This piece is pretty interesting, although I think Mr Miller takes a more generous view of separatism than I do. I have often thought of the marriage analogy in reflecting on the current state of our denomination, and I am a bit befuddled by the whole 'gracious separation' language. Many of us of counseled couples who are kicking around the 'd' word; many of us have also, in one capacity or another suffered a divorce in our family. How many couples who separate ever get back together? How many couples start talking about divorce without actually doing it? Not many. Once a spouse begins valuing divorce as an option, it is well-nigh a done deal. There is great scene in movie "The River Wild" where Meryl Streep's character is having marital woes. Her father is blind and a difficult man, and Streep asks her mother how she has made the marriage work all this time. Her mother's answer was simple: Divorce was never an option. The question is not whether we can make the PCUSA work or not--that, I think, is largely left to God. The question for us is faithfulness. Will we consider divorce an option? Will we fight over the house and checking accounts in a bitter dispute? Because divorce is always the death of something: The death of a covenant, the death of a network of relationships, the death of a hope and a promise, the death of a child's confidence in family and self (and God!). Is that what we want? What is so bad that going through a divorce is a better option? Instead of engaging in the self-fulfilling prophecy of divorce/secession/separatism/schism/whatever you want to call it, maybe we should spent more energy on bleeding for those that Jesus bleeds for.