More than a year after the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) passed a policy that opens the door to the ordination of openly gay ministers, the first test cases have emerged. A Minnesota presbytery last month reinstated a theology professor, Paul Capetz, to ordained ministry, an office he gave up eight years ago after the denomination passed a constitutional ban against ordaining noncelibate homosexuals.
The Presbytery of San Francisco voted earlier last month to allow Lisa Larges, an openly lesbian candidate who has aspired to ordination since 1992, to take procedural steps toward that goal.
Both cases face expected challenges in church courts -- which often take years to resolve. But Capetz said in an interview that he is undeterred.
"I'm happy to go anywhere and talk to anyone about any of these issues," he said. "This is part of a much larger movement for full inclusion of gay people in the church, and I'm going to do everything I can to see that it happens."
The two cases come after the June 2006 approval by the church's General Assembly of a measure that allows for regional flexibility in enforcing the church's constitutional ban on gay ordination.
The vote retained the church's constitutional ban on ordaining noncelibate homosexuals as ministers, elders or deacons, but it tapped into a historic tradition that allows presbyteries to ordain people even when they state a "scruple" or reservation about Presbyterian doctrine or law in the church constitution.
Supporters said the vote was a compromise that offers a way out of the denomination's perennial debates over homosexuality.
Opponents saw it as an end run around the church's constitution, and argue that it only extends the debate.
"What is actually lamentable is that again we become obsessed with the internal workings of the church," said the Rev. Paul Detterman, executive director of the Louisville-based Presbyterians for Renewal, which opposed the measure."The great commission from Jesus Christ is proclaiming the good news in the world, and not just patrolling the church."
The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk for the denomination, declined to comment on the recent cases, noting that they are expected to be appealed.
"The action of the assembly dealt not only with this issue but also with the whole call for a new culture of discernment and community in the church," he said, while adding that "issues about the impact of that relative to the ordination of gay and lesbian people are what will be resolved basically in the courts of the church."
Kirkpatrick, the highest officer in the church, has had to field protests to the 2006 vote, which has prompted dozens of the denomination's 11,000 churches to either leave or move toward the exits.
Reactions have varied among presbyteries.
Many conservative presbyteries have declared they would continue to enforce the constitutional ban on gay ordination without exception.
But the Presbytery of San Francisco narrowly voted to advance Larges' ordination bid.
And the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area voted by more than a 2-1 margin to restore Capetz to the ministry, saying his reservation was not over an essential issue.
A minority report disagreed, saying the vote "allows the will of the (presbytery) to supersede the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church" and is based on "interpretive gymnastics required to provide biblical sanction for sexually intimate same-sex relationships."
Capetz was originally ordained in 1991. At that time, the Presbyterians had a policy against ordaining noncelibate homosexuals, but that policy had not yet been written into the constitution.
Once it was, Capetz said he felt he could no longer remain in ministry because it required him to uphold parts of the constitution that he opposed.
He has said he felt he could seek reinstatement once the 2006 General Assembly allowed for limited dissent.
Part of his argument is that the Presbyterian requirement that homosexual candidates for the ministry remain celibate runs contrary to the theology of Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin, who said the Roman Catholic emphasis on celibate clergy amounted to an effort to earn one's salvation rather than accept it as a free gift of God's grace.
"I have never heard a sermon that offered wisdom as to how a gay man should live his life in a faithful Christian manner," he told the presbytery. "All I have heard is silence, or when there was something other than silence, the words have been condemning."
Capetz teaches historical theology at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a denomination that ordains open homosexuals.
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