This week in Christian history: Dwight Moody joins church, PCUSA changes rules on fidelity
PCUSA removes 'fidelity’ requirement for clergy – May 10, 2011
This week marks the anniversary of when a majority of regional bodies within the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to remove a provision mandating clergy to practice “fidelity” within marriage and “chastity” when single.
The Minnesota-based PC(USA) Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area became the 87th presbytery to approve an amendment that removed the denomination’s requirement that all deacons, elders, and ministers live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.”
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The 219th PC(USA) General Assembly had approved the amendment in 2010, sending it to the 173 presbyteries for ratification.
As a result of the Twin Cities vote, the change to the PC(USA) Book of Order received the necessary number of supporting regional bodies to be passed. The official change took effect July 10, 2011, a year after the adjournment of the general assembly.
The approval of the amendment helped pave the way for individuals in same-sex romantic relationships to be ordained and was part of a broader theologically progressive direction for PC(USA).
Changes like these would lead hundreds of mostly theologically conservative member congregations to disaffiliate from the PC(USA) in subsequent years.
