Category Archives: General Assembly

A Brief Update On Cross-Issue Correlation In PC(USA) Amendment Voting

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Not Much Change.

Brief enough for you?  OK, you want a bit more?

As I have commented the past couple of posts on this stuff there was a bit of a question about the data, particularly for the New Form of Government vote, because the official tally from the Office of the General Assembly differed markedly from the unofficial “word on the street” numbers.  Well, in the last week the unofficial lists have caught up and as of today’s release of the official numbers the differences have mostly disappeared.  The official numbers always lag a bit because of the extra time required to report the votes (the Stated Clerk still does not accept reports from those of us who tweet it).  So, at the moment the numbers are: Belhar – Official 44-23, unofficial 46-29; nFOG – Official 50-33, unofficial 50-39; Amendment 10-A – Official 57-37, unofficial 67-47.

For those playing along at home it appears that nFOG and 10-A are on track to be affirmed by the presbyteries but the Belhar Confession is very close and trailing the 2/3 confirmation it needs to join the Book of Confessions.  Of the other 14 amendments being voted upon, 11 have now been affirmed by the presbyteries and the other three are seeing some degree of negative votes, but still on track to be affirmed.

As usual, my data is aggregated
from 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 and my cross-vote spreadsheet through yesterday’s
reports.

What appears to have happened is that the Layman and Reclaim Biblical Teaching lists, which are the ones that track the Belhar and the nFOG voting, have gotten a bunch of new data on nFOG.  The good news is that new data is always good and makes my analyses more reliable.  The bad news is that most of these are unrecorded votes meaning that either the vote was taken by voice or a show of hands and not counted out, or the counted data was not available to the reporting groups.  The bottom line is that there is not much new for my strength of voting analysis so I’ll let my previous one stand for the moment and just look at the cross-tabulation of the “yes/no” votes.

So here are the correlations:

 n=52 Belhar
Yes 		Belhar
No
 nFOG yes  25
48%		 3
6%
 nFOG no  4
8%		 20
38%
n=48 Belhar
Yes 		Belhar
No
 10-A yes  27
56%		 3
6%
 10-A no  4
8%		 14
29%
 n=65 nFOG
Yes 		nFOG
No
 10-A yes  28
43%		  6
9%
10-A no 10
15% 		 21
32%

Well, there is a little shift, but the same quantitative pattern holds and the shifts are mostly minor.  The Belhar/nFOG correlation is now tied for the best with 86% of presbyteries voting the same way on both issues (down slightly from 90% last time) and 14% opposite voting.  Yes, now Belhar Yes/nFOG No has one more vote than the other combination while it had one less vote last time — still pretty similar.

The Belhar/10-A correlation is interesting because it has the same number of opposite voting presbyteries as the Belhar/nFOG correlation and within the rounding this gives essentially the same percentages – 14% opposite and 87% same.  The previous analysis had 83% of the presbyteries voting the same so there is a slight increase in the correlation.

Finally, we have the least favorable correlation, the nFOG/10-A voting, and the numbers are very close to the previous analysis, and maybe a bit better correlated.  Previously, within the rounding, 75% of the presbyteries voted the same way on both issues and now we have the same number again.  Last time the opposite votes were the same and now we see a slight tendency for a presbytery that votes no on 10-A to still support a yes vote on nFOG.  In fact, since the previous analysis only one more presbytery has been added to the count that voted yes on 10–A and no on nFOG.

What does it all mean?  Well, for the data crunchers like me it is nice to see that the larger quantity of data supports the preliminary analysis I did before.  We are still only at about 1/3 of the presbyteries in any one of these comparisons so this is still in a preliminary mode, but it is valuable to see that as the data set grows the basic trends remain the same.  It is also suggestive that we can have some confidence in the previous analysis that used the strength of voting.

It also continues to encourage us to ask the question of why these votes are correlated.  I’ve pondered that in the previous posts so won’t repeat it again in print until the data set has filled out substantially more.  Some of you have suggested additional variables to look at with the strength of vote numbers to help clarify that question a bit.  When the strength of vote data has increased some more I’ll revisit it again.

This continued trend does not however allow up to say anything about the time trend of the data.  These data have no associated date information and just because they were added in the last week does not mean that the votes were taken in that time period.  So while they have the same trend we can not say that the voting trend truly “continues” in a temporal sense.

Anyway, a little lunch hour diversion and we will watch the voting continue and await more data.  The rest of this week I have a heavy meeting schedule so I’ll try to catch up on some global Presbyterian issues over the weekend.  Stay tuned…

The Fog Around nFOG

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[No, this is not about the questions arising from the differences in the official vote count on nFOG and the unofficial tallies.  (The official tally for this week is posted and the OGA has the count at 45-32 while the unofficial “word on the street” is 24-35.)]

