This past week the headlines seemed to be dominated by General Assemblies, particularly the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

Ministers attending General Assembly told to ‘clock in’ or lose expenses

Scotsman, 19 May 2012 (yes, slightly out of range but I wanted to keep the GA news together)
The Church of Scotland has a new electronic voting system which doubles as an attendance system at each session. Commissioners, not just ministers, must attend 10 sessions to get expenses reimbursed. A motion to change the Standing Rules to make it 12 sessions next year was defeated.

A move to restrict the use of Church of Scotland buildings to activities not in conflict with the religious principles of the Kirk led to a couple of different stories

General Assembly: Church accused of facilitating worship of ‘false idols’

Scotland on Sunday, 20 May 2012

Hindus object labeling of their deities as 'false idols' in Church of Scotland assembly

South Asia Mail, 26 May 2012

In other Assembly News...

General Assembly: Cash-strapped congregations told to donate more to Kirk

Scotsman, 25 May 2012
Insurance costs are rising dramatically

General Assembly: Pay day loan firms ‘doing great damage to society’

Scotsman, 22 May 2012
Related to the major economic report presented to the Assembly


At the same time the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland was meeting and their work generated a couple of headlines

Free Church of Scotland study sees same-sex marriage as 'social experiment'

STV, 22 May 2012
Reporting on the marriage report the Free Church adopted

New ministers admitted to Free Church of Scotland

Stornoway Gazette, 25 May 2012
Two ministers that left the Church of Scotland over the choice of trajectory to move towards the ordination of active homosexuals were received by the Free Church GA.


In other news around the world

Southern Presbyterians Lose Third of Members, But Amicably

Christianity Today, 24 May 2012
In a commentary piece it is noted that in the church dismissals I mentioned last week two presbyteries, Mississippi and Tropical Florida, each graciously dismissed about one third of their membership.

And two high-profile congregational votes to request dismissal

Church votes to join new denomination

WYFF Greenville, 21 May 2012

Texas Presbyterian Church Splits Over Vote to Leave PCUSA

Christian Post, 23 May 2012 - Although in this case there was a large enough minority that a continuing group will be organized

Mixed reactions over Malawi's plan to repeal anti-gay law

Christian Science Monitor, 21 May 2012
The proposal by the new president of Malawi to repeal laws banning homosexual practice and same-sex marriages is opposed by, among others, the Nkhoma Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian.

Church daycare fire ruled arson

WAVY, 23 May 2012
A fire at Royster Memorial Presbyterian Church of Norfolk, VA, on May 9 was ruled to be arson

After a two day break we now turn our attention to the other side of the North Channel and the activities in Belfast. At 7:00 PM tomorrow evening, Monday 28 May, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland will convene in the Assembly Hall. If you are interested, here is some helpful information:

• The Church has produced an excellent narrative of their docket as well as the more standard programme of the meeting on the same page.
• The narrative contains links to the reports in order of discussion and you can also get them in alphabetical order on the reports page. I don't see a link to the complete Blue Book although some reports have been issued after publication of the Blue Book. At some point it should appear on the Archives page.
• The Assembly meeting is typically livestreamed. I don't see a link yet but will update as appropriate - UPDATE: Live Streaming
  
• Likewise, there are usually news reports from The Press Office. There is the news page or I will update if a separate page is used.
• If you need a polity refresher you should check out their unified document, The Code
• In the past the PCI has done a wonderful and prolific job of tweeting the Assembly at @pciassembly. For the meeting the hashtag is #pciga12
• Other Twitter accounts related to the church that could be interesting are @PCIYAC from the Youth and Children department and @pciSPUD from the Youth Assembly
• Other observers of the GA to keep an eye on include Alan in Belfast (Twitter @AlanInBelfast, blog Alan in Belfast) and the local news site Slugger O'Toole with their Twitter @sluggerotoole
  

The preview of the Assembly acknowledges that this year's meeting will be a bit quieter than several past meetings as restructurings are implemented. One of the interesting reports should be the Financial Crisis Panel formed in response to the Presbyterian Mutual Society issue. They will report under the General Board report and be highlighting lessons learned and recommendations for the future.

