three principles to help the Voices of Sophia live faithfully in the public domain: 1) Start with "rational self-interest," the wisdom of God that resides in us. 2) Exercise self-discipline in all things, rejecting "the enemy’s stuff" and confronting "Bible thumpers and Promise Keepers" who are "polluting the stamp of God on each person’s soul." 3) Develop God consciousness, by communicating with God regularly.

The Voices of Sophia, an independent organization, is allied with the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, and other groups seeking to make the Presbyterian Church (USA) a "more inclusive" denomination.


Voices of Sophia members give
"Sophia blessing" to their speaker

CHARLOTTE, NC — The General Assembly’s Committee on Health and Education Tuesday approved measures to tighten reins on the Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association [PHEWA] but rejected efforts that would have effectively dismantled the controversial agency as it now exists.

The committee voted against a motion that would have required each of PHEWA’s 10 "networks" of health and social action units to have at least 250 members. None has more than 80 now, so PHEWA networks would have had to increase membership dramatically to maintain eligibility for funding.

In a series of votes, the committee supported the substance of a General Assembly study that requires PHEWA to be more accountable to the General Assembly and the denomination’s National Ministries Division.

That means, in simple terms, no more statements defying the denomination’s policy, such as PHEWA’s endorsement of ordination of practicing homosexuals and its political efforts to shape national social service policy that might contradict General Assembly policy.

The study committee’s report acknowledged that PHEWA, while PCUSA funded, often operated in contradiction to denomination policy.

To rectify that, the study group proposed, and the Committee on Health and Education endorsed, a number of changes, including:

1. Requirement that PHEWA accept as network members other organizations that are involved in health affairs. One such organization, Presbyterians Pro-Life, applied for membership, but PHEWA never responded to its application.
2. Requirement that PHEWA enter into a revised covenant with the National Ministries Division, agreeing to abide by the mandates of the General Assembly.

PHEWA is an umbrella group for 10 "networks" — independent ministry and advocacy groups that get at least some PCUSA funding. It is also a hybrid of sorts. The staff and offices are commingled with the General Assembly’s Social Justice program area.

CHARLOTTE, NC — The National Network of Presbyterian College Women will lose sponsorship and funding if the General Assembly concurs with two key votes that were cast Tuesday by the Committee on Health and Education.

Advocates of the campus organization were on the defensive from the outset as critics used NNPCW’s own literature and activities to discredit the organization.

One example was the publication, Young Women Speak: Issues for Study by College Women, which advocates being united with Presbyterians for Gay and Lesbian Concerns and teaches that sex before and outside of marriage is morally equivalent to sex within marriage.

The votes against the network came despite an impassioned plea on behalf of NNPCW by Isabel Rogers, a former moderator of the PCUSA. She defended the network and its publication.

Holding high and waving a copy of Young Women Speak: Issues for Study by College Women, Rogers said, "I’ve been in education for 50 years. This is Christ-centered education…. I think this is a tremendously helpful document."

But Commissioner Walter Hackney of Louisiana seemed to express the sentiment of the majority of the members of the Health and Education Committee when he said bluntly that the authors of Young Women Speak were in error in preparing the material and that they owed the church an apology.

As moderator in 1984, Rogers appointed members of the denomination’s Human Sexuality Committee. That committee’s report, which was overwhelmingly rejected by the General Assembly, expressed moral approbation for the practices of adultery and homosexual behavior.

The group was also criticized for strange rituals that seemed alien to Reformed theology.

The Health and Education Committee first voted against an overture that would have increased funding by $273,000 over three years. It later voted in favor of an overture to withdraw sponsorship and current funding. The second overture suggested that NNPCW could continue as a special-interest group or that it could be integrated with the denomination’s co-educational campus ministry. Advocates of NNPCW opposed being absorbed into the co-educational ministry because, they said, the women needed "their space."

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