Category Archives: Confessions

220th General Assembly of the PC(USA) — Minority Reports

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Please note – this is a live-ish sort of blog post that I will update as reports get produced. Update times and dates will be below but you will want to check back for the latest.

[Created 1 PM July 4]
[Updated 8 PM July 5]

The time for submitting minority reports has now passed. The @TrackerGA220 Twitter feed tells us that there are minority reports for Committees 7, 10, 13, 15 and 18. (And from the numbers one of those must have two.) As you can see from the committee titles below none are a surprise. The unexpected thing may be that there are only going to be minority reports on these five.

The reports are still in production but I will link to them here when posted
The list is now complete

  • Committee 7 – Church Orders and Ministry – Minority Report on 07-17 On honoring Jesus Christ in our Relationships with one another
  • Committee 10 – Mission Coordination – Minority Report on 10-14 Rec 2 On Special Offerings
  • Committee 13 – Civil Union and Marriage Issues – Minority Report on 13-01 to 13-13; Minority Report on 13-04 on amending W-4.9000
  • Committee 15 – Middle East and Peacemaking Issues – Minority Report on 15-11 MRTI recommendations on divestment in Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank
  • Committee 18 – Confessions – Minority Report on 18-01 regarding the Belhar Confession

There is the complete list

220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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  		Well, many of the other American Presbyterian branches have had their Assemblies but now it is time for the mainline…

The 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gets underway at 1:30 pm local time on Saturday June 30 in Pittsburgh, PA. The theme for this Assembly is “Walking, running, soaring in hope” from Isaiah 40:31, although it is difficult to find that theme on the web site and materials. (Expect it to be emblazoned around the conference center.)

The schedule has been rearranged a bit this year with the opening worship service truly opening the Assembly on Saturday afternoon with business to follow and then the election of the Moderator Saturday night.  Committees meet Sunday evening through Tuesday evening so there will be a break in the live streaming until 2 PM Wednesday afternoon. The Assembly will conclude at noon on Saturday July 7. (I was going to make a snarky comment about fireworks on Wednesday evening but thought better of it. )

There are a lot of resources out there for the commissioners, observers, media and those following along at home:

For following along on Twitter the most important thing you need to know is that the hashtag is #ga220. While there are several official Twitter accounts the most useful will be @Presbyterian and @presbyGA. For news coverage keep an eye on @presoutlook and @lscanlon. For all the rest of us crazies GA Junkies there are Twitter lists compiled by Bruce Reyes-Chow and Sonnie Swenston-Forbes. I plan to do some live tweeting at @ga_junkie and will be posting news reweets to @gajunkie. (I will also be blogging obsessively right here.)

As with most PC(USA) GA’s there will be a ton of business – there are several committees that will report, there are over 100 overtures and an as yet undetermined number of commissioner resolutions. Several of the items have the potential for spirited debates in the committees and in plenary and a few could have significant implications for the PC(USA) going forward.  I am previewing some of the business in other posts but here is a quick list of all that you can expect.

Let me conclude with a personal note: Call me crazy but I’m coming to the Assembly with three additional special projects.  First, I am an overture advocate for Item 20-03 to provide partial disability benefits and I plan to write up my experience with this sometime after the Assembly. Second, I will be harassing interviewing people regarding social media and the church. Third, in an effort to identify and tag the true polity wonks, presbygeeks and GA junkies (and in a bit of shameless self-promotion) I will be carrying some GA Junkie bling to hand out.

And yes, I will try my best to have my GA summary sheet out by the end of the day on Saturday July 7.

 

And with that we turn our faces towards Pittsburgh and pray for the leading of the Holy Spirit and what God will do in our midst next week.

PC(USA) GAPJC Decision — Parnell v. Presbytery of San Francisco

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The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has heard the final installment in a series of cases concerning San Francisco Presbytery’s decision to ordain Lisa Larges as a teaching elder. This has been a long journey which has finally reached its conclusion — this decision lifts the stay of enforcement and clears the way for the Presbytery’s decision to ordain Lisa to be carried out. In the larger context with the passage of Amendment 10-A we have probably seen the last of this type of cases.

I am not going to go through the full, complicated history of this case and the other remedial cases revolving around this ordination process – you can read about it in the GAPJC decision and my previous summaries. Briefly, where we stand with this case is that in the previous hearing before the GAPJC the Commission agreed with the Synod PJC that for the most part the procedure followed by the Presbytery was correct but that in their decision the Synod PJC had not properly dealt with the issue of doctrine. It was remanded back to the Synod for further consideration and now following that consideration, and an SPJC decision that there was no problem, it was appealed back to the GAPJC.

Now, in the case of Eric Parnell, Bruce McIntosh, Cordelia Shieh, Margaret Gelini, Greg Roth, Marsha Roth, Randy Young, and the Session of Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church, Appellants (Complainants), v. Presbytery of San Francisco, Appellee (Respondent):  Remedial Case 220-10 the GAPJC in a unanimous decision did not sustain any of the eight specifications of error.  As I indicated above every one dealt with doctrine and all begin “The SPJC committed an error of constitutional interpretation when it…” These specifications of error are:

  • “…when it failed to act according to its constitutional responsibility to warn and bear witness against error in doctrine within its bounds.”
  • “…when it presumed that it was the presbytery’s prerogative to determine the essentials of Reformed faith and polity, when they are expressed in the Constitution.”
  • “…when it failed to properly reconcile the Historic Principles of Church Order by giving effect only to F-3.0101 (Freedom of Conscience) at the expense of all the others.”
  • “…when it applied the concept of mutual forbearance (F-3.0105) to permit the candidate’s conscientious objection to a scriptural and confessional standard to infringe upon the rights and views of others (G-2.0105).”
  • “…when it failed to apply and enforce the interpretation of Scripture found in the Confessions (G-2.0105) with regard to sexual conduct.”
  • “…when it failed to discipline and rebuke the Presbytery for its failure to admonish and instruct the candidate in correct doctrine (G-3.0301c).”
  • “…when it permitted the Presbytery to accept a candidate for ordination who could not, by her rejection of sound doctrine, provide an affirmative answer to each of the constitutional questions for ordination (W-4.4003, 4005b, 4006b).”
  • “…when it permitted mere authoritative interpretations – in this case, the PUP and Knox AI – to override constitutional provisions, including those found in the Book of Confessions.”

As polity wonks know, every one of these has been an important polity question in the Presbyterian understanding of church government. In this present case some of these are rendered moot by the change in the Book of Order removing the specific restrictive language. But others are more general, such as how free a presbytery is to decide essentials of Reformed Faith and polity or the interplay of mutual forbearance, conscientious objection and confessional standards.  I’ll make a couple of observations in a minute, but first some quotes from the decision itself.

In the opening paragraph of the decision section the GAPJC writes:

[The] alleged errors can be subsumed under two categories: (1) doctrinal error by errant interpretation of Scripture and Confessions, and (2) the authority of the Presbytery in the examination of the Candidate for ordination. The Commission agrees with the SPJC Decision that the Presbytery properly exercised its prerogative in determining that the Candidate did not depart from the essentials of Reformed faith and polity.

