Local Option sunders PCUSA polity

What will happen if those who support local option succeed in one of their three attacks on the polity of the PCUSA? What will local option mean for Presbyterians?

In the first place, under local option, the church would no longer be measuring the fitness of prospective ordinands in a uniform way. Instead, different presbyteries and sessions would in effect place different sets of requirements on their ordinands. Some presbyteries might require candidates to state that they not only approve of the ordination of Self-Acknowledged Practitioners of Homosexual Acts (SAPHAs), but that they will participate in their ordination. Other presbyteries might require candidates to state their belief that SAPHAs are not eligible for ordination.

All this means that the most essential expression of unity between presbyteries and sessions – the ability to transfer ministers and elders between governing bodies, trusting that other governing bodies have properly trained and examined them – would no longer be possible in any meaningful way. It would be practically necessary to examine all candidates coming from other presbyteries just as if they were coming from other denominations, because there would be no way to know if they shared a common view of sin, or even a common commitment to govern their behavior according to the Book of Order.

More seriously, local option would necessarily allow presbyteries and sessions to let candidates choose not to abide by all the behavioral requirements of the Book of Order. At the same time, those same candidates would still be required to vow that they will be “governed by the church’s polity and abide by its discipline.” Promising to be governed by a polity that you are at the same time stating you will not obey is not properly called inconsistency – it is called a lie. And such lies will destroy the bonds of trust that exist between sessions and presbyteries that will now have to wonder if other governing bodies allow their candidates to lie in order to be ordained.

But even those candidates who make their vows honestly, truly intending to be governed by the spirit and letter of the constitution, would be unable to do so under local option. For if every session or presbytery can allow candidates to disobey whatever parts of the constitution they choose, then the constitution – the polity of the church – can no longer serve as a meaningful limitation on those candidates’ behavior. Instead, candidates would in reality be governed only by the arbitrary dictates and whims of their sessions or their presbyteries. Thus even if honest candidates genuinely state their desire to be governed by the polity of the church, they will in fact only be governed by force and fiat. In a very real sense, the constitution itself will cease to exist.

For all these reasons, it is not too much to say that local option will dissolve all the political bands that currently unite the sessions and presbyteries of the PCUSA.