This post is about my experience the last three days with the discernment process around approving a New Form of Government (nFOG) section of the Book of Order that is currently being voted upon by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) presbyteries.  But it seems that this amendment has left many people conflicted or confused.  And it seems that it is hard to work up any enthusiasm for or against this major change in polity.

As part of the discernment process for my presbytery the group planning the presbytery meeting where the Belhar Confession and the New Form of Government would be voted upon asked two individuals to be resource people for each of these issues.  Each of them had served on the committee (Belhar) or task force (nFOG) for that issue.  Unfortunately, the nFOG specialist was not available yesterday and I guess I got the call as the second choice.  So my job at the presbytery meeting was to give a pre-presbytery presentation on nFOG, a brief intro to the debate, and to answer questions during debate.  In agreeing to the request I did make it clear to the planners that they were not getting an nFOG advocate but a polity junkie who would try to give a fair and balanced presentation.  What I got out of it was a better understanding of nFOG myself, and a fascinating insight into the nFOG discernment in my congregation and presbytery.  So here it is as a story in three scenes.

Scene 1
I have the advantage that I have been following the progress of the New Form of Government since the task force was created over four years ago, so I know the history.  I have read, but not studied in detail, a lot of the material that is out there concerning nFOG.  And I have previously heard presentations at least five times by members of the task force, including the member who was not able to make it yesterday.  But that really only covers the history, charge, and over-arching view of the product — what about the details?

I set about to look more closely at the details of nFOG by first visiting the official documents.  The amendment as printed by the Office of the General Assembly runs 46 pages. (The booklet itself also contains an Advisory Handbook bringing the total length to 58 pages.)  There is also an eight page insert that provides some background material and a study guide.  That insert has a list of six additional printed resources and a link to a 21 slide PowerPoint presentation explaining the proposal.  All total, that comes to 352 pages of material.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  If that is not enough for you there are many additional nFOG resources floating around out there.  The most useful, and what I drew heavily from, is the regular analysis from the Association of Stated Clerks.  There is also a blog by the nFOG task force folks.  Most of the rest of the resources are from advocacy groups promoting one side or the other and most of those promoting a negative vote.  I won’t go into detail, and I have not made any attempt to add up the pages, but if you are interested I’m sure the best list of all these items is over at GAHelp.  And if you want one more, I have a one-sheet, front and back, nFOG Summary I used for my presentation yesterday.

The point of all this is that there is plenty of material out there about nFOG, and arguments for and against, for your reading pleasure.  For me, the challenge was to figure out what to pack into a 45 minute discussion and then a 15 minute presentation.

Scene 2
My pastor, seeing that I was doing the presbytery presentation, invited me to present to our church’s Session on Sunday.  I welcomed the opportunity to not only educate them, but to practice my presentation.  It turned into a bit of a “focus group” experience for me.

I had my prepared materials and went through my presentation and at the end one of the elders commented “this is just as murky as before.”  Message or messenger?

Well we talked about nFOG for a while and in the end it was probably a bit of both that was causing the murkiness.  Specifically, for our elder commissioners to presbytery, I recommended the GAHelp site and they were going to check it out to prepare themselves for the discussion.

Scene 3
With the help of the focus group behind me I threw out my first presentation and handout and started over to try to construct a more helpful one.  It must have been successful because I got good feedback from members of presbytery about it.  But what I also got was a lot of feedback about how people were feeling about nFOG.  I spoke with almost no one who had strong feelings about it but rather they were leaning one way or the other but said they were still uncommitted.  And this was across the demographic spectrum – it included teaching elders and ruling elders of different ages, levels of experience and theological leaning.  In fact, in the debate on the floor of presbytery there was no debate – there was one speaker against who made some claims, another speaker who then asked the question whether what the previous speaker had said was really correct because that was not his understanding, I got called on to answer the question, and debate was over — no one else rose to speak.  In the last three days I have had contact with no one in my church or presbytery who expressed strong feelings either way about nFOG except the one speaker who seems to have been working with incomplete information.  (For the record, I am pretty sure that several commissioners attending my presentation had firm opinions on nFOG but did not express them in that session or later in debate.  Also, again for the record, the lack of debate could also get back to my rule of thumb that a governing body has in it “one good debate per session” and the body had already had that debate on Belhar.)

Some observations
So what do I gather from this little drama in three scenes?  First, that there is too much material out there about nFOG and it results in sensory overload.  OK, let me rephrase that – while it is good and useful to have the 352 pages of official material available for someone thoroughly studying the dynamics and implications of the New Form of Government, how that material gets presented needs to be carefully considered.  One approach would be to have tiers – general information on the first tier, more specific resources on the second, and the comparison charts (all 268 pages) and other very detailed material on the third tier.  As it is now, they are all listed together with no guide for the uninitiated as to what to read first.

But the corollary to this is the fact that when these issues are sent out to the congregations and presbyteries for study, it is my experience that we usually pass up the opportunity.  (Anyone out there studying the Marriage Report I helped write and put so much time, effort and sleepless nights into?)  As faithful teaching and ruling elders we need to be aware of these items the GA wants us to study and encourage each other to do so.  This is especially true when we will have to vote on making them part of the church constitution.

