The 1993 Precedent

The finding

What the church did in 1993, in its own words

The July 1993 Herald of Holiness printed the report of the Commission for the Study of Divorce and the Nazarene Ministry, which first met in October 1990. Deasley's preface to his later book confirms the connection.

This book had its beginnings in a paper for a denominational committee on divorce, which eventually formed the basis of legislation presented to the General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene in June 1993.Deasley, Marriage and Divorce in the Bible and the Church (2000), 9

The committee unanimously agreed that the teaching of Jesus on marriage and divorce should be viewed as an ideal.Herald of Holiness 82.7 (July 1993), 6

There is no longer a rule of thumb, namely: did adultery take place or not?Herald of Holiness 82.7 (July 1993), 6

In the last analysis there is only one guiding principle: The law must be proclaimed in the context of the gospel.Deasley, "Marriage and Divorce in New Testament Interpretation" (paper for the committee, August 1991), 19

The report says Deasley's paper "served as a biblical and theological foundation for the proposed recommendations", that he set out two options (Jesus' teaching as "prescriptive law" or as "an ideal"), and that he drafted the Manual changes at the committee's request. It notes that "some of our most careful New Testament scholars" find no grounds for divorce in the Bible at all. Deasley's own exegesis, in his 1991 paper for the committee, came close to that view. The 1989 Manual had said "only adultery is a scriptural ground for divorce" (¶35.3). The 1993 Manual removed that sentence.

Why it matters. The usual reply to the divorce comparison is that the church yielded to culture. The record is more interesting than either side's version. The question was open in print by 1968, when the Herald's editor called for a formal study of marriage and the family. According to an account passed down from Frank Carver, who did the New Testament work, an earlier study reached much the same reading Deasley later did and was not adopted. If that is right, what changed between the two studies was not the scholarship but how many divorced people, and divorced ministers, were in the church.

Deasley's own 1991 paper for the committee shows what kind of answer the church gave. His exegesis did not soften. He concluded that Paul and the Gospels present Jesus as teaching that marriage is "lifelong and indissoluble; and remarriage is forbidden and adulterous," and that Matthew's exceptions are not true exceptions. The change came at the next step: whether that teaching is "prescriptive law" or "an ideal," under the principle that "the law must be proclaimed in the context of the gospel." The church granted the strict reading of the texts and still decided the wording did not settle how it should treat people. Pastoral reality pressed the question, and the committee's method gave the church a faithful way to answer it.

The precedent also cuts the other way: the committee's first guideline was that permanence remains "the baseline of the biblical view", so what the precedent delivered was grace for those who fall short of an ideal, which is accommodation and not affirmation.

The July 1993 issue is public at the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library. The report is on pages 5–6. The June 26, 1968 issue is at the same library; Purkiser's editorial is on pages 10–11.

Chronology

How the teaching and the question moved

Each entry names its source and how it was checked. Documents marked "Primary, read" can be opened on the Sources page or at the linked library.

