The final report seems like a big exercise in avoiding the critical issue that needed to be addressed in order to provide conscientious objector status to PCA women: is it biblically wrong and a personal sin for a woman to engage in military combat? A man can’t obtain conscientious objector status merely by asserting that his religion says it is a sin for him to be drafted; it needs to be a personal sin for him to take up arms, and his church needs to be on record that it will discipline any man who does so voluntarily. But this is what the final report studiously avoids stating concerning women of the PCA.
Resolution 2 condemns the use of women as military combatants, but all that does is shift the responsibility and sin onto the drafting authorities, for which they will happily take the risk. Why didn’t the resolution simply state something along the lines that it condemns women voluntarily acting as military combatants. We wouldn’t use the original style of wording for other sins, would we? For example, would we condemn only the one performing the abortion and not the one choosing to undergo an abortion?
A similar problem is in this statement from the final report:
it has become apparent that the sin of our present circumstances is not that of women who have taken on the role of warrior-defender, but that of brothers, fathers, and husbands who have abandoned their daughters, wives, and mothers to the androgyny and sexual anarchy
Why is it not a sin of our present circumstances that women have taken on the role of warrior-defender? That puts the PCA on record that it has no problem with the fact that women are currently serving in the military. If it had stated instead that it is a sin that women had taken on the role of warrior-defender, then PCA women would have better recourse to conscientious objector status. I don’t disagree that men have abandoned women to androgyny, but why is it that one is not a sin and the other is a sin rather than that both are sins?
The lengthy discussion of the prospect of women coming under session censure is odd. Would this be a worry for other sins? Would we hold back on producing a resolution against abortion on the grounds that some women in our churches have had abortions and therefore might come under discipline? Don’t we trust our elders in their handling of such situations? If the PCA had categorically condemned the service of women as military combatants, then sessions across the country could have worked with their members currently in such a situation to transition them out just as sessions work with members who have had abortions. Nevertheless, it is true that session censure would need to be applied to any woman high-handedly enlisting as a military combatant with full knowledge of the stance of the PCA (had it been such), just as session censure would be applied (or ought to be applied) to any woman seeking an abortion with full knowledge of the stance of the PCA. After all, if the PCA would be unwilling to carry out ecclesiastical discipline against its women members who voluntarily enlist as military combatants, then how could PCA women tell the draft board that it is against their religion to serve as military combatants?