Last week The Presbyterian Church (USA) announced it has appointed 13 members to special committee to study the issue of Civil Union and Christian Marriage.
Last year, the Presbyterian General Assembly voted to create the special committee, “representing the broad diversity and theological balance”.
The committee has five main issues to report on:
- The history of the laws governing marriage and civil union, including current policy debates;
- How the theology and practice of marriage have developed in the Reformed and broader Christian tradition;
- The relationship between civil union and Christian marriage;
- he effects of current laws on same-gender partners and their children;
- he place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community.
The special committee has also been charged to make its report to the 219th General Assembly next summer in Minneapolis.
The denomination already allows ministers to bless same-sex unions, but the ceremonies can’t replicate marriage ceremonies.
Last year’s General Assembly voted 54 percent to 46 percent Friday to drop the requirement that would-be ministers, deacons and elders live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”
The proposed change to the church constitution would require the approval from a majority of the nation’s 173 presbyteries, or regional church bodies, a yearlong process that has proven to be problematic in the past.
The church has 2.2-million members across the country.
Joel Landon Watts is a Masters of Theological Studies student with a focus in Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific ideals of the past century. Currently, he is a TA for Old Testament at United Theological Seminary under Dr. Vivian Johnson, Associate Professor of Old Testament. His first book, Rhetorical Strategies of the Evangelist: Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark, is expected to be published by Wipf and Stock early next year. He is currently co-editing a book on moving from Fear to Faith (Energion, 2013).
sigh.. this sort of thing saddens me.
sigh.. this sort of thing saddens me.
Where will it all end? Life goes in cycles. Some day it will be fashionable for a man to marry a woman.
Where will it all end? Life goes in cycles. Some day it will be fashionable for a man to marry a woman.
heh. But only if you are open to divorce.
heh. But only if you are open to divorce.
oh, puh-lease read the above as dripping in sarcasm.
oh, puh-lease read the above as dripping in sarcasm.