No Safe Place: Kirkpatrick Rigged the Presbyterian General Assembly PUP Debate

Friday, the Presbyterian Layman revealed that Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick “requested” that Presbyterian Panel survey results be withheld from the General Assembly earlier this year. The central act of the latest General Assembly was to pass the recommendations of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (PUP) to make constitutional ordination requirements on sexual morality optional (A blatant subversion of church order. But I’ll leave that aside for now.). The major survey withheld from the General Assembly indicated that a majority of rank and file Presbyterians opposed efforts, such as PUP, to make constitutional ordination requirements on purity optional for the sake of unity.

Given the close passage of PUP, Kirkpatrick withholding this survey from the GA may have affected the final result. In any case, he rigged the debate and the process.

The reason I include this news in my No Safe Place series is to illustrate that when militantly apostate leaders, such as Kirkpatrick, are in control, as in the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, assuming that they will act in good faith in the political processes of the church is, well, an assumption.

Once the authority of Scripture goes among church leaders, then anything goes.