Presbyterians avoid extra May meeting

ON A MID-JANUARY day, as Presbyterian leaders met in their Louisville, Kentucky, offices to discuss how to cut $2.6 million from one budget and patch a $1.5 million hole in another, a West Coast surgeon walked in with a petition that was likely to reopen festering wounds in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or be the operation long needed, depending on one's viewpoint.

The petition, had it been verified, would have forced in mid-May a costly emergency recall of 554 delegates from the 2002 convention--at an undetermined location--only days before the 2003 General Assembly convened May 24 in Denver. Petitioners contend that church authorities have not enforced the denomination's laws forbidding, among other things, the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians, and marriage-like rites for same-sex couples.

"If the defiance we are witnessing continues to go unchecked, we will no longer be a constitutional church," said Dr. Alexander Metherell, the Presbyterian elder from Laguna Beach, California, who led the campaign and delivered the petition to PCUSA officials January 14. He was quoted on the conservative Layman Online Web site. Metherell's wife, Pamela, is on the board of the related Presbyterian Lay Committee.

However, PCUSA leaders announced January 27 that six ministers and seven elders who signed the petition had decided to withdraw their names from the list. Twenty-five names in each category were required, but those petitioners who reconsidered signing lowered the number to 20 ministers and 24 elders. Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick ruled that no further petitions were in order, but that the issue of enforcing church laws will be before the regular General Assembly May 24-31.

"There are no winners in this situation," said Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel in a January 25 letter to last year's delegates, or commissioners, to notify them that they would not be recalled. Alluding to the intensified liberal-conservative struggle, Abu-Akel said: "There are people who are in great pain in our denomination, and for that I have great concern and compassion."

Among the developments:

* A resolution adopted by a western Pennsylvania presbytery on January 24 asks the upcoming General Assembly to "remind synods"--the regional bodies above the presbytery level--of their oversight responsibility in some 25 cases of apparent gay ordinations or other noncompliance with church laws. "This overture assures that the matters in the [disqualified] petition will be before the commissioners" in Denver, said Abu-Akel.

* On the same day, as the moderator attended a presbytery meeting in San Diego, California, Metherell hand-delivered a five-page letter to Abu-Akel, threatening a suit over what he called improper tactics in an attempt to delay the special session for 120 days or to disqualify the petition. Metherell, a 63-year-old physician and engineer, wrote that it was "with a heavy heart" that he decided to resort, if necessary, to the secular courts, "in light of the counsel we are given in scripture on that subject."

* Metherell's pastor, John A. Huffman Jr., longtime senior minister at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, had earlier issued a statement opposing an emergency session, the Los Angeles Times reported. A special assembly, Huffman said, "is not only unwise but could be counterproductive to our constitutional procedures."

Presbyterian officials were aware of petitions circulated last fall and advised against calling a special session--which might cost up to $500,000, according to a headquarters estimate made in October. Upon receiving the petition, Abu-Akel wrote to the 57 signatories that a special assembly on May 15 "would expend valuable resources of time, energy and money that are desperately needed for the mission of Christ." Two assemblies so close in time would create confusion, he said, adding that "this may not have been your intention when you signed the petition."

Reached by the CENTURY January 22 at a consultation of Presbyterian pastors at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, Abu-Akel said that surveying petitioners was advisable because "an individual who signed the petition in September might not be willing in January; the dynamics are different."

Another consultation speaker, self-acknowledged liberal Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, said a special assembly was "the moderator's call." Abu-Akel denied that that was true. "I want to uphold the constitution," he said, asserting that if names of 25 ministers and 25 elders were confirmed, he would summon a session.

A panel discussion at the consultation included Wheeler and Fuller President Richard Mouw, a Reformed-raised scholar who leads a seminary born out of Presbyterian conflicts and change. "There have always been two parties in opposition in Presbyterianism," Mouw said. "This is nothing new ... we are always groaning for something better."