Synod prohibits presbytery review of defiant session By John H. Adams The Layman Online Tuesday, January 7, 2003 Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, whose leaders have repeatedly declared their defiance of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has won its request that the Synod of the Covenant prohibit administative review by the Presbytery of Cincinnati. The synod court, responding to a complaint by the session of Mt. Auburn, issued a stay of enforcement while a presbytery investigating committee considers a disciplinary complaint against the Rev. Stephen Van Kuiken. The disciplinary complaint accuses Van Kuiken of "participating in the ordination and installation of deacons and elders who refuse to repent of self-acknowledged practice(s) which the confessions call sin." In its remedial complaint to the synod court, the Mt. Auburn session argued that it was unconstitutional to have two judicial cases on the same issue proceeding simultaneously, even though administrative review by the presbytery would be broader in scope than consideration of disciplinary measures against Van Kuiken. Copies of the Mt. Auburn complaint and the response of the synod court – the latter at the conclusion of the presbytery's minutes for its Nov. 12, 2002 meeting – were posted recently on the Web site of the Presbytery of Cincinnati. "Complainants believe that the impending course of action by the Presbytery amounts to consideration of the same charges both by a permanent judicial commission and by a quasi-judicial administrative commission," the Mount Auburn session said in its complaint. "Complainants believe this to be irregular in light of D-3.0102: 'When a case, either remedial or disciplinary, has been transmitted to a permanent judicial commission, the electing governing body shall take no further judicial action on the case.' Any actions by an administrative commission (see G-9.0505), no less than the appointment of the administrative commission itself, are actions by 'the electing governing body.'" After referring the disciplinary case against Van Kuiken to a presbytery investigating committee, the presbytery also formed an administrative commission to consider remedies recommended by Madiera-Silverwood Church, an evangelical congregation. The Madiera-Silverwood proposal would have required the administrative commission to order Mt. Auburn to rescind its repeated public declarations of intent to defy constitutional prohibitions against ordaining practicing homosexuals and "marrying" homosexual couples. In addition to repeated declarations by the ministers and session of Mt. Auburn that they will not comply with G-6.0106b – the "fidelity/chastity" ordination standard – both Van Kuiken and Harold Porter, pastor emeritus of Mt. Auburn, have publicly announced that they have married same-gender couples. The Mt. Auburn session told the synod court that the administrative commission would have been biased against Mt. Auburn because it was instructed to meet with the session of Madiera-Silverwood as well as Mt. Auburn's elders. Furthermore, the administrative commission's authority would have included deleting Van Kuiken's name from the roll of the presbytery, which "would seem to us fully as harsh as any result of a remedial case before a permanent judicial commission," the Mt. Auburn session said.

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