RELIGION / JOHN DART : Presbyterians Vote to Disavow Parts of Women’s Conference

Local Presbyterians have voted overwhelmingly to disavow elements of a controversial women’s conference held last November, and called on the national General Assembly to investigate involvement by Presbyterian staff workers.

The resolution approved after five hours of debate Tuesday was a milder version than one first submitted to the presbytery by four Valley-area congregations. Some conservatives had denounced worship at the conference as heretical.

The Presbytery of San Fernando, regional unit for 35 congregations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), voted 92 to 34 to adopt an overture, or resolution, of disapproval over Presbyterian involvement in the ecumenical “Re-imagining 1993” conference in Minneapolis.

“The substitute overture brought by some pastors preserved the sense of concern while expressing it in language which was not inflammatory or divisive,” said the Rev. Judith Hirsch-Fikejs, moderator of the presbytery.

The furor erupted in December when a conservative publication, “The Presbyterian Layman,” leveled charges that the conference was dominated by heresy and paganism. A service which invoked the name Sophia, the Greek word in the New Testament for the Wisdom of God, particularly stirred protests among Presbyterians and United Methodists around the country. One speaker disparaged the central Christian tenet that Jesus died for humanity’s sins in her remarks.

About 40 other overtures sent to the General Assembly, the church’s decision-making body convening June 10-17 in Wichita, Kan., call for some sort of investigation into Presbyterian roles in the planning and partial funding of, and participation in, the conference.

The measure passed in Reseda this week declared that $66,000 from the denomination’s Bicentennial Fund to help underwrite the $400,000 cost of the conference “was not prudent given the polarized atmosphere and financial problems of our denomination.”

It also asked the General Assembly to explain that church members “do not hold nor accept the presentations or liturgy of the Re-imagining 1993 conference that are contrary to the Scriptures” and to Presbyterian beliefs.

However, the statement also declared the right of Presbyterians to attend events that include other religious traditions and endorsed the aspirations of women for full equality in church life, including the broader goals of the World Council of Churches’ “Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women,” a project linked to the November conference.

Hirsch-Fikejs, pastor of a church in Acton who moderated the special presbytery meeting, said she was concerned that the provocative aspects of the November conference had obscured its character as an interdenominational meeting and “an academic colloquium”--not a denominational conference.

The original resolution put before the Presbytery of San Fernando called for restoring $66,000 to the Bicentennial Fund from other denominational sources and to discipline or dismiss Presbyterian staffers found to have supported or participated in the women’s conference. That resolution was submitted by Canoga Park Presbyterian, Glendale Presbyterian, Palmdale Presbyterian and Bethany Presbyterian Church in Burbank.

The presbytery meeting started with three hours of open forum before the formal debate and voting began.

Though the issue was a volatile one, “there was no name-calling and everything was quite decent,” said Hirsch-Fikejs. “We even sang a verse of Amazing Grace and had prayer at the end.”