The General Assembly (2009) of the Church of Scotland dealt with a protest to a Presbytery approval of a church’s call to a partnered gay man to serve as pastor of the church.  For more details you can check out a couple of my previous posts, but to greatly summarize the actions of the Assembly on the specific case the policy of the CofS going forward they:

1. Sustained the call and the Presbytery approval
2. Formed a Special Commission to report back to the 2011 General Assembly with recommendations about such actions in the future.
3. Placed a moratorium on ordination and induction (installation) of partnered same-sex individuals while the Commission is working
4. Placed a gag order on all officers of the church urging them not to talk publicly about this whole issue while the commission is working

There has been much made about the gag order since the Assembly, including my comments in May and August. Up to this point that has been getting most of the publicity.

But this week brings news of some disagreement over the nature of the moratorium on ordination of partnered gay candidates.  Thanks to the Rev. Ian Watson for bringing this to our attention and all the important details are laid out in a post on his blog, with a brief follow-up.

His first post is extensive and complete enough that a GA Junkie can get a good idea of what the issues are.  I will summarize the recent action and then comment on the polity implications and the parallel to the PC(USA) working through this same question.

Rev. Watson reports that on September 1 the Presbytery of Hamilton “voted to nominate for training for the ministry of a man who is in a civil partnership.”

The question that arises is what is the scope of the Assembly’s action.  The specific deliverance says:

Instruct Presbyteries to observe a moratorium on ordinations and
inductions which might appear to prejudice the Special Commission before it reports.

Rev. Watson reports that as part of this decision the Presbytery received advice from the national CofS Ministries Council pertaining to the moratorium.  The complete advice is in his post, but it reads in part:

The decisions recently made should ensure that no applicant will be prejudiced, between now and the General Assembly of 2011, in the decision of their Presbytery whether to nominate them. That Assembly will determine the Church’s position, on receipt of the report of the Special Commission that has been established under the convenership of a Scottish judge.  No-one can predict at this stage what implications that might have for those who are applicants, candidates, or serving in the ministries of the Church at that point. 

So it is unclear if the moratorium applies only to the final step in ordination and induction, or applies to the whole ordination process.  This is a question that the Church of Scotland will have to wrestle with.

One of the reasons that I bring this up is because the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has had to deal with exactly the same issue, and the changes that the Report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (PUP) brought.

Since adoption of G-6.0106b into the PC(USA) Book of Order there has been a discussion about at what point in the ordination process the “fidelity and chastity” clause needed to be applied.  The decisions of the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, especially Sheldon v. West Virginia and Stewart v. Mission, set the pattern for handling these cases during the ordination process not at the point of the final examination for ordination by the Presbytery.

The Authoritative Interpretation adopted with the PUP Report allowed for declaring exceptions to the standards of the church but it does so in the context of examination for ordination, not entry into or during the preparation process.  Suddenly the ground shifted so that the review was no longer during the preparation process but at the time of examination.  This was the process affirmed by the PJC of the Synod of the Pacific in the case of Naegeli v. San Francisco, but has not been tested by the GAPJC yet.

So there you have some of the subtleties of this type of case.  Where is the appropriate point in the process to enforce standards or policy?  It is not clear that the Church of Scotland case will go any further, that would require a protest from members of the Presbytery of Hamilton and Rev. Watson does not suggest that is coming.  There does appear to be a need for a formal clarification from the Ministries Council to the whole church, not just on a case-by-case basis to Presbyteries.  But this would then start to drift into the realm of the prohibition on publicly discussing the topic. 

And what is the spirit of the actions that were taken by the CofS General Assembly?  The sense I got from listening to the debate was that they wanted to provide a level and neutral space for the Commission to work.  A space that was not biased or prejudiced by specific actions and statements within the church.  I must agree with Rev. Watson that this action by the Presbytery of Hamilton does seem to encroach on the spirit, if not the letter, of the Assembly action.  Time will tell how this develops.