Linda Ardan, Mr. Moderator, Mr. Vice Moderator, committee members and friends.

I thank you for the opportunity to express concerns about the program and resources of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women.

I have prepared a series of slides which I believe will help you in the task you have been given by the 210^th General Assembly. Copies of the slides and my observations are included in packets that will be given to each member of the committee and the press at the conclusion of my presentation.

I begin with a statement of broad concerns that form a context for the controversy that now surrounds the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, hereafter referred to as "The Network."

Since the 1960’s, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost more than one million members. Our failures in Christian education have produced a generation of Presbyterians, many of whom are biblically illiterate. Our once unrivaled influence on government – an influence that informed the fabric of this nation’s public philosophy – has decayed into incidents of whimpering social protest. Much of our global mission has lost the power of the Gospel.

But the good news is that early in this decade we began to see signs of change. In 1991, our General Assembly received a report from its Task Force on Human Sexuality that called for a radically unbiblical sexual ethic. Commissioners to the 1991 assembly overwhelmingly rejected it, signaling what I believe were early signs that a turnaround had begun.

In 1994, the General Assembly rejected – again by an overwhelming margin – key themes of the ReImagining God movement. This time, the commissioners sent a letter to every congregation in the denomination, declaring that the theology of our Reformed Tradition matters and that we are committed to teaching that theology to our children and to our children’s children.

In 1997 and 1998, we spent two wrenching years debating and voting on the language of our ordination standards, making explicit in the Constitution our biblical sexual ethic. We concluded that chapter with two declarative votes: one that established the standards of chastity in singleness and fidelity in marriage and the second, by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, that reaffirmed those standards.

Thus, in the latter half of the 1990s, the Presbyterian Church began to reflect something of its historic character – grounding its actions in the Word of God and assessing proposed policies according to principles expressed in our written Constitution.

Our membership decline in 1997 was one of the lowest since reunion: A sign, I believe, of our renewed hope that, after a generation of drifting off course, the Presbyterian Church is returning to its polestar: Jesus Christ and its foundational authority, the Holy Bible.

The question addressed by the 210^th General Assembly regarding the program and resources of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women was simply this: Is this organization’s program and resource material consistent with the teachings of Scripture and our Constitution, or is it promoting and reflecting an aberrant philosophy, one that the General Assembly has explicitly and repeatedly rejected?

As members of the committee reviewing the Network, your task was well defined by the Assembly:

1. To evaluate the resources, publications and program of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women.
2. To ensure that those resources, publications and program are consistent with the Scripture and the Constitution of the PCUSA.
3. To submit a complete report, including recommendations for future funding, to the 211^th General Assembly.

You were not asked to conduct an ad hominem exercise, either to vouch for or to criticize the young women who are part of this group.

Neither will I.

You were not asked to reopen issues - like the morality of homosexual behavior – on which the General Assembly has clearly spoken.

Neither will I.

 Instead, you were asked to evaluate the Network’s program and recommended resources in the light of Scripture and our Constitution consisting of our Book of Confessions and our Book of Order, the authoritative documents of our denomination.

When your committee was established, the Network described its own resources in a publication titled Young Women Speak, and on its official PCUSA World Wide Web site. Shortly after the 210^th General Assembly voted to establish a committee to evaluate the Network’s resources, these two sources vanished. Young Women Speak was declared out of print, and the Web Site disappeared without explanation.

But before these resources disappeared, our own independent investigation reviewed, recorded and preserved them. We know precisely what program and resources were offered by this network at the very moment in which the General Assembly called for their evaluation. And it is on the basis of that documentation that I speak.

In both Young Women Speak and the Network’s web pages, three clear emphases emerged that run contrary to Scripture and our Constitution:

1. A showcasing of ReImagining God themes and a promotion of its leaders.
2. A sanctioning of pre-marital sex, both heterosexual and homosexual.
3. An aggressive commitment to support the ordination of persons who engage in sex outside marriage.

On several occasions, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has clearly rejected these three emphases:

1. In 1991, the General Assembly voted 523-17 to reject the report and recommendations of its Task Force on Human Sexuality, particularly its ethic called "justice-love."
2. In 1994, the General Assembly voted 526-4 to declare key themes of the ReImagining God movement beyond the boundaries of Christian faith.
3. In 1996-1997, the presbyteries voted to insert the "chastity/fidelity" clause in the Constitution.
4. And in 1997-1998, the presbyteries voted 2 to 1 to re-affirm those ordination standards.

There is no question where our General Assembly stands with respect to the theology and ethics of the Reformed Tradition. Here is what it said in Wichita: "Let there be no doubt that theology matters, that our Reformed tradition is precious to us, and that we intend to hand it down to the next generation: our children and our grandchildren."

We would expect, therefore, that official program agencies of this same General Assembly would do precisely that. We would expect that the Network’s program and resources would reflect the theology and ethics of our Reformed Tradition, certainly that it would not promote positions that the General Assembly has specifically rejected and declared beyond the boundaries of the Reformed Tradition.

