Comments from A Presbyterian Reader

I received the following from Larry Rued, who is affiliated with the First Presbyterian Church of Bradenton, Florida. I am not Presbyterian (although I have many Presbyterian friends, and I know I have many Presbyterians in my family tree) so I cannot comment knowledgeably on these points of information. They do seem interesting, thoughtful, moderate, and consistent with center-right thinking. I invite comments from Presbyterian readers who are better-informed than I am.

Presbyterian Church Overtures

You may want to include this information on your blog.

Our church has submitted four overtures to our Peace River Presbytery. The overtures are currently under review by a presbytery committee and will be voted upon at the November 17, 2005 meeting of the Presbytery.

The overtures are available for reading on the Truth in Love Network Blog:

http://blog.pcusaelders.org/index.php?p=181&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#more181

1. Divestment overture----Peace River Presbytery offers its concurrence with the Mississippi Presbytery, who on May 17, 2005 unanimously approved an overture to the 217th General Assembly on rescinding and modifying certain actions of the 216th General Assembly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2. Abortion overture----Peace River Presbytery calls upon the 217th General Assembly to direct its offices and entities immediately to cease funding of any group that supports or advocates either for or against abortion.

3. Property overture----Peace River Presbytery calls upon the 217th General Assembly to repeal the property held in trust clauses so as to allow those churches, who as a matter of conscience have defied the Book of Order, to leave the denomination with their property.

4. Reapportionment overture----Peace River Presbytery calls upon the 217th General Assembly to direct the 16 Synods to reapportion the presbyteries so as to achieve fair representation on the critical votes amending the Book of Order.

Collectively, the overtures will improve the peace, unity, and purity within the Presbyterian Church USA.

Larry Rued
First Presbyterian Church
Bradenton, FL

UPDATE: Larry sent me a follow-up e-mail, which explains the significance of the overtures above:

These are the issues that have been very divisive in the Presbyterian Church USA. The leadership has been pushing their liberal agenda for years and the result is that over the past 40 years the PCUSA membership has dropped from 4,3 million to 2.3 million members.

Of course, the denominational leadership totally opposes these four overtures. However, the rank and file people in the pews would pass these overtures in a heartbeat.

The internet through bloggers, websites, and the email system are new means to get the message to those people in the pews.