Second, the nFOG in and of itself is too long to be easily considered in one fell swoop.  Yes, it is easier from a polity standpoint to just do a rewrite of the whole thing rather than work with a hybrid document as it is revised in bite-size pieces.  But we did the hybrid thing with current Chapter 14, maybe it would work for the rest of the book.  And based on the “deer in the headlights” looks I saw in my presentation when we started talking about the work of producing the operating manuals, taking those incrementally as well might make the task seem easier.

Finally, there is a great deal of mixed feelings about the nFOG.  Many of the people I have talked with understand the goal of flexibility and concept of returning the Book of Order to a constitutional document by removing the operational details.  But many experienced elders I have talked with in the last three days, both ruling and teaching, know how much our polity hinges on a few words here or a sentence there.  That is the stuff that Authoritative Interpretations and GAPJC decisions are made of.  To lose some of those, particularly the one due process section, raises concern in this experienced cadre.  For both experienced and inexperienced elders I really sensed that they were looking at the “risk/reward” balance and it was pretty even – the rewards did not outweigh the risks by much if anything.  I can also say that I had input from very few that saw this as an ideological issue or that saw it as change for change’s sake.  There was a real and profound sense that everyone was deliberately weighing the pros and cons of the text itself and actively seeking God’s will in this matter.

A couple of additional observations:
1. It might be reasonable to take some of these observations and experiences and look at the Presbyterian Church in America and the defeat of the Administrative Committee’s funding initiative in the same light.  While that change to the Book of Church Order was much shorter, only two specific sections, it struck me that it had the same sort of “sensory overload” as large amounts of official material, including the video, were unloaded on the church to “help” them make a decision.  Similarly, there was a large amount of unofficial chatter about the amendments. Were these resources truly helpful or did they add to the sense of confusion and being overwhelmed?

2. On the nFOG vote the commissioners in my presbytery were not alone in being undecided or looking for strong reasons one way or the other.  Last week there was an interesting exchange when John Shuck in advance of the Holston Presbytery meeting asked on his blog “Should I Vote for the New Form of Government?”  He expressed an undecided position and lack of strong reasons in support of the document,  sentiments that were similar to what I heard from commissioners in my presbytery.  Mr. Shuck admits in the first paragraph “I really don’t see myself having a horse in this race.”  In terms of arguments either way, one of them is “I know the LayMAN and the various true
believers and biblical reclaimers are against it. That would give me
reason to vote in favor, but admittedly not much of a reason.”  After the vote he tweeted “Holston Presbytery approved nFOG. I ended up voting in favor. Time
for a new thing…”  Change for changes sake?

So this was an interesting experience with the New Form of Government.  I don’t know if it will be approved and therefore it will be over and dealt with, or if the presbyteries will not concur and another rewrite may be back for another round in the future.  But whether it is this issue, or another large and complex one, we as a denomination need to think carefully about what will happen to it after it leaves the General Assembly and how it is presented to the presbyteries so they are best positioned to be able deliberate, discuss, debate and discern the issue.

Oh, how did it turn out?  San Gabriel Presbytery did not concur with nFOG by a 47 to 99 vote.  They approved of the Belhar Confession by a 79 to 66 margin.  Each vote had one abstention.

My Thoughts On The New Movements In The PC(USA)

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I had to laugh yesterday morning when I opened up Twitter because my friend Robert Austell (@gspcrobert ) had asked the question I had been pondering myself the last few days.

So what’s the difference (other than theological perspective) between #nextchurchindy and the fellowship/whitepaper? any takers? #pcusa

I’ll tell you my answer at the end, but let me first rewind to what got me into this line of thought in the first place…

In retrospect I realize that I was all over the Fellowship PC(USA) announcement because it fell in my lap.  I got the original e-mail, it pushed one of my hot buttons, and I was off to the races.  In contrast, the NEXT Church event earlier this week was something I had seen mentioned but had not really kept track of.  It looked like just another conference like Big Tent (pick one ), Wee Kirk, or the College Conference. But when I started reading the tweets, and then watching the live streaming it seemed that this was a bit more high-profile than I had realized.

Well, the next stop was the web site to see what it said.  On the conference web page I read this:

For some months a group of friends and colleagues across the church have been in conversation about the “next” Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). We have focused less on denominational controversies and other matters and more on vital, faithful and connectional congregational ministry.

Déjà vu all over again.  Sound familiar?

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… Our purpose is to LIVE INTO new patterns as they are created, modeling a way of faith: the worship, supportive fellowship, sharing of best practices, and accessible theology that brings unity and the Spirit’s vitality.

Yes, those are lines from the original Fellowship PC(USA) letter.  And yes, on balance the rest of the letters are a bit different in tone and viewpoint, I will grant you that.  But both originated out of these small groups, mostly pastors it seems, that wanted to do something new to promote unity and connectionalism in the PC(USA).