They note the “diversity of opinions” in the PC(USA) and that historically “presbyteries have had full authority to determine whether a candidate for ordination adheres to the necessary and essential tenets of the Reformed faith.” The decision section concludes by talking about the Book of Confessions:

The Book of Confessions reflects that the Church listens to a multitude of voices in shaping its beliefs. The Book of Confessions is hardly univocal, containing as it does eleven different creeds, catechisms, and confessions of faith written over millennia of Christian witness. … Therefore, the confessional tradition is, itself, an instrument of reform. The Book of Confessions, much like Scripture itself, requires discernment and interpretation when its standards are to be applied in the life and mission of the church.

The decision of the SPJC is therefore affirmed and the stay of enforcement vacated.

This decision comes with two concurring opinions from two different viewpoints.  The first, signed by four commissioners, is an interesting historical commentary. It begins by noting that the original examination of the candidate involved declaring a scruple which they “believe to have then been unconstitutional.” With the change in the constitutional language this is no longer relevant.

But they go on to note, using language from the SPJC decision, the “vast diversity of interpretation of scripture and the confessions regarding human sexuality” across members of the denomination. They then write:

While we concur with this assessment of where the PC(USA) is as a denomination, we lament that it is in this place – where differences over matters of human sexuality have become so diverse and divisive, where slim majority votes create huge shifts in the communal life of the denomination, and where every decision the church makes in this area is a sweet victory for one side, and a bitter defeat for the other, ultimately causing entire congregations to determine that they can no longer remain in fellowship with the denomination. As Joe Small described in a recent article in First Things, our denomination has relied on polity instead of scriptural and theological discernment to decide particular manifestations of the dilemma in which we find ourselves.

In many respects the denomination has been transformed by a culture of sexual fixation rather than being transformative of that culture. What difference does it make to be “Christian” when it comes to our lifestyles? Have we spoken truth to power on issues such as promiscuity, premarital, extramarital and postmarital sex and the “soft” pornography that is rampant in our television shows and advertisements? Have we been willing to teach our children and each other on these matters? Or have we succumbed to the tyranny of cultural peer pressure? How can we discipline officers for sexual misconduct when we are unwilling to discipline ourselves generally? Have we been blinded by the “trees” of the homosexual issue, while overlooking the “forest” of the larger issues of sexual gluttony generally?

They continue with an interesting comparison of the situation today with the circumstances in the 1920’s that gave rise to the Swearingen Commission. They quote from the Commission’s first report that discussed the lack of interest in changing the Constitution but rather that “They are agreed that the remedies for our troubles are within the Constitution itself.” The opinion then goes on to say:

The same assessment could not be given today, and it is precisely our arguments over the constitution – including acts of outright defiance of constitutional provisions by those on both “sides” in our various debates – that we believe threaten our continued existence and future vitality as a faith tradition. There was a time when our covenantal commitment to each other was strong, and when “mutual forbearance” meant a willingness to abide by our constitution even as we worked to change it. Because of our increasing differences regarding what the constitution ought to say, those days are gone – and we are therefore in the position described by the Swearingen Commission in which our difficulties are “multiplied greatly.”

There is a second concurring opinion by two commissioners that makes an argument about the place of interpretation. They begin by noting that “the matter of interpretation is central because in large part it is inevitable within scriptural and confessional authority.” They go on to write:

The necessary act of interpretation has been at the heart of the Reformed tradition from its inception. One may, in fact, claim that the Reformation in itself was an event of radical reinterpretation, i.e., a corrected interpretation of the Bible in a recovery of the priority of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the means of grace.

They continue:

In this case, the parties agree on the necessity of continuing interpretation in understanding the meaning of Scripture and Confession through the application of modern textual analysis. The record exhibits testimony and general agreement in a number of interpretive conflicts in the church’s more recent history dealing with issues such as the role of women in the church, or in the matter of divorce and remarriage. The use of textual-critical methods, especially in the last century, has altered the range of interpretation to such an extent that scriptural and confessional texts in the arena of social and sexual relations areas have become open to alternate understandings.

Only in the matter of homosexuality do the Appellants claim an exception, i.e., pressing a univocal meaning and interpretation across vastly different historical periods and socio-cultural contexts. Although in other areas of contention there is an acceptance of the conditioning nature of radically altered historical-cultural situations, including differing social and scientific assessments, that may lead to the legitimacy of variant interpretation, in the argument of this Appeal homosexuality is an exception. It alone is held to be exempt from such interpretive analysis. The Appellants do not offer a convincing rationale in support of this exception. There is extended reference to a simple preponderance of pre-modern and early modern testimonies, but the argument remains rooted in an assumption of univocal constancy, with little reference to contemporary critical analysis or contextual differentiation. Absent such substantiation, the Appellants present no basis for rejecting the truth claim in variant interpretations.

The opinion concludes with how the Swearingen Commission described an essential tenet in their second report:

That which is “essential and necessary” is that which must be present in the doctrinal system of the church in order to uphold its central witness and maintain its distinctive character. Absent such doctrine, the system collapses. The test then becomes whether a particular doctrine or practice is necessary for the integrity of the system of doctrine as a whole.

They conclude that the doctrinal issue in this matter does not rise to the level of “essential and necessary.”

Now, while each of these is an interesting commentary and provides insights into the historical context, they are only concurring opinions and are not authoritative. In addition, they are essentially comments on the larger situation in the PC(USA) and how they see that it got into the current circumstances. It is left as an exercise for the reader as to the strengths of each of their arguments.

So, in that vain here are a couple of observations from me that I hope address the implications of this decision…

One of the things that I am on the lookout for when reading PJC or SJC decisions is to what extent they may be setting precedent. Because Amendment 10-A has gone into effect Specification of Error 8 is moot and was not individually addressed so this decision does not help enlighten us on the extent to which a General Assembly may use an Authoritative Interpretation to, shall we say, smooth constitutional language.  The first concurring opinion gave us their belief on the matter. I am concerned that the 220th General Assembly could issue AI’s that will be bouncing back and forth between the GA and the GAPJC much as the PUP and Knox AI did.

One thing this opinion does reinforce is that “presbyteries have had full authority to determine whether a candidate for ordination adheres to the necessary and essential tenets of the Reformed faith.” In doing so the GAPJC again declines to give specific guidance on what those are and leaves it up to the presbyteries. Is the logical extension of this that presbyteries, in discerning the necessary and essential tenets, are empowered to formally establish what necessary and essential tenets are? (exempli gratia) We know from the 2008 Buescher v. Olympia decision:

Attempts by governing bodies that ordain and install officers to adopt resolutions, statements or policies that paraphrase or restate provisions of the Book of Order and/or declare them as “essentials of Reformed faith and polity” are confusing and unnecessary, and are themselves an obstruction to constitutional governance in violation of G-6.0108a.

Candidates must be evaluated individually but if the presbytery has “full authority,” to what extent can the necessary and essential tenets be determined as a matter of presbytery policy?