One of the other interesting items under the General Board report is the Doctrine Panel which will be presenting a report on marriage. This has definitely been a consistant theme across General Assemblies this year and like the others this has its own particular nuances.  Consider the remit from the 2009 GA:

The terms of the 2009 General Assembly remit to the Doctrine Committee were as follows: ‘That the Westminster Confession, chapter 24, paragraph 3, states: “It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgement to give their consent; yet it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord”. Within the Church, there is a variety of interpretations held concerning what is meant by “to marry only in the Lord”. Such confusion arising from a variety of interpretations is unhelpful and is giving rise to pastoral difficulties and clarification is therefore required’.

A draft was presented last year and has been commented upon by the presbyteries and in response to that significant rewriting and restructuring occurred. In particular at the end of the introductory material the Panel says

In the present report, we have altered the order in which we present the material. The report presented in 2009 was divided into three sections: (a) the Confession; (b) Scripture and (c) pastoral issues. It began with the Confession not because we regarded it as having priority over Scripture, but because the remit referred specifically to the Confession. However, Presbytery responses revealed that perceived deviation from the Confession was a cause of concern only to the extent and on the assumption that this was also a deviation from Scripture, a principle which, we assume, is shared by both the Doctrine Committee and the General Assembly. We have therefore judged it advisable to begin this revised report with biblical materials and proceed to make brief remarks on the Confession after that.

After considering these issues the Panel states a general principle based on the Apostle Paul's writings that "those who truly seek to follow Jesus Christ should marry only those who also truly seek to follow Jesus Christ." In their conclusion they state three things:

• It is important to uphold marriage, understood as a relationship between man and woman, in the third millennium...
• It follows that teaching about marriage and relationships is important in the churches. When this is done to the exclusion of wider teaching on a range of social issues, ministry becomes unbalanced, but we believe that it cannot be neglected in any congregation.
• The imperfection of the church, like that of the people of Israel, for all the differences between them, results in a situation with which we are bound to wrestle: God’s requirement, on the one hand, that we should be holy and blameless; the reality, on the other, that we are not like that. We find Paul, in particular, wrestling with this in his epistles and instructing the churches with both things in mind – the need to be holy and the necessity of being realistic.

Each of these are only excerpts of the conclusion so check the report if you want the full discussion. And much more detail and discussion is available in the full report which begins on page 38 of the General Board report. The General Board reports on Wednesday.

So we look forward to another GA and our prayers are with the Assembly and the incoming Moderator, the Rev. Roy Patton. May the Holy Spirit indeed be moving among you.

I arrived at work this morning, fired up my computer and sat down to livestream the General Assembly the Church of Scotland in the background as I got ready to read my email. But there was nothing there! Oh no... This GA Junkie is going to go through withdraw having expected a hit of polity this morning.

It turns out that the Assembly finished its docketed work early today and took most of the afternoon off. At least a few of the young adults took the opportunity to toss recreational objects around in the park and I suspect that a few commissioners might have caught a nap.

(And don't worry about me - The General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland was online and they have an evening session on missions and worship with Psalm singing that I am listening to as I write this.)

Now, I can fully appreciate the frustration of at least one commissioner who wishes the down time was better placed as he tweeted "how annoying when Sat session went on till 9PM so missed Scottish & Champions League Finals." But this break in the action got me thinking about a couple of things.

The first is the difference in workloads between different Assemblies. In looking through the reports and docket for the Church of Scotland Assembly it did strike me that this year was a bit lighter and had fewer controversial items. Checking over the GA reports page you can see that this year there were 26 councils, committees and other entities reporting to the Assembly and a total of two petitions and one overture from presbyteries.

