Booklet intended to make Presbyterians feel guilty By John H. Adams The Layman Online Tuesday, November 9, 2004 CHICAGO – "So sad! So very sad! These are stories of incredible pain." Thus observed Doug Oldenburg, moderator of the 210th General Assembly, in his afterword to Far from Home: Tales of Presbyterian Exiles, a booklet produced by the Covenant Network. Far from Home was designed for one purpose – to make Presbyterians feel guilty about the denomination's policy that prohibits the ordination of men and women who are sexually active outside of marriage. The booklet was distributed to the Presbyterians who attended the Nov. 4-6 annual conference of the Covenant Network in Chicago. The network wants its allies to use Far from Home to persuade Presbyterians to repeal the denomination's constitutional ordination standard. Far from Home includes 40 brief stories of gays and lesbians, parents and others who say they have left the PCUSA because of its "exclusionary" prohibition against ordaining practicing homosexuals. Some of the stories are about homosexual and lesbian couples. Some are about homosexuals who have AIDS. But one of those stories is no longer completely true. It is the account of the Rev. Pat Youngdahl, a lesbian activist, who was an ordained minister in the church for years but kept her lesbian relationship with Michal McKenzie, a former vice moderator of the denomination, a secret. She left the parish after coming out. Earlier this year, with the constitution-defying approval of the Presbytery of Genesee Valley, Youngdahl became interim associate pastor of Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y. One of the Covenant Network's long-time leaders, John Wilkinson, pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, was on the presbytery's Committee on Ministry that approved Youngdahl's call to Downtown Presbyterian Church. Neither Oldenburg (he's the retired president of Columbia Theological Seminary, a school that is supposed to train students to think theologically and Biblically) nor the exiles offer Biblical or theological reflection. There is no wrestling with the issue of whether the Bible is forthright in its message that homosexual practice is sinful. For the most part, they repeat a similar story: They were innately homosexual. They loved the Presbyterian Church. They were deeply devoted to God. They had gifts for ministry. They were denied their right to be ordained. They found other denominations, especially the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church, more hospitable. They would like to return from exile. The stories in Far from Home were compiled by Alice V. Anderson, who had served as a minister at a number of Presbyterian congregations before she accepted a call to serve a congregation in Virginia. Anderson says the Pastor Nominating Committee knew she had a 15-year relationship with another woman and the congregation approved the call. But two days after Easter in 2002, she says, "all hell broke lose" when some members of the congregation protested. She says the presbytery encouraged her to step down and she did. One story is about David Buttrick, who was a member of the faculty at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary for 14 years. He supported the ordination of homosexual students, and, according to his comments published in Far from Home, got "an unctuous letter from Tom Gillespie about loving homosexuals but hating their sin. He said he knew he spoke for all right-thinking professors when he articulated their position." At the time, Gillespie, now retired, was president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Gillespie was also a member of the General Assembly task force that wrote the 1978 Authoritative Interpretation that is the theological backbone of the denomination's constitutional "fidelity/chastity" ordination requirement. Buttrick left the PCUSA in 1993 to join the United Church of Christ. Another professor who once taught at a Presbyterian seminary is also featured. That's Paul Capetz, who was called to succeed Dr. John Leith at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond. Leith, who died in 2002, was an iconoclastic evangelical and one of the most influential theologians in Union's history. At Union, Capetz says he was accused of being homosexual. According to Anderson, he refused to answer Union's officials when they asked him whether that was true. Anderson quoted him as telling them, "I'm single. I live my life in compliance with the moral norms of the church." But he later decided to leave Union and he voluntarily laid aside his ordination as a minister of Word and Sacrament. He teaches now at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. According to Anderson, he said, "I found it impossible in good conscience that I would never have a romantic [homosexual] relationship again." Anderson says she hopes the stories in Far from Home "will help readers begin to recognize the mighty cloud of gay and lesbian Christian witnesses surrounding them who have taken up the gospel mandate to follow Jesus. We are everywhere." That includes, the booklet says, Dennis Crawford of Concord, Calif., ordained as a Presbyterian since 1979 after graduating from Whitworth College and Fuller Theological Seminary, evangelicals schools. Crawford left the PCUSA in 1997 in the fallout over his leaving his wife and children to fulfill his homosexual orientation. He said he prayed that, if homosexuality was a sin, that God would make him a heterosexual. Anderson quotes Crawford as saying: "Instead, God affirmed, 'I created you. You are a gay man. It's good. You're good.' I asked God to heal me from homosexuality and instead, God healed me from homophobia." Anderson said that as of the date of the publication of Far from Home, Crawford was seeking ordination in the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination begun principally for homosexuals. "The stories in this little booklet are only the tip of the iceberg," Oldenburg says. "Scores and scores have left our denomination because of our policies about gay and lesbian people." Oldenburg doesn't date the beginning of the disapora of homosexuals. But the issue has been on the front burner of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and its predecessor denominations since 1978. That year, there were 3.4 million Presbyterians. At the end of 2003, there were 2.4 million – a loss of nearly 1 million, or 30 percent. The overwhelming majority were not homosexuals seeking ordination in the PCUSA.

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