Monthly Archives: February 2011

PC(USA) Amendment 10-A Voting About To Reach Half-Way Point

1 Reply

There has been a flurry of presbytery voting this past week with some interesting developments.  Here is a quick summary and some observations.

Following presbytery meetings last Saturday it appears from the reports that 81 out of the 173 presbyteries have voted on Amendment 10-A, quickly approaching the half-way mark of 87 presbyteries.  A potentially bigger development is the flurry of presbyteries that have voted “yes” on 10-A after voting “no” on 08-B in the last round.  The number of presbyteries switching now stands at a net change of eight towards “yes,” with nine total switching to “yes” and one switching to “no.”  Since a net change of nine is necessary for the passage of 10-A (it was 78 “yes” and 95 “no” last time) if the current trend continues it is reasonable to expect that 10-A will be approved.  However, don’t take that as a done deal because 1) part of being Presbyterian is the process and 2) just as there was a flurry of “yes” changes this weekend there could as easily be a momentum shift with a number of “no” switches in the future.  Oh, and if you are keeping count I think the vote is 46 “yes” and 35 “no.”

One of the interesting things in the past few weeks was how the three votes were tracking together — That has changed somewhat.  The first observation is that while there was a burst of voting on 10-A, there was not a corresponding burst on Belhar or nFOG.  At the present time 51 presbyteries have voted on Belhar and 47 have voted on nFOG.  Breaking it down, I have 12 presbyteries that have voted on all three amendments, 14 that have voted on Belhar and nFOG but not 10-A, 15 that have voted only on nFOG and 10-A, and 13 that have voted on 10-A and Belhar only.  That gives a total of 61 presbyteries (including my own) who have not voted on any of the amendments yet.

The second thing that struck me was a bit of a weakening of the cross-issue correlation I commented on a little while ago.  While I have not done a full recalculation of my chart to include Saturday’s voting, looking at the numbers it seems there have been a few presbyteries who have voted “yes” on 10-A and “no” on nFOG, to the point that while 10-A is currently passing nFOG is trailing 21-26.  I don’t know if it is this trend, or just a coincidence, that a few days ago GA Moderator Cynthia Bolbach in her monthly column encouraged passage of the new Form of Government and pointed readers to the nFOG blog. ( And yes, Ms. Bolbach’s statement to avoid nFOG advocacy applied only to the sessions of the General Assembly and not the voting period.) And if you are keeping score at home, both Belhar (needs 2/3 to pass) and nFOG are currently trailing, the former 28 to 23 and the latter 21 to 26.

I will leave further analysis of Belhar and nFOG for another time as well as the cross-issue trends.  But taking a more detailed look at 10-A voting we have 73 presbyteries with reported numbers for their votes on both 08-B and 10-A.  I have aggregated these numbers from Twitter as well as vote counts at the Covenant Network, Yes on 10-A, Reclaim Biblical Teaching and the Layman. This aggregation is available in my spreadsheet.

At the present time the total reported number of voting commissioners is 8635, down 8% from the corresponding 08-B total of 9337.  Votes for 10-A have increased slightly from last time, 4602 to 4726, a 3% increase.  Votes against have dropped 17% from 4735 to 3909.

In the chart below I try to graphically show the different results from the presbyteries.  I use my usual margin of a 4% change (or 4 votes for small numbers) being random variation, and so the numbers in that range are considered equivalent for this analysis.  And for the chart below, the comparisons mentioned (Y>N, Y<N, Y=N) are the magnitude or the absolute value of the change in Yes and No votes.  For example, if Yes votes decreased by 15 votes and No votes increased by 6 votes, that would be counted under the “Y decrease, N increase, Y>N” box.  I hope that makes sense.

  Y increase
N decrease
Y > N

n=8
11%

Y increase
N decrease
Y < N 

n=13
18%

 Y increase
N decrease
Y = N

n=4
5%

N no change
Y increase

n=7
10%

Y increase
N increase
Y > N

n=1
1%

Y increase
N increase
Y = N

n=0
0%

Y increase
N increase
Y < N 

n=0
0%

 Y no change
N decrease

n=13
18%

 Y and N
no change

n=4
5%

 Y no change
N increase

n=3
4%

Y decrease
N decrease
Y < N 

n=4
5% 

Y decrease
N decrease
Y = N

n=6
8%

 Y decrease
N decrease
Y > N

n=4
5%

 N no change
Y decrease

n=3
4%

 Y decrease
N increase
Y = N

n=2
3%

Y decrease
N increase
Y < N

n=0
0%

Y decrease
N increase
Y > N 

n=1
1%

 

See any patterns?  There is a tendency for “no” votes to decrease — in 10% of the presbyteries they increase, in 19% the no votes are constant, and 71% of the time they decrease.  And there is a weaker tendency for yes votes to increase — in 45% of the presbyteries it increases, in 27.5% they remain the same, and in 27.5% they decrease. But if you are looking for patterns of no decreases or yes increases it is tough to make a strong argument for a consistent behavior across all the presbyteries.  The best we can say is that the two cases of decreases in “no” with stable “yes” and decreases in “no” with smaller increases in “yes” comprise about 1/3 of the presbytery vote changes.  The other 2/3 are more evenly distributed across a greater variety of cases.

OK, eyes glazed over?  The object of this extensive enumeration is to make the point that there is little in the way of strong trends that one can point at.  Is the trend for shifting from “no” votes to “yes” votes?  Yes, in several presbyteries like Central Florida where the total number was stable (a 3 vote/1% drop) but there were 17 more “yes” votes and 20 fewer “no” votes. And then there is Stockton where there were 50 votes each time but five votes shifted from “yes” to “no.”  Yes, we can say that there are fewer “no” votes overall, but sometimes that comes at no increase in “yes” votes, as in the case of Cimarron, and sometimes with a substantial decrease in “yes” votes as well, such as happened in Heartland.

Bottom line – there are a few trends but if you are looking for easy explanations (like “the conservatives are leaving” or there is a “shift to equality” ) it is hard to tease that out as a simple rule when you look on a case-by-case basis at presbytery voting.  Presbyteries are amazingly unique entities — that is what I have found in my years of tracking this stuff.  (And that does not even include consideration of weather conditions, wind direction, what show in on in prime time that evening, or who is having a conference in Phoenix.)  Believe me, I would love easy answers.  But I have lost count of the number of numerical models I have made that are either solvable but too simplistic or complex but underdetermined.

So we will see how the voting goes in the next few weeks.  We are getting enough data that I can start calculating robust statistics and frequency distributions like I have in the past.  And I will try to keep the cross-tabulation above updated as well as the cross-issue correlation chart.  So stay tuned…

A New, Destructive, Earthquake Sequence In New Zealand

Leave a reply

I am sure by now you have all heard about the destructive earthquake that hit Canterbury and Christchurch, New Zealand, yesterday.  When I heard the news on the radio my first reaction was that it was a strong aftershock of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit that area last September, one month before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand was held in Christchurch.  (The PCANZ message on the new earthquake.) That opinion quickly changed as the damage reports started to appear in the media.  So here is a brief summary of what I know now.

The earthquake struck at 12:51 PM local time and was located just to the south of Christchurch.  While the 6.3 magnitude is significantly less than the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that occurred in September, the earlier event was some distance away in rural areas where the lower population density and single-family residential construction significantly reduced the cultural impact.  At the present time there are reports and pictures of significant damage in downtown Christchurch.  The death toll is currently at 65 but that is likely to rise as rescue efforts continue.  There are even reports of the shaking producing breaks and ice chunks to separate from a near-by glacier.

Besides the size and location, there is one other difference in the two earthquakes which may have increased the damage in this one.  While not as important as the close proximity to the urban center, yesterday’s earthquake was compressional, moving the ground upward.  The September quake was strike-slip, moving the ground sideways.  We will have to wait for the survey data to know how much the ground moved upward, but my initial calculation is about six to eight inches near the fault.  Looking at some of the pictures I think I see some of this compression but without the full context and exact location of the picture I can not be sure.  There is also discussion about this being a shallower earthquake than the September event and therefore more destructive.  Since that depth is generally only a measure of the start point of the earthquake I am not sure this is really a significant difference.  The September quake may have started deeper, but because of its size broke all the way to the surface.  Until we have detailed source-time functions for this event it will be difficult to really know the impact of the depth.

The question is asked if the two earthquakes are related.  My response is very likely yes, but exactly how I am not certain yet.  The most likely linkage is that September’s quake made this new one more likely through stress triggering.  A quick back of the envelope calculation last night indicated a good possibility, but I need to get better numbers today for the geometry of both quakes to be certain since it initially appears to fall right on a dividing line.  The second guess is triggering related to visco-elastic relaxation.  I’ll leave it at that.

It is interesting how the media grabs on to these stories and runs with them.  Without negating the impact of what is now being called one of New Zealand’s greatest natural disasters, it is important to keep this in perspective with other earthquakes.  I have heard news reports call this earthquake “huge.”  Is it huge?  Consider in the last 13 months we have had the Haiti earthquake – 7.0 magnitude with an uncertain death toll between 100,000 and 300,000.  We have also had the Chile earthquake one year ago – with an 8.8 magnitude it was one of the ten largest earthquakes of the last century.