In comparison, at the present time the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has about 115 overtures, reports from about five special committees and a commission, about 10 reports from General Assembly entities and an as yet unknown number of commissioner resolutions. The Committee to Review Biennial Assemblies has made recommendations to streamline overtures and commissioner resolutions by requiring greater collaboration and support across presbyteries for each of these to be considered by the Assembly. In addition they recommend processes to make greater use of consent agendas. Will this pare down the PC(USA) GA business to the streamlined version of the Church of Scotland Assembly? Probably not, but it will be interesting to see if it does introduce some breathing room.

One of the other interesting things this year is how little contentiousness there is at the Church of Scotland General Assembly. It seems that today's session wrapped up early because time was allotted for debate on various topics and the debate was short and generally harmonious. It struck me earlier in the week how both the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland considered their respective marriage reports and each was adopted smoothly with no changes. At their last GA the PC(USA) debated their marriage report for some time and through a series of interesting, to say the least, parliamentary actions the minority report was added to the distributed report along with the main report. I was struck by the difference in how the PC(USA) and Kirk reports were handled. (I will have a bit more to say about the Kirk and Free Church marriage reports in a day or two.)

The PC(USA) has a reputation for several late night sessions during it's GA while every day this week the Church of Scotland has done all its work without an evening session and they are on track to adjourn tomorrow afternoon. While one afternoon recreation time would be nice at the PC(USA) GA I am not holding my breath. In the PC(USA) there is a particular ethos about the Assembly part of which encourages these long debates and tremendous work loads.  I don't know how much the recommendations from the Review Committee will help, but they might help. In a couple cases I am not sure I agree with the recommendation, but that is a topic for another time.

The bottom line is that if your only exposure to a Presbyterian general assembly is the General Assembly of the PC(USA) I want you to know that it is an anomaly in the amount of business and strength and length of debate compared with the wide diversity of other general assemblies and general synods around the world. It is not that these other meetings are just an excuse to get together - most years they all deal with very important issues. And sometimes they do deal with an overwhelming amount of work, like a couple of years ago when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was working on a new Directory for Worship and had to send it back to the committee to return the next year. But that is the exception and not the rule and usually a GA has a good balance of routine and celebratory work with a limited number of controversial items of business.

Your experience my be different and in spite of all this I am still looking forward to the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA). But for the moment, my lunch hour is up and I think we are on the last report on international mission at the Free Church GA. And to all the Church of Scotland commissioners and delegates I hope you enjoyed your unexpected sunny afternoon in Edinburgh.

A few items that caught my attention this week

Church of Scotland hit by staff bullying claims

Herald Scotland, 19 May 2012
As the 2012 General Assembly gets underway there are reports that a secret survey of the Kirk's central office staff alleges "disturbing levels of bullying."

Congregations leave local Presbyterian district

Sun Sentinel, 16 May 2012
At its regular stated presbytery meeting the Presbytery of Tropical Florida dismissed nine churches from the PC(USA), most to ECO.

Vicksburg churches switch affiliation

My San Antonio, 19 May 2012 [Originally from the Vicksburg Post post which requires registration - link within this article.]
The Presbytery of Mississippi dismissed three churches from the PC(USA) to the EPC.

France will have new denomination with Protestant merger

ENI News, 16 May 2012
The Reformed Church of France - the largest Protestant body in France and tracing its origin back to the Huguenots - merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France to form the United Protestant Church of France.

Finally, if any news item went viral this week it was the resolution of the Presbytery of the Redwoods objecting to the rebuke of Teaching Elder Jane Spahr by their PJC that was upheld on appeal to the SPJC and the GAPJC. I commented on that and there are numerous article about it including ones from the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and the Associated Press.

We now have two General Assemblies underway so there will be lots to talk about next week.

Just down the street and around the corner from where one General Assembly has begun meeting you will find a second one convening tomorrow - the 2012 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. The Assembly will begin at 6 PM on Monday 21 May at St. Columba's Free Church and conclude its business on Friday 25 May. (Note, unless there is a time warp somewhere in there and the 25th of May is missing like the Order of Business says.   ) [Update: The time warp has been resolved.]

Now, you may have to chose, or be good at multi-tasking to do this, but to follow along with the Free Church GA here is what you need to know...

