August 22, 2001 Dear Moderator Rogers and Stated Clerk Kirkpatrick: We appreciate the fact that your letter of August 3 addressed us as brothers and sisters in Christ and extended greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We respond in that spirit as we seek to honor Him. As requested, we have reconsidered the opinion expressed in the July/August The Layman editorial, in light of the thoughts in your letter. The editorial was written by our Editor in Chief and was approved for publication by our Publications Committee in individual obedience to the mandates of our confessions to test all church pronouncements and teachings in the light of Holy Scripture. The limited construct of apostasy you offer distorts the editorial. The editorial clearly delineated the classical definition of apostasy and we unanimously endorse and support that editorial for the reasons stated below. First, neither the Presbyterian Lay Committee nor The Layman purports to act as a church or a church court, but assessment of apostasy is not reserved solely to such bodies by our church Constitution. Do we not believe in the priesthood of all believers, that church councils do err, and that the decrees of the church are to be honored and respected only insofar as they are consistent with Scripture? Foundational to our system of government are the principles of open debate and the application of Scripture. By what provision of our Constitution, or the duties of your offices, do you have authority to censor, or intimidate by threat of disciplinary action, either the free press or those who challenge the actions of an Assembly that are inconsistent with Scripture? As Ch. 20, of the Scots Confession states: "But if men, under the name of a council, pretend to forge for us new articles of faith, or to make decisions contrary to the Word of God, then we must utterly deny them as… drawing our souls from the voice of the one God to follow the doctrines and teachings of men." Or, as Ch. 2 of the Second Helvetic Confession states: "Certainly Jeremiah and the other prophets vehemently condemned the assemblies of priests which were set up against the law of God; and diligently admonished us that we should not listen to the fathers, or tread in their path who, walking in their own inventions, swerved from the law of God." Second, the July/August editorial was not, as your letter incorrectly alleges, a personal attack on the individuals who served as commissioners. Neither we, nor the editorial, dispute the sincerity, motivations, or work ethic of individual commissioners at the Assembly. Indeed, more than a few commissioners are active participants in the renewal groups of the church, and many of the Assembly minority share our views of the Assembly actions. The editorial's assessment and our sincere disagreement refer to the erroneous end product of majority votes, which unfortunately became the official positions of the 213th Assembly. Third, the Assembly majority deliberately limited its declaration of Jesus as Lord to the personal, subjective sense only. It refused to affirm Jesus as the Lord and the Savior of all mankind in an objective sense. This "departs from the stand," clearly taught in Scripture and repeatedly set forth in our Book of Confessions. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." The unequivocal message of the gospel is not merely "Jesus is my Lord"; it is also "Jesus is the Lord." (See Attachment A for citations to our Book of Confessions.) The Assembly's failure to answer culture's challenge to Christ's identity, thereby repudiating the gospel, is apostasy – precisely what Martin Luther described as flight and disgrace: "If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battle besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." Fourth, the Assembly majority deliberately caused the General Assembly to repudiate more than 20 years of definitive guidance and to jettison the sexual ethic taught by Scripture and the Christian church since its inception, thus requiring all presbyteries to vote for the third time on our ordination standard. It begs the question to say that G-6.0106b only became part of the PC (USA) Constitution in 1997. Prior to that time it simply had not been necessary to place formally in the Constitution that which the church had universally taught for two millennia. The local option proposal of the Assembly would give license to churches and presbyteries to bless and ordain that which Scripture unambiguously calls unholy. With the sexual chaos of our culture so evident, and the need for the prophetic voice of Scripture so clear, the repudiation of Biblical sexual ethics by this Assembly is apostasy. Flinching and flight in the face of this cultural challenge bring disgrace to all our churches, causing members to drop out and others to decline to join at all. Biblical sexual ethics are rightly defined by German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg as an essential boundary of historic Scriptural faith: "Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the authority of Scripture. