Spam overtures

Our Presbytery has been struggling with whether to be agressive about talking about the issues the 218th GA dealt with or let sleeping dogs lie.

I'm in the sleeping dogs group but some very knowledgable people think the folks in the pews need to know what happened.  I really haven't heard much talk about the 218th.  There was no local news coverage and I never saw anything on the NY Times web site or the Wall Street Journal. 

My view is that it's easy to get distracted by these things and very hard to get a fair and comprehensive view of them.  One of our commissioners came and spoke at our Men's prayer breakfast and, although I know he has some strong opinions, he did a great job of explaining both sides of the issues he was talking about.

Of course, the issue that creates the most controversy is the 4th attempt to delete the fidelity and chastity clause (G6.0106b) which now goes to the Presbyteries.  I don't understand why we have to deal with this over and over again and I don't understand why it gets everyone so exercised.  The last attempt, in 2001 was defeated by 73% of the presbyteries voting.  Six synods had 0 presbyteries vote yes.  Out of 16 synods, only 2 had a majority of presybyteries voting yes.  Out of 173 presbyteries, only 46 voted yes.

Yes, the churches that left the denomination are more conservative, but that's not going have much of an effect.  It's like spam email.  Annoying but harmless.