Graeme Ferguson: Church taking path out of step with its members

The Presbyterian Church normally acts on matters of public concern in a reasonable and well-informed manner. It has a reputation for intelligent debate and responsible decisions.

However, recently it decided in General Assembly, to bar from leadership in the Church all who were engaged in sexual activity outside faithful Christian marriage. This decision has confused many in the Church and the wider community.

Historically, the Church has required of its ministers and lay leaders (elders) that they live "a godly and circumspect life". The Church did not pruriently try to invade the private lives of its members nor did it set any higher standard of moral purity for leadership beyond that required of all its members.

It required that people live their faith in the world with integrity. Ministers were to set a "godly ensample to the flock", as the older standards wrote.

Over the last 50 years, the Church has struggled to adjust to the changing patterns of social behaviour. Integrity requires people to live with mutual respect, honouring each other and facing the brokenness and complexity of living. People live joyfully in love, fulfilling each other's lives.

The Assembly seems to have destroyed this hard-won understanding of human life. Instead it has tried to impose a restrictive, exclusionist view on a church noted for the inclusive grace of many parts of its life.

The Church is able, when necessary under the Human Rights Act, to formulate rules to govern its own life. The debate to exclude people who are sexually active outside a faithful Christian marriage was intended to stop the Church from continuing to have lesbians and gay men practising ministry, unless they were celibate.

When this was pointed out to be discriminatory, the Church drafted a law that excluded a variety of people.

The first casualties are divorcees. The Church knows that broken relations can be forgiven and restored. People in pain can be counselled by a pastor instead of rejected. However, since divorced people are not in a faithful marriage, they cannot be considered for positions of leadership. This can be an absurd position to maintain.

A Christian married to a partner who is a sceptic, non-believer or a member of another faith also falls under the ban. The other partner may not want to be described as living in a Christian, as distinct from a loving, marriage. People were not asked whether they could live with robust love in mutual respect, when living with differing understandings and practice.

The situation has been complicated by the Civil Unions Act which recognises a range of relationships. One-third of all civil unions are between a man and a woman. The Church wants to claim that people living this way are still living an immoral and promiscuous lifestyle. The Church would be hard put to justify such a stance and may be open to lawsuits if making false accusations against people living faithful, committed lives together.

A civil union partakes of all the duties and responsibilities shared by people who are married, in a form proper to their own situation in a civil union. This is both legally and socially acceptable as responsible.

The Church is not free to claim that they are living in sin and it opens the question of why a same-sex couple should be excluded from leadership when living in a civil union which could well be a faithful, loving, Christian relationship.

The Church has historically regarded people who live together in an intentional way as, in effect, being married. In law, they are married. This has up till now been recognised by the Church as part of its Scottish background.

Church people share the same experience of most members of the wider community that their own children are likely to have formed relationships and lived together for extended periods of time. The Assembly, again without asking anyone what the change in social practice has meant to Church families, has condemned all these young people for living a promiscuous and immoral lifestyle, inappropriate for leadership.

The fact that young people have experimented, often with great courage, is ignored.

The serious commitments entered into, often far exceeding what the Church requires of faithful, Christian marriage, are dismissed as of no account. This suggests a church out of touch and afraid of social commitments that are no longer within its control.

These are the practical difficulties the Church has made for itself. There are also serious theological problems most notably over understanding baptism, the rite of entry to the Christian Church. All the baptised are called to serve. The call to leadership in the Church is an aspect of baptism, which does not allow the Church to discriminate or exclude.

The final question is whether God calls people into the ministry from all backgrounds and experiences. The Church has the responsibility to listen to God's call on a person's life without setting legal limits as to what God might seek to do. The Church has gracious and effective ministers of all sexual orientations, and people who have been humbled into service by their experience of brokenness.

Members of the Church are asking why the Assembly has not listened to the wise experience of the Church.

* The Rev Dr Graeme Ferguson preaches regularly in Auckland Presbyterian churches.