These two earthquakes in New Zealand are a remarkable parallel to a couple we had here in SoCal and that I use in my class as a comparison of risk and hazard, and the different ways we measure the “size/impact” of an earthquake.  Back in 1992 the Landers earthquake hit an rural area (we call it desert) outside Los Angeles. While it was a significant earthquake at 7.3 magnitude and widely felt in the LA area, because of its location damage was fairly limited and there were only three deaths.  Two years later in 1994 the Northridge earthquake struck within the Los Angeles metropolitan area (“The Valley”).  It was a major, but smaller, earthquake at 6.7 magnitude but because it was in the heavily developed area the casualties were higher at 60 (higher by some counts) and the cost of damage was about 200 times higher than Landers.  (In the billions rather than millions of US$).  Location, location, location!

The parallel actually goes a bit further.  While they occurred further apart in space and time than the New Zealand quakes and are not linked in the same way, the Landers was a strike-slip earthquake like the September quake, and the Northridge was a compressional quake like yesterday’s.

Again, I in no way want to trivialize the death and destruction of yesterday’s quake and the continuing aftershocks.  In putting this in a seismological perspective I encourage prayers for all those affected and the rescue workers who are putting in hard and extended hours to help them.  I also ask for prayers for all others around the world who are impacted by natural disasters in their countries.

Drilling Down In The Religious Life Survey — Is Church Attendance Really That Good An Indicator?

Leave a reply

I don’t know how many other bloggers post something and then spend the next 24 hours second guessing themselves.  In this case, one of my conclusions yesterday was nagging at me and in a sense of academic honesty I just had to know if in my treatment of the data I had fooled myself and any readers along the way.  So, being the geek that I am I decided to drill down into that one particular survey question to see what else there was to see.

The conclusion that was nagging me was the sensitivity or “high bar” of church attendance as correlated to the growth or decline of denominations.  As part of the analysis I combined some categories in the survey and did not discuss the actual numbers from the survey.  So to remedy that here is an expanded analysis of that single question.  Those who are squeamish over statistics or don’t feel particularly geeky might want to turn away now — this analysis clarifies and qualifies some details but does little to change the overall conclusion I reached yesterday.

To recap, I am working with two data sets.  The first is the National Council of Churches list of the 25 largest denominations, especially the 14 of those that reported growth rates for 2010.  The second is The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey dataset from the Pew Research Center.  The resulting analysis and data manipulation is mine and it
should be kept in mind that “The Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum
on Religion & Public Life bear no responsibility for the analyses or
interpretations of the data presented here.”  For consistency I will again use only the data for the 48 contiguous United States and will not implement their weighting scheme.

In this analysis I want to look at only two questions in the survey.  The first is the multi-part question that established a respondent’s religion or denomination.  This was user supplied and provided some interesting results, as you will see in a minute.  I want to compare that affiliation information against the question “Aside from weddings and funerals, how often do you attend religious services… more than once a week, once a week, once or twice a month, a few times a year, seldom, or never?”

So, for the 14 denominations on the top 25 list that provided information, here are the results for that question.  I have ranked them by growth rate and include total respondents with each answer as well as the percentage.

Denomination 2010
Growth
Rate
(NCC) 		Attend
more than
once a week 		Attend
once a
week 		 Attend
once or
twice a
month 		Attend a
few times
a year 		 Attend
seldom 		Attend
never 		No
Answer
 Jehovah’s
Witnesses 		 4.37%
 158
74.2%
 21
9.9%
 7
3.3%
 13
6.1%
 9
4.2%
 4
1.9%
 1
0.5%
 Seventh-Day
Adventist 		 4.31%
 35
25.9%
 56

41.5%

 14

10.4%

 13
9.6%
 8
5.9%
 9
6.7%
 0
0.0%
 Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter
Day Saints 		 1.42%
 184
33.1%
 256
46.0%
 43
7.7%
 34
6.1%
 24
4.3%
 15
2.7%
 0
0.0%
 Catholic Church  0.57%
 842
10.5%
 2814
34.9%
 1471
18.3%
 1539
19.1%
 953
11.8%
 399
5.0%
 36
0.4%
 Assemblies
of God 		 0.52%
 225
46.9%
 135
28.1%
 44
9.2%
 38
7.9%
 26
5.4%
 11
2.3%
 1
0.2%
 Church of God
(Cleveland, TN) 		 0.38%
 65
52.4%
 24
19.4%
 15
12.1%
 15
12.1%
 3
2.4%
 2
1.6%
 0
0.0%
 Southern Baptist
Convention 		 -0.42%
 846
33.3%
 697
27.5%
 347
13.7%
 336
13.2%
 220
8.7%
 81
3.2%
 12
0.5%
 United Methodist
Church 		 -1.01%
 248
11.1%
 782
34.9%
 446
19.9%
 456
20.4%
 243
10.9%
 54
2.4%
 10
0.4%
 Lutheran Church-
Missouri Synod 		 -1.08%
 40
6.8%
 225
38.3%
 138
23.5%
 114
19.4%
 56
9.5%
 13
2.2%
 2
0.3%
 American Baptist
Churches in the USA 		 -1.55%
 70
17.0%
 114
27.7%
 80
19.5%
 82
20.0%
 46
11.2%
 16
3.9%
 3
0.7%
 Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America 		 -1.96%
 69
7.9%
 359
41.3%
 199
22.9%
 158
18.2%
 69
7.9%
 14
1.6%
 1
0.1%
 Episcopal Church  -2.48%
 41
8.6%
 144
30.4%
 101
21.3%
 106
22.4%
 61
12.9%
 16
3.4%
 5
1.1%
 Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) 		 -2.61%
 71
13.1%
 238
43.8%
 102
18.8%
 81
14.9%
 44
8.1%
 6
1.1%
 2
0.4%
 United Church
of Christ 		 -2.83%
 21
8.5%
 81
32.7%
 46
18.5%
 62
25.0%
 27
10.9%
 10
4.0%
 1
0.4%

Well, instead of combining categories I ran correlation statistics on all six meaningful responses.  (You could argue that not responding is meaningful, and looking at the numbers there is a case to be made – why do more Episcopalians not want to respond? – but that is a topic for another time.)   However, from crunching the numbers the first time I noticed that responses from those affiliated with the Catholic Church were frequently outliers, something I pointed out in the first post and something that can be seen in this data set.  It has been observed in other reports that cultural and immigration factors play a larger role in membership numbers for that denomination so I have chosen to exclude those responses from my analysis.

Today, the correlation statistics I calculated include both the linear correlation coefficient as well as the rank correlation.  I won’t go into that latter statistic, except to say that it is a good test for leveraging by extreme values and for none of the responses was that significant, and the only response for which it might have a slight effect is “attend once or twice a month.”

Now it turns out that my combining response categories yesterday may not have been a good way to treat the data because the correlation for “once a week” was not only pretty low, but it was inverse at that.  The only category for which there was a meaningful positive correlation (0.74) was “attend more than once a week.” For “attend once or twice a month” and “attend a few times a year” there are pretty strong negative correlations (-0.84 and -0.81 respectively).  I feel better — While my combining categories may not have been the best move, it appears that it does not substantially change the “high bar” I saw that having the correlation with even “once or twice a month” being related to decline.  At this point I feel I can stick with yesterday’s conclusions.

But having embarked on this data exploration, let me continue with a couple new analyses.

First, using the strongest positive and negative correlations let me ask, “where is the line between growing and declining.”  Now, remember this is only a guideline and not hard and fast, but if we run a linear regression on “more than once a week” we find that using this as a predictor tells us that denominations that have more than 27.5% of affiliated respondents answering in that category were growing.  Looking at the table above (and remembering to skip the Catholic Church) we see that indicator holds up pretty well.  If we do the same with “once or twice a month” we get a predictor that tells us that growing denominations have less than 14.9% of affiliated respondents give that answer.  Again, in the table above this holds up with only one exception.  So while not perfect, these two numbers give a pretty good proxy for predicting growth or decline.

So lets apply these numbers.  First, what about non-denominational churches?  While they don’t represent a denomination, by definition, and we don’t have NCC growth data for them, let’s have a look at the attendance statistics for the three most frequently reported nondenominational categories in the Religious Landscape Survey.

Category Attend
more than
once a week 		Attend
once a
week 		 Attend
once or
twice a
month 		Attend a
few times
a year 		 Attend
seldom 		Attend
never 		No
Answer
 Nondenominational
Evangelical
 138
33.4%
 171
41.4%
 62
15.0%
 22
5.3%
 12
2.9%
 7
1.7%
 1
0.2%
 Nondenominational
Charismatic
 74
43.0%
 51

29.7%

 17
9.9%
 10
5.8%
 16
9.3%
 4
2.3%
 0
0.0%
 Nondenominational
Fundamentalist
 41
39.8%
 29
28.2%
 14
13.6%
 11
10.7%
 8
7.8%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%

As you can see, all three have “more than once a week” numbers above the indicator, and two out of three have “once or twice a month” numbers below that indicator – and the third misses by only 0.1%.  The indication is that if these were denominations we would expect them to be growing.

