Presbyterians OK Equality Prayer
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BALTIMORE — The Presbyterian Church adopted a historic statement of faith Saturday that places sexual equality and environmental concerns into the official church canon.
Commissioners to the 203rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted, 412 to 40, to place “A Brief Statement of Faith” in the church’s Book of Confessions, alongside such documents as the 4th-Century Nicene Creed and the 16th-Century Heidelberg Catechism.
After the vote, they stood up and cheered.
The statement--in the form of an 80-line prayer--says in part that everyone is created “equally in God’s image, male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community.”
Another passage enumerates sins against God, saying people “exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”
In a short debate before the vote, one commissioner objected to the use of traditional masculine imagery of God as the father.
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