When I last posted on the current controversy headed to this year’s General Assembly of the Church of Scotland I did not realize that I was writing at a point in time when the discussion was shifting from the Mainstream Media reports driving the Web, to the Web driving the media.  I’ll not fully rehearse the specifics of the case again.  You can check out my previous posts or some of the other links I’ll cite today for that.  Let me give the essential information for this discussion that Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen called the Rev. Scott Rennie, a partnered gay pastor, to its vacant charge.  Aberdeen Presbytery concurred but a protest was filed and that protest will be heard at the General Assembly that begins in just over two weeks.

In that previous post what I did not realize was that I had found the web site for the Fellowship of Confessing Churches on the day of its launch.  Thanks to the Rev. Ian Watson for that information.  You can check out his announcement on his blog Kirkmuirhillrev.  Anyway, as I mentioned last time, on the Confessing Churches web site there is a petition supporting the dissenters and asking the GA to support the protest.  Well this petition has gone “viral,” or at least as viral as something Presbyterian can go, and there are currently 2530 individuals from the Church of Scotland who have signed, 1404 from other Scottish churches, 1104 from other UK churches, and another 1193 from other churches worldwide for a grand total of 6233 as of this writing, and increasing by the minute.

And this petition is now being advertised and debated in the blogosphere.  Over on the Reformation 21 blog, Carl Trueman announced the petition but indicated he would not sign.  However, other writers on the blog, like Phil Ryken and Rick Phillips did sign and post their comments about why they did.  Carl Trueman posted a second, much more extended comment on his view of the situation in response to Rev. Ryken’s post.

But the first post from Carl Trueman found responses from elsewhere in the blogosphere, some supporting his position (e.g. Thomas Goodwin, Joshua Judges Ruth and Knoxville) and some who argue for signing (e.g. Michael Bird at Euangelion).  And there is Darryl Hart on Old Life Theological Society who finds positives in both positions.  I find it interesting that many of the respondents are associated with the Presbyterian Church in America which will be dealing with ordination standards as they again address the issue of ordaining or commissioning women as deaconesses at their GA this year.  In fact the Rev. Dave Sarafolean makes this connection directly in his post at Joshua Judges Ruth (and his quote from Carl Trueman comes from Trueman’s second post):

Having just come back from presbytery
and preparing for General Assembly in a few weeks I found this quote
from Carl Trueman very helpful. I say this because of the on-going
debate in the PCA about the topic of ‘deaconesses’ (which are not
prescribed by our constitution):

“The policy of
ceding church courts to the liberals has proved disastrous. I feel for
friends caught in the crossfire in Aberdeen but, as I said earlier, a
petition is too little too late. These battles are not won by petitions
which have no ecclesiastical status; nor are they won by preaching to
the converted at large Reformed conferences or to congregations of the
faithful in the big C of S churches. They are won by the nasty,
brutish, hard labour of fighting in the church courts, face to face,
toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball, with those who would seek to take over
session, presbyteries, synods, and General Assemblies for evil”

There are a number of other facets to this debate that have developed over the past week.  The one that hit the mainstream media was a correction and apology that the conservative group Forward Together issued after they said that the Rev. Rennie had left his wife while it was actually the opposite.  This correction was widely covered by the press, such as these articles in Scotsman and The Herald.  However, the Rev. Louis Kinsey at Coffee with Louis takes issue with the tone of some of the press coverage and the bias he perceives in the reporting of the correction.  Similarly, he comments on bias in the headline of another news story about the petition.

From a different perspective Mr. Stewart Cutler has a blog post titled “Not In My Name” where he says why he will not sign the petition and he concludes with

So, no.  I won’t be signing your petition.  And I hope no-one else does
either.  Not because I don’t believe in your right to have one.  Not
that because I don’t think you have the right to hold your opinion. 
But because I believe that we are called to love one another and to
conduct our discusions with love and respect.

In another blog entry Mr. Cutler points us to the latest OneKirk Journal which has an extended interview with Rev. Rennie.  From all the reading that I have done on this story I think these are the most extensive comments by Mr. Rennie since the controversy broke.  The comments are serious, heartfelt and honest.  When the interviewer ask about the affect on his faith this controversy has had Mr. Rennie says:

Interestingly, it has greatly strengthened my faith. It has heightened my sense of call, opened my eyes to a wealth of kindness and Christian love from other people; some of whom I know, and some of whom I have never met. It is always easy in these kinds of circumstances to focus on the negative, but the reality is that most people are kind, compassionate and good at heart. Through them, God reveals himself to us all. I keep hearing in my mind the verse of that children’s hymn we all grew up with: ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’.

This article and this quote have also been picked up by the print media including an article in The Times Online today with the very attention-getting headline “Gay Church of Scotland Minister Hits Back at Evangelical Critics.”  I’m wondering if the Rev. Rennie would consider the OneKirk interview “hitting back” or just “telling his side”?

So as we approach the Assembly meeting the Journal article gives us one additional item — An Order of the Day:  This protest will be heard at 1900 on Saturday May 23 and decided in that session.  I appreciate the information so that I can rearrange my schedule and referee an earlier football (soccer) match that day.  I am still looking for the Blue Book or the docket to know when the related overture will be debated.