Friday, June 17, 2005

PCA GA Results

The PCA general assembly is over, and one can begin to evaluate it though many more eye witness accounts must be gathered before a final opinion can be reached about this years GA. The big issue of the Mississippi Valley Presbytery Report and its distribution met with a bitter defeat. Admittedly it was a silly overture. It probably should have failed, but what worries me is that a substitute motion to create a committee to study the issue failed. The PCA is racked with these divisions of significant differences, and no one is even going to study the problem? Seems odd to me. There is a mention in the blog linked about the Standing Judicial Commission. I hope that mean there actually will be some judicial cases about this, but we will see. Somehow I doubt it.
The ‘papist’ overture failed because there is no method in place to annotate the Westminster. Probably a good thing.
They failed to condemn public schools. I am not sure where I would have stood on this issue, but I think it is important for one reason. You will note that this is a motion brought by several individuals, not a presbytery. One of the individuals is Dr. Kennedy, a very influential man. In fact, I think he is the motivating force behind that Justice Sunday thing. Anyway, his motion failed. I just think it is interesting that Dr. Kennedy could not get a presbytery to move on his motion, and now can’t get the GA to act on it either.
The overture requiring people to explain their exceptions to the WCF, and when they teach them make it known to the congregation they are not in line with the WCF on that point, failed. One would like to think that this was because of how troublesome it would be to police, but it failed because exceptions to the WCF are not that big a deal in the PCA.
The Value of Human Life is now under consideration by the PCA. I have hope that they will come back with a good statement, but it just seems odd that they have never dealt with this before, and that they had to a make a committee to study the issue. A second overture asking the GA to make a statement on the Schavio case was turned down because they now had a committee to study such things.

I have to say it was interesting to be able to sit down one night at my computer and read blogs by people attending the GA. The PCA is nothing if not market savvy. One wonders how much longer the PCA can go on ignoring its internal differences. One presbytery condemns men in other presbyteries without trying to have trials, and then the home presbytery clears them without a trial. Everything done in Ad Hoc committees. These differences will soon rend the denomination or carry it into liberalism.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

There actually was a pretty good report on human life that came out from the GA in 1988. We just thought that with technology having advanced, and society having declined, it was time for a new report. Hope that is helpful.

Rick Phillips

Lee said...

That does help, Rick. Thanks for the info.