Now, to be fair, almost any change, or movement (if that’s what these are), comes out of a small group and grows.  After all, Jesus started with a core of 12 and grew the movement from there.  And changes in the Presbyterian system begin with overtures from presbyteries to be debated by the General Assembly moving upward from local governing bodies to the national level.  But in this case, it looks like both of these movements have grown out of groups of “tall-steeple” pastors who wanted to do something different.  For more on the development of the NEXT group have a look at the post by YoRocko!, who happens to be addressing this exact same question.

At the moment, there is something that is different about these groups, aside from the theological perspective, and that is the fact that the NEXT group has had its first big conference.  What that conference demonstrated, and which was pointed out by the attendees during the feedback session, is that those present were mostly white and middle class, with the most diversity being provided by the seminary students. It was also pointed out that the attendees included only a small number of ruling elders and most of those were from the local area. These were initial criticisms of the Fellowship group.  The NEXT group made a commitment to diversity, much as the Fellowship group has.  The point here is that both these groups reflect the reality of what the PC(USA) looks like now.

Another similarity between the groups is that they both advocate that something needs to change in the PC(USA).  The NEXT web site says about the conference “Together, we will seek God’s guidance in discerning how to move forward in a rapidly evolving church and culture.”  The Fellowship letter says of their conference “Our purpose is to LIVE INTO new patterns as they are created, modeling a way of faith: the worship, supportive fellowship, sharing of best practices, and accessible theology that brings unity and the Spirit’s vitality.”  Both groups seek ways to discern and discuss what is the future of American Mainline Presbyterianism in a changing world.

I found one more interesting, and possibly telling, similarity between the two groups — both of their initial web sites are hosted as part of the church web sites at tall-steeple churches.  The Fellowship PC(USA) web site is hosted by Christ Presbyterian Church of Edina, Minnesota.  The NEXT web site is hosted by Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, Indiana.  Checking the Top 15 list of PC(USA) churches we find that these churches are number three and number thirteen respectively on the list.  If your first reaction is “so what?”, you might be correct.  Big churches have the resources to share with developing groups like these and both groups have announced that they will be migrating to their own web presence with unique URL’s.  But look again, because I think there is a subliminal message which may not be intended but might be conveyed. In each case, at my screen resolution, the church’s banner takes up 1/3 to 1/2 of the visible page.  In both cases the church was careful (as far as I can tell in the very dynamic world of web pages) not to put the conferences on their front page, sending no message that it is a ministry of the church.  But each group’s individual page is still done in the church’s template implying an association with that body.  When I place them side-by-side, and maybe it is only me and I am over-interpreting here, the message that I see is one of “battle of the tall-steeple churches.”  The movements both give the impression of being driven by large churches contending for control of the PC(USA).

As I said, I might be getting this wrong.  But try to think about it as if you are not an insider to the PC(USA) world — if you look at these two pages with the eyes of an outsider what message does the totality of the page send?  OK, maybe I’m the only one getting this impression.

Turning to what is different, the first thing that strikes me is the tone of the two groups and their outlook.  There is a lot more printed verbiage from the Fellowship group so their perspective is easier to see.  To be specific, the Letter and the White Paper are very negative about the future of the PC(USA) but do strike a hopeful tone about the possibility of reform when they say “We hope to discover and model what a new “Reformed body” looks like in the coming years, and we invite you to join us, stepping faithfully, boldly, and joyfully into the work for which God has called us.” Interestingly, in the white paper the similar line is followed by “We propose this change with regret, despising division and all it entails in witness to the world, but with excitement at what may emerge.”  The mix of negative and positive.

The NEXT group says less on their web page, but do begin by quoting the prophet Isaiah (43:19) “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?”  They make passing reference to the current situation in the PC(USA) and give the invitation in a positive phrasing:

We will join with friends and colleagues, old and new, who care about
the future of Presbyterian witness. Together, we will seek God’s
guidance in discerning how to move forward in a rapidly evolving church
and culture.

The NEXT Conference plenary sessions are available online so you can hear what was actually said.  I have listened to some, but not all, and again find the tone mostly positive.  But let’s turn to someone who was there, Carmen Fowler, and what she had to say in an article for the Layman.  While Ms. Fowler could probably at a minimum be described as a “skeptical observer” and she had plenty to critique about the NEXT Conference, she also had mostly positive comments about the spirit of the conference.  This includes:

The
spirit of the event was positive, framed by beautiful Reformed,
Word-centered worship and designed to promote genuine fellowship.
…
There
were no exhibits, no stoles, no banners, no buttons and no animosity
from the leadership toward the few folks in attendance who could be
identified as “right” of center.
…
There is hope among Next organizers that when Next meets again, a broader spectrum of voices will participate.

Again, when the Fellowship group meets it will be interesting to see if their tone is reviewed as positively by a neutral or skeptical observer.