OK, lets get close to home — What about Presbyterian Groups?  The survey has 22 self-reported categories of Presbyterians.  Here are a few of the more frequently reported one.

Denomination Attend
more than
once a week 		Attend
once a
week 		 Attend
once or
twice a
month 		Attend a
few times
a year 		 Attend
seldom 		Attend
never 		No
Answer
 Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.)
 71
13.1%
 238
43.8%
 102
18.8%
 81
14.9%
 44
8.1%
 6
1.1%
 2
0.4%
Presbyterian Church
in America
 30
17.9%
 43
25.6%
 37
22.0%
 34
20.2%
 18
10.7%
 5
3.0%
 1
0.6%
 Associate Reformed
Presbyterian
 3
23.1%
 5
38.5%
 2

15.4%

 1
7.7%
 1
7.7%
 0
0.0%
 1
7.7%
 Orthodox
Presbyterian
 2
25.0%
 3
37.5%
 0
0.0%
 1
12.5%
 1
12.5%
 1
12.5%
 0
0.0%
 Evangelical
Presbyterian
 6
50.0%
 5
41.7%
 1
8.3%
0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 Conservative
Presbyterian
 1
100%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 Presbyterian
(other not specified
evangelical)
 7
13.7%
 17
33.3%
 13
25.5%
 8
15.7%
 5
9.8%
 1
2.0%
 0
0.0%
 Liberal
Presbyterian
 0
0.0%
 1
100%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 0
0.0%
 Presbyterian
(other not specified
mainline)
 10
5.6%
 28
15.8%
 37
20.9%
 51
28,8%
 39
22.0%
 11
6.2%
 1
0.6%
 Mainline
Presbyterian
 5
4.9%
 17
16.5%
 12
11.7%
 32
31.1%
 28
27.2%
 9
8.7%
 0
0.0%

Well, maybe the most important thing about this table is a demonstration of the nature and limitations of surveys.  The first item is the statistics of small numbers.  This dataset works well for the largest denominations, but below the level of the PCA one would like to see a bigger sample.  The second is the self reporting of affiliations and it leaves me wondering if the two different mainline but unspecified categories should be folded into the PC(USA), ignored, or treated as their own group?  And what to do with our liberal and conservative friends?

However, taking the numbers at face value and using the indicators suggested above the only listed Presbyterian branch where we would expect growth is the EPC and the OPC is pretty close.  It is interesting to see the PCA numbers in the same ballpark as the PC(USA).

OK, bottom line — While I need to modify or qualify my attendance calculations from yesterday, the conclusion remains pretty much in tact.  The difference between growing and declining congregations is not in getting Christmas and Easter members to church a couple more times a year (although that would be good) but in fostering an environment were religious faith and participation is taken seriously.

On to the next data set – PC(USA) amendment voting.  Stay tuned.

National Council Of Churches Membership Data — We Can Correlate That

Leave a reply

This past Monday the National Council of Churches USA announced the release of their 2011 Yearbook, a press release that traditionally includes the membership data for the 25 largest denominations in the country.

My first reaction, after a quick look at the data, was “nothing new here — move along to something else.”

My second thought was “why don’t I just take that part of the post from last year, copy and paste it for this year, strike out the old numbers and fill in the new ones.”  In all honesty, the two sets of numbers look a lot alike and I was wondering if there was anything new worth saying about it.

Well, I finally came to my senses, remembered that my motto is “I never met a data set I didn’t like,” and on my commute home I thought about what I could do with it.  I then spent my lunch hours the rest of the week crunching data.  Yup, that’s the way I roll.

Now, a couple of years ago I correlated the NCC data against surveys about political opinions and found that for the mainline churches the degree of membership decline correlated with stronger liberal political opinions.  But, based on reading I have done in the last couple of years I have modified this hypothesis and now think that part of the problem of decline is not the political opinions of the churches per se, but rather that the problem is a lack of clear and well defined beliefs and expectations, particularly in the mainline.  That is to say that trying to be too broad in doctrine leaves those looking for a church uncertain about that church and no need to be committed to anything in particular.  It is the hot and cold of Laodicea and shown on a small scale by the division of the Londonderry Presbyterian Church which split and, at least when I wrote about it a year and a half ago, the combined membership of the two churches had nearly doubled over what it was before the split.  (Now, when I get the the end of this post I won’t necessarily have proven that thesis, but I think it will support it.)

Now, to give credit where credit is due, this is not something I pulled out of thin air but, as I said, saw in the studies and essays I was reading.  Prominent among these, in the chronological order in which I read them: Beau Weston, Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment; Dean Hoge, Donald Luidens, and Benton Johnson, Vanishing Boundaries; Bradley Wright, Christians are hate-filled hypocrites… and other myths you’ve been told;  and Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian.

So, I set about seeing if I could find correlations between indicators of strength of faith and the NCC data.  Thanks to Brad Wright’s book I knew that the Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life was a wealth of information.  The data is split into two reports, the Religious Affiliation Report (full report ) and the Religious Beliefs and Practices Report (full report ).  To tinker a little more, I downloaded The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey dataset from the Pew Research Center.  The resulting analysis and data manipulation is mine and it should be kept in mind that “The Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented here.”  OK, you got the required disclaimer.

I was fun look at the raw data because there are some interesting details in there although they are generally not related to this present discussion.  For example, of the 480 participants who identified themselves with the Assemblies of God, 420 said there was a heaven but 432 said there was a hell.  While that may say something interesting about the theology, in fairness I would have trouble with the wording of the study’s questions because they were base on merit, that is if someone led “a good life” and not on Christ’s free gift of eternal life.  Since individuals could self-identify the denomination they were with it is interesting to note that there is one who said Emerging Church, one each who identified as Liberal Presbyterian and Conservative Presbyterian.  But my favorite has to be the two individuals who identified themselves as an Electronic Ministries Baptist and Electronic Ministries Pentecostal.  Can I now call myself a Virtual Ministries Presbyterian?  We will have to wait to see when the Open Source Church appears.   I am going to keep playing with the dataset and see what other interesting details I can find.

Anyway, some additional interpretation details: The survey was conducted in 2007 so technically a bit of a time offset from the 2010 NCC data.  In addition, the data package comes with one database for the continental U.S. and another for Alaska and Hawai’i.  I only number-crunched the former which contains a bit over 35000 records.  For the first set of correlations with the demographic data I have taken the numbers from Appendix 3 of the Religious Affiliation report which lists results as percentages with no decimal places.  Results for religious behavior that I calculated from the provided dataset are reported as percentages with one decimal place.  And for those interested in trying it themselves at home, the data is provided in SPSS format which you can also read with the open source package PSPP.  I will talk about correlation coefficients which test only for a linear correlation and the data is supplied with a weighting scheme designed to reflect reliability, which I did not use for this initial exploration.

For the NCC data, of the 25 churches on the list only 14 provided numbers for membership change. Of these, we saw notable growth in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (+1.42%), and significant growth in the Jehovah’s Witnesses (+4.37%) and the Seventh-Day Adventists (+4.31%).  There was small growth in the Roman Catholic church (+0.57%), the Assemblies of God (+0.52%), and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) (+0.38%).  The mainline/oldline churches had typical declines including the United Methodist Church (-1.01%), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (-1.96%), Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (-2.61%), the Episcopal Church (-2.48%), the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. (-1.55%), and the United Church of Christ (-2.83%).  Slightly smaller declines were experienced by more evangelical churches, such as the Southern Baptist Convention (-0.42%) and the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (-1.08%).

All of the correlations I ran are available in a web-published Google spreadsheet and the sheet also contains the 2009 membership changes and correlations with those as well.  For this discussion I only use the 2010 membership changes.  As always, use at your own risk.  For those who don’t regularly work with correlations a quick introduction: If the number is positive the correlation is direct and if negative it is inverse.  Correlation statistics range in absolute value from 1, which is perfect, to 0 (zero) when there is no correlation.  Values of 0.8 and greater are generally considered strong correlations and values below 0.5 have weak to no correlation and need to be looked at carefully.  Also, this analysis assumes that the correlation is linear and I have not run tests for leverage effects by extreme values. (But as you will see in the graphs below there are a pair of high values that usually cluster nicely.)

The first demographic data I looked at was for members’ marital status and there was little to no correlation between that and a denominations growth rate.  However, looking at the extremes of age distribution we find that growing churches have a higher percentage of younger members (18-20 years old) than declining members and the declining churches have more older members (>65) than growing churches.
 
These correlations are good with 0.77 and -0.78.  The question is whether there is a cause and effect relationship.  Are growing denominations growing because they have more young people, or are more young people there because they are growing.  We can probably safely conjecture that the relationship is complex and mutual and there is a bit of each going on probably establishing a positive or negative feedback loop.

