#pc(usa)

Today I started with a program put on by the PC(USA) meant to support and train upcoming pastors in the denomination under the guise of collective mentorship and establishing a community of peer groups.  Its new at the divinity school but can be found at most of the seminaries for the denomination.   In fact, I think our group is the first one to be hosted at a divinity school (which is ecumenical and not denominational specific).  The program is basically, a support group, theological indoctrination, and Presbyterian boot camp all rolled in one (but it’s consensual!). 

I’m really looking forward to seeing where it goes.  The facilitators are amazing and in my opinion the epitome of what a Presbyterian minister should be.  I also had one of them as my professor for polity (Presbyterian 101) and he has been my favorite professor at the divinity school so far.

I was a bit nervous going into this intro meeting because of my religious discernment issues, and briefly regretted my decision to be so open about it to my peers and professors over the past few weeks.  I thought that if I brought it up the fact that I might be converting, then they would kick me out of the group.  To my surprise, they seemed really interested in it and supportive of my inclination to hold space for both Christianity and Judaism in my heart while the rest of my being makes up its mind.  I am constantly amazed at how accepting people are when one simply has no clue what they believe.

Hell, if only society treated my bisexuality with such respect.

This week I also decided not to go to temple.  I have been going every week because in my Christian practice... that’s what one does... and I think one of the rabbis was becoming concerned about my constant presence.  Most people seem to only come once of twice a month, and here I show up to everything.  Also, I had sent her an email earlier which consisted of panicked word vomit concerning my religious identity and she hasn’t really made eye contact with me since.  Which I get.  I’ve been in her shoes before. Encountering clergy tends to bring out one of two sides in people:  1.Strict defense of ones religious/ nonreligious practices or 2.Let me explain all of my problems.  Apparently I fall under the second category.  So this week I decided to quell my eagerness and skip synagogue.

Now that I am halfway through the week, I’m sad that I missed it.  I have found something so fulfilling in going to services there.  The liturgy, community, and yearning in the prayers have almost become my saving grace.  Church no longer gives that to me.  In fact, I find myself more frustrated after church on Sunday than I do spiritually fulfilled.

Today I went to the synagogue I have been attending for about a month now for a panel discussing a recent trip to Israel with local Christian clergy.

The essence of the panel and the trip was to take local christian clergy from denominations that have voted or are voting to boycott/ disburse/ separate ties from Israel etc. and actually take them there.  When I first heard about it, like any good person who went to a small liberal arts college in the northeast, I didn’t want to go near it with a 10 foot pole. (I went to school near Brandeis, and hence know better than to be anywhere within pie throwing distance of a discussion on Israel/ Palestine.)

That being said, I come from the PC(USA) which started/ brought into the mainstream the whole disbursement controversy.  I also noted that on the panel was a minister I had spoken to about chaplaincy vocation a few years back and the executive presbyter of the Presbytery I am an inquirer in.  I love and respect both of them and I was curious how they would respond.

Also in the back of my head, I saw this as a great opportunity to experience both religious callings (PC(USA) and Reform Judaism) in the same room and see if it would help my discernment process.

Spoilers! It didn’t.

If there is anyone that I would secretly want to be BFFs with in this world, it is the executive presbyter. He is so cool and compassionate, but also insanely well spoken and intelligent.  He also has a great sense of humor.  If Barack Obama was a Presbyterian minister, he would be this guy... and that’s not just because he is black (although having a black Executive Presbyter speaks volumes about progress in a still predominantly white denomination... in the south no less!).  Seeing him sit next to the Rabbi and hearing how honest yet harmonizing his comments were in such a tense environment... it just was too much for my calvinist heart to handle.

And that is where it hit me.

Shit hit the metaphorical fan like expected, and if it weren’t for clergy who know how to calm a situation and read an audience, I wouldn’t have been surprised had pie been thrown.  

While tension and feelings rose from predominately Jewish voices, I was reminded just how much of an outsider I am.  Judaism as a cultural expression and experience is not my home and nor do I think it ever will be.  Theologically I could align with Judaism and perhaps begin to understand the importance of the cultural aspect... but other than that, I can get no farther.  Judaism will never be home for my soul.  It can be a home for my mind and maybe my heart... but never for my soul.  That part of me will always be held by the Presbyterian church and any remnants of Christianity that I subconsciously still hold on to.

Even our best intentions…

As Sesame Street’s Kermit the Frog croaks that it’s not easy being green, today reminds me that it’s not easy being right, whatever “right” is.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) recently amended the Church’s constitutional definition of marriage as a commitment between two people. It was a good day for those of us who have discussed, debated, and advocated for full inclusion over the last 40 years.