• The General Assembly 2012 page has most of what you need
  
• The Programme for the meeting gives the order of proceedings
• Reports are available individually from the General Assembly 2012 page
• The Assembly will be webcast through the facilities of the host church
• This GA is not big on Twitter but if I spot consistent activity I will update here [Update: Yes, there is Twitter activity! The Free Church is now in the twitterverse at @FreeChurchScot and the meeting is using the hashtag FCGA2012.]
  

If you want to have the polity documents at the ready you can begin with the Acts of Assembly page.  Some more detail, a bit like a Book of (Church) Order, is found in the online Free Church Practice. In addition, for reasons I will discuss in a moment, it might be useful to have the Worship Papers - 2009 available.

Having just gotten back on the grid from a weekend in the desert I am still scanning the Free Church reports for items of interest.  For now, let me highlight the two special reports.

The first is the report of the Special Committee on Praise.  This Special Committee was formed by the Plenary Assembly of November 2010. After they decided to make the church's requirements for worship music broader than just exclusive psalmnody, they formed this group to help them find additional music that would be appropriate. To to this the report says:

The Committee decided to draw up a list of hymns which, in its judgement, are “consistent with the Word of God and the whole doctrine of the Confession of Faith”. After examining a wide variety of praise material, including hymnals and web-based resources, the Committee has produced, in the first instance, a list of hymns from the hymnbook Praise!, published by Praise Trust in 2000.

This list is not attached to the report but I am hoping it might be published elsewhere during the Assembly. The Committee does emphasize in their report the need for following copyright law noting that only 11 congregations have so far obtained a CCLI license. The Committee has also been selecting and editing Scripture passages for singing and a booklet will be circulated to commissioners.

The second report contains the final report on Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage produced by a Study Panel on the subject. The report is 39 pages long and I will not review the document here. It is an interesting read and reflects the input received from the church following the release of the review version at the last GA.  The committee also notes: "In view of the Scottish Government’s current consultation about proposed legislation for “same-sex marriage”, the Panel thought it wise to include a section on this subject to explain the Biblical basis for the Church’s opposition to this proposed legislation."

Both of these reports are docketed for Tuesday evening.

As always, our prayers for the deliberations and discernment of this General Assembly and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Coming up this Saturday the first large General Assembly of the 2012 season begins as the 2012 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is convened in the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh. The Assembly will begin at 10 AM on Saturday 19 May and adjourn a bit after 3 PM on Friday 25 May. On Sunday afternoon 20 May there will be a large public festival in Prince Street Gardens called Heart and Soul 2012, inspired by the similar and successful Roll Away the Stone program last year.

So, to follow along with the GA here is what you need to know

• The Starting Point for almost everything is the General Assembly 2012 page
• The Order of Proceedings is available as a PDF and the Daily Papers will be on the media page
• Reports are available individually on the General Assembly 2012 page or all together in the Blue Book and Supplement
• The Assembly will be webcast, as usual, linked to the media page
• In addition, the media page will have the Daily Updates podcast and Assembly News Items
• There is an official Facebook page for the Church of Scotland, new this year if I remember correctly
• On Twitter the official feed is @churchscotland and the Assembly hashtag is #ga2012
• You can follow the incoming Moderator of the General Assembly, The Rev. Albert Bogle, on Twitter at @italker and his blog - iTalker

If you want to have the polity documents at the ready you start at the Church Law web page and from there can get the Acts, Regulations, Standing Orders, and An introduction to Practice and Procedure in the Church of Scotland (2009 edition).

The business of the Assembly is not as high-profile and controversial as some years because issues regarding human sexuality are not on the docket — the Theological Commission dealing with issues related to same-sex relationships in the church that was created by the 2011 GA will report next year.

But based on the press release and some of the media attention the report A Right Relationship With Money will be interesting to watch.  This report, part of the work of the Special Commission on the Purposes of Economic Activity, is docketed as an Order of the Day at 2 PM on Monday and comes under the Church and Society Council.  This is the only Order of the Day that I see in the docket.

