Presbyterian Church breakaway 'not linked to gay issue'
By MEGAN REYNOLDS
Tribune Staff Reporter
mreynolds@tribunemedia.net:
REVEREND Scott Kirkland has rejected claims that the ordination of gay ministers in the Church of Scotland drove Presbyterian kirks in the Bahamas to break away.
The minister of Lucaya Presbyterian Church in Freeport announced at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Scotland this week that Presbyterian congregations in the Bahamas had voted in favour of leaving the "mother church" after 200 years to align with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) in the United States.
A total of 39 church members voted in favour of joining the EPC and three against after Rev John Macleod resigned from St Andrew's Presbyterian Kirk in Nassau and admitted it was partially over the Church of Scotland's ordination of its first openly gay minister, Scott Rennie.
Ordinations
The American EPC is strongly against such ordinations and since the ordination of Rev Rennie last year, more than 50 Scottish churches have backed the evangelical position, showing they will not accept the ordination of gay ministers.
However, Rev Kirkland has shot down any link between Rev Rennie's appointment and the Bahamian choice to align with the EPC.
"To suggest my congregation is leaving the Church of Scotland because of the General Assembly's decision to uphold the call of an openly gay minister is simply not true," he said.
"It has been a long-held ambition of the Kirk's congregations in the Bahamas to form our own denomination, following the example of many other churches around the world which began their life under the wing of the Church of Scotland."
Although the ambition to form a Presbyterian Church of the Bahamas (PCB) has been under discussion for 15 years, the Bahamian following lacks the capacity to run its own denomination and therefore hopes to affiliate with the US Presbyterians as an interim step, Rev Kirkland said. "Furthermore it has a Presbytery in Florida, very close to the Bahamas, where the two congregations can have the experience of being part of a working Presbytery and benefit from the capacity and supervision it offers," he added.
May 20, 2010
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