re homosexuality issues in christiani he is hoping to pass a resolution that more or less states that we the members of the church agree to disagree on the issue admitting that both sides have honestly studied the scriptures and had the spirit lead them to different conclusions it worked last year when the abortion issue threatened to do more or less the same thing and he is hopeful that the ga can foster a loving and caring attitude about people who disagree with their own view cliff slaughterbeck people would not be willing to note that the church was not willing to live with this kind of compromise with ordination of women the one thing that will definitely prevent a person from becoming a presbyterian minister is if they indicate that they don t accept ordination of women the argument is that we can t have half the church not accepting the leaders of the other half maybe people will clh it might be interesting for folk to know that the church of scotland also a presbyterian church managed to agree to disagree over women s ordination for years the reasoning was that congregations are free to call whoever they wish and that ministers and sessions choose elders if a congregation did not wish to have a woman they were not obliged to and if a session did not wish to they could not be forced to note that the who issue of freedom to call on the part of the congregation is very important here this year is the th annivarsary of the disruption where the church split on that very issue they didn t get back together for almost years a couple of years ago on the anniversary of the allowing of womens ordination the position was changed so that in theory all ministers and elders must recognise that women can be ordained in theory a minister who refused to ordain a woman to his session or refused to work with a woman minister in presbytery could be disciplined in practice this has not happened and i believe it is unlikely to happen my personal view is that the new legislation was a mistake and that the permissive but not prescriptive legislation worked very well we are going to start going round the homosexual debate at next years assembly at this years a motion was put to ban the blessing of same sex couples after an edinburgh minister did so our panel on doctrine is currently looking at marriage and will report next year the matter will be considered and debated then hope this is interesting alison