The correlation with number of children is somewhat predictable based on this preceding relationship. While families with no children are more likely at declining churches (correlation -0.63), it surprised me that the strongest correlation in the children categories was the relationship of families with one child to be at growing churches (correlation 0.81) and then to have families with two children to be completely uncorrelated (-0.03).  The correlation returns with moderate strength for three children (0.63) and for four or more not quite as strong at (0.50).  Like above, assigning dependency is problematic and there is probably a complex relationship. (Maybe something to crunch the numbers around a bit for.)

There is one other demographic relationship and that has a moderate correlation — college grads are more common at declining denominations (correlation = -0.55).

Now, what about the idea I really wanted to test – that patterns of behavior and belief that indicate more intense or dedicated religious practice are correlated with denominational growth.  The survey provides us with several of these.

First, again taking a lead from Brad Wright’s book, I look at church attendance, as self-reported.  I have combined six categories down to three with the frequent attenders (once a week or more than once a week) in one group, the occasional (less than once a week but still multiple times a year) in the second group, and the seldom to none in the last group.

In the first two cases there is a strong correlation with the frequent attenders (weekly or better) to be members of growing denominations (correlation=0.76) and the less-than-weekly to be members of declining denominations (correlation=-0.82).  For the seldom to none, they are more likely in declining denominations, but the correlation is weaker (correlation=-0.40).  For comparison purposes, the Presbyterian Panel asks a similar question and found that for members 26% responded that they attend weekly and another 38% said they attended “nearly every week.”  That total of 64% is a bit higher than the 56.9% in the RLS data, but seems a reasonable match in light of the different wording of the questions.

The survey has two ways of looking at the importance of religion to the participants.  The first is a direct question if their religion is very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important.  The percentages that answered very important and somewhat important are both well correlated with the growth/decline numbers, but in opposite senses.  For those who said their religion was very important there was a correlation of 0.74 indicating they are more likely to be in growing churches.  For those who answered somewhat important, the correlation is -0.74 and they are more likely in declining denominations.

The second is a question that asks “When it comes to questions of right and wrong, which of the following do you look to most for guidance.”  Of the four choices, two were substantially preferred by respondents.  “Guided by religious teachings and beliefs” is shown with the red squares in the graph below and has a 0.77 correlation with denominational growth.  On the chart you can see the outlier to the trend at 0.57% growth which is the data point for the Roman Catholic church.  Removing that data point the correlation jumps to a strong 0.83.  As you can see, the other strong answer is “Practical experience and common sense”, shown in green, and that has an inverse correlation at -0.77.  So in growing churches the members rely more on church teaching and in declining churches the members are guided more by their own experience.  It is interesting, and somewhat surprising to this scientist, how far below the first two the reliance on philosophy and on science fall.  And both of those have almost as strong inverse correlations.


 
You can have a look at the spreadsheet for a bunch of the other correlations I ran.  It pretty much holds up that strong religious beliefs, certainty in those beliefs, and practices correlate with denominational growth while the moderate to weak responses for these things are inversely correlated and are more likely in declining denominations.

Well, crunching the numbers is the easy part.  What does this all mean and can it be applied to reverse mainline decline?

First, let me say that I think it is difficult to separate what should be the neutral practices from the doctrine.  As I said, correlation coefficients for the relationship between beliefs and growth/decline are pretty much identical to correlations between practices and growth/decline.  To put it another way, at what point does regular weekly attendance at church change from being just a religious practice to being a matter of doctrine or belief?

Another tricky point here is that for most of the indicators measured, while the doctrinal ones may be teachings of the church, what the statistics show is not the effectiveness of the churches teachings directly, but the ethos of the church and the expectation for accepting those teachings.  In other words, almost every church would want a member to be guided by the church’s teachings to determine right and wrong, but the growing denominations pass along not just the teaching, but the expectation that members take it seriously.

Finally, it has to be remembered that a denomination is composed of particular churches and in most cases we are measuring one of these on the level of the individual member and the other on the level of the denomination.  Lost in the middle are the different congregations where this is actually implemented.

So by way of conclusion here are two things that surprised me in this analysis:

The first was the uniformity of the correlations.  Yes, there were some variations but in general there were a lot that fell in the 0.7 to 0.8 range or the -0.7 to -0.8 range.  This suggests to me that you should not be looking through this to find the “silver bullet.” Instead, these measures show broad patterns that probably reflect the overall nature of the denominations rather than where to improve on one or two specific practices.

The second thing that surprised me was how high the bar was.  In looking at this data we are not seeing the line between growing and declining as being in heresy or apostasy.  We are seeing the difference in whether members attend once a week or once a month.  We are seeing the difference in whether someone is certain or God, or fairly certain of God.

Now, I welcome you to stare at the data and draw your own conclusions.  My number one take-away is that “Being Christian” is not about what you do for one-hour on Sunday morning (OK, one and a half hours if the sermon goes long and you stay for a cup of coffee.)  Rather, it is about how you live your life the other 167 hours out of the week.  It is about whether that hour influences the other 167.  It is about how your Christian faith affects the rest of your life.  To me, these data show that the indicator of a growing denomination is a pattern of faithfulness in many areas of our lives.

Your mileage may vary.  OK, now what do I do with my lunch hour next week?

Technical note:  I think it is important to note that for questions with only two choices any correlations with a third variable will be of the same magnitude and opposite sign for the two choices.  For the Guidance question above, while there were four choices, the Philosophy option and the Science option were selected by so few respondents that there are effectively only two answers, the Religion option and the Experience option. That is not the case with the demographic graph since substantial numbers of respondents fell into the age ranges between these two end groups.  Combined, the two end members represent no more than 40% of the sampled population.

Strong Cross-Issue Correlation In PC(USA) Amendment Voting To Date

Leave a reply

To give you fair warning right at the onset, this will be a fairly geeky post to go with the geeky title.  So let me begin with an executive summary for those that want to avoid the drill-down into the statistics.

Coming out of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the summer of 2010 were three high-profile amendments to be voted on by the presbyteries:  addition of the Belhar Confession to the Book of Confessions, a new Form of Government section for the Book of Order, and Amendment 10-A which proposed new language for the “fidelity and chastity” section, G-6.0106b, of the Form of Government.  At the present time between thirty and fifty presbyteries have voted on each and the votes on each side are very evenly matched.  Furthermore, when you consider the relationship between votes on the different issues they are very strongly correlated.

While this is an interesting statistical result there are two practical implications of this.  The first is that if voting continues to follow the current trends and the correlation holds, the final votes on nFOG and 10-A will be very close but we can expect that the Belhar Confession will not be approved by the presbyteries since it requires a 2/3 vote for inclusion.  The second implication is the fact that presbyteries, and by that we really mean their commissioners, might see some sort of strong linkage between these three items.  It is not clear to what extent any particular factor generates a linkage, but potential reasons could be related to maintaining or rejecting the status quo, affinity group promotion of particular votes, and perception of the issues as all being promoted by the centralized institution of the denomination.

Got that?  OK, for the geeks, nerds and other curious readers here is where this comes from…

I am taking the correlations from my own tally sheet of the voting on these issues.  My spreadsheet is not original to me but represents an aggregation of data from posts on Twitter, and other vote sheets from the Layman, Covenant Network, Yes On Amendment A, and Reclaim Biblical Teaching.  It is important to note that only the first and last of those have info on all three issues and the other two are only for 10-A.

As of yesterday morning, the Belhar Confession was at 21 yes and 20 no, the nFOG was tied at 15, and 10-A was at 27 yes and 25 no.  In total, 88 presbyteries – just over half – had voted on one or more of the issues.  Of these 22 have voted on two of the issues — 9 on Belhar and nFOG, 7 on Belhar and 10-A, and 6 on nFOG and 10-A. Seven presbyteries have voted on all three issues, five of those voting no on all three and two voting no on two out of three with one voting yes on 10-A and one on nFOG.

I eventually plan to run correlations on voting ratios for those presbyteries that have recorded votes, but for this analysis I maximized the sample set by just looking at the bimodal yes/no outcome.  I have a master matrix which those familiar with statistics should be careful not to confuse as a joint probability chart since I have mixed the votes together.  (And I’m sorry if the 70’s color scheme annoys you, but it is just my working spreadsheet and not intended for final publication.)

So, here are the charted data:

 n=16  Belhar
Yes 		 Belhar
No
 nFOG Yes  2  1
 nFog No  0  13

 n=14  Belhar
Yes 		 Belhar
No
 10-A Yes  4  1
 10-A No  1  8

 n=12  10-A
Yes 		 10-A
No
 nFOG Yes  4  1
 nFog No  1  6



Statistics of small numbers? Clearly. But I find it striking that so far only one presbytery has voted cross-wise on each combination except that no presbytery has yet voted no on nFOG and yes on Belhar.  I also think it is noteworthy that in each case, and most pronounced in the Belhar/nFOG voting, there are more presbyteries that have voted “no” on both than have voted “yes.”  For Belhar/10-A and 10-A/nFOG this goes away, and even reverses, if you take out the presbyteries that have voted on all three.

