The Top Ten issues at GA – #3 Overture attempts to mandate use of inclusive God-language By Robert P. Mills The Layman Online Wednesday, June 16, 1999 FORT WORTH – The third-ranked issue coming to the 1999 General Assembly, one that would affect every service of worship held by every PCUSA congregation, is an overture that proposes requiring Presbyterian worship leaders to use inclusive language for God. Overture 99-24 from Western New York Presbytery would amend W-1.2006b of the Book of Order to read, "In its worship the church shall use language about God which is intentionally as diverse and varied as the Bible and our theological traditions." The mandatory "shall" coupled with the plural "our theological traditions" (which include the ReImagining God movement) would make it possible for charges to be filed against a minister who baptized "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" or an elder leading worship who began the Lord's Prayer "Our Father." The potential impact of this overture is enhanced by Overture 99-60 from Palisades Presbytery, which would have each presbytery send a report to next year's Assembly "disclosing in narrative and/or statistical form how inclusive language is used and/or studied in that presbytery's churches." It would only take one more small step to require such statistical reports of every congregation every year and to penalize those that failed to meet statistical standards for using inclusive God-language.

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