But while this decision speaks of the full authority of a presbytery and listening to a “multitude of voices,” the polity wonks are well aware of the tension and limits expressed in the Maxwell v. Pittsburgh decision where the GAPJC said that “presbytery’s power is not absolute. It must be exercised in conformity with the Constitution.” They went on to say

It is evident from our Church’s confessional standards that the Church believes the Spirit of God has led us into new understandings of this equality before God, Thus the Confession of 1967 proclaims, “Congregations, individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and bring contempt on the faith which they profess.” (9.44.)

So a tension is present and over time the confessions may be understood to be more univocal on particular points.

And just a note about how these decisions focus on the church Constitution in general and the confessions in particular.  Yes, it is the charge of the GAPJC to interpret the Constitution, but while the specifications of error made reference to scripture, only passing reference to this is made in this decision to the authority of scripture. The focus instead is on how it is filtered and viewed through the confessions.  Compare this to the charges against Charles A. Briggs in 1893, admittedly a bit apples and oranges since this is remedial and that was disciplinary, which are very specific in regards to scripture references and doctrinal errors. As the Maxwell decision says, the authority of a presbytery is judged in relation to the Constitution, not in direct relation to scripture.

Another point that jumped out at me was the decision’s discussion of the nature of The Book of Confessions.  I don’t think it surprised anyone who has looked at the history of American Presbyterianism to read the line in the decision that says “The Book of Confessions reflects that the Church listens to a multitude of voices in shaping its beliefs. The Book of Confessions is hardly univocal, containing as it does eleven different creeds, catechisms, and confessions of faith written over millennia of Christian witness.” Even with only the Westminster Standards American Presbyterians have had trouble agreeing on what they mean — how much more when you have eight other documents thrown in? In light of the fact that ECO has expressed their desire to be specific about necessary and essential tenets I, and I suspect a number of others, were surprised to see that they propose adopting all eleven of the documents as their subsidiary standards, at least as an opening position.  Recognizing that this variety of statements is not univocal on many doctrinal issues, at the West Coast Fellowship of Presbyterians gathering in March it was interesting to hear TE Jim Singleton, in response to a question about this, commented that there will probably be doctrinal issues to be worked out “once we are all in the boat together” as the new ECO body.

OK, I have rambled on enough here so let me get to the bottom line.  As I read this decision I don’t see that it breaks any new ground but is a confirmation of the current status in the PC(USA). It is significant in two respects: 1) From my tracking all pre-10-A judicial cases have now been concluded. 2) The reinforcing of the status quo comes at a pivotal time with the establishment of ECO and a number of contentious issues coming to the General Assembly in two months. Another milepost on the journey — let us see what happens next.  Stay tuned…

Musings On The FOP NRB Theology Document – 2. Theology Comes First

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As we anticipate the next gathering of the Fellowship of Presbyterians I thought I would riff for a few minutes about their draft Theology Document…

One month ago the Fellowship released both a draft Theology and a draft Polity document for the new Reformed body ( NRB ) in preparation for their meeting in just under two weeks. The close of the comment period for the drafts was yesterday and registration closes on Monday. The Fellowship says that at the present time 2100 people have registered for the meeting so it looks will have significant participation.

For those interested in polity, parliamentary procedure and process I think you will find some of the analysis by Carmen Fowler LaBerge in the Layman of some interest. She highlights many of the process issues that will come up at the meeting, e.g. Who can vote on these documents? Will substitute motions be permitted? I’m sure the organizers have this all in hand but an announcement of these process issues has not been posted to the Fellowship web site. She also echoes a couple of my thoughts about the Theology document, which I will refer to in a minute.

While my first musing was on the polity related to subscribing to the theology, when the documents were released I probably looked forward to reading the theology document more than the polity — after all, our polity flows from the theology. There were several things I anticipated in the theology document and I can say that I was wrong about several of them.

Maybe my biggest question, and my biggest surprise, was the approach they took to confessional standards. The proposal is to adopt the whole of the current Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Confessions as the initial standards. The Forward to the document begins with this (page 1):

The first task is to identify the statements of our confessional heritage that will connect us with the one holy catholic apostolic church and express our distinctively Reformed convictions within that church. We propose the collection of confessional documents in The Book of Confessions as the appropriate theological expression at this moment in our life together. These creeds, confessions, and catechisms have much-needed wisdom of proven worth for us, and can uniquely serve as the central documents for a new Fellowship that strives to retain meaningful connections among congregations, some of whom will be within the PC(USA), some of whom will be in a new Reformed body. (emphasis as in original)

Later it continues with (page 2)

We recognize that The Fellowship and/or the new Reformed body may, after a time of building and testing theological consensus among us, alter this judgment. But it is our opinion that the theological consensus among evangelicals has not been tested and, further, that to presume a consensus where one does not exist is to repeat one of the most significant theological failures of our generation. As members of the ordered ministries of the Church, we have agreed to The Book of Confessions. Let us keep that covenant that we may be found faithful to any new theological covenant we will make.

As I said, Carmen Fowler LaBerge echoes my surprise at this broad inclusion when she says:

I was surprised that the Fellowship document recommends the entirety of the PCUSA Book of Confessions
as the confessional standard of the new Reformed body.  In particular,
the Confession of 1967 is problematic for many who have grown
disaffected with the PCUSA’s diffuse theological wanderings since its
adoption a generation ago.

I could ask whether the playing field would have been different if the Belhar Confession had been adopted — but since it was not this really is a hypothetical and moot question at this time.

Now, I am going to take the document at face value about their reasoning, but also add that there are obvious pragmatic benefits to this choice: The document mentions the shared confessional standard that would benefit union churches and affiliations as well as the fact that they are beginning with a standard currently accepted and vowed to by those in the Fellowship. But, when you consider the time frame that the drafters were under as well as the potential for bogging down an assembly in fine-tuning a new confessional standard, the benefits of an off-the-shelf known entity are obvious. It also means that the NRB does not have to worry about publishing their own volume of confessions just yet.

The Confessional Standards are the first substantive portion of the document and the second is the Essential Tenets (of the Reformed Faith). I think that most would agree that the Essential Tenets section does a good job of articulating the historical orthodox Christian beliefs as well as what most would consider the traditional Reformed distinctives. Throughout it there is good agreement with the Foundations section of the PC(USA) Book of Order. In general, whether you personally agree or disagree with Reformed theology and basic Calvinism, you have to acknowledge that for the most part this section holds closely to that. And doing this section as a narrative, and not bullet points, I would say enhances the value of it.

The point where the disagreements would most likely begin is in the final “application” section – the document calls it “Living in Obedience to the Word of God.” This is the section that uses as a framework the Ten Commandments. While I discussed some of my hesitancy with this in the previous post, this is the section that applies the preceding confessions and tenets to specific lifestyle issues that a good portion of the church might see in a different light. For instance, the second point says:

2. worship God in humility, being reticent in either describing or picturing God, recognizing that right worship is best supported not by our own innovative practices but through the living preaching of the Word and the faithful administration of the sacraments;

Church historians and polity wonks may recognize that the term “innovative practices” is a loaded term in Presbyterian tradition. This is a current topic among churches, like the Free Church of Scotland, that are discussing flexibility in worship styles, particularly regarding exclusive unaccompanied Psalmody. As one article on the Regulative Principle puts it – “The regulative principle of worship requires man to worship God only as
He has commanded in His Word. To add elements of human innovation into
the worship of God brings His just displeasure.” (emphasis added) Many of these Presbyterian branches would consider some of the worship practices seen across the PC(USA) as “human innovation.”

