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Foreword The action of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, meeting at San Francisco, in adopting the Report of the Special Committee to visit Princeton Theological Seminary, has raised an issue upon which the entire future character of the institution depends. In treating of this issue, I shall not deal with the personal attack that has been made upon me. My real sorrow has been due not to the personal indignity that I have suffered by the actions of the last two General Assemblies, but to the fact that I have been the...

Elizabeth Liebert is modest about her low-key fame since becoming the first Roman Catholic sister to serve as a dean of a Presbyterian seminary. "It's a very pedestrian appointment, sorry to say," said Liebert, one day after greeting new students during a reception at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. Liebert, who replaced Jana Childers in the role on June 30, will serve a three-year term as the only dean at the graduate school in San Anselmo as well as vice president for academic affairs. She will be officially installed as dean Oct. 4 in a private dinner...

IÂ’ve spent most of my life conflicted over baptism, not about whether or not one should be baptized, but about the proper age for baptism.My parents dedicated me when I was an infant. Back then, Dad pastored a Wesleyan church and the denomination believed that baptism was for those who had reached the age of accountability and could personally choose to be baptized. They believed that dedication is something parents do for their child and that baptism is something the individual chooses for himself. The denomination based its theology on the fact that the New Testament seemed to indicate that...

Local Presbyterian churches won't be putting candles on a birthday cake for John Calvin--500 wouldn't fit anyway. But church members recognize the importance of July 10. Sunday school classes and study groups at the Presbyterian Church of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Presbyterian Church have been reading the works of the man whose principles eventually founded the Presbyterian faith. "Calvin would be unimpressed that people were celebrating his birthday," said the Rev. Allen Fisher Jr. of the Presbyterian Church downtown, "but deeply edified that people were still reading his works." John Calvin was born July 10, 1509, in France. During his 55-year...

SAN ANSELMO, CA — Elizabeth Liebert will become the first Roman Catholic sister named as dean of a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seminary this summer when she takes over the position at San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS). With more than two decades of teaching experience at the 138-year-old seminary, Liebert will replace the Rev. Jana Childers, who will step down June 30 after nearly eight years as dean. “We are particularly pleased to be attaining a historic ecumenical milestone,” SFTS President Phil Butin said. “Dr. Liebert's deanship is a sterling example of SFTS's thoroughgoing commitment to ecumenical theological education.” “This seems...

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DAVENPORT — Members of the East Iowa Presbytery voted last night in favor of changing the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to allow the possibility of gay and lesbian ministers. Pastors and ruling elders of the East Iowa Presbytery voted 74-21 in support of an amendment that would change wording in the church constitution that currently requires ministers to adhere to sexual chastity unless they are married. Marriage is legal for same-sex couples in only a handful of states. The amendment would not guarantee that gays and lesbians could become ministers but it would open the possibility, said the...

Unofficially, ordination requirement is affirmed The Layman, Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009 The “fidelity/chastity” requirement will remain in The Book of Order, according to the unofficial reports of votes by presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church (USA). The April 22 reports raised the number of presbyteries supporting the Biblical ordination standards to 86, the number needed for a majority. Surprisingly, San Francisco, the last presbytery to report its vote on April 22, was the 86th to reject an amendment to G-6.0106b that would have eliminated the language requiring candidates for ordination to maintain fidelity in their marriages and chastity if single....

Hugh Hewitt, a political pundit radio personality, wants the Mormon presidential election runner Mitt Romney in the Whitehouse—very badly. He casts his pre-election vote in writing A Mormon in the Whitehouse? (Regnery, 2007). In defense of Romney, Hewitt also defends Mormonism better than some Latter-day Saints (LDS). This is strange for a Presbyterian, as what Hewitt claims for himself. It is possible and logically consistent that Hewitt could defend Romney as a republican without defending Mormonism, but he chooses otherwise. The reason that I find this strange is that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, claimed that God appeared to...

The Presbyterian Church (USA) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America both have slashed their 2009 budgets, cutting programs and laying off scores of personnel as denominations continue to suffer from the recession. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in American (ELCA), the nation's largest Lutheran denomination, announced a $5.6-million reduction in its 2009 budget on Tuesday (March 31). The cut was necessary in part because regional synods plan to decrease their contributions to the denomination by $2.4 million this year, church leaders said. Since last November, the ELCA has eliminated more than 23 jobs and cut 12 additional vacant positions. All churchwide...