Maybe the biggest difference between the two movements is that the Fellowship documents lay out as their agenda specific points and actions they want their group, and by extension the denomination to take.  The NEXT group outlines their conference description as “We will engage in worship, hear presentations and participate in small
groups. More than that, we will build relationships, connect with others
in shared ministry and learn from one another.”  In this case, the discussion and relationship are the agenda.

Finally, there is the “theological perspective” of each group.  It seems that this has been set up as a Conservative (Fellowship) versus Liberal (NEXT) polarity.  The Fellowship group is pretty clear with the stance when they list one of their characteristics as seeking “A clear, concise theological core to which we subscribe, within classic biblical, Reformed/Evangelical traditions, and a pledge to live according to those beliefs, regardless of cultural pressures to conform.” 

The lack of verbiage on the NEXT web site makes it more difficult to clearly claim a theological perspective from that source, but if nothing else the comments during the meeting that held up NEXT as an alternative to the Fellowship seem to also declare an alternate theological perspective.  Ms. Fowler suggests this as well, telling us “Unfortunately,
the conversation was had largely in isolation among Presbyterians who
share a progressive theology. Conservative Presbyterians did not show
up.”

Finally, let me mention one more factor what we will have to wait and see if it is a difference or a similarity.  One thing that really struck me about the NEXT Conference was the number of members of the PC(USA) national leadership that showed up for it.  This included the Moderator and Vice-moderator of the General Assembly, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and the Chair and Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council.  The list goes on, making you wonder who was left in Louisville.  When the Fellowship consultation rolls around we will have to see if the showing is as good.

Now I have listed most of the similarities and differences I have seen and the question Robert asked excluded the theological perspective.  When I first considered his question I looked at the theological perspective in a very broad sense that attributed all the differences to the differences in theological perspective.  In other words, how much does the theological perspective influence the tone and their view of the PC(USA).  How much does the theological perspective influence how the agenda is shaped and how specific it is or is not.  In a broad sense I thought that it did and my answer to Robert was “not much it seems.”  (If you think this is too terse or superficial remember that the medium was Twitter.)

If theological perspective is more narrowly viewed as just the stance each group takes, then there are some areas in which the two movements diverge.  But on balance, I would argue that these groups presently have more similarities than differences.  Breaking it down, in origin and structure the two groups appear very similar.  In theological perspective and agenda the groups are pretty different.

OK, if you want to make up your own minds, there is plenty of reading out there about the NEXT Conference and I suspect more will emerge.  I’ve already mentioned YoRocko! and the Layman article. There are also discussions from McCormick Theological Seminary, MGB Commission and MGB Commission member John Vest, Landon Whitsitt’s riffing on John’s piece , and Bruce Reyes-Chow’s comments .  And that is just a start.

As I said, at this point we are at a disadvantage in the comparison since one group has a lot of written material but the first conference has not yet been held, and the other has had their conference but has not provided a lot of written background, at least in the public domain.  So we will see how all this develops and maybe we’ll be in a better position to compare the different approaches in August after both have met.  May I suggest they also live stream their event for those of us who can’t get free to attend in person.

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.

Irish Presbyterians Chose Their 2011 GA Moderator

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For whatever obscure and personal reasons, today always feels like the beginning of the build-up to the General Assembly season to me.  There is something about the first Tuesday in February and the vote of the presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for their General Assembly Moderator that perks up my interest and makes me look ahead to the upcoming GA season.  But enough waxing poetic… Let’s get down to business.

In the PC Ireland today the 19 presbyteries gathered in their traditional simultaneous meetings and elected…

Rev. Ivan Patterson, pastor of Newcastle Presbyterian Church. He was on the ballot last year
and received four votes in the first round.  This year he received a very strong 12 out of 19 votes. Rev. Patterson is quoted as saying “I am absolutely overwhelmed to be elected as Moderator. I am very
happy to serve the Church and to represent its members but am somewhat
daunted by the thought of the year ahead.”

There were four others on this year’s ballot:

From the PC Ireland press release in advance of the election, here is the brief biographical sketch for the Rev. Patterson.

Rev. Ivan Patterson

Minister of Newcastle, Ivan was born in 1949 and in 1980 was ordained as
Assistant in First Bangor. In 1982 he was installed as minister of
Bushvale before accepting a call to Newcastle in 1991. He convened the
Youth International and Inter Church Committee between 1984 and 1989,
the Youth Board from 1989 until 1993 and the Reception of Ministers and
Licentiates Committee in 2008. He is currently Clerk of the Iveagh
Presbytery, a post he has held since 1995.



Thanks to @cherylmeban for the first tweet.  The results were just announced with an official announcement and additional media reports should be released shortly.  I will update here.

My congratulations to Rev. Patterson and best wishes and prayers for his moderatorial year.

