I wanted to respond to Saying Grace’s comment about yesterday’s presbytery meeting, but decided to do it separately since the response got long, and that post was all, like, idealistic and nice and stuff. Rant ahead, proceed with caution.
(Non-Presbyterians, I’m sorry for the inside baseball, but it’s hard to explain and be concise)
So we have this new process in National Crankypants whereby candidates for ministry and ministers taking a new call are examined in areas of theology, polity and “fit” with the congregation.
Part of this examination includes asking The Question. In a nutshell, are you in compliance with G-6.0106b of our constitution, which upholds “fidelity in marriage and chastity (whatever that is) in singleness,” and says that persons “refusing to repent of anything the confessions call sin shall not be ordained or installed” as an officer in the church.
My understanding is that, while we skew somewhat more “liberal” as a presbytery (2/3 if most past votes are any indication), each of the clearance teams strives to have one liberal voice, one conservative voice, and two more middle of the road people. In other words, both “sides” are given equal footing, which means the conservative voices have a greater say on the clearance teams than their numbers would suggest in the presbytery at large. Fine. Good. Protect the rights of the minority.
And yet despite this!—despite this painstaking good faith effort to make sure that conservative voices are as well represented on the teams as liberal voices, and despite the fact that candidates are asked The Question in these interviews, people still feel compelled to ask The Question on the floor of presbytery. And folks like SG become unwitting participants in this drama because of positions they hold.
To that I say, poor SG. Really. You are between a rock and a hard place with that whole thing. I heard yesterday’s meeting was rather… disheartening (understatement of the year?).
Usually what happens is the candidate, some poor soul who is fresh out of seminary and just wants to keep her head down and her nose clean, says, “Yes. I am in compliance.” And I’m sure that’s truthful. And I don’t blame these folks a bit for swallowing the bitter pill, because they don’t know us from Adam. They have no power in this system whatsoever. They have just accepted their first call as a pastor and don’t want to tick off their new colleagues or their congregation.
However, until people refuse to answer the question, or at the very least say, “I have already answered that question with the clearance team,” we are stuck with this charade. I guess the charade might still continue even then, but answering The Question with a simple “Yes” gives it legitimacy as the litmus test par excellence.
No, it’s those of us who’ve been in the system awhile who have to be the ones to say No to this BS. People like me, with a spouse of the opposite sex and 2.5 kids and who fit the wholesome stereotype.
So, if I have the nerve, whenever I take a new call in this presbytery, I hope The Question is posed to me, because I have a whole list of “things the confessions call sin” that I am not repenting of:
Working on the Sabbath day. No, I’m not repenting for fulfilling my duties as Minister of the Word and Sacrament. Sorry.
Ignorance and forgetfulness of God. (how can I repent of something I don’t know or don’t remember?)
“Charging God for the evils he inflicts on us.” I don’t even know where to start with that one, except to say, did these dudes ever READ the lament psalms?
Tolerating false religion. Yes, in a pluralistic society I certainly do tolerate worldviews I consider false. Or should I launch a crusade against them?
And the section on honoring father and mother is full of all this hierarchical “superiors and inferiors” language that I don’t subscribe to in the least.
And all of that’s just from one section of one confession (Westminster). I’m sure there’s some Catholic-hating stuff in the Scots Confession that I want nothing to do with either.
Instructed, guided, led by the confessions—yes. Absolutely. But G-6.0106b is crappy legislation and even worse theology. When are people going to start talking about THAT instead of making it about who we’re sleeping with?
OK, back to more productive matters.
16 Responses to “comment on crankypants”
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I am not going to do business as usual anymore.
They actually ASK you? so, what, if they see a single pastor picking up birth control at target they can whip out their BOO and stage a citizen’s arrest?
the rules are repugnant.
But those questions on the floor? reprehensible.
Oh, and I do love that you actually have 2.5 children.
Re: PPB’s comment - I was asked by a 17 year old to buy birth control for her in the “local” drugstore (15 miles away) because “people would talk if she bought it.” I — as a single 27 yr. old pastor — responded, “You have no idea how much people would talk if I was the one to buy it.”
And those were the pre-Amendment B “good old days.”
I’m writing my article for the presbytery news about this. Very snarky. I don’t care.
why, I do believe that this post deserves a wholehearted snap in a “Z formation and around the world”
Thank you sir, may I also receive a “you go girl” ?
Dear RM,
Would you mind if some of us blatantly stole some of your prepared responses to use ourselves if/when the occasion arises? (Of course, that is stealing and sin enough… but I shall not repent:) ) Seriously, though, we have not gotten to that point around here, but it is good to have a head’s up. As one who serves on the same kind of Presbytery committee that you serve up in Crankypants, I will keep my radar up for this stuff to start creeping down to the Lone Star state.