So what has the Network included among its resources?

Delores Williams’ comment at the 1993 ReImagining Conference, and again at its "revival" in 1998, encapsulates the theology of the movement. It is a theology away from Jesus Christ – a theology that seeks to divorce women and men from their relationship with the Christ who died for our sins and rose to rule our hearts and minds.

So where’s the connection between the Network and the ReImagining movement? It runs throughout the pages of Young Women Speak and the Internet resources that the Network recommended for young college women.

An obvious personal connection is Mary Ann Lundy, who, while a PCUSA staff member, secured funding for the ReImagining Conference. It was Ms. Lundy, then director of Women’s Ministries, who gave birth to the Network. And it is Ms. Lundy who declares that being ecumenical means moving beyond the boundaries of Christian faith.

By what stretch of imagination does the philosophy of this Network founder square with our denominational standards?

Another key resource for the Network is lesbian activist Carter Heyward. Her book, Touching our Strength: the Erotic and Power and the Love of God, discloses a theology that is unChristian to the core: Jesus, she declares, is not God.

By what stretch of imagination does this Network resource square with our denominational standards?

Fortunately, Carter Heyward is honest. She literally admits that "the body of Christa cannot be, and should never become, an exclusively or uniquely Christian body."

This is a Network resource, offered to our college women without a hint of criticism, without disclaimer – a blatantly unChristian affirmation, offered, presumably as if it were Christian.

Our great Reformed principle is Sola Scriptura – Scripture alone. But not any more. At least, not if Johanna Bos is to be believed. Here’s what she says in a book recommended by the Network: "In view of the overwhelmingly patriarchal cast of the Bible, we must ask whether it is possible for feminists to maintain a belief in the centrality of Scripture and its authority."

And here is Beverly Wildung Harrison, who manages to violate both our Christian faith and our Christian ethic in this resource, again recommended by the Network: "Jesus is not … the possessor of a unique relationship with God." And here’s her counsel to young people who are discovering and interpreting their sexual feelings: "trial relationships … should be encouraged as positive and ethically appropriate."

If the Reformed Tradition is wrong – if Scripture is not our authority – then what is? This Network resource gives us our answer. Authority is to be found in nothing less than our own experience. So let’s all just get together and share our "stories." Presumably, in our sharing we will learn that one person’s experience is as good as another.

There are other ingredients in the theological stew being stirred by this Network. This recommended resource pours in a measure of Marxism. And just what "new insights" does Phyllis Trible find in Marxism? Where was she when the Soviet Union fell? Has she learned nothing from North Korea, the boat people from Cuba, the rejection Ortega experienced when the Nicaraguan people spoke in free, internationally supervised elections?

Is it just possible that the last vestige of Marxism – an intellectually discredited philosophy that has failed wherever it was attempted – will be found clinging to the skirts of this Network?

But some are sure to say, "Those are only the views of Lundy, and Heyward, Williams and Trible. Just because the Network recommended them doesn’t mean it promotes them." Setting aside the obvious question of why the Network chose such resources over all others, you be the judge of what appears from the Network leaders’ own hand:

Here’s a bit of poetry from Young Women Speak:

Who do people say we are?

Partner to our Sister God …

Mothers of mothers who age and die and

return to our Primeval Mother …

Daughter of the Daughter of God,

the Christa of the New Creation.

Artemis of the Ephesians couldn’t have said it any better than that!

Or consider the Network’s recommended resource by a well-known gay activist: "I do not claim Christian spirituality encompasses all truth or the only truth."

So much for Jesus’ words: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me."

And do the Network’s new rituals – like ReImagining’s milk and honey – add to its Christian witness? Or are they modern-day pilgrimages to Bethel and Gilgal, where Israel added Baalism to the worship of Yahweh? Should we not warn our young women that they cannot heal themselves with invented or borrowed rituals?

Should they not be told that it is "by his stripes that we are all healed?"

I believe anyone who reads Young Women Speak or who saw the Network’s web site before it was suddenly removed will come to the unambiguous conclusion: There’s a lot about sex. And you will also discover that the material on that subject expresses a very clear ethic.

Meet James Nelson, the sex expert who was staff consultant to the 1991 Task Force on Human Sexuality. In this resource, recommended by the Network to its college women readers, we have the ethic that no sexual act is wrong in itself. Not as long as the people involved in this act have genuine equality and mutual respect. If they agree to do it, and neither is forcing the other, then it’s OK. They call that "justice love."

The 1991 General Assembly utterly rejected that philosophy. But the Network’s resources are doing their best to keep it alive.