A Very Preliminary Look At Amendment Voting In The PC(USA)

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The holidays are now behind us and traditionally this is the time when voting on amendments to the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) kicks into high gear.  So I thought that I would take the first, preliminary look at possible trends in the voting.  But first some preliminaries…

Let me first make a couple of comments about the question “why bother?”  Well, beyond the fact that crunching data is the sort of thing that I enjoy doing I also think that it gives one of the best windows into what is going on in the denomination at this time.  It is a widely accepted generalization that the decisions of the General Assembly do not necessarily reflect the thinking of the “people in the pews.”  The usual evidence that is pointed to is the fact that three times previously the GA has sent an amendment to remove or rewrite G-6.0106b in the Book of Order, and three times it has been rejected by the presbyteries.  Another example of a disconnect is the negative reaction from many churches to the GA decision to boycott companies who supply items linked to the Israel-Palestine conflict.  So, while Research Services gives us statistics based on opinion poles of sampled members, the vote counts, both the absolute and relative numbers, give us an insight into how ruling and teaching elders react to the issues the Assembly sends down to them.  In short, I think the vote numbers can give us an insight into how the PC(USA) is changing.

So what is different this year about the vote?  I think there are four things that need to be taken into account.

1) Each year the Assembly sends an amendment with a bit different wording and that might make a difference.  This year the proposed language speaks more about the examination, that the governing body is responsible for it, and that they are to be guided by the Scriptures and the confessions.   One of the more interesting lines is “The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003).” So while the confessions and the Scriptures are to guide the governing body, the candidate’s qualifications seem to be focused on the constitutional questions.  So, how will any individual commissioner view the proposed wording this time around?

2) This vote is coming right after another vote two years ago while the previous interval was seven years from 2001 to 2008.  There are a number of ways that this could manifest itself with two possibilities being the reduced turnout due to a “fatigue factor” and/or little change in the numbers due to less time for the church to evolve.

3) I will not develop this point here, but will just say that in looking at the numbers for the last four votes (96-B, 97-A, 01-A, 08-B ) I consider the vote on amendment 01-A to be a unique case with a turnout of conservative voters in proportions not seen in the other three votes.  I will say that so far for 10-A this observation seems to still hold with the current numbers looking a lot like the last round of voting.

4) Overall, the voting is not just about “fidelity and chastity” this year but there is also the addition of the Belhar Confession to the Book of Confessions and a whole new revision to the Form of Government.  The voting could have different dynamics this year due to this expanded slate and the dynamics of the timing of scheduling the votes.

OK, now the data.  While the official count is always kept by the Office of the General Assembly , it only gives the totals.  For the Amendment A vote I have been comparing the breakdown by presbytery from several sources: the Yes On Amendment A site, Covenant Network, Reclaim Biblical Teaching, and the Layman.  Voting on the Belhar and nFOG are covered by both the Layman and the Reclaim Biblical Teaching site.  Then for breaking news there is always Twitter.  I’ve got my own tally sheet shared online, but I don’t claim to have it updated as quickly as the others.  And if you want a detailed list of resources related to these votes you should start with Robert Austell’s GA Help web site.

So, at the present time the Belhar Confession trails by 17-12 (remember it needs 2/3 for a confession to be approved), nFog is passing 10-7, and after a flurry of voting yesterday Amendment A is currently failing 15-20.  In total, 67 of the 173 presbyteries have voted on at least one of these items, eight have voted on two and three have voted on all three.  You can see that so far the presbyteries are taking the votes deliberately and not usually taking more than one at a time.

Of the four that have voted on both the Belhar and 10-A the votes have been very similar: Alaska – 24% yes Belhar and 31% yes 10-A, Lackawanna – 45% yes Belhar and 40% yes 10-A, New Castle – 72% yes Belhar and 70% yes 10-A, Santa Barbara – 23% yes Belhar and 27% yes 10-A.  While this is not proof that commissioners view Belhar and 10-A as being closely linked, it is suggestive that many may view both of them through a common filter.

Correlations for nFOG with the other two are not as close.  Sometimes there is a similar proportion, like Alaska that had identical 7-22 votes on each, or Des Moines which had 64% yes on Belhar and 70% yes on nFOG. Sometimes it is not as close, such as Eastern Oklahoma that barely passed 10-A but passed nFOG on voice vote, or Northumberland which was 36% yes on Belhar but only 13% yes on nFOG.

But these are early trends of just a small number of votes so we will see what develops over the next six months.

I want to finish by taking a quick look at the repeat voting on G-6.0106b comparing Amendment 10-A to 08-B.  We have reports on 35 presbyteries having held their votes and so far two have moved from “no” to “yes” (Eastern Oklahoma, Eastern Virginia) and one has moved the other way (Lake Huron).  So the net change at this point is one to the yes column.

