Clipped comments Volume 34, Number 5 Posted July 6, 2001 The 213th General Assembly committed an error in judgment. It recommended the lowering of the standards for ordination. In this action, please keep in mind, the whole church has not spoken. Indeed, this vote represents only a recommendation for action. The presbyteries, we pray, will exercise better judgment, as they have before, as recently as 1996 and 1997, when they upheld our historic Biblical and confessional standards. Anita Bell and Jerry Andrews Co-moderators, the Presbyterian Coalition Congregations angered by the 213th General Assembly’s controversial recommendation to lift a ban on gay and lesbian ordination are expected to protest with their pocketbooks in the coming months, withholding contributions to the Presbyterian Church’s per-capita budget. Jenifer Files The Presbyterian Outlook The church has taken a step toward justice for God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Self-described lesbian “evangelist” Janie Spahr Director of That All May Freely Serve There is much to be done in the months ahead, but as someone said this morning, we’ve witnessed a tectonic shift in the earth of the Presbyterian Church. It does indeed look like a new and fresher world. Witherspoon Society Almost every member of the Presbyterian Renewal Network, the most inclusive gathering of Presbyterian Evangelicals, has endorsed the Confessing Church Movement. Certainly that indicates it is not a tiny fringe movement. The Presbyterian Review Emil Brunner, no great bastion of orthodoxy himself, writes in his book The Mediator that the whole force and flow of liberal theology can be summed up in one word: Unbelief. Brian Carpenter “Looking Glass Theology,” vow.org I was preparing to teach on the Barmen Declaration when the Confessing Church Movement was announced. So I looked at that history again [and] I have to say to you with great sadness that there is virtually no similarity between what is being called the Confessing Church Movement in this denomination and the Confessing Church Movement to which they refer. Jack B. Rogers Moderator of the 213th General Assembly

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