Specifically, the term “innovations” is a technical term in many branches of Presbyterian polity whose depth of meaning I won’t go into at this time. One place it is regularly found is in the Barrier Act – the standard in many Presbyterian branches descending directly from the Scottish Reformation that says when an act of the General Assembly/Synod must have the concurrence of the presbyteries. A polity discussion from the Free Church Assembly regarding worship practices discusses the Barrier Act of 1697. The sub-title of the act is “Act anent the Method of passing Acts of Assembly of general concern to the Church, and for preventing of Innovations.” (Yes indeed, capitalized as a proper noun.)

But getting back to the Theology document… This complexity around the application of the second commandment is just one example. My point is that it is usually when the church tries to translate doctrine into practice that we run into the biggest differences of opinion.

Moving on I’ll finally get to what I like best about the Theology document, and that is the concept behind section three on Ideas & Questions for Immediate Consideration. Let me back-track to the Forward for the real punch line here (page 1-2):

Casual affirmation of our theological heritage by our generation has severely weakened our worship and witness. We are squandering the gifts our confessional heritage could give us. We confess we have not been good stewards of the Faith. We must now reengage the Faith of the Church in ways that are more deeply committed to its truth and thus its value in ordering our life toward faithfulness. We have a strong conviction that our current theological failures are not the failures of the bishops at Nicea, the divines at Westminster, or the confessors at Barmen; the failures are our own. Now is the time to confess it and strengthen our theological covenant.

It later (page 2) says

Structures for doing theological work and for keeping theological integrity need to be established. Theology is not only to be established in our minds and become formative for our hearts, it is to be embodied in our manner of life and in the structures of the church. Companies of Pastors and Orders of Elders need to be formed. Teaching and Ruling Elders must relearn how to fulfill their missional callings in light of the Faith of the Church.  Our faithfulness depends on it. We strongly propose that new structures will be formed for the purpose of making a contribution to the theological well-being of the church so that our Faith can make its full contribution to the mission of the Church.

[Rant mode on] This may not be true for your congregation but I sometimes ask myself “If we have a Book of Confessions, why don’t we use it?”

One of my concerns with adopting the Belhar Confession was that we have so many documents now that just sit on the shelf, what is the value of adding one more? And I’m sure my pastor is getting tired of my commenting that we don’t use confessions enough in worship and education, or when we use one from another tradition why don’t we use more from our Book of Confessions.

Don’t misunderstand me – just as this Theology document finds the standards “have much-needed wisdom of proven worth for us” I agree and value both the historical and the timeless voice in which they speak. It is not in their intrinsic value that I have questions but in their visibility and application in the church today.

[Rant mode off]

I really like the fact that the Theology document recognizes this and proposes a process for keeping the confessions “on the table,” making sure theology comes first (page 10):

Renewed commitment to sustained conversation is needed. At its best, sustained conversation is characterized by prayerful and rigorous study of the Scripture with attention to clarifying the Reformed theological lens through which we read the Scriptures, by grateful listening to the voice of the church around the world and through the ages, and application of theological wisdom to every part of life before God and for the world.

Toward these ends, we now commit ourselves to the formation of theological friendships in communities that include all teaching and ruling elders – gatherings of elders which covenant to study and learn together, providing mutual encouragement and accountability for the sake of sustaining and advancing the theological and missional work of the church.

If the creeds, confessions and catechisms are living documents, then we must live with them and into them. I very much appreciate that this document and the proposed life of the NRB addresses that fact.

Well, there are a bunch more things I had in my head to muse about, but my time is up and this got longer than I thought it would.  At this point I don’t anticipate another musing before the FOP has their next gathering so I’ll sit back and watch Presbyterian polity at work in a new venue. Prayers for the gathering and I’ll catch up with the FOP on the back side.

Musings On The FOP NRB Polity Document – 1. Can I Declare An Exception?

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Prologue
Regular readers have probably noted that my blogging productivity has decreased a bit the last few months. This is due to an increased number of personal, professional and Presbyterian commitments. While I always anticipate that I can find more time for blogging in the future, sometimes that does not come to pass.

I tell you that as an introduction to this particular post and probably a few to follow. (I won’t promise anything.) I have decided to classify these as “musings” – posts which are shorter, more spontaneous and less polished than what I consider my regular writing to be. I also consider musing about this particular topic appropriate since the Fellowship of Presbyterians’ New Reformed Body documents are also a work in progress and at a stage where a more informal discussion is probably most appropriate.

Well last weekend I “escaped” and backpacked to a campsite up in a canyon in the mountains above L.A. (picture right) It was a wonderful chance to get away and the weather was really great. (And then that campsite probably got a foot of snow in the storm that rolled through yesterday.) But being so close to the longest night of the year I brought plenty of reading material and had a chance to do a first read of the NRB Theology and Polity documents. (Anyone read them in a more unique location?) A couple of first impressions and thoughts from that reading…

 

The Fellowship of Presbyterians recently released their two organizational documents for discussion in advance of their Covenanting Conference in mid-January. To set the stage for anyone who has not reviewed the documents yet let me begin with a summary of the two pieces.

The Theology document is a three-part statement that begins by affirming that the confessional basis for the NRB will be the current Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The second section then sets out what the NRB considers to be the Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith. The third part is titled “Ideas & Questions for Immediate Consideration” and sets out a vision for the NRB as a group that actively does theology and has a “renewed commitment to sustained conversation.”

The Polity document is a Form of Government for the NRB modeled on the PC(USA)’s new Form of Government section.  There are no Foundations, Worship or Discipline sections yet.

One point that struck me as I read through the Polity was the reliance on the Essential Tenets section of the Theology.  I found nine references to it (numbers following are the FOG section number, italics as used in the original, text from the version posted now (expecting the obvious typo to be fixed soon)):