1. 1906The Manual of the Holiness Church of Christ, one of the bodies that merged into the Church of the Nazarene, calls marriage an institution that "cannot undergo changes or pass away in the progress and mutations of society; but will remain the same and unalterable."Secondary · Manual of the Holiness Church of Christ (1906), 42, quoted in an unidentified history of the church, 161
2. 1908The first Manual of the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene: those "divorced, where Scriptural grounds for divorce did not exist, and have subsequently remarried, are living in adultery"; "only the Biblical cause for divorce, namely, adultery" permits the innocent party to remarry; ministers are "positively forbidden" to marry anyone else.Secondary · Manual (1908), 37–38, as quoted in Barnard 2016, 10–11
3. 1915–28The rule is restated "with no change in wording," then "given more legislative force when the 'Special Advices' became 'Special Rules' in 1928." Article IV on Scripture gains the word "inerrantly" in 1928, in wording drafted by H. Orton Wiley.Secondary · Unidentified history, 160–61; Manual (1928)
4. 1968W. T. Purkiser, editor of the Herald of Holiness, writes on the eve of the General Assembly: "A four-year study of marriage and the family is being considered." The church's stand for permanence "must be unqualified," yet "we must not impose limitations that would automatically exclude many who most need the gospel of full salvation."Primary, read · Herald of Holiness 57.19 (June 26, 1968), 11
5. 1964–72Two commissions, authorized by successive General Assemblies, study divorce and church membership for eight years. Sam Powell recalls hearing from Frank Carver that Carver did the New Testament work for one of them, with W. Shelburne Brown involved, and reached a reading close to Deasley's later one.Via tool, check wording · Purkiser 1972, 16 · Reported, unconfirmed · Sam Powell, recalling Frank Carver (2026)
6. June 1972The Eighteenth General Assembly, at Miami Beach, adopts the commission's report: "the vote was almost unanimous." Divorced and remarried people may now become members "at such a time as they have given evidence of their regeneration." The report's reasoning: "The Bible is explicit on the subject of divorce. The Commission does not alter that. The Bible is silent on the subject of specific requirements for church membership." Ministers stay under "the historic standard."Primary, read · General Assembly Journal 2023, 15 · Via tool, check wording · Purkiser 1972, 16–17
7. July 19, 1972Purkiser explains the change in the Herald: the old rule said such people "are living in adultery," and "the present tense of that clause has said more than we really have meant." A second marriage "does represent a valid marriage." "What has changed is one item in our requirements for church membership."Via tool, check wording · Herald of Holiness 61.15 (July 19, 1972), 16–18
8. 1970sA historian of the church writes that the rule has produced "numerous debates and questions raised in General Assembly action," and that "many problems have arisen in the attempt to administer the Special Rule dealing with divorce."Secondary · Unidentified history, 160 (written after 1968; title and author to identify)
9. 1989The Manual reads: "Though there may exist such other causes and conditions as may justify a divorce under the civil law, only adultery is a scriptural ground for divorce and only adultery will supply such ground as may justify the innocent party in remarrying" (¶35.3). Divorced people may be ordained only with the general superintendents' discretion and "scriptural grounds" (¶320).Primary, read · 1993 committee report, 202–4, which prints the 1989 wording it proposed to replace
10. Feb. 1989The General Board creates a committee "to study the issue of divorce and the ministry in order to give guidance to district boards in their work with candidates for ordination."Primary, read · 1993 committee report, 201, citing General Board minutes, February 1989, 46
11. Oct. 11, 1990The Divorce and the Ministry Study Committee first meets. It adds a second question: whether Nazarene ministers may marry divorced people. Its members: Lee McCleery (chair), James W. Daniel (secretary), General Superintendent Jerald D. Johnson (adviser) and Alex Deasley.Primary, read · 1993 committee report, 201–2; Herald of Holiness 82.7 (July 1993), 6
12. Aug. 1991Deasley delivers "Marriage and Divorce in New Testament Interpretation." His exegesis is strict: Jesus taught that marriage is "lifelong and indissoluble," and Matthew's exceptions "are not true exceptions." He then sets out two ways to build a position, "prescriptive law" or "an ideal," and one guiding principle: "The law must be proclaimed in the context of the gospel."Primary, read · Deasley 1991, 1, 14–19
13. 1991–93The committee "unanimously agreed that the teaching of Jesus on marriage and divorce should be viewed as an ideal" and asks Deasley to draft the Manual changes. The new baseline reads: "In biblical teaching, marriage is the commitment of male and female to each other for life… divorce an infraction of the clear teaching of Christ," and recognizes that some have divorce "thrust upon them against their will."Primary, read · 1993 committee report, 201–3
14. July 1993The Herald of Holiness prints the committee's report for the whole church before the Assembly.Primary, read · Herald of Holiness 82.7 (July 1993), 5–6
15. July 25–30, 1993The Twenty-Third General Assembly meets in Indianapolis and adopts resolution DIVOR-1. The adultery-only sentence is removed, and "unscriptural divorce" becomes "divorce." Barnard dates the adoption to July 30. Deasley's preface later says "June 1993."Primary, read · 1993 committee report, 200–206; Barnard 2016, 11; Deasley 2000, 9
16. 1999–2000J. Kenneth Grider prepares "Wesleyans and Homosexuality" for the Wesleyan Theological Society and withdraws it "so as not to be an embarrassment to my university." He circulates it himself in 2000.Primary, read · Grider (1999–2000), 42
17. 2000Deasley publishes the expanded study, Marriage and Divorce in the Bible and the Church. He credits the committee's adviser, Jerald D. Johnson, with encouraging him to publish.Primary, read · Deasley 2000, 9
18. 2013The Scripture Study Committee recommends leaving Article IV unchanged and writes that "Christian ethics are formulated as the Church interprets Holy Scripture guided by the Holy Spirit."Via tool, check wording · Report of the Scripture Study Committee to the 28th General Assembly (2013)
19. 2015Reginald Watson completes a Regent University dissertation surveying how Nazarene clergy respond to homosexuality. Thomas Jay Oord sits on the committee.Primary, read · Watson 2015, title and approval pages
20. 2016Bruce Barnard, in a Doctor of Ministry paper, becomes the first writer this page has found to use the 1993 revision as a precedent for the LGBTQ+ question. The Nazarene Archives supply him copies of the 1991 paper and the 1993 report on April 21.Primary, read · Barnard 2016, 10–13
21. 2023On March 29 the Board of General Superintendents rules that the Covenants of Christian Character and Christian Conduct are "essential statements of the doctrine" of the church. The anthology Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming appears. It does not mention Deasley or the committee.Secondary · BGS ruling as quoted in The Point (Point Loma Nazarene University); Oord and Oord 2023
22. 2026Alex Deasley dies on March 9.Secondary · Obituary, Penwell-Gabel Olathe