Looking at the total yes and no votes, we find that there are 6% fewer total votes (3848 versus 4101) for these 33 presbyteries.  It is interesting to note that this 6% decline in commissioners voting exactly matches the overall decline in membership in the PC(USA) over the last two years (3.1% plus 2.9%).  Taken as a whole, the
number of commissioners voting yes is up 5% (1875 this vote versus 1786
in the last vote) while those voting no have declined 15% (1973 down
from 2315).  If the decline in total votes were proportionally represented in the yes and no votes we would expect 88 fewer yes votes and 199 more no votes.  So the decrease in no votes can not be explained only by the increase in yes votes but there must also be a decline in the number of commissioners who favor “fidelity and chastity” who are voting.

For the 33 presbyteries with reported numbers (Northern NY and Cayuga-Syracuse had hand or voice votes without recorded numbers), 23 had a decrease in the number of votes, 9 had an increase and one was exactly the same.  Now, some normal fluctuation in the number of commissioners attending the meeting is to be expected and I have usually placed this at +4%.  Taking this into account,  eight lower totals and five higher totals for a total of 13 more are added to the unchanged category.  This total of 14 is just a bit less than half of all the presbyteries voting so far.  The greatest decline is from Elizabeth Presbytery which had only 76% of the commissioners present as they had for the last vote.  This could easily be attributed to the inclement weather in the northeast this weekend. However, Genesee Valley, which voted at the same time, had only a slight decrease of 3%.  The largest increase was in Newton Presbytery which had 1.14 times the number of commissioners as the last vote.  Of the four increases that I consider significant (in a statistical but only quasi-rigorous sense), there are three presbyteries that voted no and one voted yes.  Tempting but dubious to draw conclusions from such a small sample.

If we look at yes and no votes broken down by presbytery, on average there are 19% more yes voters and 13% less no voters.  For the presbyteries that voted yes there was only a 1% increase in the number of yes voters and 16% decrease in no voters.  For the presbyteries that voted no, the increase in yes voters was 31% while the no voters decreased by 11%.  That increase in no votes was pulled by a couple of large increases, but it suggests that the Yes on A get out the vote campaign is having an effect while the similar effort for No on A is not as effective.

Let me warp up this discussion with the general observation that I am seeing the whole range of behaviors in different presbyteries.  The three presbyteries that switched all had significant increases on the prevailing side with 12%, 21% and 22% increases.  On the other side were varying decreases from 5%, to 14% to 23%.  The switch in position was a two-way street apparently caused by both gains and losses.  There were a couple of presbyteries with uniform change, such as Great Rivers which had a 3% increase in both the number of yes and no votes, or Newton which had a uniform 19% increase in both columns.  There are also presbyteries, like Central Florida and Stockton, where the total number of votes was very constant and the votes shifted columns.  It was into the yes column for Central Florida and towards no for Stockton.  There is only one presbytery, Mississippi, where the no votes were stable (47 versus 49) but the yes votes increased (up to 11 from 2).  And there are two presbyteries, Boston and New Castle, where the yes votes remained constant but the no votes declined significantly.  And then there are the rest of the presbyteries which exhibit more complex changes that can not be explained solely with these simple end-member models.

So, that is what I am seeing so far.  As I said, this is preliminary because with only around 30-40 presbyteries having voted on each amendment drawing statistical conclusions would be a bit early.  However, there are interesting trends developing and we will see how those play out.  Stay tuned… I’ll get out the white board and draw geeky charts and graphs next time.

Tensions In Nigeria Lead To New Presbyterian Branch

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As of a couple of days ago the universe of Presbyterian denominations got a little bit larger with the formation of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Nigeria.  This branch was formed when the Mid East Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria disagreed with their General Assembly over the rotation of leadership and so declared themselves autonomous.  How did we get here?

From a polity standpoint this seems to be about an agreement, possibly stipulated in their polity documents, that the position of Moderator of the General Assembly is to be rotated around the nine synods.  (I have looked and have not yet found The Practice and Procedure online so I can’t confirm the exact wording of the policy.)  Mid East Synod believed that the rotation should fall to them at the August 2010 Assembly but when a Moderator from another synod was elected and later installed they first filed a protest and then broke off on their own.

As I said, this started at the meeting of the General Assembly this past summer when The Rt. Rev. Prof. Emele Mba Uka was elected as the new Moderator.  With thanks to the Presbyterian Church in Canada for a story on the election , we know that not only was he elected by a unanimous vote but that a hard rain falling on the training institute the Assembly was meeting at, and only on the training institute, was taken as a divine sign.  Another article from the Daily Sun gives more of the back story and how two original candidates did not have their names placed in nomination and instead Rev. Uka’s name came into the picture at the last minute and he became the sole nominee.  The Rt. Rev. Uka is, as the professor title implies, a senior academic with numerous earned academic degrees, including a Ph.D. from Drew University.

The interesting thing is that nowhere in the reporting I have seen from the time of the election is there mention of any protest or dissent.  The election was unanimous after all.  Having looked over several news articles about the General Assembly and the election from the August and September time-frame there is not a hint of a problem.  In fact, the first mention of the dissent that I saw in on-line sources was from allAfrica.com at the beginning of December.