April 6Kenneth Howell Former Presbyterian minister The Eucharist Converted Me! Kenneth J. Howell  As I knelt in St. Peter’s Cathedral at daily Mass, my heart struggled to know what God wanted me to do. The past year had opened my eyes to the beauties of the Mass and to the truths of the Catholic faith, but I just could not become a Catholic. How could I give up what I had worked so hard to achieve? Now that I was successful in what I had always wanted to do, wouldn’t it be foolish to walk away from it all?...

On a stormy Sunday morning in Charlotte, N.C., latecomers were still shaking off wet umbrellas and streaming into a rented chapel at a local Catholic high school as Anglican minister Filmore Strunk led the congregation in reading Psalm 19: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold." For this congregation, those words ring especially true: Less than 15 months ago, the 300-member group was worshipping with more than 1,000 other parishioners in a 22,000-square-foot, gothic-style sanctuary on a prime piece of property in a growing...

LOUISVILLE – No one could escape the somber atmosphere enshrouding last week’s General Assembly Council meeting, which culminated Friday in a $4 million budget cut and pink slips for 14 staffers. But among those involved in denominational politics, the week proved especially trying for left-leaning activists committed to social causes and minority issues. For them, a series of recent developments – from organizational restructuring to GAC bylaw changes – triggered calls to action and concerns that the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s “prophetic” wing wasn’t receiving a fair shake. “Folks on the left are scared,” observed GAC member Thomas Gillespie as the...

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- A lesbian Presbyterian deacon's application for ordination has been stopped, at least for now. A church commission Wednesday rejected the process used by the Presbytery of San Francisco to approve 45-year-old Lisa Larges' candidacy for ordination.

This following report comes to us from Christian Post: Members of a committee in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will gather this week to consider proposed changes, including the removal of a negative reference to homosexual behavior, to a historic document. The General Assembly Special Committee on Correcting Translation Problems of the Heidelberg Catechism is scheduled to begin a two-day meeting on March 27… Much of the controversy revolved around a reference to “homosexual perversion” among a list of sinful behaviors that is not found in the original German text. Opponents of the current translation argued that the original text and...

When Steve Olmstead served as a Presbyterian minister in Juneau, he would often finish his duties on Sunday, close up the church and head to Mass with his devout Catholic wife and their children.“I had a place to worship, which a lot of pastors don’t,” Olmstead said in an interview with the Anchor. “It was nice to go to a place and worship where I wasn’t the minister.”The Anchorage Archdiocese’s newest seminarian grew up in a Presbyterian home and always had a strong spiritual life. When Olmstead entered adulthood, he felt called to serve as a youth minister, and was...

The largest Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Arkansas on Sunday elected a homosexual as deacon... The vote comes one day after the Presbytery of Arkansas voted to remove restrictions on homosexual ordination from the national church's Book of Order... Upson is a bell choir member and oversees the acolyte program. A Second Presbyterian member since 2001, he also has taught Sunday School, volunteered for Vacation Bible School and served as a lay leader...

For years, the Rev. David Thompson has angered some members of the Presbyterian community with his views. The pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church has said gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve as clergy and marry. He has spoken repeatedly against Proposition 8, global warming and attempts by conservative congregations to break away from the denomination. Now, Thompson and his supporters believe his outspokenness may cost him his job. Two weeks ago, the Presbytery of Sacramento, the local governing body of the denomination, assumed control of the historic downtown church across from the state Capitol. The presbytery installed an...

Another Presbyterian Church (USA) is set to close its doors this spring. West Presbyterian Church of Wilmington, Del., has announced that it will hold its last worship service in its historic Gothic church building on April 26. ... In the ‘90s, it became a More Light Presbyterians governing body member by ascribing to their mission statement: "Following the risen Christ, and seeking to make the Church a true community of hospitality, the mission of More Light Presbyterians is the full participation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people of faith in the life, ministry, and witness of the Presbyterian Church...

John Witherspoon was not only a Founding Father, but in his roles as preacher and professor he taught and influenced many of the great men of the Founding era.On November 15, 1794, a 72-year-old Presbyterian preacher lay dying on his farm near Princeton, New Jersey. In some ways he may have welcomed death. His wife had died five years earlier, and for over two years he had been blind, so his associates had to lead him into the pulpit, where he still preached with his usual earnestness and perhaps with more than his usual solemnity and animation. Even though his...

