 How Christians around the world see the PCUSA By Parker T. Williamson The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 1 Posted January 24, 2001 ORLANDO, Fla. – “If you support same-sex marriage, we will have to break relations with you,” declared Ricardo Santana, president of Mexico’s San Pablo Seminary.
Human sexuality disputes among Presbyterian Church (USA) leaders have taken their toll on this denomination’s international partnerships. Santana’s seminary, for example, enjoys close relations with the PCUSA, which supports the seminary financially. Severing ties with the U.S. denomination would strike a severe blow to San Pablo’s income. But President Santana says that, if the PCUSA endorses same-sex unions, Mexican Presbyterians would have no choice but to pay that price. “Homosexual behavior is wrong,” Santana says. “We cannot support that and be faithful to Scripture.” Growing influence Santana’s seminary plays a critical role in the PCUSA’s Latin American mission strategy. Located on the Yucatan Peninsula, San Pablo is now the largest Presbyterian Spanish-speaking seminary in the world. There, leaders are trained for the rapidly-growing Presbyterian Church of Mexico, which claims 160 churches and more than 400 new church developments in the Yucatan alone. Students come to San Pablo’s 15-acre campus from all of Mexico, as well as Nicaragua and Belize. Their number has doubled in the past five years. Because the PCUSA missionaries work through partnerships with national churches, a divorce from San Pablo could cripple this denomination’s credibility, not only among Central American Christians, but further south as well. The Rev. Guihermino Cunha, president of the Supreme Council of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil and a delegate to the Orlando conference, told The Layman that his people are “amazed” that U.S. Presbyterians are even discussing extramarital sex. “How is this possible when the Bible is so clear?” he asked. Cunha and his colleagues monitor news of the PCUSA via the Layman Online and other related web sites. Layman articles are translated into Portuguese and appear in a seminary-based publication called Impacto! He says that U.S. Presbyterians should know that their battles over sexual ethics are distressing to Christian brothers and sisters in other lands.
The Rev. Alonzo Ramirez Alvarado, moderator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Peru, and The Rev. Pedro Merino Boyd, first vice president of Peru’s Evangelical and Reformed Presbyterian Church, told the Orlando gathering stories of Christians who stand firm in the gospel amidst a guerrilla war that rips their country apart. To them, reports of U.S. Presbyterians bickering over homosexual marriage ceremonies sound like fairy tales.
“AIDS has infected millions in our countries,” Ababio said. “We know what happens when people refuse to follow God’s law. Our people are suffering. Our children are becoming orphans. The church must say that sex is for marriage. This is God’s way, and this is what the Bible teaches.” The Rev. Peterson Sozi, former moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Uganda, is president of a rapidly growing evangelistic association that employs 10 full-time ministers and 26 lay evangelists to plant churches throughout the country. Noting that Uganda has suffered terribly from the ravages of AIDS, Sozi’s team has launched a major effort to rescue some of the 2.4 million children who have been orphaned due to deaths from AIDS. Peterson shakes his head in dismay when he hears that U.S. Presbyterians are debating the legitimacy of homosexual behavior. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “No sense at all.” Far East Presbyterian leaders in the Far East are asking what has happened to the church that brought the gospel to their countries. The Rev. Byung Sun, of the Kumkwang – Sungnam City church in Seoul, South Korea, and Dr. Aaron Pyungchoon Park, president of Christian Theological College in Seoul, recall with gratitude that U.S. Presbyterian missionaries came to their country 100 years ago to establish churches, hospitals and colleges. Presbyterian churches are found throughout Korea today, some congregations with as many as 50,000 members, and they are sending missionaries throughout the world. The emigration of South Koreans to the United States has sparked a fascinating reverse-missions thrust. Today, South Koreans comprise the fastest growing segment of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Speaking on behalf of the denomination’s 350 Korean-American congregations, the National Korean Presbyterian Council has sent a letter to every Presbyterian congregation urging the passage of Amendment O, which bans same-sex union ceremonies in Presbyterian churches. The letter warns that endorsements of same-sex unions would result in “a devastating blow” to membership growth among the Korean congregations. “In a word,” it said, “the blessing of same-sex unions would bring our demise as a church of Jesus Christ.”
Europe Reformed Church leaders and scholars from centers in eastern and western European countries also participated in the Orlando gathering. Dr. Emil Bartos, director of the Center for Reformation Studies in Oradea, Romania, and Dr. Daniel Szabo, lay vice president of the General Synod in the Reformed Church of Hungary, spoke of the seismic changes that are occurring in their countries since the fall of communism. In the face of such challenges, they said they find the U.S. Presbyterians’ preoccupation with sex trivial. Western Europeans at the conference, like Dr. Pierre Berthoud, professor of Old Testament at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Aix-en-Provence, France, and Christians from Great Britain like Malcolm Maclean, representing the Free Church of Scotland, and Dr. A.T.B. McGowan, principal of Highland Theological College in the Church of Scotland, spoke of the enervating effect that theological liberalism has had on their churches. The seminaries that they represent are training new leaders who can articulate Reformed faith and address the moral malaise that has undermined their society. Isolating the church One of the ironies of our time is the fact that liberalism, which historically has promoted ecumenical alliances, appears to be the driving force toward an isolated Presbyterian Church (USA). To the extent that denominational leaders advocate the homosexual agenda, they are clearly distancing themselves from the worldwide Christian community. This is precisely what happened to Episcopal Church (USA) bishops when they met in Canterbury, England, for the August 1998 Lambeth conference of the worldwide Anglican church. At Canterbury, American bishops led by John Shelby Spong met overwhelming opposition as bishops from around the world insisted on adopting a sexual ethic that is faithful to Scripture. Since Lambeth, bishops in other countries have begun to dispatch missionaries to the United States, and even to ordain priests inside other bishops’ territories, in order to bring the Episcopal Church back into the fold of Biblical Christianity. If the Presbyterian Church (USA) experience parallels what is happening to the Episcopalians – and the Orlando gathering suggests that it will – denominational leaders in this country will experience increasing pressure from the world church. And as South Korean Presbyterians have been quick to point out, those to whom the United States once sent the gospel will now bring it back home. |
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