Drafters say ‘chaste’ means ‘chaste’ The Layman Volume 35, Number 1 Posted February 8, 2002 The enforcement of the “fidelity/chastity” ordination clause in the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has become a game of how to make “chaste” mean something other than what it means. The office of Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick appears to have engendered that confusion when it issued Polity Reflection # 19, its analysis for interpreting the constitution. The reflection said, “In the examination of persons for church office the definition of being ‘single’ or being ‘chaste’ will be decided initially by those doing the examination.” Kirkpatrick’s office also said the words “chastity,” “self-acknowledged” and “repent” – which are part of the ordination standard – “are not defined. Examining bodies will need to consider reasonable definitions and decide which to apply.” The stated clerk’s ambivalence on the meaning of chastity has opened the door for challenges to the ordination standard on the basis of different definitions. Kathleen Morrison, a candidate for minister, told the Presbytery of Redwoods that she was a lesbian and in a sexually active relationship. But after she declared herself chaste by her own definition, the presbytery approved her call to serve as an associate minister of a California congregation. But the meaning of the ordination standard is crystal clear, say two of the General Assembly commissioners who served on the 1996 drafting team for G-6.0106b. Fred W. Beuttler, an elder at First Presbyterian Church in River Forest, Ill., and the Rev. David Worth, pastor of the same congregation, said chastity “itself means abstinence from sexual intercourse outside the bounds of marriage.”

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