  1. (Regarding new congregations) …desire to be bound to Christ and one another as a part of the body of Christ according to the Essential Tenants [sic] and government of the NRB. [1.0200]
  2. (Regarding expectations of members) Those who are invited to take significant leadership roles in the congregation should ordinarily be members for at least a year, agree with the Essential Tenants [sic] of the NRB, be trained and/or mentored, and be supervised. [1.0305]
  3. (Regarding qualifications of officers) Ordaining bodies must ensure that all officers adhere to the Essential Tenets of the NRB. [2.0101]
  4. (Third ordination vow) Do you receive and adopt without hesitation the Essential Tenets of the NRB as a reliable exposition of what Scripture teaches us to do and to believe, and will you be guided by them in your life and ministry? [2.0103c]
  5. (Regarding the preparation of pastors) In addition to adherence to the Essential Tenets, presbyteries shall ensure that candidates for ministry are adequately trained for their task. [2.0400]
  6. (Regarding Affiliate Pastors) Affiliate pastors must adhere to the Essential Tenets of the NRB. [2.0401f]
  7. (Regarding the duties of the synod – note that in this FOG a General Synod is the highest governing body.) c. maintain the Constitution and Essential Tenets of the NRB. [3.0202c]
  8. (Regarding Union Congregations) Congregations, historically members of the PC(USA) or other Reformed denominations, who wish to maintain that membership while joining with the NRB and who recognize and teach the Essential Tenets may request to join a presbytery of the NRB… [5.0202]
  9. (Regarding other denominations) Out of our common Protestant heritage, partnership and joint congregational witness will be encouraged where mission, ministry, and collegiality can be coordinated and approved by the appropriate governing bodies, and where the Constitution and Essential Tenets of the NRB can be followed. [5.0300]

Clearly the Essential Tenets are put forward as the distillation of what is unique and special about the NRB. This is plainly presented as the litmus test of what it means to belong to this branch. For comparison there are only four uses of the term “scripture” or “scriptures,” three of them in the ordination vows, and two uses of “confessions,” one in the ordination vows.

In reading through this I did wonder about the variation in the language regarding the relationship to the Essential Tenets. The word most commonly used is “adhere,” so the intent is to stick to them. But the ordination vow preserves the current language of “receive and adopt” adding the “without hesitation” regarding the Essential Tenets. Are these the same or different? If my promise is to “receive and adopt” is asking me elsewhere to “adhere” to them asking more, less, or something different of me? Remember, I’m just musing about it here and don’t really have an answer at the moment.

I guess what really sticks out to me is that the language seems to be asking me to agree to 100% of what is in the Essential Tenets, even when I think it might conflict with my understanding of Scripture or the Book of Confessions. This is not an academic exercise.

A simple example:  For the sake of this example let’s say that I agree with everything the Essential Tenets say except that as I read them there is one little point that bothers me based on my theological framework. At the end of the document the Ten Commandments are used to summarize some of the points. This is a time-honored way of discussing theology and is used in many catechisms, along with the Lord’s Prayer, as a template for teaching the faith.  But the Essential Tenets summarize the fourth commandment like this:

4. observe Sunday as a day of worship and rest, being faithful in gathering with the people of God;

I honestly have a theological issue with simply taking this commandment and substituting “Sunday” or “Lord’s Day” for the term “Sabbath.” To explain briefly, I see the Sabbath as an Old Testament template or analogy for the celebration of the Lord’s Day in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. The theological connection is much more nuanced than can be expressed in a simple one-to-one substitution. The Westminster Confession of Faith [section 6.112ff in the Book of Confessions] takes a lot of words to expound on this analogy. Maybe the best brief discussion of the nuances is from the Heidelberg Catechism:

Q. 103. What does God require in the fourth commandment?
A. First, that the ministry of the gospel and Christian education be maintained, and that I diligently attend church, especially on the Lord’s day, to hear the Word of God, to participate in the holy Sacraments, to call publicly upon the Lord, and to give Christian service to those in need. Second, that I cease from my evil works all the days of my life, allow the Lord to work in me through his Spirit, and thus begin in this life the eternal Sabbath.

All this to say that on this point I have a small, but what I consider substantive, disagreement with the Essential Tenets. So what happens now? The Essential Tenets do not address how minor differences in theological understanding are to be treated. Taken on face value I guess I can not adhere to the standard as the Polity requires. (And please understand, I am not putting up a hypothetical disagreement here but one that I honestly and sincerely hold.)

Now, the polity wonks have surely figured out where I am going with this (even if they weren’t tipped off by the title). The American Presbyterian church has been struggling with how to handle these differences, big and little, throughout its entire history. We affirm in the Westminster Confession that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” and we understand that to a certain degree we can differ in belief but must be consistant in practice. That is what the Adopting Act of 1729 was basically about.

So how is the NRB going to approach this? At the present time I did not find a solution in the proposed Polity document.  One approach would be a highly structured method like the Presbyterian Church in America has where ordained officers are required to subscribe to the Westminster Standards and they must declare and explain exceptions like I have done above. As the Book of Church Order says [21-4f]

Therefore, in examining a candidate for ordination, the Presbytery shall inquire not only into the candidate’s knowledge and views in the areas specified above, but also shall require the candidate to state the specific instances in which he may differ with the Confession of Faith and Catechisms in any of their statements and/or propositions. The court may grant an exception to any difference of doctrine only if in the court’s judgment the candidate’s declared difference is not out of accord with any fundamental of our system of doctrine because the difference is neither hostile to the system nor strikes at the vitals of religion.

But this adds an additional layer of administration to a Form of Government which is intended to be simple and clean.  It also opens up the “slippery slope” or “camel’s nose under the tent” problem where a series of very small steps away from the Essential Tenets results in a cumulative substantial difference and heterogeneity in what is intended to be a fairly homogenous belief structure. As I pondered this it seemed to me that incorporating a way to relax a point in the Essential Tenets could be problematical for the NRB.

You can justly accuse me here of focusing too narrowly on minor details — Guilty as charged.  My particular point detailed above is pretty minor in the grand scheme of Christian doctrine. But let me ask these two questions: 1) If I have a tiny little difference of understanding can I still in good conscience adhere to the standard if no provision is made for variability? 2) If differences around tiny details are acceptable, where is the line between the tiny stuff and the big stuff?

Enough musing on this for now. As I continue musing to myself on other points in the Polity and Theology documents maybe a few more will find their way into this virtual space. So until next time I leave you with the sunset over The City of Angles that I watched last Saturday night.

The Fellowship Gathering — Through The Tweets Dimly

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Last week was an interesting week for me, what with the Virginia earthquake on Tuesday and the two day Fellowship of Presbyterians Gathering in Minneapolis on Thursday and Friday.

I did not make it to The Gathering so I have been trying to follow it from my vantage point over here on the Left Coast. News and blog articles about the event are starting to appear, but it was fascinating to track the Twitter comments and interactions during the meeting.  However, what I found was that while the tweets were interesting and helpful they were not enough to help me connect all the dots to understand what the Fellowship is and where it is going. (Guess you had to be there… )  What follows is not so much reporting on the Gathering but sharing my impressions from and about the social media content related to it. As Scott Keeble (@skeeble99) put it:

Gotta love overreactions to 140 char. summaries of a conference you aren’t at.

If you want to play along at home you need to check out the tweets with the hashtag #mn2011.  As the meeting was getting underway I did comment that I did not see a lot of use of the #pcusa hashtag and by implication there was a distancing from the institution. Several friends of different theological stripes informed me that it is indeed common practice to only use the conference hashtag and that nothing sinister should be seen in the use of hashtags.  I stand corrected and apologize for casting aspersions where nothing should have been read into it.

