Covenant Network schedules annual conference Nov. 4-6 The Layman Online Tuesday, August 3, 1999 The Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which has taken the leading role in opposition to the ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church (USA), has scheduled its annual conference in Atlanta Nov. 4-6. The principal speakers will be Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, and Douglas John Hall, a professor emeritus of Christian theology at McGill University in Montreal. Wheeler is a member of the executive committee of the Covenant Network and author of a document that summons liberals to use a 75-year-old strategy to take over control of the denomination. That document was circulated widely by the Covenant Network through its web site and newsletter, although the Network did not officially endorse Wheeler's strategy. In that document, Wheeler said that when a majority of the presbyteries voted to place and maintain the current ordination standards in the PCUSA constitution, it put the liberal minority in a "difficult, even tragic, dilemma: whether to defy the policies openly, a step that could well lead to disciplinary charges and removal from the ministry; or to acknowledge the force of these policies as church law while working to change them and perhaps quietly subverting them." Obedience not on list Wheeler did not include obedience to the constitution in her list of options. She stated that her alternatives "weigh heavily on the conscience because they require - at least for the time being - countenancing actions that are wrong and possibly also making statements that are untrue." Hall, an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, is the author of 25 books. He has served on numerous theological committees of the World Council of Churches. Hall will speak on ecclesiology and Christology during the conference. Wheeler will talk about "how congregations and sessions can apply Presbyterian and Reformed Biblical and confessional standards in considering specific ecclesial and ethical issues today."

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