I will update this info as necessary and comment in other posts as the week progresses. Prayers for the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the General Assembly meets.

The biggest news in the Presbyverse right now is the motion passed by the Presbytery of the Redwoods objecting to the decision and punishment and failure to overturn those on appeal in the most recent disciplinary case against the Rev. Jane Spahr (the Spahr II decision).

In case you have missed it, this past Tuesday was the first stated presbytery meeting of Redwoods Presbytery since the PC(USA) General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission heard the appeal in this case and upheld the decision from the Presbytery Permanent Judicial Commission trial. Teaching Elder Spahr was found to have committed "the offense of representing that a same-sex ceremony was a marriage by performing a ceremony in which two women were married under the laws of the State of California and thereafter signing their Certificate of Marriage as the person solemnizing the marriage." In addition, she was accused of persisting in this since the first disciplinary action (Spahr I decision) and of violating her ordination vows by failing to be subject to the authoritative interpretation of the Book of Order.

At the Presbytery meeting, in the Stated Clerk's report of the GAPJC decision, a motion was introduced that laid out a series of reasons the judicial decisions were wrong and concluded with this resolution:

Be it RESOLVED that the Presbytery of the Redwoods opposes imposition of the rebuke set forth in the decision dated August 27, 2010, as inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the faithful life of ministry lived out in this Presbytery.

The full text of the resolution is available from the Presbytery (with a follow-up letter from the Stated Clerk), MLP web site or Mary Holder Naegeli's blog.

Let me begin with some polity observations.  We need to be clear at the onset that the Presbytery resolution is an objection or protest. The rebuke has been made and registered.  The Presbyterian News Service article about the resolution says this from the Presbytery Stated Clerk:

“Perhaps the majority, perhaps all of them, thought they had removed the rebuke but I don’t see how it is in the power of the presbytery to do that,” Conover said, adding that he had about 30 minutes notice on the Clark motion before the beginning of the meeting.

The article goes on to say that Laurie Griffith, manager of judicial process in the Office of the General Assembly affirms this as well with the article saying that "The rebuke stands, whether Redwoods Presbytery reads it publicly or not."

Let's drill down on this for a moment. In Book of Order section D-11.0403e about the degree of censure it ends with this line: "Following such determination and in an open meeting, the moderator of the session or permanent judicial commission shall then pronounce the censure." In the decision Charlotte v. Jacobs (GAPJC decision 215-09) the Commission clarifies that "Unless there is a stay of enforcement in place, censure takes effect immediately upon the pronouncement of the decision at trial..." The Presbytery PJC decision did specify a stay in the event of appeals so with the exhaustion of the appeals the rebuke pronounced at the conclusion of trial on August 27, 2010 would go into effect with the decision by the GAPJC on February 20th, 2012.

Bottom line - they can express opposition to the rebuke, but under our polity the rebuke decided upon and initially imposed 21 months ago by the Presbytery through their own judicial commission became effective earlier this year.

What have they done? First and foremost, the Presbytery by a 74-18 vote has effectively registered a protest to the current authoritative interpretation of the PC(USA) Constitution. And, if I understand the news reports correctly (and I would welcome someone who was there to provide more accurate information in the comments) the resolution did not stop the Stated Clerk from reporting and distributing the decision, but it stopped the decision, including the rebuke from being read. Based on usual practice the rebuke has been read at lease once and probably twice before after the PPJC trial and the SPJC appeal.

I have spent a good deal of time in the last 36 hours working through GAPJC decisions and the Annotated Book of Order to see if I can find a precedent. I am not aware of one but I invite anyone to comment if they are aware of a previous similar presbytery action. From reports on-line it appears that others are not aware of a precedent either. The Louisville Courier-Journal has this in Peter Smith's column: "Jerry Van Marter, director of Presbyterian News Service, said he knows of no other case where a presbytery has refused to carry out a court directive." And in her blog Mary Holder Naegeli, an experienced watcher of these things, says "I cannot recall in almost 25 years as an ordained minister ever witnessing open defiance of a direct PJC order."

