Our Presbytery has been a bit slower than some in dealing with people's responses to Resolution 84, but we looked at it at our meeting yesterday.
I found myself wondering just how some people had remained in the Uniting Church for so long, or even joined it in the first place, given their rhetoric. The approach to Scripture that some of the people I heard are wanting to take is one that says that if there are any verses in the Bible that say anything negative about something, then we can't do it, because we're ignoring Scripture. We didn't seem to have any people yesterday wanting to draw us back to the Basis of Union, which talks about the Bible as God's word etc, but I think that the Basis of Union is very, very clear about how we are to use the Bible. It states that God calls men *and women* to leadership in the church and that the Uniting Church will ordain men *and women*. Ever since we began 27 years ago, we've had ordained women and women elders and women members of parish/church councils, even though it is possible to find some places in the Bible where it says that women should not be in leadership positions over men. The Basis of Union doesn't mention divorce and I'm not sure whether there's any written policy on divorce, but the majority of Uniting Church clergy have never refused to perform a marriage ceremony for someone who is divorced if the relationship seems otherwise to be one which should make a valid marriage. We ordain divorced people, we don't 'unordain' people who become divorced and a significant number of our clergy are remarried after divorce. Despite what Scripture, including Jesus, says about divorce. I could list other examples, but I won't bother. What we have always done, however, is to accept that the Bible is *not* a totally internally consistent document and to look at it as a whole, to try to find and understand the major emphases so that when we find contradictions, we can decide which is the 'right' (or better) interpretation based on which interpretation harmonises best with the rest of Scripture. And we don't take English translations on face value when the traditional translation seems odd - we dig more deeply and try to discern whether there are other possible translations of the problematic words and phrases, sometimes by looking at how these words were used in the secular literature of the time. And in the spirit of Martin Luther, when church tradition seems to be at odds with our new understanding of Scripture we don't say "well, hundreds of years of Christian tradition must can't be wrong - it must be me". We look very carefully at what we've come up with because we believe that there are times when the church gets it wrong. Thus, what is being done with respect to homosexual people and people living in homosexual relationships is well within the tradition of the Uniting Church and well within how the Basis of Union uses Scripture as a standard. If we were consistent with the perspective/interpretive method that many of the critics of Resolution 84 are taking and wanting the Uniting Church to take, we would not allow divorced people or women to have any leadership role in the church and we would not be able to promise to adhere to the Basis of Union. It seems to me that, if people want to use that particular interpretive method whenever they look at Scripture, there are a number of denominations which they could join, but I don't really understand why they haven't already done so. If they are comfortable with how we deal with women in leadership and divorce, then it seems to me unreasonable that they should expect us to change the ground rules on the issue of the place of homosexual people in the church. One of the major reasons I belong to the Uniting Church because I believe strongly in the interpretive method that is upheld in the Basis of Union and if we move away from that to a more literalist interpretive method, it leaves me nowhere to go in Australia. Much as I dislike 'slippery slope' theories and want to say 'no, the UCA would never do that', I didn't believe that the Presbyterian church (of which I was a member until 1981) would do it either, but they have. So I admit to being worried about what is happening in our church. Not to mention unimpressed by the lack of sensitivity which would lead the other two people in my small group (who were well aware of my position on this) to agree that Resolution 84 is a Satanic attack on the church! That seems to make me an agent of Satan, I think. Judy ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/lists.htm ------------------------------------------------------