Since the 210^th General Assembly in Charlotte, the Network has held its "national meeting." And who should appear as its featured leader than Sylvia Thorson-Smith, who with James Nelson was one of the drafters of the Human Sexuality Report that the Assembly rejected. Here’s her good counsel to young people:

To advise teenagers against premarital sex "represents an ethic of control .. of judgment. … To do that to teenagers one more time because they are teenagers violates what we’re trying to do with this whole report."

Here’s the Network’s advice for college women: "God is letting me know that it doesn’t matter whether I have a relationship with a man or a woman, just as long as I remember that God is the center of the love."

The sexual ethic promoted by this Network requires us to believe three negatives: The Bible is outdated. Reformed Theology is irrelevant. And any principle that fails to make room for justice-love is repressive.

Is this the ethic that we would have raised up by a Presbyterian organization? The General Assembly has on repeated occasions said No.

Finally, the Network has promoted the ordination of self-avowed, practicing gays and lesbians. Now I recognize that this is an opinion held by a minority of Presbyterians, and as such we may engage it in respectful discourse and debate. I fault no independent group for promoting its agenda, making its best case.

The Witherspoon Society does it. Voices of Sophia does it. Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, now called More Light Presbyterians, does it. These independently-funded organizations have a perfect right to raise their own funds, publish their own periodicals and contest the church’s standards.

But the National Network of Presbyterian College Women is not an independent organization. It operates under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and, as such, it is funded by offerings from our churches.

Is it too much to ask that an official agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA) affirm the faith and ethics of our denomination as they are stated in our standards: Scripture, the Book of Confessions, and the Book of Order?

There is something inherently dishonest about any organization that would take money from the church and use that money to promote philosophies and practices that the church itself has explicitly rejected.

Although my final comments refer to matters that some would assign to darkness, I shall speak of them in the light. Your packets contain printouts tracing links from the Network’s Internet web page. That site provided not merely links to pornography, but explicit directions on getting there, and electronic help for those who chose to make the trip.

In this presentation, I will spare you graphic details. I have provided all members of the committee with abridged copies of my report, and one member of your committee, the Vice Moderator, an unabridged version. Suffice it to say that the official web site of the Network, using facilities provided by the PCUSA, was an Internet gateway to hard-core homosexual pornography.

Some have argued that the Internet is a giant interlinked electronic database, and that a user can easily locate pornography on it. That is true. But there is a difference between finding offensive material through one’s own prurient pursuits and being directed to that material by the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Shortly after our discovery of the Network’s Internet activities, the website’s contents disappeared without explanation. I believe I know what happened. Alerted to the fact that an examination had been ordered by the General Assembly, someone pulled the plug.

Now, shortly before this committee met to begin its deliberations, the website is back, this time without the pornography, and with no reference to that material that preceded it.

We note that the website no longer recommends, as it once did, the ReImagining and sex-liberation leaders that you met earlier in my presentation.

The new web site does not include the content of Young Women Speak, which they now say is being revised.

Let me say now – unequivocally and for the record – that I rejoice over the disappearance of the original web site and the original Young Women Speak.

As one who saw the former things and documented them, I marvel that such massive conversion could occur in such a timely fashion - just after an investigation had been ordered and just before your deliberations began.

I want you to know that I believe in the possibility of conversion. How could any Christian deny it? I believe that the grace of God can and does redeem us and turn us from our evil ways. He has done that in my life, and I must assume that he can and will do that for others.

Therefore, having seen a new direction established by the Network on its revised web site, I affirm the possibility that this change reflects conversion. I also affirm the possibility that it represents mere window-dressing, established for the duration of this committee’s inquiry. Any reasonable person would agree that either explanation is possible.

How can we know which possibility represents the truth?

You, members of the General Assembly committee, have within your grasp a tool by which you can make that determination. You can simply ask the leadership of the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, both staff and the students themselves, if the new emphases on their web site represent a change of heart.

In the light of what they have published and as a matter of record, you must ask them if they truly repent of advocating

1. ReImagining God ideologies
2. Sexual relationships outside the covenant of marriage
3. Overturning and defying the denomination’s biblical and constitutional ordination standards.

If the answer is affirmative, then as far as the Presbyterian Lay Committee is concerned, this case is closed. We will applaud their change of heart, commend their new direction and suggest that this program be folded into whatever accountable agencies are accorded responsibility for college ministry in our denomination.

But if these Network leaders and advisors do not explicitly reject the organization’s former dalliances with ReImagining ideology, an unbiblical sexual ethic, and the forces that seek even now to undermine our ordination standard, I urge you to conclude the obvious: that the Network has declared itself beyond denominational accountability and is therefore not entitled to office space, staff, support, funding, letterheads, conferences, web sites or publications that bear the imprimatur of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

We live in a time of such linguistic word games that it is often difficult to ascertain what "is" is. Your unequivocal question, and their unequivocal answer can give us all the clarity we need to deal with the matters that are before us fairly and honestly.

I ask you, therefore, to ask the question, record the answer, and make your recommendations to the 211^th General Assembly accordingly.