Looking at the bigger picture, while the total vote counts don’t provide any definitive correlation data, their very close margins at the present time are completely compatible with the interpretation that the votes are correlated.  In other words, if the votes are correlated very similar vote counts would be expected (which we have).  But this observation is only necessary and not sufficient for the interpretation.  Additionally, when vote counts are recorded there are usually very similar vote distributions for each of these issues, giving additional evidence of their correlation.

Calculating the number is the easy part, figuring out if it is meaningful is more difficult.  With less than 10% of the presbyteries actually represented in any of of these correlation charts at this point I firmly acknowledge that this could all easily change around very quickly.  So, I don’t want to over-interpret the data, but I do think some corresponding observations are in order.

The simplest explanation is that while the voting may be correlated they are not linked.  In this case a commissioner would make up his or her mind separately on each issue independently and without regard for the other two issues.  The result is that most commissioners, after weighing the arguments and reflecting on information, would be guided to vote the same way on each of the issues.  This is a likely conclusion, especially for those presbyteries that schedule the voting at three different meetings.

But even with our best efforts to be thoughtful and treat each issue independently I have observed a few things around the denomination that tend to link these issues together.  In some cases this is fairly prominent and in other cases I suspect the influence may be at a subliminal level.

The first possible effect is that affinity groups, by recommending the same votes on all three issues, are having an effect and providing a linkage, even if only implied.  Resources at Theology Matters and the Reclaim Biblical Teaching site of the Presbyterian Coalition both recommend a no vote on all three issues.  Similarly, the Covenant Network and Presbyterian Voices for Justice are in favor of all three actions — although to be fair, PJV voices are not unanimously in favor of nFOG.  What has been set up, rightly or wrongly, appears to be a “party-line” vote where you vote yes on the slate if you are progressive or liberal or vote no if you are conservative or orthodox.  This linkage of Belhar and 10-A has been floating around for a while.  It is tougher to tell if there are real linkages of these two with nFOG or whether they are not linked but rather appeal to the same theological base, or possibly whether the issue is “guilt by association.”  Maybe another linkage between nFOG and Belhar is not theological but logistical and some of the negative sentiment simply stems from the church not having had the time to discuss and explore them enough yet. Yes, quite possible despite the fact that we were supposed to be doing that with both issues for the last two years between assemblies.

Beyond the third-party recommendations, let me put forward more subtle explanations – inertia & cynicism.  This is somewhat related to the lack of familiarity argument above but more about the seven last words of the church – “We’ve never done it that way before.”  The question I have is how many presbytery commissioners are opposed to all of them because this seems like change for change’s sake?  Or how many are for it because the church needs to change?  Or to put it another way – “if it ain’t broke why are we trying to fix it?”  A similar argument against Belhar and nFOG could be “if it comes from Louisville it must not be good.”  Remember, neither of these finally came as a presbytery overture but as recommendations from GA entities. (The nFOG has been talked about for a while but the recommendation to form the Task Force was the result of a referral to the OGA.  The request to study the Belhar Confession came from the Advocacy Committee on Racial-Ethnic Concerns.)

Now let me be clear before I am set upon in the comments: For each of these amendments there are very good arguments for and against them and as presbytery commissioners we set about weighing these arguments and discerning God’s will together.  I would expect few if any commissioners would vote solely on the idea that “nothing good can come from Louisville.”  What I do expect is that for some individuals the preservation of the status quo and skepticism of proposals that are top-down rather than bottom-up from the presbyteries are important factors, explicitly or implicitly.

Well, I am afraid that I have gotten too close to the great quote from Mark Twain – “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”  Considering we are still in the early stages of the voting I may indeed be guilty of over interpreting the data.  So rather than provide more conjecture, let me ask a question that may be hinted at but not answerable by these data or even the final data set:  Are we doing our deliberations and voting a disservice by having so many high-profile votes in a single year?  To put it another way – Is our explicit or implicit linkages of issues, valid or not, unfairly influencing the votes?  Something to think about and keep probing the data for answers.

So, until next time, happy data crunching.

New PC(USA) GAPJC Decision — The Southard Decision

1 Reply

Yesterday the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released their decision in disciplinary case 220-102:

Southard v. PC(USA) through Presbytery of Boston


If you are looking for a sound-bite length summary of the whole case you will not find one.  The Commission has given us a multi-layered decision, but has done us the favor of helping to define the layers.

The facts of the case are agreed by both sides: That on March 1, 2008, the Rev. Jean Southard officiated at a marriage ceremony between two women in Waltham, Massachusetts.  The ceremony was characterized by the participants as a “Christian Marriage.”  Further details are enumerated in the history section of the opinion to show that this same-sex ceremony was represented as a marriage ceremony.

Two additional legal details are important to keep in mind here:

  1. At the time of this ceremony same-sex civil marriage was legal in the state of Massachusetts.
  2. The decision in disciplinary case 218-12, Spahr v. PC(USA) through Presbytery of Redwoods, was decided on April 28, 2008, about two months after this ceremony was preformed.

In the Presbytery Permanent Judicial Commission trial the Commission acquitted the Rev. Southard saying in part:

The Prosecuting Committee has not proven beyond reasonable doubt that W-4.9000 contains mandatory language that would prohibit a Minister of Word and Sacrament from performing a same-gender marriage.
Since the Preface to the Directory of Worship (clause b) states that the Directory uses language that is “simply descriptive”, this Commission takes this to mean that the definition of Christian marriage in W-4.9001 is merely descriptive; there is no mandatory language in this article.

This was overturned on appeal by the Presbytery to the PJC of the Synod of the Northeast.  The Rev. Southard appealed that decision to the GAPJC.

First layer: The specific actions of Rev. Southard
The GAPJC wrote this regarding the charges related to the ceremony preformed by Rev. Southard:

This Commission concluded in Spahr that prior authoritative interpretations lacked mandatory language. Southard conducted this ceremony two months prior to Spahr. Sensitive to the authoritative interpretation in Spahr, this Commission agrees with the SPJC that Spahr cannot be applied retroactively to the facts of this case. Therefore, Southard did not violate the Book of Order or her ordination vows by erring in her constitutional interpretation. She did not commit an offense because the applicable authoritative interpretation (Spahr) had not yet been promulgated.

So, a definite line has been drawn in PC(USA) polity at April 28, 2008, when the GAPJC decision in the Spahr case provided an authoritative interpretation that the language in the Directory for Worship is mandatory.

Based on this conclusion the charges against the Rev. Southard are not valid and she is acquitted of violating the constitutional requirements of the PC(USA).  The first two specifications of error in the appeal, the ones dealing with the specific charges, are sustained.

Second layer: Constitutional Interpretation
Here is the “but” that the GAPJC seems to be putting in the decision.  The third specification of error deals not with the specifics of the ceremony preformed by with more general constitutional interpretation:

The SPJC erred in constitutional interpretation by determining that a minister of the Word and Sacrament who performs (participating in and directing) a same-gender marriage as a Christian marriage commits an offense prohibited by the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Authoritative Interpretations and violates his or her ordination vows.

This specification of error was not sustained.  The decision essentially says that the status quo, the current prohibition made mandatory in the Spahr decision, is in effect.  The new polity twist in this case was the fact that same-sex marriage is legal in some states, but the GAPJC says that when it comes to Christian Marriage in the PC(USA) that does not matter:

The question before this Commission, then, is whether the Massachusetts law defining this relationship as a legal marriage changes the impact of the definitions in W-4.9001. This Commission holds that it does not. While the PCUSA is free to amend its definition of marriage, a change in state law does not amend the Book of Order. It is the responsibility of the church, following the processes provided in the Constitution for amendment, to define what the PCUSA recognizes as a “Christian marriage.” Consequently, Spahr’s holding, “By the definition in W-4.9001, a same sex ceremony can never be a marriage,” remains in effect.

This Commission further held in Spahr, for prospective application, “that the liturgy should be kept distinct for the two types of services.” In light of the change in the laws of some states, this Commission reiterates that officers of the PCUSA who are authorized to perform marriages, when performing a ceremony for a same-gender couple, shall not state, imply, or represent that the same-gender ceremony is an ecclesiastical marriage ceremony as defined by PCUSA polity, whether or not the civil jurisdiction allows same-gender civil marriages.

So, it was not an offense back in March of 2008, and it might not be prohibited at some future point, but the Commission reasserts that it is prohibited now in the church, even if civil same-sex marriage is permitted by the state.  This also seems to imply that while the officiating pastor may not be guilty of an offense, if the Spahr decision is extended to this one, no marriage ceremony was actually preformed since “a same sex ceremony can never be a marriage.”

Technical details
There are four more specifications of error which were decided on procedural grounds.  In the case of specifications 4 and 5 they were not sustained because they “do not accurately reflect the holding of the SPJC as to the matters involved.”  In the case of specifications 6 and 7, the errors were sustained.  These dealt with the decision of the SPJC which reversed the PPJC’s decision when it should have remanded the case back to the PPJC for a new trial and in doing so did not provide specificity on one of the charges.  With the dismissal of the charges these are rendered moot.

Concurring Opinions
There are three concurring opinions attached to this decision.