Yes, you go, girl. You rock. Feels very sadistic to me…
As someone who participated in the questioning–not the G-6106b question, but the G-6106a question, I am experiencing something of a dilemma. It makes me madder than all get out that the “b” question is being asked from the floor of presbytery, given the painstaking conversation we had with the new clearance process. One questioner at Tuesday’s meeting basically said “I don’t trust the COM clearance process.” I do trust the process and yet think if “b” is lifted up, “a” needs to be lifted up as well. I seek the wisdom of my friends and colleagues in knowing how to proceed. Apologies for those who weren’t at the meeting and aren’t conversant with the “a” “b” language–probably a blessing.
Very well said.
So…I guess that’s one more supposedly progressive Presbytery I can check off my list of possible places to seek a call next time around. (sigh).
I suppose I could muster up the various arguments why, though I’m not currently in a relationship and therefor not technically out of compliance, I should make it through. But I’ll admit I just don’t have the stomach for that kind of hair-splitting anymore. Besides, I haven’t “repented” of my prior relationships, I simply regret they did not work out. Does that mean I’m NOT in compliance? Who knows? And does kissing constitute a violation? Does, um, getting to third base?
Regardless…the whole thing makes me tired beyond belief. As you say, there are far more productive things for us to be doing, but more and more I realize that I don’t get to set the agenda in the church. So be it.
Best I can now determine, the actions of the last general assembly, though thought to have opened the door for local option, have accomplished exactly NOTHING, other than driving some far-right churches from the denomination. The only interpretations of the provision by church courts have held that the “scruple” can only be declared as to belief, not as to conduct…so I can believe that my capacity to love fully and intimately is as honorable as anyone else’s in God’s eyes, so long as I don’t act on it.
And people wonder why there are fewer and fewer lgbt clergy coming through the system…It’s because we are so inhospitable. Why be a part of this tradition when the UCC is MORE than welcoming, at least up in this neck of the woods? I find it utterly defeating that someone would ask these kinds of questions in a public forum that smells oddly of inquisition. It makes it no less reprehensible that everyone is asked the question…RM perhaps you will remember that in our former Presbytery, the CPM switched the order of examinations the day I was up for certification so that they could say that I wasn’t the first person they ever asked if s/he was in compliance with G-6.016(b).
Still, in reality, some are merely inconvenienced, embarrassed and (rightly) incensed by the question. For others it is a terrifying prospect, where there is no stake and there is no public burning, but a calling can never the less be immolated.
Four years ago this past summer, I sat across a casual dinner table from a Presbytery executive in a Presbytery that will remain nameless and was asked to outline, specifically, my sexual history since my ordination as a deacon some 8 years before. I tried not to be aghast; I tried to be civil; I refused to answer. Four years on, I fear that my patience has not deepened, my pastoral center has not given me overarching compassion for one caught in such a place that he would think those questions appropriate. I fear that today, my response would be career ending. So be it.
I was once sitting in as an observer at an examination of a candidate for ordination in which the words “sexual proclivities” were uttered on the floor of Presbytery by a minister member.
No one called the questioner out of order.
Why didn’t I?
I could not, because I was an intern at the church where the meeting was being held, a candidate under care of Dinky Presbytery (2000 miles away) at the time, and therefor had neither voice nor vote.
She passed, by the way. But I found the whole evening to be humiliating, and it wasn’t even about me.
Meanwhile, across the street, the board of trustees of the seminary was busy defending it’s hiring (and nervously scrambling to find ways of avoiding the firing) of the then-president, a sexual predator.
That is f’d up.
Tex, if any of my ramblings are helpful to you or anyone else, feel free to use them.
NSCR, what can I say. I feel your pain, though I cannot know what it’s really like. It would be relatively low-risk for me to answer The Question in such a way, because I honestly don’t think there would be severe repercussions.
I suspect, however, that the issue will be moot—methinks the powers that be are doing their darnedest to stop these shenanigans from taking place on the floor of presbytery.
RM - you are correct in your thinking. Trust me.
And, btw, I am going to mention this in my sermon on Sunday and post it on my own blog, in the context of Lazarus and Dives who was much too distracted to pay attention to the poor at his gate. I wonder if the Church is so conveniently distracted by arguing over the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians who actually want to serve the church - imagine that! - that we neglect to see Lazaurus at our gate or the 6 million beloved children of God who will die of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV on our very watch. While we are obsessing about sex, the poor are at our gate just as they were at Dives gate and he not no time for them. Yet, we have the capacity to be endlessly distracted by lesser matters, what precisely other than death, will cause us to pay attention?
Well, I left the PCUSA in part (not completely but in part) because of the hypocrisy over “B.” I am thankful for those of you still there fighting the good fight. I think refusing to repent for all the other “sins” in the confessions is an awesome tactic…
Nobody says “You people are completely full of shit” and walks out?
It sounds like the members of Cranky Pants don’t trust the Examinations Committee to do their job of vetting candidates appropriately and so are doing it themselves on the floor of presbytery.