Source ledger

How each source was checked

Not every source here was handled the same way, and you should know which is which. Quotations marked "via tool" passed through a page-reading tool that summarizes, so each needs checking against the original before it is cited anywhere.

Known weaknesses

Where this is most likely wrong

• The reading of "nature" in Romans 1 is a minority one. Loader, Hays, Gagnon and Schreiner hold that Paul's ground is the created pairing of male and female, and the vocabulary of 1:23–27 tracks the Greek of Genesis 1:26–27. Martin answers the "Fall" reading. He does not answer the vocabulary echo.
• Gagnon got to the Qumran evidence first. He reads the Damascus Document's use of Genesis 1:27 as deriving "two" from the two sexes. The reply offered here is this project's own.
• Acts 15 cuts against the case. The council relaxed circumcision with a scriptural warrant (Amos 9) and kept the ban on porneia, probably with Leviticus 18 in view. No comparable positive text exists for same-sex marriage. Isaiah 56 is the nearest candidate and it is not close.
• The precedent yields accommodation. Deasley kept male-female complementarity and the committee kept permanence as the baseline. Affirmation needs a further premise that the argument does not establish.
• Wesley limits the appeal to fruit. He grants that "experience is not sufficient to prove a doctrine which is not founded on Scripture." Experience can confirm a reading. It cannot supply one.
• Martin calls the lenient exegesis on divorce special pleading. He names Keener and Instone-Brewer. A critic could say the same of Deasley.
• The same committee wrote "male and female" into the new baseline. The paragraph it drafted to anchor the revised Manual reads: "In biblical teaching, marriage is the commitment of male and female to each other for life." The people who made the ideal-not-law move did not think it reached this question.
• Pressure, not only exegesis, moved the church. The church studied divorce formally from 1964 and changed its membership rule in 1972, but kept the strict rule for ministers until 1993. Sam Powell argues the difference was the number of divorced members, and that pastoral pressure on this question is smaller. A reply is that the pressure runs through parents and grandparents as much as through gay members themselves. Either way, the precedent shows the church moving when a pastoral problem became unavoidable, not simply when the exegesis was ready.
• The question has become a marker of identity. Divorce never divided the church into camps the way this question does. A study commission would face a harder room than the one in 1990.
• About fourteen modern books are cited without having been opened, among them Belousek, Webb and Gagnon's 2001 book, which are the strongest opponents.

What else exists

The draft and the working notes

The primary documents, including Deasley's 1991 paper and the committee's 1993 report to the General Assembly, are on the Sources page.

A full draft paper of about twelve thousand words follows this argument section by section, with author-date references. It is raw material and not a finished piece. The research notes behind it, including two rounds of source-checking and the corrections they forced, are available on request.

A draft study resolution for the 2028 General Assembly, with a one-page case for sponsors, puts the argument's modest conclusion into the form the church uses: a request that its scholars and pastors study the question and report, as it did on divorce in 1964–72 and 1989–93.

Copyrighted sources are quoted briefly and not reproduced. Deasley's book, Martin's article and book, and the anthology are available from their publishers and libraries. Grider's monograph is posted online.