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand no longer on biblical ground but against the unequivocal witness of Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church." Fifth, it is disturbing that you would presume to use your offices to try to censor expression of sincere convictions in the free and independent press, through what appear to be thinly veiled threats of disciplinary action for alleged violation of "the spirit of our ordination vows." The first vow is to trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and "acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church." The second is to accept Holy Scripture as "the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ. . .and God's word to (us)." The Presbyterian Lay Committee's own commitment to freedom of expression is demonstrated by our setting aside space in each issue of The Layman for you both to publish your views without editorial control. Our Board and our staff will continue to exercise our rights of conscience, consistent with the Book of Order and our vows, in obedience to God's Word. Our opinions are directed at the actions of the Assembly, not at individual commissioners, and we will continue to honor our vows to seek to be a friend among our colleagues in ministry. We believe the declaration of apostasy on the actions of this General Assembly is not only consistent with those vows, it is also faithful to their spirit. Sixth, in his July 6 letter to the church, the Moderator stated "Commissioners voting against the change believed that there is a clear word of Scripture that all homosexual practice is sin. . .It is unfair to impugn the motives of opponents on matters of this moment." We find it strange that by August you would jointly impugn the motives of the staff of The Layman and this Board, questioning our faithfulness to the spirit of our ordination vows. Strange, indeed, because to our knowledge neither of you has written nor spoken even a word of concern when ministers of Word and Sacrament openly proclaimed explicit disobedience to our Constitutional sexual standards; publicly questioned the efficacy of Christ's death and resurrection by asking "what's the big deal about Jesus"; otherwise "preach(ed) another gospel"; or when a recent former moderator publicly "damned" conservative renewalists and wished "them out of the church." We urge you to reconsider your double standard for upholding our Constitution and accountability to ordination vows. Since you publicly questioned the faithfulness of our staff and this Board to our ordination vows by releasing your letter to the press before it could be received by us, it is appropriate that we respond publicly by releasing this response to the whole church. We will publish your full letter in the next issue of The Layman along with this response and we trust that our response will be included in any further communications issued by your offices. We assure you this letter was drafted by Directors of The Lay Committee, and every Director had opportunity for input on its contents. We are in unanimous agreement on these matters as our individual signatures on the following page attest. We also assure you that the Presbyterian Lay Committee is committed to the peace and unity of the church, as well as to its purity, and to the maxim that "he who has the head to criticize should also have the heart to help." We will continue to work constructively toward that end. We sincerely want to speak words of both grace and truth. That is why, in each issue of The Layman, we publish Sunday School aids, mission profiles, book reviews, and why we are also publishing Bible studies, devotional works, confirmation curricula and other helpful resources to build up the church in proclaiming our historic faith. We receive hundreds of affirmations each month expressing gratitude for The Layman, as the independent source of news in our church, for our publishing resources, and for our unequivocal commitment to the historic faith delivered once for all to the saints. Our Board is willing to meet with either or both of you to discuss these important issues. We will continue to pray, as instructed in Ephesians – that the eyes of all our hearts may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which He has called us. May His grace and peace be with you. In His Service, The Board of Directors, The Presbyterian Lay Committee cc: All Commissioners, 213th General Assembly and all middle governing bodies ATTACHMENT A August 22, 2001, Letter to Moderator and Stated Clerk From Board of Directors, The Presbyterian Lay Committee The Nicene Creed, (first seven lines), Section 1.2 The Apostles' Creed, I believe...in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord... The Scots Confession, Chapter VI, Section 3.06 The Heidelberg Catechism, Question and Answer 29 and 30 (Sections 4.029 and 4.030) The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter V, Sections 5.024 and 5.077 The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter X, Sections 6.056 and 6.058 The Shorter Catechism, Question and Answer 20 and 21 (Sections 7.020 and 7.021) The Larger Catechism, Question and Answer 30, 31 and 60 (Sections 7.140, 7.141 and 7.170) The Theological Declaration of Barmen, Sections 8.09 - 8.12 The Confession of 1967, Section 9.42

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