Now, if you want a good look at the best play-by-play of the event you need to check out the constant stream of tweets from Carolyn Poteet (@cvpotweet) who was the unofficial live-tweeter. Her stats say she is only at 1034 tweets ever — I would have sworn that she had 10,000 in one day last week! Of course, she hit her rate limit a couple of times and to get the complete picture you need to also check the tweets from @TomJHouston which she co-opted to keep the info coming while her account was in time-out.  Carolyn, thanks for all your efforts! Your tweets helped tremendously to follow along. (Generally tweets I quote but are not identified as from another source came from Carolyn and I trust that my quoting her in what follows does not stray from Fair Use.)

Also be aware that there were times when the participants split up into breakout sessions so if you see tweets sent at about the same time but on very different topics that is probably what is happening.

Moving on from the reporting to the “conversation” the first thing that impressed me was the theological breadth represented by those tweeting from The Gathering. In particular there are several people I know that I don’t think were at the meeting to sign up for the New Reformed Body but were checking out the Gathering for other reasons. I trust that they will provide their thought in the blogosphere in the near future. Based on the Twitter activity I make a back-of-the-envelope calculation that about 5-10% (100-200 people) of those present probably held viewpoints contrary to the view of orthodoxy the Fellowship seems to be promoting.

In addition, I was pleased to see at least three of the “big four” from the General Assembly at the meeting.  The GA Moderator and Vice-Moderator were there — Moderator Cynthia Bolbach made some well-received comments towards the end of the meeting, judging by the tweets, and Vice-Moderator Landon Whitsitt was his usual self providing a nice stream of insightful comments throughout the meeting. (More on this later) If I understood the tweets correctly, GA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons was also in attendance and spoke briefly — as Seth Normington (@revnormsy) put it “Brief, rather opaque comments from ga stated clerk, gradye parsons. Nice of him to attend. Blessings, good sir.” There was no mention of GAMC Executive Director Linda Valentine being present and likewise but I saw no identification that anyone else from the GAMC was in attendance. [Update: Thanks to Jody Harrington’s comment below where she commented that Linda Valentine was at the conference. The text above has been adjusted appropriately.]

That leads me into a few observations about the meeting gleaned pretty much exclusively from the tweets:

  • Besides the breakout sessions there were also discussion groups. It looks like the higher governing body professionals and officers were grouped together in their own groups. I did not see an explanation of this and am curious why.
  • Carmen Fowler LaBerge (@csfowler2003) informs us “#mn2011 registration info: 950 clergy; 575 elders; 53 church administrators; 20 PCUSA staff; 68 presbytery execs. 300 didn’t indicate.” (That would be 1966 total)
  • Carolyn also tweeted the answer to one of the nagging questions I had: “Primary diff from New Wineskins – tone.” Another time a speaker is quoted as saying “I felt like New Wineskins got hijacked by angry people.”
  • Leslie Scanlon (@lscanlon) of the Outlook provides us with some of the descriptions of where the conservatives feel they or the denomination is – “Some metaphors used at #MN2011. Deathly ill. Stuck in a box canyon. Car sunk in swimming pool. #pcusa”
  • Because it is Twitter with a 140 character limit the acronyms were flying. Two that I had to recalibrate my brain for were NRB – which to this group means New Reformed Body but I normally think of as National Religious Broadcasters – and the FOP (or FoP) – which of course here means Fellowship of Presbyterians but in my day job is a professional organization.
  • There were questions from afar about the diversity in the Gathering but I did not see the questions answered.  However, at one point Carolyn tweets this telling comment “Potty parity at #mn2011! First time in my life I’ve ever seen a line at the men’s room but sailed through the ladies’!”

Going back to that bullet point about the tone of this group, I was struck by how positive the official portion of the meeting was.  That did not completely extend to the Twitterverse, but I’ll talk about that below. Based on the 140 character reports the leadership of the FOP is in communication with, and maybe even working with, the OGA leadership.  It was also made clear that  “we are not calling anybody apostate,” and “will not seek to demonize the #PCUSA in any manner.” And one final quote on this – “One of the ways this won’t be a spin off to a new denom (quickly), is b/c we don’t want to lose relationships w/people we love.”

Two big topics at this meeting that are inexorably linked are the New Reformed Body and theological beliefs, usually referred to as the Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith.

Coming into the meeting the FOP had made it clear that the NRB (yes, I can throw acronyms around too ) was going to happen but that there were a lot of details to be worked out.  The impression I got from the Twitter reporting and discussion is that enough details have to be worked out and now this is a train that has left the station and is headed for the announced constitutional convention January 12-14, 2012, in Orlando. But the FOP clearly hopes for the NRB to continue in some form of partnership with the PC(USA).  One comment was “the degree to which the NRB can relate back to the PCUSA, and we hope it can, baptisms, ordinations, permeable boundary.” Another said “hopefully we can share some HQ functions – missions, theology and worship…” One of the themes I found most helpful was the description of what they are about in this sequence of tweets from Carolyn: “like-minded church to unite around a common purpose. from Phil 2:1-2,” “we’ve created such a broad tent that there’s no center pole. we need to establish essentials again,” and “need to make clear abt what’s at the center rather than police the
boundaries, so people can determine if it’s a good fit for them.”

Related to this is the question of standards.  At the Gathering the NRB was described as an “empty warehouse” waiting to be filled.  That is to be done this Fall when draft documents are posted on the web site, regional gatherings are held, and they are finalized at the constitutional convention in January.  There is a clear intent to define or state the Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith. But this led to a lot of Twitter conversation about the standards.  There were comments about the return of subscription. While not necessarily advocating subscription, @BenjaminPGlaser, who was at the meeting, asked in a tweet “I wonder how many of the ministers/ruling elders at #mn2011 could affirm the WCF w/out major qualification…” (WCF is of course the Westminster Confession of Faith, a document that Presbyterians historically have included in the standards that needed to be subscribed to.) There were also references to Machen, particularly his final sermon recently republished in Theology Matters. To that TwoFriars commented “Machen’s fundamentals are NOT Reformed essentials, FYI.” Along a similar line Landon Whitsitt (@landonw) commented “I’m struggling to reconcile the fact that the “essentials of faith” being thrown out at #mn2011 are classicly Evangelical, not Reformed.” Craig Goodwin (@craiggoodwin) had a number of thoughtful comments about standards and in response to Landon asked ” …are Evangelical, not Reformed. Can’t be both?” It will be interesting to see what this discussion produces throughout the Fall leading up to the January meeting.

Going forward I suspect the real hard questions will not revolve around the theology, although they probably should, but around the “Three P’s”, yes pensions, property and power.  To put it bluntly – can you take it with you when you leave?  From the Q&A portion of a presentation on the NRB Carolyn tweeted “lots of Qs about per capita, pensions, etc. A – we’re not giving answers
at this point, don’t want to get tangled in the details.”  This turned out to be a bit deeper than it seems — they put off some of the discussion of details to a breakout on Friday but they are also putting off details until the relationship of the NRB with the PC(USA) is more clearly defined.

