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| I documented the mainline gay agenda efforts in 1987, 24 years ago: Out of the Depths of ELCA. |
4 area Presbyterian churches leave national denomination:
By Brandon Smith-Hebson, Staff Writer
7:39 PM Thursday, December 8, 2011
SOUTH CHARLESTON — Four of 60 Presbyterian churches in the Miami Valley recently left their national denomination.
Their ministers pointed to changes in the denomination’s constitution that paved the way for openly gay people to become ministers or church leaders, as well as changes to the way the church is governed that could provide for a more top-down leadership in the future.
Churches sometimes organize a significant part of the charitable work done in their area, and can influence and reflect the beliefs of a community.
But these recent changes weren’t the entire reason for leaving, ministers said — rather, the national denomination, Presbyterian Church (USA), had been on a decades-long drift to a less-specific, more inclusive theology, they said.
“We were concerned,” said Peter Larson, head pastor at Lebanon Presbyterian Church, “that some might see this move as creating a church that’s anti-gay people, or homophobic.” Larson’s church voted to leave the denomination. “That’s just not true. Every person is welcome here. This is not a condemning place.”
But some pastors from churches that remain have their doubts.
“The message it sends is, ‘we love you as long as you aren’t practicing who you are, as long as you aren’t yourself,” said Dwight McCormick, pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Springfield.
McCormick said that gay people “have had a lot of violence done to them over the years,” spiritually as well as physically, and that the denomination wants to distance itself from that.
Shortly after the constitution was altered, the first openly gay minister was ordained in the PCUSA, in Madison, Wis.
Secessions over similar subjects rocked Lutheran churches in the area earlier this year.
In addition to Larson’s church, the local congregations that voted to leave include First Presbyterian in South Charleston, Kirkmont Presbyterian in Beavercreek, and Greenville Presbyterian in Greenville, which is in Darke County.
Church members were invited to afternoon meetings for a vote — two churches on Oct. 23 and two on Oct. 30. All were said to have good turnout for church business meetings, between one-third and two-thirds of voting membership.
And at each church, more than 90 percent of votes supported measures to split from the denomination.
Three of the four churches also voted to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, another, smaller Presbyterian denomination with more conservative theology.
“There was very little hostility” in the splits, said Dennis Piermont, the top executive at the Presbytery of the Miami Valley, a local grouping of about 60 churches in the denomination.
PCUSA isn’t seeking to take individual church buildings or property, according to Piermont. In other states, departing churches have had their buildings confiscated by the denomination, or they’ve had to buy back their own building.
Piermont considers it an “enormous concern” to maintain theological diversity in the church, something that took a hit when these churches left.
“Let’s recognize we still have some of that here, and to value that,” he said. “A great many people remain who are theologically conservative. It’s now easy for them to feel marginalized, and that is a great concern for me.”
But the churches that left sometimes view theological diversity as a farce, complaining that PCUSA had become a “big tent” denomination — and that it was getting bigger.
“In scripture we see diversity based on races and male and female, but there’s no such diversity in terms of doctrine and theology. It’s a pretty tight document,” said Bill Riesenweaver, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in South Charleston. Riesenweaver’s church voted unanimously to leave the PCUSA.
“Some people believe you can be a good Buddhist, Muslim — different strokes for different folks,” said Larson. “It’s a fundamental disagreement, ‘who is Jesus?’ ”
The denomination believes it’s following tradition in its more inclusive approach.
“Theological diversity has been a mark of our church from the beginning. There were debates in the early 1700s,” said Gradye Parsons, a PCUSA official whose responsibility includes theological discussions. “We’ve never really been what’s called a subscriptionist church, where you have to subscribe to very specific doctrines.”
Like most other large church denominations, Presbyterian Church (USA) has had a declining membership in the United States since the mid-1960s, according to church historians.
At its height in 1965, it counted around 4.2 million members, while last year it had just over 2 million members. It is the largest of the Presbyterian denominations.
But as reported in The Layman, a conservative-leaning source of Presbyterian church news, PCUSA experienced a large drop in membership in 2010 — likely as a result of the changes to the constitution.
Because presbyteries don’t report their membership loss or gain until the end of each year, officials said, the full effect of the changes won’t be known until early 2012.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0353.
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