'I don't know if we can ever trust you again' over the plain meaning of marriage, Gagnon says By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Thursday, June 22, 2006 217th General Assembly Birmingham, Ala. BIRMINGHAM - "I don't know if we can ever trust you again," a commissioner said Wednesday morning as he sought to remove any ambiguity in the "fidelity/chastity" clause in the Book of Order to emphasize that "there are to be no sexual relations outside the covenant of marriage between a man an a woman." Robert Gagnon, an elder commissioner from Pittsburgh Presbytery, sought to have the 217th General Assembly approve a minority report in place of a recommendation from the General Assembly Committee on Ecclesiology. That recommendation, from an overture from the Presbytery of Mississippi, said: "The 217th General Assembly (2006) of the PC(USA) hereby confirms that the requirement for fidelity and/or chastity as set forth in Section G-6.0106b of the Book of Order plainly prohibits practicing homosexuals, adulterers, or anyone engaged in sexually immoral conduct from being ordained and/or installed to church office whether as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament." The minority report sought to strengthen the language so that it would read as follows: "The 217th General Assembly (2006) of the PC(USA) hereby confirms that the requirement for fidelity and/or chastity as set forth in Section G-6.0106b of the Book of Order plainly prohibits practicing[, unrepentant] homosexuals, adulterers, or anyone engaged in [sexually immoral conduct] [unrepentant sexual relations outside the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman] from being ordained and/or installed to church office whether as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament." Gagnon said that the minority report affirms "that there are to be no sexual relations outside the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman." "I have never had a responsible response to why G-6.0106b is a particular standard of the covenant of marriage," he said, "if not for the express purpose of saying that it's essential. Non-compliance with the plain meaning of the Book of Order violates trust. Proponents of the recommendation [of the General Assembly Committee on Ecclesiology] say, 'Trust us.' I don't know if we can ever trust you again." The plain reading, Gagnon said, "confines sexual relations to the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. The plain meaning is crystal clear in Matthew 19 and the teachings of the church." "I ask the General Assembly to make the meaning of the text clear to anyone who would like to twist the meaning into a postmodernist sense," he said. Speaking in opposition, Jack Rogers, moderator of the 213th General Assembly, said that the Westminster Confession of Faith, "in the first chapter, says that all things in Scripture are not essential and those things that are essential are clear." "But it says that in controversies in religion, we are to go back and study," he said. "As we enter this period of discernment, it is well to realize that there are a variety of views among Presbyterian scholars as to how the Bible is to be interpreted." Rogers made comparisons by comparing the treatment of African Americans and women in the 1800s. In regard to those issues, he said, "We changed our minds and for the better, and we are now enriched by that change of mind. Let us go forward with study in this period of discernment." Commissioners voted (335-169-5) to reject the minority report, then voted (353-152-5) to approve the majority report.

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