I want to look at this topic of the relationship between the NRB and the PC(USA) in more detail another time after the presentation videos are posted and I have had a chance to digest them.  Let me just say here that three possible models were proposed: 1) This might be accomplished with union presbyteries – a polity solution that already exists. [ed. note – I should have seen that before now!] 2) Create the category of affiliate churches or affiliate presbyteries like the current affiliate members. Requires new polity language. 3) Leave completely.  Regarding this, Carolyn quotes Jim Singleton: “Singleton – yes, this is gonna be messy!!”

Now, a couple of weeks ago in my pre-Gathering piece I suggested that this event was a Rorschach Test for those who had issues with the PC(USA).  Well, I see now that I was right in concept but wrong in scope.  This event was a Rorschach Test for the whole PC(USA) and maybe even for American Presbyterianism more broadly. But after the broad reaction that the very first Fellowship letter last February engendered I should have expected that.

Departing from Twitter for a moment it is important to note that groups with opposite views have posted very specific pieces on their web sites interpreting or making suggestions related to the Gathering.  More Light Presbyterians issued a call to prayer for the meeting and a related article.  Individually, Janet Edwards offered a suggestion to the FOP ahead of the Gathering, as did Shawn Coons, and Adam Walker Cleaveland wanted to make sure the elephant in the room got named. Clearly this meeting had a lot of people’s attention across the denomination.

So back to Twitter and the meeting…

First, in the interest of full disclosure I would comment that I (@ga_junkie) did not tweet much but did make the one comment I discussed above that could have been considered snarky, and also a second that could be taken that way as well.  Early on Andrew Johnson (@AndrewJohnsonYM) tweeted “New reformed body… no brand but Christ” which I retweeted adding “Starting to sound like the Springfield Presbytery”. (If you need the reference, Springfield Presbytery was part of the Stone-Campbell Movement that left the Presbyterians two centuries ago proclaiming “No creed but Christ” and led to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). )

The vast majority of Twitter comments I saw were constructive and contributed to the social media discussion.  Yes, a lot may have had a snarky edge to them, but I found few offensive and there was a general improvement in tone when the organizers made it clear that this new group was not about demonizing the PC(USA).

Yet most of the comments, my own included, seemed to clearly reflect the lens through which the writer was viewing the Gathering.  Exempli gratia:

DavidIvie1 David Ivie
#mn2011 why would a group convene to protest gay ordination and then on day one celebrate women’s ordination? no sense of irony?

David_Berge
David Berge
#mn2011 lots of people talk about “post-denominationalism” 4 better or worse #fellowshippres is actually doing something about it

rwilliamsonjr Robert Williamson Jr
If you want to leave, I will
bid you peace. If you want to stay, I will embrace you. But I can’t
relate to the leave-but-stay option

Stushie57
John Stuart
The future of the Church is in Christ’s good hands, not conferees nor ordinands.

joyousjava Lara B Pickrel
Sometimes our churches’ panicky attempts to keep people from leaving (for the sake of numbers) feels like idolatry.

craiggoodwin
Craig Goodwin
Pleasantly surprised by tone and focus of #mn2011. Did it take finally losing the vote for Presby evangelicals to get focused on mission?

Reading the events through our own lens or filter is not inherently an issue.  It is what shapes our diversity and understanding of the world and the conversation and listening process for others helps us to not only see alternatives but can help us refine, sharpen or adapt our own perspective.  Along those lines I have to point out and say how much I appreciated the tweets from Landon Whitsitt (@landonw) who was multi-tasking and reporting on the proceedings through both his open source lens as well as his progressive lens. This tweet captures his dual perspective:

Okay…I’m putting my cards on the table. Except for including GLBT
persons, I want a church that looks like what I’m hearing at #mn2011

Let me conclude by saying that in spite of some sharp comments in the Twitterverse I was generally very impressed by the depth, breadth, level, volume, tone, thoughtfulness and civility of the Twitter conversation around this event.  But the operative word here is “around.” While the live tweeting helped me know what was going on I still feel that I am looking through a glass dimly related to where this is going. The quotes that were passed on and the sessions reported on still seemed to reflect the influence of the core group of tall-steeple pastors. There seemed to be lots and lots of discussion of a New Reformed Body but I did not sense how that might have been informed or moderated by Dr. Mouw’s comments regarding why we need each other. And I am still left with the impression that tail number four may be wagging this dog. But this is only what I see from my remote vantage point via the Twitterverse.

So, as this moves on I am looking forward to several things. First, I want to see the videos when they get posted on the Fellowship site so I have the primary sources for much of this information and I can judge for myself. Second, I await written accounts from those who were there – something longer than 140 characters. (The Presbyterian Outlook has already posted several articles by Leslie Scanlon including ones on the lead off presentations, Richard Mouw’s message, the talk by Ken Bailey, and an initial summary. There are similarly one, two, three and four articles from the Presbyterian News Service.  In addition, it looks like Two Friars and a Fool are aggregating blog posts on the Gathering but I would single out Jim Miller’s which is getting a lot of Twitter recommendations.) Once I have a chance to view, read, think and digest I anticipate being ready to make some more comments about the content of the meeting.

Looking out a bit further the real test of this model as the open source community that Landon is looking at will be in the process for posting, consulting, editing and approving the new documents for the New Reformed Body.  At this point I am pretty much trusting Landon’s impression of the proceedings so far in its promise for development of a Covenant Community in a participatory environment.

Looking even further ahead, there is a good possibility that both the New Reformed Body’s partnership with the PC(USA) as well as developments in the other FOP streams will require actions by the 220th General Assembly and changes to the Book of Order. Leslie Scanlon captured this quote from Mark Brewer:

“This next General Assembly is going to be wild.”

I look forward to seeing how the development process works and what product it results in.  I also look forward to seeing how the broader church reacts as this progresses.  This has the promise of being new territory — I like an experiment and I hope you do too.  Stay tuned…

Cross-Issue Correlation In PC(USA) Amendment Voting

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OK, I need to get two things onto the table right at the beginning of this post:


  1. Yes, this is an extremely geekish and polity wonkish post, but that’s what interests me and this analysis is the one I have really wanted to do since the 219th General Assembly adjourned last July.  I do think there is something important about the PC(USA) in here so if you want to skip the data analysis and jump to the end you will find my discussion there.
  2. I posted a preliminary result on Twitter on Saturday but got the variables confused.  Sorry about that. I posted a correction on Twitter and will point out the error when I come to it in this post.
So, the question that has had me on the edge of my seat is the degree to which each of the three high-profile amendments is correlated with the other two.  I took an initial pass at this question a couple of weeks back and found a strong correlation.  That correlation has weakened a bit but is still present, stronger in some relationships than others.  While it still may be a bit premature to make strong conclusions from the data at this point in time, I think I’ve got enough data to do a preliminary analysis.

Now, if you are looking for just the vote results after last Saturday here is the “word on the street.” Belhar is still not getting the 2/3 it needs with 32 yes and 28 no.  The New Form of Government continues to have weak support and still trails, currently at 25 to 31.  The story of the last week is that support for Amendment 10-A continues at the pace we have seen throughout the month and with three more presbyteries switching their votes a total of 12 presbyteries have shifted to “yes” with only one shifting to “no.”  At this point enough presbyteries have shifted (a net of nine was needed) that with all the rest of the presbyteries voting as they did in the last round Amendment 10-A will be approved. At the end of the weekend the vote stood at 55 to 41.  No further analysis of that today, I’ll come back to that in another week or two. (Particularly in light of the question about the vote totals that is raised at the end of the next paragraph.)