Where will President Barack Obama attend church in Washington? Thanks to revelations about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) in Chicago, Mr. Obama’s church shopping requires more careful political contemplation than a new president typically needs. But his ultimate choice likely will be a noncontroversial church, suitable for young children, with a brief commute and tightly scheduled worship that gets the president back home early on Sunday mornings.

The Presbytery of Chicago has borrowed money to settle a multi-million-dollar civil suit by four men who say they were sexually molested by a presbytery youth minister when they were children. It is still trying to figure out how to repay the loan. The cost of the settlement has not been disclosed. But it is known that the presbytery is having to sell off some its property. The presbytery has already sold a portion of a retreat in Saugatuck, Mich., and there are plans to sell the presbytery’s headquarters in Chicago. The presbytery has its offices in a converted warehouse...

London, Nov 15 (ANI): Religious people really do see the world differently, that's what a new research ahs suggested. The study found that Dutch Calvinists notice embedded visual patterns quicker than their atheist compatriots. According to Bernhard Hommel, a psychologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who led the new study, culture has long been known to distort visual perception. In a bid to see if religious differences skew perception, Hommel's team tested 40 Dutch atheist and Calvinist university students, who, religion aside, had similar cultural backgrounds. In the study, Hommel's team showed participants a large triangle or square made...

Question: Do Presbyterians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus? A friend of mine said the Presbyterian church did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary. She said that Joseph was the biological father. I am sure she is mistaken but would like a clarification on the doctrine of the Presbyterian church on this. Answer:Thank you for your fine question. Your instincts were correct; we do firmly believe that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. We affirm with the Nicene Creed: "We believe ... in one Lord Jesus Christ, ... who...

Tulsa, Okla., September 9, 2008 – Tulsa County District Judge Jefferson Sellers ruled today that the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) and the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery of the PCUSA (EOP) own the Kirk of the Hills property at 4102 E. 61st Street, under the denomination’s constitution... The Kirk of the Hills paid for the property over the last four decades and the deeds are in the Kirk Corporation’s name. ... The Kirk has been in a legal battle over this property since the Kirk withdrew from PCUSA denomination in August 2006. ...

A third lawsuit has been filed involving Peters Creek United Presbyterian Church, whose members voted 207-26 last year to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) for the more theologically conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. On Monday the minority, who Washington Presbytery has declared the "true church," sued the majority, asking the Washington County Common Pleas Court to remove the officers of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and return all property to control of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Last year the majority sued Washington Presbytery, the local governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA), for the right to keep all property. Last month Washington...

Clovis native Rebecca Sitterly registered to vote soon after returning to her native state in 1979 and jumped right into Democratic politics about the same time. So the former Bernalillo County district judge was surprised to get a July 3 call from a community nonprofit that was checking on her new registration. When Sitterly said she hadn't filled out a registration form (indeed, she'd been regularly voting in the same place on Mountain Road NW in Albuquerque for nearly 20 years) a supervisor with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now promised to destroy the card, Sitterly said in...

Here is an interview with Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of New City Presbyterian Church and the author of the new book, Do I Know God?What are some memories you have of spending time with your grandparents, Billy and Ruth Bell Graham? All of my memories (and I have a lot) are wonderful. People ask me all the time, “What was it like growing up as the grandson of someone so famous, so well-known?” My answer is simply: I never knew any different. I don’t have anything to compare it to. In fact, it wasn’t until I got older that I...

Bruce Reyes-Chow "PCUSA" is a "mainline" denomination of 2.3 million members. This is the spirit of the times (zeitgeist): certainly not the Holy Spirit. According to a story from the Catholic News Agency: San Jose, CA., Jul 8, 2008 / 11:57 pm (CNA).- Reaction continues to the decisions of the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), which took place between June 21 and June 28. The assembly nullified proscriptions against sexual behavior outside of marriage and called for a vote to delete the church’s constitutional standard requiring fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness. It also...

The 218th Presbyterian General Assembly, held from June 21-28 in San Jose, offered both good and bad news for opponents of the anti-Israel campaigns that have roiled mainline churches and disrupted Jewish-Christian relations. First, the good news. The Assembly soundly defeated a divestment resolution (called Overtures), reinforcing its 2006 decision to move away from the anti-Israel positions that had characterized the divestment measure it passed at its 2004 Assembly. The Presbyterians had been the first mainline American church to get on the divestment bandwagon, and its second step away from extremism is hopefully a bellwether for the path other denominations...

