August 9 1999

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Presbyterians ate lunch at Billy Bob's, the world's largest honky-tonk, sang the national anthem as concert pianist Van Cliburn played, and once more put off resolving the church's most cantankerous controversy—whether non celibate homosexuals should be ordained.

The 2.6 million–member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) retained current bans on ordaining homosexuals in a weeklong General Assembly meeting in June in Fort Worth. But the denomination also voted to study the homosexual ordination question and revisit the subject in 2001.

The assembly was marked by prayerful restraint by those on both sides of the volatile issue. "We opted again for a cooling off period," said Christopher Harris, a minister in Garden City, Michigan.

Clifton Kirkpatrick, the church's chief executive, and the elected moderator, Freda A. Gardner, a retired Prince ton seminary professor, found the annual gathering to be among the most healing and reconciling of recent years.

"This was an assembly marked by grace and a greater willingness to respect one another," Gardner said. "I think we are trying harder than ever to live together in our diversity."

Echoing that sentiment, the denomination's chief spokesperson, Jerry Van Marter, noticed unusual concern by both sides to seek reconciliation. "Many of them realized for the first time that we could really split over this, and it frightened them."

In the most debated action, delegates voted 319 to 98 to retain a section of the church constitution that, in effect, prohibits homosexual ordinations. But the proposal also calls for providing materials so that local congregations can discuss whether homosexuals should be ordained and reconsider the subject two years from now.

The edict that homosexual advocates ...