At this point in my understanding of church government (an …

/ 1 min ago April 23, 2024

Comment on Northern California Conference Votes to Act Independent of the General Conference by Sean Pitman.

At this point in my understanding of church government (an understanding which is obviously changing over time and is still fairly tentative) it seems to me that the world church in session has the power to make new doctrinal statements and changes. However, the ordination issue is not one of the official church doctrines. Therefore, the GC in session cannot dictate regarding the policies of unions on the topic of ordination because the unions have been given “final authority” on this topic (like the “final authority” given to individual churches regarding church membership). As far as I can tell at the moment, there seems to be nothing that the world church can do about this (short of the “nuclear option” of taking over a union – over a non-fundamental issue) unless it actually turns ordination into a fundamental doctrinal matter… which seems like it might be rather difficult to do.

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Recent Comments by Sean Pitman

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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!

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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…

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Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…

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Where did I “gloss over it”?

Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.

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