Church Youth Leader Accused Of Touching Girl, 13Group Leader Was Helping Girl With Sacrament Classes   NORRISTOWN, Pa. -- A youth group leader from a local church has been arrested, accused by prosecutors of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl. Video Report Members of the Carmel Presbyterian Church found it difficult to believe an employee there was arrested.   "I'm surprised, a little disappointed if it is true," Denise Bottinger, a church member, said.  Montgomery County prosecutors charged 61-year-old Norman Brooks with indecent assault. Investigators said Brooks inappropriately touched a 13-year-old girl.  Investigators said Brooks was the girl's church youth group leader...

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s highest governing body voted Friday in favor of a proposal that would allow for the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians. The 218th General Assembly, meeting in San Jose, Calif., this week, voted 380-325 to send the overture – that would delete the requirement that clergy live in "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between and a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness" – to the denomination's 173 presbyteries for approval. Adding to the blow to conservatives, the Assembly also adopted a supplementary authoritative interpretation of the PC(USA) constitution that would allow gay and...

The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 57,572 members in 2007, the worst decline in decades, according to the official statistics released by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick on Saturday. That leaves the denomination with 2,209,546 members, 2 million fewer than the number of Presbyterians who were members of the predecessor denominations in 1965 that merged in 1983 to form the PCUSA. Kirkpatrick's office projects even higher losses in 2008 and 2009.

June 2 Dr. William Bales - Open Line Former Presbyterian Minister Dr. William Bales, a Senior Fellow of The St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, is a Professor of Sacred Scripture at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from The Catholic University of America and a Master's degree in Theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he concentrated in Old Testament studies. Dr. Bales is also one of the founders of the National Association of Catholic Home Educators. He and his wife Lisanne have six children and live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. St....

The regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and representatives of the Stow Presbyterian Church have reached an agreement that allows the local congregation to keep the church property. The pact comes after 18 months of discussions between the Stow church and the Eastminster Presbytery, according to the Rev. Dan Schomer, who leads the Mineral Ridge-based presbytery, which includes 55 churches in Summit, Portage, Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties. ''The action to dissolve the congregation effectively severs the ties of the church to the denomination and permits it to continue its ministry as an independent congregation,'' Schomer said in...

Tiburon, Calif. (AP) -- The highest court of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has found that a Northern California minister did not violate denominational law when she officiated at the weddings of two lesbian couples. The ruling announced Tuesday by the Louisville, Ky.-based court overturns a decision against the Rev. Jane Spahr last year. A regional judicial committee had found Spahr guilty of misconduct and gave her a rebuke — the lightest possible punishment. The church's high court found that the ceremonies Spahr performed were not marriages, so she did not violate the church's constitution. The panel reiterated the church's position...

A judge ruled April 8 in favor of the motion for a summary judgment filed six months earlier by First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., which had been seeking quiet title to its property, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief, since March 2007. She also ruled against a competing motion for a summary judgment filed by the presbytery. *** "If you saw from the decision of the court, under California law, trusts are presumptively revocable unless the trust instrument makes them expressly irrevocable," he said. "And in the plain language, as we argued to the court, the plain language...

Several U.S. mainline Protestant denominations are about to face their latest showdowns on one of the most vexing issues since slavery: whether to break from biblical morality as traditionally understood to allow clergy with homosexual partners and to sanction blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples. "Mainline" groups (predominantly white, with early American roots, and affiliated with the National Council of Churches) contain vocal, well-organized liberal and evangelical combatants. The resulting dispute "certainly has taken a big toll," says Jack Haberer of Presbyterian Outlook, an independent magazine that airs varied views. "For some, it's the total compromise of all things moral. For...

-snip- Tissues will be needed Sunday when the north Oak Cliff church, known for community service, closes after 118 years. -snip- Trinity has struggled for years as an aging, predominantly Anglo church in a neighborhood turned largely Hispanic. Average Sunday attendance has dwindled from 100 to 40 in the last decade...Indeed, about a third of Trinity's faithful now live at Grace Presbyterian Village, a seniors community in east Oak Cliff. -snip- In the last few years, Trinity tried various strategies, including advertising that it is openly welcoming to gay people. But nothing reversed the decline.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Presbyterian Church (USA) is anticipating annual membership losses will reach 46,544 in 2008, growing to 50,000 in 2009, and another 43,436 members expected to leave the denomination in 2010. Those projections of 139,980 members leaving the PCUSA in the next three years follow on actual membership losses of 91,649 over the past two years - 43,175 in 2006 and 48,474 in 2007, according to a report released Feb. 13 at a joint meeting of the General Assembly Council and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly.