1) This opinion, signed by five commissioners, expresses the sentiment that this is at its core a human rights issue and in light of that urges the PC(USA) to “amend the constitution to allow for the marriage of same sex couples in the PCUSA, and otherwise welcome gay, lesbian, and bisexual people into the full fellowship of the church.”

2) This is the longest concurring opinion, running a full page in narrative, signed by six commissioners.  Four of these six also signed the first concurring opinion. As the authors say, “[Our] concern is whether W-4.9001 provides an effective and unambiguous definition of Christian marriage.”  To the point they write later on:

To claim that this paragraph is primarily and intentionally legal in nature places a strain upon its obvious narrative purpose. As a fourfold theological outline of Christian marriage in narrative form, it is arguable that it propose
s either regulatory imperative or legal intention. Certainly, it does not have the kind of language or format that the church has come to expect in definitional statements, for the language in this paragraph is not obviously legislative, in the sense of providing regulatory lines that define boundaries or proscribe behavior.

and

Thus, W-4.9001 has become contested regarding whether it can bear the interpretive weight that judicial process and decision has put upon it. The church needs a sharper degree of clarification and guidance that precisely defines how it understands marriage, especially in light of the high financial and personal burden involved.

For all the polity wonks out there, I recommend having a look at this concurring opinion — you may or may not agree with it, but they have done a good job of clearly stating where there might be problems when theological narrative is applied as polity for judicial process.  (And now I am going to have a look at nFOG and see how it would stand up to this test.)

3) I will let the opening paragraph of the third concurring opinion, signed by three commissioners, speak for itself:

We concur with the Decision of the Commission, and with the holding that Spahr is not applicable as precedent because the actions taken by Southard took place before the Spahr Decision was rendered. However, it is disingenuous of Southard to claim that no guidance was available from the larger church on the advisability of performing a same-gender marriage.

Their point is that the Spahr Decision is not the first one and enough guidance is present in the 1991 Authoritative Interpretation and the 2000 Benton Decision to have discouraged this ceremony from happening.  The opinion concludes “While Southard may be commended for her desire to provide compassionate pastoral care, a failure to seek out the guidance of the larger Church would raise a concern about Southard’s willingness to ‘be governed by our church’s polity, and to abide its discipline.'”

Personal Comments
Having served on the PC(USA) Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage I want to add just a brief comment about the polity situation the PC(USA) now finds itself in.

As the second concurring opinion points out so clearly, section W-4.9001 of the Book of Order provides a theological definition of marriage where even the civil dimension is part of God’s order.  Our committee was painfully aware that there are on-going changes in the civil realm that those of us of faith can speak to, but the church as an institution can not control.  This means that the second point of the four-fold definition of marriage is something we as a church can not specify and yet we have it in our constitution.  While some of us would have liked to have seen something done, with the theological diversity on the committee the exact nature of the adjustment was not immediately clear.  The discussion was however moot since our charge from the General Assembly was to make our report a social witness document and the charge excluded from our purview constitutional changes.  As you are probably aware, the 219th General Assembly accepted our report for study and took no further action on constitutional changes.

Looking Forward
If you are following these issues in the PC(USA) then you are no doubt aware that another, similar case is working its way through the judicial process.  Back in August there was a new trial for the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr where she was charged with, and found guilty of, conducting same-sex marriages.  The circumstances are similar because such marriages were permitted under California law at the time they were preformed.  She has filed an appeal to the Synod PJC and there is every expectation that whatever the decision is there an appeal to the GA PJC will be heard at some point in the next year or so.

As you might expect this case comes with an additional twist of its own.  The presbytery sustained the charge that Rev. Spahr had “persisted in a pattern or practice of
disobedience concerning the aforementioned authoritative interpretation
of the Book of Order.”

At first glance, it appears that the GAPJC has now clearly set the legal tests for hearing this case.  The PPJC seems to have thought so in finding her guilty but expressing their personal disagreement with the outcome.  But as we know, there is still the appeal to be heard by the Synod PJC and there may be other procedural issues that arise.  We will see how the process plays out.

Well, I think you see why I described this decision as defying simple sound bites.  On the one hand, this case is over and the defendant has been found not guilty.  On the other hand, the PC(USA) constitutional standard – as currently understood by judicial commission interpretation – has been reiterated, including the understanding that earlier same-sex marriage ceremonies could not, by definition, actually be marriage ceremonies in the PC(USA).  Stay tuned to see where this legal standard takes us in the future…

Taking A Step Back From The Fellowship PC(USA) Discussion

Leave a reply

I will admit here at the onset that I am planning to move on from this discussion and look forward to following it for a while as an interested observer but not a commentator.  I was not planning to post again at this time, but the Fellowship PC(USA) steering committee released a letter yesterday and since I have been a voice in this I felt it appropriate that I should reciprocate.

The new letter titled “Letter of Clarification and Background” which begins:

Regrettably, the initial email we sent out on February 2, in which we shared our concerns and invited people to an August meeting, generated significant misunderstanding (and offense) for some, particularly in regards to a lack of diversity among the signatories. As people who communicate for a living, it saddens us to have created any misunderstanding. We apologize and take full responsibility… In our minds, the letter was intended primarily as an invitation to a gathering in August, and we should have made that clearer.

Likewise, as an early voice of reaction I would like to apologize if my words of critique came across too harshly and caused offense.  I respect and appreciate the Fellowship’s intent of adding another voice and forum to the on-going discussion about the future of the PC(USA). While I was struck by what I saw as a couple specific weaknesses in the proposal and how the proposal was initially presented, I was sincere in my comment that there are important sections of it that I appreciate and can support.

Let me try to clarify each briefly

Regarding the composition of the proposing group, I accept that it came out of a very specific fellowship group of pastors.  But in looking at the implications and impact on the PC(USA) I was concerned by the lack of, shall I say, depth.  At the heart of Presbyterian government is the working of ruling elders and teaching elders together.  To only see teaching elders in the list provoked a strong reaction from this ruling elder who has put in significant time and energy, both on and off line, encouraging ruling elders to be active in the wider church.  Thank you for the clarification that no slight was intended by that.  (But as an editorial comment, can we avoid this “clergy and laity” language which even appears in the clarification letter?)

The other point of concern was how the churches connected to the signatories were a limited subset of the congregations in the PC(USA).  Looking at the big picture, with roughly 10,000 churches and 2 million members, the congregations larger than 1000 members account for about 2% of the churches in the denomination but the churches with 50 or less members make up one quarter of the total churches and about another quarter have between 50 and 100 members. (Research Services Data ) For every mega-church in a large metropolitan area, there are almost ten small faithful ones, like Childwold, Lee Vining, or Spindale.  These churches are inherently small because of their rural location.  Three of our presbyteries each have a total size that is right around 1,000 or less members.  So not just this discussion, but all the discussions about the future of the PC(USA) need to have this in mind.  (And we are not alone since the Church of Scotland, at its last GA, debated the question of whether to remain a national and territorial church and resolved to continue that calling.)  By no means to I intend to say that the Fellowship PC(USA) does not realize this or keep it in mind, but I personally had a hard time getting past the congregation names next to the names of the signatories.  Sorry for that.

Now, as I said, I agree with several points in the white paper, particularly the passions that are listed.  The need to nurture leadership, to share in the larger mission of God’s people, to multiply healthy congregations, and the connectedness in fellowship are things that most would agree with and support.  The red flag probably goes up when we see the “united theological core” as  we all realize that the real discussion and disagreements will come from trying to define that.

It is tempting to just point to the Book of Confessions and say that is our theological core.  I’ll accept that – it should guide us in helping to understand Scripture.  But the @PCUSAResearch factoid today is “Before discussion at GA, 1 in 6 PC(USA) ministers and almost no laity were familiar with the Belhar Confession.”  Let me take that a step further, how many ruling elders know that the Second Helvetic Confession is in the BofC.  When was the last time any of us read the Westminster Longer Catechism or even C67?  I would agree that while we have a theoretical theological core we are not familiar enough with it.  I would suggest that a good place to begin is going back to our Reformed confessions and refreshing our memory.  I look forward to this discussion about what, beyond the Bible, we should be considering our theological core.

OK, I just got cynical and snarky again so I think it is time to wrap this up.  Suffice it to say that in my own analytical and researcher-like way my intent is to point out the places I would disagree and highlight what I see as weaknesses.  Please forgive me if along the way I have caused offense to any of my Christian sisters and brothers.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled polity wonk stuff and I will step back and remain just an observer of the Fellowship PC(USA) developments for a while.

One Heart Bowl — Another Game Altogether

Leave a reply

Well, this is the eve of the greatest secular high-holy day in American culture.  Tomorrow there is a lot of spectacle and celebration around a game of American football played by one team named for a meat packing plant and another named for an industrial economy that has been gone for decades.  If you want to play the religious geography, you can think of it as the game between the team from the Presbyterian hills of western Pennsylvania versus the one from the Lutheran coast of Wisconsin.  I am nominally pulling for the black and gold, not because of Presbyterian connections but because I have a few ties to that part of the world.

