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Members down 3 percent in PCUSA, adult baptisms up: The lowest yearly drop in the last decade

The net losses in membership in 2009 amounted to the lowest yearly drop in the last decade for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), though the 3 percent decrease to 2,077,138 members was part of a good news/bad news assessment from the denomination’s top executive. “The good news is that adult baptisms rose for the first time in at least four years,” said Gradye Parsons, stated clerk of the PCUSA.

PCUSA to try again on partnered gay clergy, but reject same-sex marriage: At the biennial General Assembly

In a familiar routine, mainline Presbyterians at their biennial General Assembly voted 373-323 to lift a ban on partnered gay clergy, sending the proposed change for the fourth time in nearly a dozen years to the denomination’s 173 regional presbyteries for ratification.

The regional bodies in the 2.07-million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) must vote in the coming year on whether to substitute a measure that would strip any mention of sexuality from ordination requirements for elders, deacons and pastors.

Presbyterians find common ground on Mideast: Committee members displayed "mutual forbearance toward one another"

As Presbyterians opened their eight-day General Assembly on the Fourth of July weekend, they faced a bitter debate over a report on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It appeared to some leading participants that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) would reenact a bruising version of Mideast confrontations “within its own body, so divided were we on all sides.”

However, a heavily revised version of the 170-page report was adopted on the last full day of the assembly in Minneapolis, 558 to 119—a margin called “miraculous” by one voter.