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Former Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary president John Mulder suspended as minister
John Mulder last October resigned as president of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary after 21 years, citing health concerns, including some mild strokes.

A month later, the Presbytery of Transylvania, which overseas Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations in eastern Kentucky, launched an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. Yesterday, Mulder admitted the misconduct, and was suspended from his ordained office for 14 months by the presbytery.

"In the final years of my presidency I yielded to personal temptation by inappropriately engaging in sexual conduct with adult women outside my marriage vows, my pastoral vows, and contrary to Scripture," Mulder wrote in a letter to the seminary's faculty and student body. "I ask now your forgiveness for these sins, and for the harm they have caused the Seminary."

In his letter, Mulder also noted that he is being treated for medical depression and alcohol abuse.

The Louisville Courier-Journal notes that "sexual misconduct" has a specific meaning in the PCUSA: it's "a misuse of authority and power that breaches Christian ethical principles by misusing a trust relation to gain advantage over another for personal pleasure in an abusive, exploitative, and unjust manner." But the paper says it's unknown if Mulder sexually abused his authority with seminary employees or students.

"That is not the issue, who they are," Dorothy Ridings, chairwoman of the seminary's board of trustees, told the paper. "The issue is that it happened." She did, say, however, that Mulder's actions were not criminal, and that the board knew about the misconduct when Mulder resigned, but wanted the presbytery to investigate before taking any action.

"If you go back and look at that [news] release [when Mulder's resignation was announced], everything was honest," she said. "It doesn't say everything, though." Ridings told The Presbyterian Outlook that the board's knowledge of the misconduct was "absolutely" a factor in Mulder's resignation.

Only three years ago Donald McCullough was forced to resign as president of San Francisco Seminary, another PCUSA school, for sexual abuse, which the denomination defines separately from sexual misconduct. (He was restored to active ministry in November 2001.)

This is a very sad development, not just for a denomination, but for a man who has had tremendous influence on it. Mulder, author of Vital Signs: The Promise of Mainstream Protestantism and works on Woodrow Wilson, was highly influential in bringing the PCUSA's headquarters to Louisville, septupled the seminary's endowment, and doubled its faculty.

Muslims castigate Anglicans
African Primates of the Anglican Communion said that the church's interaction with Muslims would get much harder with the Episcopal Church USA's confirmation of a homosexual bishop. They were right. Late last week, top Islamic scholars from Egypt withdrew from a meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and other top Anglicans in protest.

"The Muslims can't understand why Christians are ignoring the revelations given to us," Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali told The Daily Telegraph. "This is very serious in the present international situation."

Meanwhile, The East African of Kenya reports that "the divisions within the Worldwide Anglican Community are not as clear cut as they appeared to be at the beginning of the ongoing debate on gay clergy." But is it true? The paper notes comments from South African archbishop Winston Njongonkulu Ndungane and his predecessor, Desmond Tutu, who both said that gay bishops were not a big deal. But orthodox Anglicans weren't all that surprised by these comments, and South Africa often sides with more liberal churches in Europe and North America rather than its counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Make no mistake: the Anglican Communion really is divided, and the Primates' meeting in October is going to be a serious one.

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September (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47