First, the usual details regarding data:  For my data I have aggregated 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.  I have also updated my cross-vote spreadsheet through Saturday’s reports.  The analysis below is more sensitive to the exact vote count and where the tally sheets sometimes differ a bit I have used either a majority among them, the Twitter reports, or a consistency in total votes to select a preferred number.  This is also probably a good place to add that the voting is not finished yet and this analysis is only preliminary based on the current data. And in a very interesting development today as I was finishing this up, the official vote tally from the Office of the General Assembly was posted.  It has caught the attention of several of us because it has numbers significantly different than the unofficial sites — nFOG 38 to 25, Belhar 38 to 18, and 10-A 47 to 33.  The difference is presumably due to reports by presbytery stated clerks not reflected in the unofficial counts.  Hopefully with time the two sets of lists will converge.

So, let’s take the three comparisons from strongest to weakest (and if you want to see the graphs in more detail they are larger in their original form and you can open them individually):

Belhar to nFOG
The strongest relationship between the issues is between the votes on the Belhar Confession and the New Form of Government. (This is the one I should have pointed out in the tweet on Saturday.)  So far 33 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 27 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes.  Looking at the numbers you can see the strength in both the cross-tabulation and the linear regression:

















 n=33 Belhar
yes
Belhar
no
 nFOG yes
  10
30%
  2
7%
 nFOG no
  1
3%
  20
60%



Bottom line: The strength of a presbytery’s vote on nFOG is going to be very close to the strength of a presbytery’s vote on Belhar.  The fit of the linear line is good with an R2 = 0.73  (a number very much like correlation that I talked about in a previous post with 1.0 as a good and 0.0 as not correlated, but this number is always positive), and a slope pretty close to 1 (the two vote percentages increase in the same proportion).  This is seen in the yes/no comparison where 30 presbyteries have voted the same way on both issues and only 3 (10%) have voted opposite on them.

Belhar to Amendment 10-A
The next strongest relationship between the issues is that between the votes on the Belhar Confession and Amendment 10-A.  (This is the one I incorrectly pointed to in the tweet.) So far 35 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 25 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes.  Here is what the numbers look like:
















 n=35 Belhar
yes
Belhar
no
 10-A yes
  17
49%
  3
9%
10-A no
  3
9%
  12
34%



Bottom line: The strength of a presbytery’s vote on Amendment 10-A is going to be related to the strength of a presbytery’s vote on Belhar, but not as strongly as for the last case and not in 1:1 proportion.  In this case, the fit of the linear line is not as good, but still moderate, with an R2 = 0.62 and a slope 0.51. There is also a significant upward shift in the trend line of almost 20%.  What this means is that for presbyteries not strongly in favor of Belhar, on average there is a 20% “base” in favor of Amendment 10-A.  On the other end, a presbytery strongly in favor of Belhar has, on average, a 30% “base” opposed to Amendment 10-A.  The yes/no comparison also shows that the linkage is not as strong and direct where 29 presbyteries have voted the same way on both issues and six (18%) have voted opposite on them.  From these results, the association of these two issues is only partial and the attitudes on one are not driving the other as strongly as might be suspected.

nFOG to Amendment 10-A
The weakest relationship is between the votes on the nFOG and Amendment 10-A. So far 36 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 23 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes.  Here is what the numbers look like:
















 n=36 nFOG
yes
nFOG
no
 10-A yes
  12
33%
  5
14%
10-A no
  5
14%
  14
42%



Bottom line: There is a weak, positive relationship between a presbytery’s voting strength on nFOG and the vote strength on 10-A.  However, as can be seen in the scatter of the data on the graph, especially at the higher end the relationship is weak.  The scatter in the data is evident with R2 = 0.39 and the lower slope of 0.46 also suggestive of a weaker linkage. The yes/no comparison supports  that the association is not as strong and direct with almost 1/3 of the presbyteries voting opposite ways on the two issues.

Discussion and Conclusions
I must admit that the strength of the Belhar/nFOG association was a bit of a surprise to me.  With the on-going discussion of the synergy between Belhar and 10-A I was expecting to that to have the strongest correlation. And the very nearly 1:1 association means that they two issues probably elicit the same response from any given commissioner.  One thought that occurred to me is the similar nature of these two issues in regards to their impact on PC(USA) polity.  While the impact of each is still being debated and is, to a certain degree, unknown, if approved they each would leave a significant mark on the constitutional documents.  There could also be a less tangible factor in the willingness to preserve the status quo — since these two amendments have similar impacts on the established order of things it is reasonable to presume that if a commissioner had a particular comfort level with changing one of them, they would have a similar comfort level changing the other. But whether it is related to those explanations, or other factors, the data appear to show that even if presbytery commissioners don’t necessarily explicitly link them, they still seem to think about them in the same way.

Having said that, and recognizing the vote tally differences from today’s announcement, I need to point out that it appears point twice as many presbyteries have voted against both of them as have approved them.  This raises a couple of questions when we look at the voting trends for the issues by themselves since the votes overall are more even.  The first thing is that as the double-issue voting catches up the close agreement could go away.  But if the close agreement continues, and considering that one currently has a majority and the other does not, we might expect the vote margins to narrow.  We also open up the possibility that Belhar might not even receive a majority vote if nFOG continues to not receive a majority.  The opposite could also be true – that nFOG will be pulled up by future positive voting on Belhar.

We could also ask the question about the strength of Belhar from the 10-A relationship.  Doing a back of the envelope calculation and extrapolating out the 10-A voting based on current proportions a 99 to 75 final vote (56.6% yes vote) would be a reasonable conclusion.  If we then mix apples and oranges and ignore whichis the the dependent and which the independent variables, plugging 56.6% yes vote on 10-A into the regression formula gives a 73% yes vote on Belhar.  Fun to speculate but I just violated too many mathematical and data rules to really believe that.  A more valid approach would be to take the presbytery yes/no vote cross-tabulation as a guide where we see that at the present time the opposite voting categories would off-set each other.  This would suggest that for presbyteries (apples to apples) the Belhar final vote could would be very close to the 10-A final count, in which case 56.6% won’t get it approved.

I’m not sure there is much to say about the weak correlation between nFOG and 10-A.  This is more of what I was initially expecting since the two issues do not have a lot in common polity-wise.  The weak linkage seen could be some polity point I am overlooking or a desire to preserve the status quo.  Either way, there is not enough strength in that correlation to risk making any conclusions about one from the outcome of the other.

So that is what I see at this point.  I will point out again that this is truly preliminary since at this time for each pairing only around 1/5 of the presbyteries have voted on both amendments.  I look forward to seeing how this progresses as the voting continues filling in the missing data.  Stay tuned…

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

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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…

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

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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.

An Interesting Invitation And Some Of My Preliminary Reactions

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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…