Centerville, Ga - The small community of Centerville has a population of just over 5000 people. But with a total of 48 Presbyterian Churches, they also hold the record for the most number of Presbyterian Churches in a small town. The high number of churches has to do with multiple splits that have taken place over the years because of one issue or another. Originally, in 1899, only one Presbyterian church existed, simply known as "Centerville Presbyterian Church." With about 20 families, the church was, at that time, the largest in the Centerville area. By 1911 the church had grown...

Paul warned us about times like this and the way people – including those claiming to be professing Christians – would act. I strongly believe Paul had in mind the kind of people who run major Protestant denominations like the United Methodist Church. Today, at an event in Fort Worth, Texas, leaders of the denomination, which boasts membership by President Bush and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will consider divesting from all companies that do business with Israel. To say that even considering such an action is hateful, unbiblical, anti-Christian and evil would be an understatement. It's not even understandable except...

A row has broken out among Presbyterian churches in Northern Ireland after a Presbyterian minister in Portadown barred a minister from another church from taking part in a joint Christmas Day service on the grounds that she was a woman. It has been a tradition since the 1940s to hold joint services in Portadown. However, this year the tradition was broken and the churches held separate services as a result of the incident, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

A legal complaint pitting a Mississippi congregation that left the Presbyterian Church (USA) against the Presbytery of Mississippi has been returned to state court by a federal judge. Grace Chapel Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Madison, Miss., is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Mississippi Presbytery from violating a final declaratory judgment that resolved a property ownership lawsuit that the church brought against the presbytery in March. Mississippi Presbytery moved the church's request to U.S. District Court within 30 days of its Aug. 29 filing, saying there was a federal question about the free exercise of religion under the First...

CANONSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Washington Presbytery officials are expected in court on Friday to contest a claim to church property by a western Pennsylvania congregation that voted to leave the national church. A property dispute arose after members of the Peters Creek Presbyterian Church voted in November to leave the Presbyterian Church USA and join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church based in Livonia, Mich.

Two of the largest churches in Sacramento Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will leave the denomination with their properties for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church on Jan. 1, now that their dismissal requests have been approved. Presbytery commissioners agreed at their stated meeting Dec. 4 to dismiss Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church in Fair Oaks, Calif., the presbytery's largest with 2,286 members, and First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., the presbytery's third-largest with 1,143 members. The vote totals were 146-18 for the Fair Oaks Church's dismissal, said Bill Cole, an elder and spokesman for that church, and 153-11 for the Roseville...

Baghdad - Vendors and shopkeepers are gearing up for business along a market street in the northeastern neighborhood of Adhamiya, when a platoon of American soldiers disgorges from Humvees. The soldiers fan out up and down the street. Even on a low-key patrol to make their presence known and gather intel, the soldiers have to stay on the qui vive. Eyes dart up to rooftops and down side alleys; while one soldier smiles and nods greetings to a vendor, another peers to the back of the store. From a distance the soldiers are indistinguishable: domed helmets, dark glasses, and tight-fitting...

First Presbyterian Church of Quincy and the Presbytery of Great Rivers have reached an agreement that will allow the church an orderly transfer to a different denomination while keeping its building and grounds. First Presbyterian will pay the presbytery $196,000 on Jan. 9, a figure that allows the church to be sole owner of the property and facilities at 1027 S. 24th. The agreement also releases both parties from any future claims, damages or demands. *** First Presbyterian Church also will change its name before March. Part of the agreement with the presbytery allows First Presbyterian to temporarily use that...

So how then did these rites and ceremonies, that had disappeared from Presbyterianism between the 17th and mid-19th century reappear in the Episcoterian worship I mentioned in this post? I examined that question in another essay that I wrote on the reintroduction of Holy Days and the church calendar that I will publish separately. Here is the section detailing how Presbyterians turned away from the simple New Testament worship they had practiced for two centuries and readopted the “shadows” that had preceded the reformation: Historically Presbyterians had rejected written liturgies, the Westminster divines had made a conscious decision not to...

A magistrate in Summit County Common Pleas Court has ruled that the property at Hudson Presbyterian Church belongs to the faction of the congregation that voted to leave the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Magistrate John Shoemaker on Friday rejected the argument of the Eastminster Presbytery that all property of the church is held in trust for the denomination as outlined in the PCUSA constitution. - snip - He also said that the presbytery's attorney is filing objections to the magistrate's ruling because it contradicts the denomination's constitution.