"Local option" is a great idea, if all will agree to it.  Some of us are old enough to remember a time when, in the old PCUS (before the 1970s schism by the PCA) when if one could not, in good conscience, affirm the full and literal, historical existence of a man named "Adam" and a woman named "Eve," one knew to avoid accepting a pastoral call to certain presbyteries in Alabama and Mississippi (and perhaps elsewhere). One looked for more accepting presbytery pastures.  How tragic that we Presbyterians don't learn from our own history!  For example, before the Civil War James H. Thornwell of South Carolina and Charles Hodge of Princeton conspired to keep the topic of slavery totally off the floor of the General Assembly, so that Old School Presbyterians were able to stay united until after Fort Sumter. Slavery was evil, of course; in doing so they snubbed God's call for Christians to stand against injustice and for freedom for all.  But the strategy was smart, if one wanted to keep the denomination intact. Quarreling over--even wondering about--who may be sleeping with whom, that has characterized so many of our ecclesiastical meetings for the past 50 years, has been the laughing Evil One's clever means of dismembering and further fragmenting the very Body of Christ.  After Harry E. Fosdick's sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" the consequent Auburn Affirmation's declaring belief in the virginal conception of Christ as unimportant, and "das Madchen's" formenting of the OPC and Westminster Seminary, the good and faithful who remained in the former PCUSA united enthusiastically around MISSION.  Can't we put sex of all varieties on the shelf now as a topic--and quit obsessing about it?  Let's all unite in 1,001 new and innovative worshiping communities, and in effective evangelism of all the world!

D. Mounger

Knoxville, Tennessee