PCUSA staff leaders are conducting private meeting with disparate factions By John H. Adams The Layman Online Monday, October 27, 2003 A private meeting began this morning at a retreat center near Chicago involving top-ranking staff members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and representatives of the evangelical and liberal wings of the denomination. The meeting was scheduled to conclude on Wednesday at the Harrison Bluff Conference Center in Lake Bluff, Ill., which is near Chicago. The conference center lists its individual room rates for those days at $115 per day, which does not include the cost of a meeting room. At that rate, the cost of the meeting is well over $1,100 a day. Details of the meeting and the invitation list were closely guarded. But The Layman Online did learn the names of the four evangelicals who were attending: Jerry Andrews and Anita Bell of the Presbyterian Coalition and Nancy Cross and Keith Hill of Presbyterians For Renewal. The Layman Online was unable to determine the names of those who were attending from the liberal wing of the denomination. Several people reportedly turned down an invitation from the organizers of the meeting, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick and General Assembly Council Executive Director John Detterick. One Presbyterian who spurned their invitation told The Layman Online off the record that the meeting could go in one of two directions: "it may be innocuous, touchy, feely" or "potentially much bad" could result. In their invitation letter, Kirkpatrick and Detterick did not reveal matters they wished to discuss or whether they intended to use the meeting to try to reconcile the growing division in the denomination. They said the meeting would focus on a Bible study taken from the letter to the Ephesians. This was the second attempt by Kirkpatrick and Detterick to pull together leaders of the disparate factions of the denomination. Their first effort in March failed after they invited 12 special-interest liberals and evangelicals, but many declined. Kirkpatrick and Detterick had invited six representatives of Presbyterians For Renewal and the Presbyterian Coalition, the evangelical groups, and six from the Covenant Network, which opposes the denomination's "fidelity/chastity" ordination standard and orthodox Christian teachings. Before he and Kirkpatrick canceled the meeting, Detterick told The Layman Online that reporters who cover the Presbyterian Church (USA) would not be allowed to attend the closed-door sessions. In its March 7 account, The Layman Online said Jack Haberer, president of Presbyterians For Renewal acknowledged that he had been invited. About an hour after he talked to The Layman Online, Haberer sent Kirkpatrick and Detterick an E-mail saying he would not attend. Haberer said his reason for not attending the meeting was that he did not want to do anything to interfere with the work of the denomination's Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity. Haberer is a member of the task force. Two Covenant Network board members who received invitations to the proposed March meeting – Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, and John Wilkinson, the pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y. – are also members of the Theological Task Force. Wheeler and Wilkinson decided not to accept the invitation in March because they, like Haberer, were concerned about whether their attendance might tarnish perceptions of their work with the task force. In 1998, Kirkpatrick conducted a private meeting with Presbyterians who were affiliated with some of the same groups that are currently polarized by the ordination issue. The result of that meeting was a negotiated deal – "A Call to Sabbatical," which asked the 1999 and 2000 General Assemblies not to consider constitutional amendments that would repeal or change the PCUSA ordination standard. The Call to Sabbatical also called for a moratorium on judicial cases against Presbyterian officers who defied the ordination standard.

Respond to this article

Home · Archives · The Layman · PLC Publications Presbyterian Lay Committee · Feedback · Links