What next?  The PNS article says:

Laurie Griffith, manager of judicial process in the Office of the General Assembly said there “are two possible options for redress if anyone wanted to raise the issue” of the presbytery’s refusal.

“Each presbytery submits a ‘compliance report’ to the GAPJC, which is reported for information to each General Assembly,” she told the Presbyterian News Service, but it’s always been just pro forma.”

The other option, Griffith said, “could be a remedial complaint against the presbytery, but remedial complaints are not usually used to challenge disciplinary processes.”

My only comments on the remedial complaint is that 1) while they are not usually used to challenge disciplinary processes this resolution appears to be without precedent so "usually" is the operative word and 2) it strikes me that this is not so much an issue with the disciplinary process itself as with the Presbytery's response to it and enforcement of it.

[Please see update at the end of this] Now, I want to mention one non-polity issue that - if correct - I do find disturbing. Reports have mentioned a significant media presence at the presbytery meeting for this item.  If the media were there just expecting the reading of the decision, that is one thing.  There seems to be a feeling, and I have no independent confirmation of this, that the media was made aware of the counter-motion in advance and were there for a sensational story. In itself that is still OK, we have open meetings... except note what the Stated Clerk said above - that he "only had about 30 minutes notice [of the motion] before the beginning of the meeting." Presumably the same goes for the Presbytery Moderator who had to handle this business. (If the Moderator had notice but the Clerk did not then the Moderator and the Clerk need to talk more.) It strikes me as a break with our much-valued "mutual forbearance" and "peace, unity and purity" if the mainstream media was given notice to be there but those charged with the decently and orderly conduct of the meeting were not.
[Important update: Did get information from someone who was there and it was their impression that the media was there for the reading of the censure. In fact, they observed one reporter grumbling because they had already written the story and now had to rewrite it.  I stand down from my concerns expressed above.]

I might have a lot more to say about this later, but there are more pressing events for a GA junkie upon us now and I will postpone any further thoughts on this, possibly indefinitely. If you want more coverage you can get it from all the usual suspects including...

• Presbyterian coverage from the PNS and Outlook
• Concurring opinions from MLP, John Shuck, Ray Bagnuolo and TAMFS
• Opposing opinions from Mary Holder Naegeli, Viola Larson, The Layman and Stand Firm
• Religious media coverage from The Christian Post
• Mainstream media reports from several sources including the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Los Angeles Times

Enough for now — This will have reverberations for a while to come in many forms and on many levels. We will see where this leads.  Stay tuned...

A few of the items that caught my attention this week:

Presbyterian Church of India decide not to join WCC

Christian Today India, 7 May 2012
During the Assembly held 4-6 of May six of the eight synods voted against joining the World Council of Churches.

A Presbyterian Presidency?

Inside Higher Ed, 9 May 2012
The Davidson College Board of Trustees has formed a committee to study whether the college's president should continue to be a member of a Presbyterian church. Most Presbyterian affiliated colleges no longer require their leadership to be Presbyterian.

Gay-led Los Angeles parish breaks with Presbyterian Church

Reuters, 9 May 2012
West Hollywood Presbyterian church, concerned that the PC(USA) was not embracing homosexual individuals and couples fast enough, requested and was granted gracious dismissal from the Presbytery of the Pacific to join the UCC.

Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) plans job cuts

Courier-Journal, 13 May 2012 (first version of the story published 11 May 2012)
At its meeting last week the General Assembly Mission Council adopted a budget which will restructure positions for a net loss of 13 employees.

No sooner do I get done reflecting on the tension between a presbytery having full authority to determine if candidates hold the necessary and essential tenets of the Reformed faith and the requirement that presbyteries don't actually try to enumerate them in advance then we have a Synod Permanent Judicial Commission (SPJC) decision that confirms that a presbytery has appropriately threaded this needle.