At that time the article reports that elders from Mid East Synod had presented a petition to the denomination’s trustees opposing the selection of the Rt. Rev. Uka and asking to halt his inauguration, which was later that week.  The article also mentions that there was an earlier protest registered with the trustees but the date is not given.  Specifically, the petition is quoted to state of the actions the “grossly unfair and unconscionable way our Synod was denied our
inalienable right to produce the next General Assembly Moderator.”

Well, the inauguration went ahead on December 7, to which the PCN press release and pictures on the home page testify.

The next chapter in the story appears to be ecclesiastical discipline as the General Assembly Executive Committee issued an order that a number of members of the Mid East Synod are “suspended indefinitely… for acts of insubordination and lawlessness capable
of destabilizing the Church and causing a breach of public peace.”  This according to the PCN’s own press release. Those suspended included not only ministers but public officials including the deputy governor and the commissioner for works in Ebonyi State.  The officials are accused of “using State apparatus as Deputy Governor and Commissioner
for Works in the Ebonyi State Government to sponsor some rebellious members of
the Church in actions designed to destabilize the Church and cause
socio-political disharmony.”  (Clearly this church discipline is not just in the ecclesiastical sphere but related to civil consequences as well.)  The other ordained officials are accused of ecclesiastical infractions that violate the church’s policies.  The press release is long on accusations but there is not much information about disciplinary process or judicial proceedings — it is just stated as a decision of the Executive Committee.

The immediate media coverage seems to echo the December 28 decision of the church, as an article from Vanguard shows.  However, Vanguard was out the next day with the response from Mid East Synod that said “the decision was contrary to the norms and proceedings governing operations of the Church of Christ.”  While the quotes from the Steering Committee of the Synod include a lot of counter accusations and rhetoric, it does include the very Presbyterian statement that “for the avoidance of doubt, no other body or organ has the right to
suspend any member of the church except the session where he or she
worships.”  They also cite the lack of due process.

Now, a couple of days ago, the Synod called a press conference and, among other things, told the reporters (as quoted by allAfrica.com )

“Whereas the Mid East Synod has the ecclesiastical right of self
determination in order to free herself from persisting enslavement,
perpetuation, and bondage; whereas members of the Mid East Synod being a
peace loving people not given to gangsterism and thuggery and violence
in the Church of Jesus wish to declare that in view of the foregoing we
are now Autonomous to be known and addressed as the Reformed
Presbyterian Church Of Nigeria with headquarters at Macgregor College
Afikpo and branches all over the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

(Synod spokesperson) Rev. Nwonu explained that their former church, Presbyterian Church of
Nigeria as presently constituted was being administered not by the
graded and constituted courts of the Church, rather, it was being
administered by the powerful interest groups who arrogate to themselves
the power to set aside the Church’s constitution, laws, policies and
procedures which have been guiding the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria
for over 164 years.

Where will this go next?  I don’t know and I’m not going to predict.  It is important to remember that the PCN is involved in conflicts in the north between different ethnic/social groups that also happen to be divided along Muslim/Christian lines. (My previous comments on the situation)  As recently as yesterday there were additional attacks in the area of Jos.  Regarding the church itself one possibility where this could end up is like the synods of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi where the three synods are growing more autonomous and the General Assembly level has less authority and ability to coordinate and negotiate between the synods.  So, for the moment we now have the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Nigeria.

New Moderators And Moderator Candidates

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Over the last couple of days there has been an interesting collection of announcements about Moderators and Moderator Candidates. A very quick run-down:

Yesterday the Presbyterian Church of Ghana held the installation service for the Right Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, who becomes the 16th Moderator of the General Assembly.  The Rev. Martey was elected by the 2010 Assembly back in August and now begins a six year term of office.  It is reported that he expressed his optimism while acknowledging the task ahead.  The previous Moderator, the Very Reverend Dr. Frimpong-Manso, assured the new Moderator of his support.

Yesterday was also the day that the Principal Clerk of the Presbyterian Church in Canada announced the names of the nominees for Moderator of the next General Assembly. The nominees are:

Notable that all are ministers, no elders, and the westerner is from Hamilton (just slightly west of Barrie), so they reflect the church’s eastern concentration.  The vote of the presbyteries will be counted and announced on April 1, 2011.

Finally, not a GA Moderator, but the new Moderator of the National Youth Assembly of the Church of Scotland.  The Kirk has announced that Amanda Philip will lead NYA 2011 as well as serving as a youth delegate to the General Assembly in May.  The press release informs us that Amanda has attended every NYA since 2005 and has been a youth delegate to GA three times.  She also works in social care for the church at Morlich House. Other coverage of her appointment from the Edinburgh Guide.  Waiting for more info or response on the Church of Scotland Youth (COSY) Blog .

Best wishes and prayers for all of you.