Homosexuality back on United Church agenda

Niagara Presbytery seeks referendum on recent policy changes

DOUG KOOP
CW Editor
— St. Catharines, ON —

The United Church of Canada’s ongoing drive to fully integrate homosexuals hit another speed bump when the church’s Niagara Presbytery narrowly passed a resolution asking for a churchwide vote on recent changes to church policy.

At a general council last summer, the UCC’s highest decision-making body officially renounced the church’s 1960 statement calling homosexuality a sin and affirmed “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered as well as heterosexual orientations” as “gifts from God.” Commissioners also committed the UCC to work for full recognition of lesbian and gay partnerships in both church and society (CW, Sept5/00).

“The members of the commission present took these issues very seriously,” recalls Steven Chambers, who heads the UCC’s Division of Ministry, Personnel and Education. “They felt strongly that the 1960 statement is not where church was currently,” he says. “The discussion was respectful and clear. These were responsible decision-makers. They felt this was a statement the church should make.”

Follow the manual

However, more than a decade of wrangling within the church has failed to develop consensus and the issue is still too contentious to simply go away. Enter the Faith and Order Committee of the Niagara Presbytery, which drafted its own resolution asking the UCC to honour procedures outlined its manual.

More specifically, the committee pointed to a procedure stipulating that before any change to doctrine, worship or government can become permanently enshrined, “it must receive the approval of a majority of the presbyteries” and, if deemed advisable, of congregations as well. Referring a decision of general council in this way is called a “remit.”

The committee determined that last summer’s resolutions effectively change church doctrine related to marriage, which also affects its understanding of Jesus and God, and therefore must be ratified by the broader church.

The call for a remit was presented at the November 26 meeting of Niagara Presbytery. It was passed 26-24 after more than an hour of what presbytery chair Alan Minarcik calls “forceful and passionate” debate. “But we left as friends,” he adds.

The petition has since been forwarded to the UCC’s general council executive in Toronto, and it falls to general secretary Virginia Coleman to determine whether or not to proceed with the remit. Coleman was not available for comment at press time, and no decision was deemed likely before late January.

Earlier this fall Coleman did respond to concerns that the summer resolutions would require UCC ministers to violate their conscience and participate in a service of blessing for gay or lesbian couples if they were asked to do so. She replied that a minister could refuse, but “should make every effort to assist ... by arranging for another UCC minister to perform this function.”

Peace in the church

Concerns that referring a contentious matter back to congregations across the country would unnecessarily trouble the church were a key consideration for those who opposed the remit motion. Because so many people “experienced so much pain” in the earlier controversies, “there’s a real fear of going through that again,” says Minarcik.

But Faith and Order committee member Graham Scott distinguishes between “the peace of Christ and appeasement before the dictates of homosexual ideology,” and says the resolutions passed last summer “seriously damage our church’s credibility, not only with our own membership but with the wider Church.

“The only way we know of to test the acceptability of those resolutions is by way of a remit,” he says.

Conservative renewal groups within the UCC are pleased with the action by Niagara Presbytery. “We certainly endorse the motion,” says Allen Churchill, president of Community of Concern. “We’ve said all along that these issues have to do with theology, faith and ethics [and should be passed] by way of remit to presbyteries and congregations.”

Geoff Wilkins, secretary of the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations, is hoping his organization can help sponsor similar requests in other parts of the country. “This kind of debate educates people about the issues,” he says.