This case goes back to last September when the Presbytery of Los Ranchos adopted a statement on "behavioral expectations" of officers. This statement reads

Affirming that 'The gospel leads members to extend the fellowship of Christ to all persons.' (G-1.0302) The Presbytery of Los Ranchos, meeting on September 15, 2011, affirms that the Bible, The Book of Confessions and the Book of Order (including G-2.0104b and G- 2.0105.1 & 2) set forth the scriptural and constitutional standards for ordination and installation. Los Ranchos Presbytery believes the manner of life of ordained Ministers should be a demonstration of the Christian gospel in the church and in the world, including living either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness and will so notify candidates for ordination/installation and/or membership in the presbytery. In obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture and guided by our confessions, this presbytery will prayerfully and pastorally examine each candidate's calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office, including a commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions of ordination and installation.

A remedial complaint was filed with the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii PJC - Gerald J . Larson, Gary L. Collins, Rebecca B. Prichard , R. Winston Presnall, Margery Mcintosh, Michal Vaughn, Lucy Stafford-Lewis, July Richwine, Jerry Elliott, Sara McCurdy, Gregory Vacca, Gail Stearns, Steve Wirth, Suzanne Darweesh, Jane Parker , Darlene Elliott, Frances Bucklin, Deborah Mayhew, James McCurdy, Judith Anderson, and Susan Currie, Complainants, vs . Presbytery of Los Ranchos, Respondent (with thanks to the Layman for making the decision available on-line). The complainants had three Specifications of Error which the SPJC wrote "can be disposed of by the following specification: Whether a presbytery has the right to pass a resolution concerning the manner of life for its teaching elders as part of the proper exercise of the presbytery's authority within the powers reserved to presbyteries . (F-3.0209)" And the decision says - "This specification is answered in the affirmative."

In stating that the resolution is proper the key line in the decision section says

It does not restate the Constitution in that it explicitly affirms the various documents without offering an interpretation of those documents.

They go on to first note that prior GAPJC decisions are based upon a prior Book of Order, although it is worth mentioning that the Report of the Special Committee on Existing Authoritative Interpretations of the Book of Order is recommending that all the cited Interpretations be retained. The decision then discusses these standards in light of the Bush and Buescher GAPJC decisions. Relative to Bush v Pittsburgh (218-10) they note that the Los Ranchos statement is in compliance with that decision as the "Resolution does not seek to offer an interpretation, paraphrase or restatement of any constitutional provisions." Regarding the Buescher v Olympia decision (218-09) the Los Ranchos resolution specifically says that each candidate will be individually examined and so it does not have essentials that are mandated in advance.

Then, in what strikes me as an interesting use of this section of the Book of Order, the decision cites F-3.0102 where it says "[E]very Christian church, or union or association of particular churches, is entitled to declare the terms of admission into its communion, and the qualifications of its ministers and members..." I have usually read this in the context of affirming denominational differences not standards for individual presbyteries or particular churches so its use here struck me as out of place. Just my reading of it and I've grasped at thinner straws myself.

The decision section concludes with this:

The Resolution does not obstruct any on-going interpretation or implementation of the constitution. It does not alter or interpret the standards for ordination and installation. The Resolution does not seek to define any tenet as an 'essential' doctrine of the P.C. (U.S.A.).

But the SPJC has more to say in the order, and while lifting the Stay of Enforcement the Presbytery was also, under order, admonished for the language that they chose:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Presbytery of Los Ranchos be admonished that while this PJC considers the resolution constitutional, the use of specific language known to be divisive and inflammatory flies in the face of the responsibility to seek the peace, unity, and purity of the church.

Now, the polity wonks probably picked up two items in the decision that seem a bit of an issue, one being the use of F-3.0102 that I just mentioned. Two commissioners dissented from the decision and highlighted these two items in their opinion. Their first point is this:

1. In using the statement, "living either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or in singleness" the Presbytery is using a direct restating of the previous Book of Order requirement which was replaced by the General Assembly action and the presbyteries' vote. Therefore, it has no constitutional standing and cannot be used to determine a candidate's ordination eligibility. Such a policy preempts the vote of presbyters meeting in the future for the examination of candidates who have met the current constitutional requirements.

