What is at stake when the presbyteries vote on Amendment B? This short note from the Board of Theology Matters introduces an issue gathered to help readers prepare for the debate over replacing the “Fidelity and Chastity” standard of G-6.0106b.
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This issue of Theology Matters contains articles that will help you prepare for the debate on Amendment B in your presbytery. Amendment B would replace the specific biblical standards of G-6.0106b, “Fidelity and Chastity,” and clear the way for the ordination of practicing, unrepentant homosexual persons.
This note first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 14, No. 5 (Nov/Dec 2008).
The whole issue
Which votes do the presbyteries face after the 219th General Assembly? Theology Matters recommends a no vote on three amendments and warns of a fourth issue, the Board of Pensions, that presbyteries will not vote on and that touches every congregation.
Would Amendment A find common ground or quietly open ordination to those living outside marriage? Ten questions and answers set out why presbyteries should vote no, then weigh the other amendments on discipline, per capita, domestic violence and lay preachers.
Was Churches Uniting in Christ really a new proposal? Set side by side, the defeated Church of Christ Uniting plan and the new CUiC plan are compared on inclusiveness, structures of accountability, ordained ministries, recognition of other churches and bishops.
Is a vote for Churches Uniting in Christ only a vote on a concept? Eighteen questions and answers walk through what the proposal would bind Presbyterians to, from new structures of accountability and their cost to ordination standards and the theology of the plan.
What clergy wear in worship has changed in his lifetime, and Taylor isn't quite sure all the changes are improvements. Working from Lorimer's nineteenth-century painting of a Scottish Kirk ordination, he reflects on the theology of vestments and what gets lost when the gown disappears.
The Pentateuch ends with Moses dying outside the promised land. Dearman reads that anticlimax theologically, finding in it a pattern: ministry passes from one hand to another, the work continues without us, and the inheritance belongs to those who come next, all by God's design.
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