DENVER — The Presbyterian Church (USA) stepped back from another divisive fight over homosexuality May 30, rejecting a third churchwide vote on whether to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to serve as pastors and elders.
Delegates to the church’s annual General Assembly meeting voted 431–92 to refer all questions on gay ordination to a blue-ribbon task force that is studying the “peace, purity and unity of the church.”
The task force, appointed two years ago, will make its final report in 2006 on how to bridge the deep differences on sexuality and theology within the 2.5 million-member denomination. The annual legislative meeting will end June 7.
In voting to defer the issue to the task force, the delegates rejected a resolution from churches in Des Moines, Iowa, that would have overturned a six-year-old ban against noncelibate gay clergy.
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