They later write:

This language is purposefully taken out of the standards for ordained service (G-2.0l04b) by the action of the General Assembly and vote of the presbyteries. This renders the statement of the Presbytery of Los Ranchos unconstitutional in form and intent.

Their second point is what they consider the misapplication of F-3.0102 by the majority. Expressing the same understanding of the section I mention above they write, in part:

In F-3.0102 the Book of Order continues to speak of the Christian church [in all its denominations] by saying, "Every Christian Church or union or association of particular churches"[referring to denominations, not presbyteries] is entitled to declare the terms of admission into its communion, and the qualifications of its ministers and members. [Again, referring Reformed Tradition churches, not presbyteries.]

In fact, the Presbyterian Church (USA) specifically stresses in diversity as it states in the Book of Order: (F-1.0403)

The unity of believers in Christ is reflected in the rich diversity of the Church's membership...

Let me make two brief points in conclusion:

First, the Presbytery of Los Ranchos is trying to walk a very fine polity line here and in the opinion of the majority of the SPJC they have successfully done so.  However, the decision I expected from this case was much, much closer to the dissenting opinion. I have to think that the verbatim inclusion of now-removed language from the Book of Order is a problem in light of the Bush decision. If appealed to the GAPJC I would think this decision has a high likelihood of being overturned. However...

Before the GAPJC will be able to hear this case, if appealed, the 220th General Assembly will be meeting and who knows what polity landscape will come out of that.  One possibility is that an Overture from South Alabama Presbytery (Item 07-08) will be sent to the presbyteries for concurrence providing for presbytery-specific behavioral expectations to be included in the presbytery's operational manuals. Or maybe officers-elect who are being examined will be explicitly prohibited from being asked to commit on how they would view the fitness of future officers-elect they might be examining. This request for an AI comes from similar overtures from Genesee Valley and Albany.

Finally, just a reminder and in full disclosure that I am, and have been, active in the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii and know a good number of the people on both sides of this issue. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect any sort of official disagreement or agreement with the faithful members of the SPJC. These are purely personal conclusions and remarks.

So, like much in the PC(USA) at the moment the future developments in this case will be interesting to see and heavily influenced by the moving target that is PC(USA) polity at the moment. Stay tuned and we will see what happens.

A little bit quieter week, but here are a few of the news items that caught my attention...

The commentary on the elections in Ghana continues from the Presbyterian Churches. From the Presbyterian Church of Ghana -

Don’t create political turmoil in 2012 elections- Rev Ampiaw

Spy Ghana, April 29
Comments from the Chairman of a Presbytery urging politicians to put the interest of the country above their own political interests.

And very similar comments from a Presbytery Moderator of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana

Posterity will not forgive Politicians who create confusion-Priest

GhanaWeb, May 5, 2012

In the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) one of the current issues is the structure of the governing bodies, now referred to as councils, and Pittsburgh is looking at a restructuring to help it do routine work in smaller units

Pittsburgh Presbytery planning to reorganize

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 21, 2012 (yes, outside the range for this week but it only appeared in one of my news feeds this week)

Speaking of Pittsburgh...
One of the hot topics for the 220th General Assembly of the PC(USA) in Pittsburgh in two months will be a proposal to divest from companies that do business related to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Philadelphia Presbytery has gone on record against that divestment proposal and is sending an overture to the GA asking it to adopt a more even handed approach

Philly Presbyterians Reject Divestment

Jewish Exponent, May 2, 2012

And in parallel news, the Methodists in their General Conference last week rejected a very similar divestment proposal by a 2-to-1 margin

Methodists Vote Against Ending Investments Tied to Israel

New York Time, May 2, 2012

Finally, the feel good story of the week

Presbyterian Church, Sewickley Votes to Preserve 'Pink House'

Sewickley Patch, 29 April 2012
In a long-running discussion about the fate of an historic house owned by the church, the Session agreed this week to preform necessary maintenance, if it can raise the funds, and to use the house for church programs.