DALLAS, USA - The smaller conservative branch of the U.S. Presbyterian church on Thursday rejected a renewed effort to change doctrine by requiring followers to view the six days of Biblical creation as literal 24-hour days.
About 1,500 ministers and church elders at the annual general assembly in Dallas of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) voted by a show of hands against a motion whose supporters said would smooth over a potentially divisive conflict.
We need this for the peace of the church. Otherwise we will continue to wrangle over this issue for years, said David Hull from the presbytery, or region, of Tennessee. Similar debates have come up for several years at the annual meeting.
But the majority voted to leave standing a theological report approved by last year's assembly that allowed for varied interpretations of the word day in the Genesis account of creation, ranging from a literal day to a figurative or poetic expression.
Opponents of the change argued a strict interpretation would force local churches to drop some ministers and the laymen who serve as church elders. The church believes only men may perform those offices, and all delegates to the annual meeting are men.
This (creation motion) is not going to bring peace, it is going to bring a calamity. It will be used to drive good men out of the church, said Texas delegate Don Darling.
The interpretation debate stems from a section of the 17th-century Westminster Confession of Faith, the basis of most Presbyterian doctrine, that says God created the world in the space of six days.
Supporters of a literal view of the day have said that allowing a figurative interpretation opens the door to evolutionary theory, which the church has rejected as not a valid explanation for the beginning of the world. The church believes the Bible is the unerring word of God.
The church, with about 300,000 members, split in 1973 from the more liberal Presbyterian Church in the United States in another of a long history of doctrinal secessions and mergers since Puritans first brought Presbyterianism to the U.S. in the 17th century.
The liberal wing later merged with another branch to form today's 2.5 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA), whose annual leadership meeting just last week voted overwhelmingly to overturn a ban on ordaining homosexuals as minsters of the church.
The general assembly was also scheduled to vote on a declaration that women should not fight in combat roles in the U.S. military, a motion offered by Philadelphia churches in response to the growing presence of women in the military services.
The motion called it the biblical duty of men to defend women and said women should also not fight because of the inherently greater vulnerability attendant to womanhood.
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