I…

After three decades of debate over its stance on homosexuality, members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted on Tuesday to change the definition of marriage in the church’s constitution to include same-sex marriage.

The final approval by a majority of the church’s 171 regional bodies, known as presbyteries, enshrines a change recommended last year by the church’s General Assembly. The vote amends the church’s constitution to broaden marriage from being between “a man and a woman” to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”

The Presbytery of the Palisades meeting in Fair Lawn, N.J., put the ratification count over the top on Tuesday on a voice vote. With many presbyteries still left to vote, the tally early Tuesday evening stood at 86 presbyteries in favor and 41 against and one tied.

“Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian couples is worth celebrating in the faith community,” said the Rev. Brian D. Ellison, executive director of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which advocates gay inclusion in the church. “There is still disagreement, and I don’t mean to minimize that, but I think we are learning that we can disagree and still be church together.”

The church, with about 1.8 million members, is the largest of the nation’s Presbyterian denominations, but it has been losing congregations and individual members as it has moved to the left theologically over the past several years. There was a wave of departures in and after 2011, when the presbyteries ratified a decision to ordain gays and lesbians as pastors, elders and deacons, and that may have cleared the way for Tuesday’s vote. With many conservative Presbyterians who were active in the church now gone, as well as the larger cultural shift toward acceptance of same-sex marriage, the decisive vote moved quickly toward approval, according to those on both sides of the divide.

Plenty of moderates and conservatives, however, have chosen to stay within the Presbyterian Church (USA.), one of the nation’s historic mainline Protestant denominations, which has its headquarters in Louisville, Ky. Ministers who object will not be required to perform a same-sex marriage.

Paul Detterman, national director of The Fellowship Community, a group of conservatives who have stayed in the church, said: “Our objection to the passage of the marriage amendment is in no way, shape or form anti-gay. It is in no way intended as anything but concern that the church is capitulating to the culture and is misrepresenting the message of Scripture.”

He added, “We definitely will see another wave, a sizable wave, of conservative folks leaving,” but said he and others were staying because “this conversation is dreadfully important to be a part of.”

Other religious denominations that have officially decided to permit their clergy to perform same-sex marriages include the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Quakers, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches and, in Judaism, the Reform and Conservative movements. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America left it open for individual ministers to decide.

“I don’t see any further large mainline denominations making the same move,” said Alan Wisdom, a Presbyterian and the interim editor of Theology Matters, a journal for conservative Protestants.

The United Methodist Church, with about 5.5 million members, has been debating same-sex marriage for years, but it includes a growing membership in Africa, where there is little acceptance of gay relationships. The Presbyterians’ decision on Tuesday will put an end to the ecclesiastical prosecutions and convictions in the last few decades of ministers who broke church law by conducting same-sex marriages.

“Some of us are calling it liberation day,” said the Rev. William Blake Spencer, pastor of Ocean Heights Presbyterian Church in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., who is gay and voted with his presbytery on Tuesday. “It will be the last LGBTQ issue that we debate and fight about, and finally our welcome comes without a ‘but’ or an ‘if.’”

Stuff Presbyterian Seminarians Say

"I can't go out tonight, someone on my Facebook wall has bad theology."

"Ohhh they're a PCA church... yeahhh... I'm not *that* kind of Presbyterian..."

Netanyahu has 2 pieces of advice for the Presbyterian church.

 “You know, I would suggest to those Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour. Go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference.

(. . . )

The Presbyterian authors have barely a word -- and no word of sympathy -- for these Jews, sent packing with a single suitcase. The guide has plenty about the 500 depopulated villages of Palestine, whose inhabitants were complicit in an Arab war of extermination against the newborn state of Israel. Not a sentence about the deserted Mellahs of the judenrein Middle East and North Africa, the Jewish property abandoned, the now overgrown cemeteries, the sequestrated clubs and schools. No Presbyterian need lose sleep over the injustice done to these Jews.

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What did the Jews do to deserve banishment and death? The persecution suffered by the Jews of Yemen predated the Zionist movement by three centuries. The authors cannot begin to fathom the plight of Yemen's 'dhimmis.' Jews were at the very bottom of the social pile. Well into the 20th century until the mass airlift of 40,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel in 1948, it was the job of a subcaste of Jews to clean the sewers. From the 1920s Jewish orphans were forcibly abducted and converted to Islam. Subjugation, servitude and humiliation, unrelieved by European notions of equality and human rights, were the order of the day.