“It is not my job as Moderator of the denomination to defend the actions of the church,” Rada wrote in his column. “It IS, however, my job to make sure that the work of the General Assembly is correctly interpreted.” So how well did Rada interpret the Detroit assembly’s actions to redefine Christian marriage from “a man and a woman” to any “two people”? Not so well. Let’s look more closely at his assertions in this column.”

Presbyterian Church (USA) Moderator Heath Rada, in a recent column, told of questions he receives about the 2014 General Assembly votes to redefine Christian marriage to include same-sex couples. Rada cited one question he heard many times: “How do you get away with changing the wording of the Bible when it comes to marriage, which clearly states that marriage is between a man and a woman, to saying something else?” He recounted that one woman had written him asking “why the committee dealing with same-gender marriage at General Assembly did not pray nor read the Bible.”

Rada reassured the woman, and his readers, that the committee had “prayed and read the Bible with great care.” The issue, as the moderator explained it, was that there were different interpretations of the Bible. Some Presbyterians still believe that “same-gender marriage is a sin,” while others have come to the conviction “that a committed marriage between two adults who love each other is consistent with their understanding of God’s word.”

Rada cautioned, “I am not trying to say that we can just sit back and interpret the Word of God in any manner that feels good to us.” But he wanted his audience to “[r]emember that the way we read and understand the Bible has been evolving throughout Christian history.”

The moderator pointed to the example of divorce. Remarking that there are divorced people in the church, the moderator said, “[W]e don’t believe that because it says in the Bible they should be taken out on the street and stoned to death, that is what God wants us to do.” He urged PCUSA members to “keep the dialogue going” about marriage and “seek to broaden our understanding of the faith.”

“It is not my job as Moderator of the denomination to defend the actions of the church,” Rada wrote in his column. “It IS, however, my job to make sure that the work of the General Assembly is correctly interpreted.” So how well did Rada interpret the Detroit assembly’s actions to redefine Christian marriage from “a man and a woman” to any “two people”? Not so well. Let’s look more closely at his assertions in this column.

“I assured her that they [commissioners] prayed and read the Bible with great care.” It is true that commissioners in every General Assembly committee had daily devotional times when they read passages of Scripture, prayed, and sang hymns together. But neither the Marriage Issues Committee nor the assembly as a whole took the time to study key biblical passages on which church teaching on marriage has been based—e.g., Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19/Mark 10, 1 Corinthians 6-7, and Ephesians 5.

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