Breaking News Round-Up From GA

Here's a round-up of actions taken by GA committees in the past couple of days, as reported by the Presbyterian News Service:

New Covenant Overture Approved: By a 67-4 margin, the Social Justice Issues committee voted to approve the PNC overture to urge Congress and the President not to saddle future generations with any more debt. The overture asks the GA to “declare that federal government practices and policies that create ever-increasing debt and unfunded or underfunded obligations for future generations of Americans are a grave moral concern as well as a clear danger to the republic” and calls upon public leaders “to have the courage to address this economic and moral crisis while there is still time.”

Revision of the Authoritative Interpretation Regarding "Scrupling" Ordination Standards: The General Assembly Committee on Church Orders and Ministry has voted to recommend that the 218th General Assembly adopt a supplementary authoritative interpretation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) constitution that applies the historical practice of “scrupling” — the declaration of conscientious objection by candidates for ordination coupled with discernment by the ordaining body whether the declared objection is disqualifying — equally to all ordination standards of the denomination. See the full story here.

Fidelity and Chastity: The GA Committee on Church Orders and Ministry voted to recommend the deletion of 6.0106b of the Book of Order. Here's the link to the story.

Definition of Marriage: The GA Committee on Church Polity rejected an overture from the Baltimore Presbytery to define marriage as between "two people". Read the full report here.

Form of Government Task Force: The FOG report will be revised by an expanded task force, which will be instructed to take the comments received so far into consideration in making its revisions. Then the revised FOG will go to presbyteries for a period of discussion and consideration. PNC formed its own study group this year which produced a very thorough analysis of the present FOG proposal, which was distributed at the last presbytery meeting. Go here for the full story from the GA.

Social Justice Committee Comments on PNC Overture

The PNC's Overture on the Church Addressing Intergenerational Injustice has been considered by the Social Justice Issues Committee to which it was assigned. Here are the Comments from the committee.

PNC's Overture: Intergenerational Injustice

PNC sent one overture to General Assembly. The overture was assigned to the Social Justice Committee for consideration and one of our commissioners, Rev. Mark Cooper, co-pastor of ChristChurch, Bellaire, has been assigned to serve on the Social Justice Committee.

The overture originated with the session of First Presbyterian Church, Pearland and Rev. Casey Jones, the pastor of that church, will serve as advocate for the overture.

The overture reads as follows:

On the Church Addressing Intergenerational Injustice

The Presbytery of New Covenant overtures the 218th General Assembly (2008) to do the following:

1. Declare that federal government practices and policies that create ever-increasing debt and unfunded or underfunded obligations for future generations of Americans are a grave moral concern as well as a clear danger to the republic.

2. Call upon public leaders to have the courage to address this economic and moral crisis while there is still time.

3. Call upon individual Presbyterians, sessions, presbyteries, and agencies of General Assembly to study, pray, and speak words of justice and morality into the present situation and to defend future generations who have no defense. We do not at this time call upon General Assembly agencies to prepare study documents or study papers, and we do not propose that the church at this time have a monolithic policy recommendation. We do call upon the church and the nation to study the policies and practices that have created this grave moral and economic crisis, to repent of the sins of greed and of stealing from future generations who cannot defend themselves, and to call upon our citizens and national leaders to make the sacrifices necessary to begin to solve this problem before it is too late.

4. Call on the nation for a day of prayer on this issue.

The rationale for the overture can be read on the GA website: pc-biz.org.