(And in another development my pastor is starting a new sermon series tomorrow on… wait for it… the Sabbath.  When I asked him later about the coincident timing he was surprised and admitted that he had not paid attention to the calendar and did not realize what else was that day.  This is going to be interesting.)

But I’m not here today to talk about the fight for global supremacy.  I’m here to revisit a story about “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”  I’m here to talk about the

One Heart Bowl

Two years ago, in this very spot and on this same occasion, I shared a series of vignettes from football that were positive, inspiring, inspirational, instructive and even religiously significant.

One of those was about the high school football game that past fall between the Grapevine Faith Lions and the Gainesville State School Tornadoes.  You probably remember hearing about the game.  This was the one where the Grapevine Faith coach encouraged his parents, students, fans, and everyone else, to become a “home team” for the kids from the state correctional facility.  Half the fans sat on the Tornadoes’ side and cheered for them by name.  It was a demonstration of respect and affirmation that most of the visiting players had never experience before.

The story was broken by Rick Reilly of ESPN and was picked up widely across the media.  The Grapevine coach became a minor short-term celebrity, even being invited to the Superbowl that year.  And it is still being used as a sermon illustration — I know I heard it used very recently.

But what happens when the lights go out and everyone goes home.  In the case of Grapevine Faith they went back and did it again the next year and again the next.  Welcome to the One Heart Bowl.  Even though the schools are no longer in the same conference Grapevine Faith has made sure the tradition continues.  As the web site describes it:

One Heart Bowl™ is an annual football game between Grapevine Faith
Christian School and Gainesville State School, a maximum-security
facility of the Texas Youth Commission for juveniles.  Coach Kris Hogan
committed to this game in 2008, and with it, taught his players about
the consequences of bad decisions while showing the players at Gainesville State that they were “just as valuable as anyone else on
planet Earth.” Students, family and faculty all attended the football
game and cheered on the Gainesville Tornadoes. Because the game was such
a positive success for the Gainesville youth and Grapevine Faith
Christian’s students, it is now a permanent game held annually.

This is your opportunity to be a part of this life altering event.

And when they say it is “life altering,” they mean for both the Grapevine and Gainesville sides.  As a 2009 article from Pegasus News says:

Several sports teams from around the nation have followed Grapevine
Faith’s example and conducted similar outreaches to opposing teams
comprised of incarcerated, at-risk, underserved, or disabled youth.

Members of the Grapevine Faith community continued to reach out to
the inmates at Gainesville. Several of them serve as mentors to boys at
Gainesville, visiting them on a regular basis.

So the story continues.  This was not a one-time event but the start of an ongoing ministry.  So mark your calendars for the next One Heart Bowl on Friday September 9, 2011.  For those who heard about it the first time but then lost track of it, please know that the exhibition of the Kingdom continues.

Further Thoughts On The Fellowship PC(USA)

5 Replies

Well, I have had a couple of days to reflect on the Fellowship PC(USA) letter, announcement, and white paper.  I have also had a bit of time to reflect on my own reaction and ask if I jumped too quickly.  The answer to that is maybe yes and maybe no.  More on that at the end.  But first, some comments on the white paper and the developments so far.

Time For Something New – A Fellowship PC(USA) white paper

I have now read the white paper referenced in the original letter and for those who have not read it, it is essentially an extended discussion of the same material as the letter.  In fact, the letter is pretty much a condensed version of the white paper with the meeting announcement and the signatures added.

On the side that maybe I did respond too quickly, I was interested to see that the extended discussion in the white paper addresses a couple of the issues I had with the letter.  On the topic of the conflict and decline in the PC(USA) being about more than the homosexuality issue, the white paper contains this paragraph which the letter does not:

Certainly none of these issues are unique to the PCUSA, [sic] but are all part of larger cultural forces. But what is the way forward? Is there a future beyond the decline as yet unseen? Is there a way to avoid endless fights, to regain consensus on the essence of the Christian faith? We see no plan coming from any quarter, leaving a continued drift into obsolescence.

While it does not seem to consider the broad range of issues the mainline/oldline faces, at least it acknowledges the “larger cultural forces” that are in play here.

Likewise, a couple of my other concerns are moderated in the white paper.  Regarding the diversity and inclusively, they say that they are speaking as a group of pastors but explicitly say “We call others of a like mind to envision a new future…”  Regarding the reference to the PC(USA) as “deathly ill” that was a lightning rod in the letter, the phrase is not used in the white paper but instead they say “The PCUSA [sic] is in trouble on many fronts.” (And as you can see the white paper uses my less-preferred acronym PCUSA instead of the PC(USA) used in the letter.) And finally, there is more acknowledgement of similar predecessor organizations and explanation of why a new one:

We recognize that there are still islands of hope across the church, but they do not seem to represent a movement. Many faithful groups and organizations have been devoted to the renewal of the PCUSA, and they have offered valuable ministry for many years. Yet it appears they have simply helped slow down a larger story of decline. Is it time to acknowledge that something in the PCUSA system is dying?

and

In many ways this [new] association may resemble some of the voluntary organizations of the past (PGF, PFR, etc.) but it is only a way station to something else. It is an intermediate tool to begin to bring together like minded congregations and pastors to begin the work of another future, different than the current PCUSA.

So some of these ideas are more developed in the 3 1/2 page white paper than they are in the 2 page letter.

Response

It was interesting to see how quickly word spread about the original letter on Twitter and the concerns that many people expressed.  This seems to have led to two rapid responses.

The Fellowship PC(USA) saw a need to respond quickly and the day following the distribution of the letter they put out a one-page FAQ addressing some of the concerns I and others had. Specifically, they address the narrow demographic of the original group (white, male, pastors mostly of larger “tall-steeple” churches).  The response is that this letter was only the beginning of a conversation that they want to broadly include all aspects of the church.  Of course, they get another negative comment from me because in an apparent effort to say that the conversation should include more than clergy they use the phrase “clergy/non-ordained as equal partners.” (Ouch! That hurt this ruling elder.)  This has now been changed to “clergy/laity.”  Sorry, no better. At best this comes off as a technical glitch that in either wording does not include ruling elders as ordained partners in governance with teaching elders (clergy).  At worst, while probably not intended to be so, it strikes me as a Freudian slip or condescending comment that teaching elders are somehow superior to ruling elders in all this.  OK, soapbox mode off.  (And yes, if you think I am being super-sensitive about this one little detail, this GA Junkie is by nature super-sensitive to that one little detail.  Sorry if that bothers you.)

The FAQ also addresses the relationship to the New Wineskins Association of Churches, other renewal groups, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and why their plan is better, different, reasonable, or something like that.

The Fellowship has also updated the letter (the old link is broken) with a revised one that appears to be the same text but has a longer list of signatories that now includes ruling elders and women.  The original seven names are there for the steering committee, but the 28 names for concurring pastors has grown to 95 (including a couple of women) and there is now a category for Concurring Elders, Lay Leaders and Parachurch Leaders with 15 names. (And I suspect that this will be a dynamic document that will be updated as more individuals sign on.)

The Fellowship letter and viral response, possibly influenced by the concurrent meeting of the Middle Governing Bodies Commission, elicited a response from the PC(USA) leadership with a letter on Friday from Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, and GAMC Executive Director Linda Valentine.  This message, titled Future of the church: GA leaders invite all Presbyterians to join in conversation, cites not just the letter but several more conversations going on in the PC(USA) through the MGB Commission, and other task forces.  One of their concluding lines is “We ask that those who would challenge us also join with all of us across the church as we work together to make that happen.”  I also applaud their openness to the whole of the Presbyterian family as they address the letter to “All Presbyterians” and part-way through the letter say “Presbyterians everywhere long for vibrant congregations and communities
of faith, and relationships built upon trust and our common faith in
Jesus Christ.”

I mention this broad-mindedness since these developments have caught the attention of the wider Presbyterian family in the blogosphere and there are comments about it by David Fischler at Reformed Pastor and Benjamin Glaser at Mountains and Magnolias.  Within the PC(USA) ranks there is a nice analysis by Katie Mulligan who has a summary of the demographics of the churches represented by the original signatories.  (Thanks Katie. It was something I started to do, but as the signatory list became a moving target I reorganized my thoughts and it will appear as a slightly different statistical analysis in the future.)

There is also an unofficial response
from the affinity group Voices for Justice.  They reject the viewpoint
the Fellowship letter has of the PC(USA) and urge working together as
one denomination.

A Case Study in Social Media

Probably what interests me the most in all of this is how it played out.  As best as I can tell, this went viral, or as viral as something can go within the denomination, within about five or six hours.  The letter and the Fellowship group itself seem like somewhere we have been before and we will see if it plays out any differently.  How this played on Twitter is something else altogether and  I’m not sure anything like this has spread through the PC(USA) Twitter community in the same way.

