Comments for ACC – advice or advocacy? at http://www.pres-outlook.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.pres-outlook.com Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:36:20 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.pres-outlook.com/reports-a-resources3/presbyterian-heritage-articles3/8545-acc--advice-or-advocacy.html#comment-4456 Dear Editor: It is on the technical side, yes, but it is also short. Every Presbyterian ought to find time to read Warren Herron's "ACC - advice or advocacy?" (March 9), for contained in his careful reading of recent shifts within the Advisory Committee on the Constitution lies the essential history of the PCUSA struggle with gay ordination in miniature. What he doesn't say is that the ACC has been tired, and has a right to be. We all are tired. The almost imperceptible shift from objectivity to advocacy inside the ACC was an attempt to move the church off the dime, to move it forward, to frame G-6.0108 as if it was not a rebalancing of an individual's freedom of conscience and the church's requirements, but rather a return to ancient principle - when, of course, it is an innovation. In a constitutional church like the PCUSA, moving the church off the dime is something the ACC has the power to do. This is not its charge, to be sure; but the ACC has the power. The question is whether the modern innovation under review here a good one. I believe that it probably is. We are stuck. And along with the PUP report, it helps the church move to a different and potentially better place. Are gay relationships, always and everywhere, examples of people justifying their freedom of conscience by "continuing in sin"? Let's find out. But Mr. Herron demonstrates that this is new territory we may soon decide to enter, driven by fatigue. Somewhere, at least to ourselves, we ought to say it. Wayne G. Boulton Boston MA - Wayne G. Boulton, Boston MA Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:02:47 +0100