Speakers urge ASCWP to uphold traditional families By John H. Adams The Layman Online Friday, September 26, 2003 LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Citing "utter chaos in the sexual revolution," the Rev. Tim Jessen told the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy that "it's time for the Presbyterian Church (USA) to speak an important word about the importance of faithfulness in marriage." Jessen was one of four people who addressed the committee during a public hearing Sept. 24. The committee has begun work to revise its controversial paper, "Living Faithfully: Families in Transition." Jessen cited two cases in which two Presbyterians – Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton and former Louisville Theological Seminary President John M. Mulder – have acknowledged having affairs as examples of that chaos. Jessen called on ACSWP to revise its paper so that "we can hold to the ideal of a Christian man and woman in marriage … instead of all the time saying this is OK, this is OK." Critics believe that one of the central flaws in the ACSWP paper was its lack of any specifically Christian standards for marriage or families. The paper, in fact, suggested that there is no "ideal," but that all kinds of "family relationships" - including unwed mothers, homosexual couples and unmarried couples – were of equal merit. Besides Jessen, speakers at the hearing included Landon Whitsitt, a student at Louisville Theological Seminary; Jean Snyder of the Presbytery of the Presbytery of Cincinnati; and Shannon Mechan, also a student at Louisville Theological Seminary. The committee also distributed to members of its task force and writing team copies of comments sent via e-mail. Whitsitt, describing himself as a "Johnny-come-lately" to the discussion, said he thought the ACSWP document was a "good one … a great start. It gave us a broad, sweeping foundation. But I didn't think the paper went far enough." Saying that he and his wife came from families in which their parents had divorced, Whitsitt said the paper needed to add a "prophetic voice. We ought to have a piece that says, 'Families, if you want to do better, here's what you do.'" He added, "I don't know how you say that theologically, I don't know how you say that ethically. But I don't want my children to deal with what I have had to deal with." But Synder was critical of the church's response to her divorce and said she found the nonjudgmental paper "well researched, well documented and well written." "I'm here to relate my experiences with family," she said, arguing that the so-called perfect family models ascribed "to the '50s do not exist." She said she got a divorce from an emotionally and sexually abusive husband and that she raised her children by herself. She said she was criticized by the church for getting the divorce and later setting up a household with another woman - "even though both of us were heterosexual" – and together raising their children. In response, Snyder said she dropped out of the church and raised her children her way. Both of her children have been successful, she said, including a daughter who is a surgeon. "Neither the Bible nor the Book of Confessions contains a singular description of the family," Snyder said, urging the committee not to endorse the marriage of one man and one woman as the ideal. Alan Wisdom of Presbyterian Action, a member of the writing team for the revision, told Snyder that her interpretation of the motives of Presbyterians who seek to uphold Biblical standards for families and child-rearing "is painful for me. It's not what I and others I worked with consciously intended. Our intention is to help all families." But Snyder said the Christian perspective offered by Wisdom and others as an alternative to the ACSWAP document had another impact on her. "You're telling me I was second class. My family was broken before we left that marriage. It was not broken afterwards." Jessen, of Mitchell, Ind., appeared before the committee as an errand for his son, Chris, who was a youth advisory delegate to the 215th General Assembly. He said Chris had intended to speak on the floor of the General Assembly and tell commissioners, "'I grew up in a traditional family. I think that's the best way to grow up. I resent that kind of family being called mythological.' Unfortunately, Chris didn't get to make that speech." Jessen said the ASCWP paper included "little … about the kind of family experience I've had." As a parish minister for more than 30 years, Jessen said he had seen the devastating effects of people failing to follow Biblical principles. "This very campus on which we are meeting is reeling right now" because of the disclosure that the Presbytery of Transylvania had recently disciplined Mulder by stripping him of his ministerial credentials. "And a year ago, [Patton] the governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a personal friend of mine, a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), confessed to an affair – destroying all the good he had done." Shannon Mechan also argued that the paper needed a stronger theological statement about the value of the traditional family. "My generation is crying out for an example – something that's going to lead us in God's path," she said.

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