So here is the timeline from my perspective (all time PST)(note: items marked * have been added or updated):

  • Feb. 2, 10:46 AM – Fellowship letter hits my email box
  • Feb. 2, 11:32 AM – Tweet from @preslayman announcing their posting of the letter – The first tweet I can find.
  • Feb. 2, 12:32 PM – John Shuck posted his first blog entry, tweeted announcement at 1:25 PM
  • Feb. 2, 3:00 PM – Tweet from @ktday that asks “what do you think of this” – quickly and heavily retweeted; beginning of the flood of tweets
  • Feb. 2, 3:17 PM – @lscanlon of the Outlook puts out a series of tweets reporting the letter
  • Feb. 2, 3:32 PM – My first blog post, I tweeted announcement of it at same time
  • Feb. 2, 7:12 PM – Time stamp on the Outlook article.*
  • Feb. 3, 2:31 PM – First tweet I saw about the Fellowship FAQ, from @CharlotteElia
  • Feb. 4, 8:56 AM – @leahjohnson posts first tweet I found about the PC(USA) leadership response*
  • Feb. 4, 9:01 AM – @Presbyterian official announcement by tweet of the denomination leadership response
  • Feb. 4, 10:10 AM – Katie Mulligan posted her blog article
  • Feb. 4, 11:07 AM – @shuckandjive announces the Voices for Justice response

Now that is what I saw.  Please let me know if you have other important events in this history that should be on the time line.  And I am going to keep researching it myself and it may grow.

So, I have to give credit to the Fellowship leadership, or at least their response team, for being able to turn around a response FAQ in 27 hours.  Nice job also by the denominational leadership for having a comment out in less than 48 hours.

In the realm of social media this is a very interesting development – that in the course of a day or two a topic could gather so much attention that the major parties each feel the need, or pressure, to weigh in on the subject.  And that the originating organization received enough criticism and critique that they so quickly issued a clarification and updated list of names.  In case you don’t think the world of communications has changed you need to take a serious look at how a topic, admittedly a hot one but one of limited interest outside our circle of tech-savvy and enthusiastic participants, has played out in just 48 hours.

And I would note that the PC(USA) is not alone in this.  In my observation of the PCA voting on their Book of Church Order amendments this year, and the ultimate non-concurrence by the presbyteries, social media, especially the blogosphere, played a major role.

So here I am commenting on it 72 hours after it broke.  Was my first response reasonable?  As I comment above, it was on only one piece of the evidence and it took me a couple more days to find time to read the white paper.  But then again, maybe it was.  The situation developed rapidly and having my own rapid response to the letter meant that the initial concerns I raised were among those addressed in the clarification the next day.

Now the big question – is all of this a good thing?  I will leave the ultimate answer up to each of you.  I have, in a bit of a play within a play, personally demonstrated what I see as both the negatives and the positives — my initial response was not as well developed as it could have been but in the reality of the new social media world it helped (I would hope) to propel the conversation forward.  Don’t we live in interesting times…

So where from here?  It will be very interesting to see what further role social media plays in this going forward.  Will this discussion become a topic for more narrowly focused groups who continue their work off-line, or will the new realities force or require this topic to remain viable in the extended social media community of the PC(USA). It will be interesting to see, and I would expect that if this Fellowship initiative is to really propel discussion of the future of the PC(USA) they will need to embrace the reality of the connected church.  I think we need a hashtag.

An Interesting Invitation And Some Of My Preliminary Reactions

2 Replies

I got an interesting invitation in my e-mail today, and I’d bet that at least a few of my regular readers got it as well.  As I read it over I had some pretty quick reactions to some of the items, both positive and negative, and thought I would spend my lunch hour reflecting on these a bit.  For me, this can be dangerous because my first reaction often is sarcastic and snarky.  So either move along to other reading or enable your snark filters before going any further if that might be a problem for you.

The invitation came in the form of a letter from “A Fellowship of Presbyterian Pastors” inviting me to a gathering next summer.  (If you don’t have a copy of the letter you can download one.) Those of you who know me realize that this in itself throws up a red flag in my mind.  Not the gathering but that it is coming from a group that contains exclusively teaching elders — no ruling elders.  Now to be clear, the invite is to ruling elders as well as teaching elders, so this is not another case of receiving mail incorrectly addressed to “Dear Rev. Salyards.”  But I must admit that as I looked through the letter and read through the signatories the first thing I thought of was RE Beau Weston’s thought piece Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.  More on the signatories in a moment, but on to the content.

The letter begins

To say the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is deathly ill is not
editorializing but acknowledging reality.

Interesting.  We are “deathly ill?”  OK, read on and I’ll address that in a moment…

Over the past year, a group of PC(USA) pastors has become convinced that
to remain locked in unending controversy will only continue a slow
demise, dishonor our calling, and offer a poor legacy to those we hope
will follow us.

I tend to think that it is not the presence of controversy itself, but the process by which we wrestle with the controversy. (And there’s that thing about this coming only from teaching elders again.)

Skipping down to the next paragraph

Our denomination has been in steady decline for 45 years, now literally
half the size of a generation ago.

It then goes on to further detail the decline.

Holding here for a moment let me first compliment them on using the acronym PC(USA) instead of PCUSA.  The latter (Presbyterian Church in the United States of America) was of course a predecessor denomination that ceased to exist with a merger in 1958 when the UPCUSA was formed. But that brings me to asking the question about who is in decline?  The PC(USA) has only been in existence for 28 years so going back 45 years means that we have to consider all the predecessor denominations and their children if we want to be faithful to the lineage.  That would be the UPCUSA and the PCUS (northern and southern in the vernacular) and out of them in the last 45 years has come the PCA, PC(USA), and EPC.

Am I just being picky?  Maybe.  But let’s skip over the next paragraph and the following begins…

Homosexual ordination has been the flashpoint of controversy for the
last 35 years.  Yet, that issue – with endless, contentious “yes” and
“no” votes – masks deeper, more important divisions within the PC(USA). 
Our divisions revolve around differing understandings of Scripture,
authority, Christology, the extent of salvation amidst creeping
universalism, and a broader set of moral issues.

While I don’t argue with what is said here, so far in the letter two things stand out to me as being a bit, shall I say, short-sighted.  First, Presbyterians – be it American, Scottish, or others – have always argued.  Does the Adopting Act and the New Side/Old Side debate ring a bell?  American Presbyterianism was imported in three or four separate streams and over 300 plus years we have recombined and realigned numerous times to double or triple that number, depending on how you count.  And many of the topics mentioned – understandings of Scripture, authority, Christology – have been part of these arguments the whole time.  Presbyterians seem prone to disagree by our very nature.  Our problem is not that we have disagreements but how we work through them.

My second point here is that all mainstream, or oldstream, denominations are in decline.  The reasons are complex and I think to simplify it to our divisions does not recognize the full nature of it and the changes in society that are also a part of the formula.

In light of this, are we “deathly ill?”  While we will continue to decline to an unsustainable level if current trends continue we must also recognize that many of the individual churches represented in the list of signatories, as well as others, are doing well individually and there are strong ministries within the PC(USA).  The question is more about how we get things done and what course we chart for the future.

So speaking of what the future course will be, the letter goes on to state five “new things” the PC(USA) needs and the four values that this group of pastors is proposing.  The first of the new things is really not new — A clear concise theological core was what the Adopting Act of 1729 was trying to attain.  The other four things are a commitment to nurture leadership, a passion to share in the larger mission of the people of God, a dream of multiplying healthy missional communities, and a pattern of fellowship.  I can get behind each of these characteristics.  Moving on to their four stated values, members across the spectrum of the PC(USA) will find these a bit more problematic.

The letter concludes with a discussion of what these pastors are looking at implementing — A Fellowship, New Synod/Presbyteries, Possible New Reformed Body and/or Reconfiguring the PC(USA).  To some degree, in fact in my mind to a large degree, this sounds like the New Wineskins Association of Churches so I would be interested to hear how this proposed fellowship would be different.

Maybe one way that it would be different would be the size of the churches.  NWAC contained some fairly large churches.  The signatories to this letter, while clearly stating they represent only themselves, do have connections to eight of the fifteen largest churches in the PC(USA) with several more recognizable congregation names in the bunch.  The significance and implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

In addition to the letter this group, Fellowship PC(USA), has a temporary web page as well as a four page white paper titled Time For Something New.  (Although I find it interesting that the current name of this file itself is “PCUSA Problem Internal 3 5b.pdf.”)  A few mentions have popped up on Twitter, there is a web copy of the letter over at the Layman, and John Shuck has given us his opinion.

Those are my initial thoughts, but I want to digest the letter and white paper some more.  Maybe I’ll have more to say later.  The meeting is August 25-27 in Minneapolis (nicely outside GA season).  I am curious to find out more of what is behind this and curious enough to mark the date on the calendar, but not so enticed yet to make my airline reservations.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.  As the polity wonks will quickly recognize, a couple of the proposals are ideas that have been brought to GA but have not gone any further.  Recognizing that holding the PC(USA) together as an organization of something even near its current size will require restructuring and compromise on both sides, this, like the Middle Governing Bodies Commission, may be a valid forum for exploring the way forward.

I’m interested to see what other reaction there is to this initiative both within and outside the denomination.

Stay tuned…