When the General Assembly headed home from Minneapolis, it left the definition of marriage intact in the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The PC(USA) continues to define Christian marriage as being between “a man and a woman.”

            But while the assembly took no action to change that – voting to answer overtures on same-gender unions by recommending that the church study two reports on marriage – that doesn’t mean nothing will change regarding this issue over the next two years.

            Recently, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast ruled in a case involving a Massachusetts minister, who married two women in a state that has legalized such marriages, that she had violated the denomination’s constitution and her ordination vows.

The court ruled that the “plain meaning” of the PC(USA) constitution is that marriage is between a man and a woman. “While this no longer reflects the reality of civil marriage in some states, and Christian marriage in some denominations, it remains the polity of the PC(USA),” the synod court ruled, reversing a 2009 ruling of the Presbytery of Boston Permanent Judicial Commission, which had found in favor of the minister, Jean Southard.

Southard, now retired, says she will appeal the synod court ruling to the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission, the highest court in the PC(USA). Southard said she married the two women in March 2008, with the approval of the session of the congregation she then served at First Presbyterian church Waltham, Mass., because they were leaders active in her congregation and involved in a committed, loving relationship.

            “To refuse to marry them would have been to give them the message that they were less than others in the congregation, that they were not holy enough to stand in the sanctuary and get married,” Southard said last year. “That was not a message I could give them, as their pastor. I felt that was an unfaithful message. God’s grace is for all of us.”

            The synod court said Southard should not have performed the wedding.

            But the ruling also states that “tensions may exist between diverse parts of the church’s polity, rendering difficult even a good-faith effort of an officer to be `governed by the church’s polity.’ ”

While Southard’s act of marrying a same-gender couple in Christian marriage violates the PC(USA)’s constitution, “failure to do so might be viewed as a violation of other provisions of the constitution,” the court ruled.

 It then cited a provision in the denomination’s constitution (in Chapter G-3.0401) which calls the church “to a new openness to its own membership, by affirming itself as a community of diversity, becoming in fact as well as in faith a community of women and men of all ages, races, and conditions, and by providing for inclusiveness as a visible sign of the new humanity.”

Southard’s case is not the only one pending in the church courts involving same-gender marriage. Janie Spahr, a retired pastor from California, was brought up on charges related to same-gender marriages she performed in 2008, when same-gender marriage was legal for a short time in that state. On Aug. 27, the Permanent Judicial Commission of Redwoods Presbytery ruled that Spahr had violated both her ordination vows and the PC(USA) constitution in performing those marriages.

Southard said Boston presbytery has already incurred more than $44,000 in legal fees related to prosecuting her case – and she’s spent more than that on her defense, although much of her expenses have been covered through donations.

“It’s not helping the church to bring charges,” Southard said. “It’s creating further division, and it’s diminishing the mission funds of the church. Boston presbytery is a very small presbytery, and $44,000 is an enormous percentage of the funds the presbytery has to spend on mission.”

The 2010 General Assembly, meeting in Minneapolis in July, recommended no changes in the constitutional language involving marriage -- although it did ask presbyteries to discuss two reports which address the historical, theological and contemporary complexities of marriage,

The assembly voted to send to the church for study both the majority report and the minority report of the Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Unions and Christian Marriage – a committee that the assembly created in 2008 and which reported back this year. The Special Committee was unable to reach agreement, and the assembly voted 439-208 to send the majority report to the presbyteries for further study, with the minority report attached – in other words, not choosing between the two.

It then responded to a series of overtures that would have allowed Presbyterian ministers to perform same-gender marriages in states where such marriages are legal by answering them all with its action on the Special Committee’s reports.

How to interpret those votes?

Some say the assembly may have been tired – it was late in the evening, and commissioners had been dealing with significant issues all day.

Some point out that the assembly had already decided to send several substantive matters to the presbyteries for a vote – a controversial proposed change in ordination standards; a proposal to add the Belhar Confession from South Africa to the Book of Confessions; and a complicated revision of the Form of Government. With all of that pending, some commissioners might have been reluctant to stir another volatile ingredient into the mix.

“There may have been kind of a pulling back – a sense that the church can only take so much” at one time, said Alan Wisdom, vice-president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy.

And some say the commissioners were simply not willing to step out in favor of same-gender marriage – at least not now.

“This was kind of a safe place to land on marriage,” said Terry Schlossberg, who is active in the evangelical group the Presbyterian Coalition.

“The assembly was asked to take radical actions on marriage,” Schlossberg said.  “That was kind of a first go at it, and it was exceptionally radical . . . The caution on the part of the General Assembly was wise. Whether they were tired or not, they should have been cautious.”

Some contend the assembly should have acknowledged the difficulty felt by some ministers who work in states that have legalized same-gender marriages, and who are being approached by members of their own congregations and being asked to perform same-gender weddings.

The definition of civil marriage currently in the Book of Order “is not factually correct” – it describes civil marriage as being between a man and a woman, when five states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-gender marriage, said Michael Kirby, a minister from suburban Chicago who also is trained as a lawyer. Kirby was the overture advocate for an overture from Chicago presbytery seeking, through an authoritative interpretation from the assembly, to grant pastors the discretion to perform same-gender marriages.

 In the PC(USA), “we have basically said we will welcome all, and in congregations across the country we are nurturing gay and lesbian members,” Kirby said.

But when those people enter into committed partnerships and want to be married, for their own pastors to say “then you have to go someplace else, that does enormous damage to the pastoral relationship,” he said. To say only that the PC(USA) does not allow its ministers to perform such marriages “ignores the prior, existing relationship and the church’s other obligations and the pastor’s obligations to be present with people in the transitions of life.”

Even if the assembly wasn’t willing to approve the overtures, Kirby wishes the commissioners would have taken the time to discuss same-gender marriage and what he calls the “pastoral crisis” in states that have legalized such marriage.

“There’s a part of me that completely understands where they were coming from. It was the end of a very long day. The body had done a great deal of work.”

But disposing of the overtures with no debate “was a substantive decision” on a policy matter, he said. “I’m concerned it wasn’t done the way Presbyterians make substantive decisions.”

Wisdom sees it differently. One overture being considered recommended that the definition of marriage in the Directory for Worship be changed to say that involves marriage between “two people,” rather than what it says now – that marriage is between “a man and a woman.” Such a constitutional change would have required approval from a majority of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries.

 But other overtures sought an authoritative interpretation from the assembly that would not change the Book of Order language, but would allow pastors to exercise discretion when asked to officiate at ceremonies for couples who have obtained a civil marriage license, and would allow sessions to permit such services to take place on church property.

To approve an authoritative interpretation “would have been a back-door approval to same-sex marriages,” without giving the presbyteries a chance to vote, Wisdom said.

Some hope that the discussion in presbyteries will go beyond same-gender marriage.

Schlossberg, for example, wants presbyteries to consider the theology behind the church’s historic teachings on marriage – the idea of “a connection between marriage and the message of the gospel.” By understanding the theology of covenantal relationships, Schlossberg said, “we’d be in a stronger position to make the applications to the current cultural questions before us.”

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