According to the June issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the 182nd General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, meeting in Chicago last May, was quite a meeting. One of the speakers, a girl, did a two-step on the way to the podium to speak for women's rights, and the spokesman for the hippie-type "Submarine Church of the West," addressed the assembly in language so vile that it made dozens of commissioners furious and caused some to weep!

It seems that "the report on sexuality and the human community" was the most controversial business of the assembly. "It denies that the Bible can provide systematic ethical guide lines for our time and substitutes for it the approaches of situation ethics and psychology as the means for dealing with most sexual practices and norms.

Now hear this: "By only nine (9) votes (356-to-347) the assembly reaffirmed its adherence to the moral law of God as revealed in the old and new testaments, and acknowledged that lust, adultery, prostitution, fornication and the practice of homosexuality are sin." Half of the 703 members of that assembly representing, evidently, the best of the United Presbyterian Church, think that lust, adultery, prostitution, fornication and homosexuality are not to be regarded as sin.

It is understandable that some of them wept and others were furious. But they are simply reaping the legitimate fruits of the denominational attitude towards the Bible: "We can't all see it alike. You have your interpretation; I'll have mine." What consistent objection can they make if someone says, "the way I see it, lust, adultery, prostitution, fornication and homosexuality are not sinful."

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XV: 7, p. 2
December 17, 1970