Category Archives: Analysis

The Lectionary – Border, Bastion, Or Barrier?

Happy New Year – kind-a, sort of, maybe…

Yes, a week ago last Sunday was the first Sunday of the Advent Season and the churches that follow the liturgical calendar moved from Year B to Year C of the lectionary.

Now, I will simply recognize that liturgical calendars and seasons, particularly Advent and Christmas, are not unanimously accepted by those of us in the Reformed and Presbyterian stream. In fact, the Directory for the Publick Worship of God adopted by the Kirk and Parliament of Scotland in 1645 says in the Appendix “Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued.” (For more you can check out an interesting article on Christmas , a detailed piece on Holy days in American Presbyterianism, a current series of pieces at Building Old School Churches, or the Wikipedia entry for Christmas. There is also a current piece by Mark Horne making the case that there is Reformed support for celebrating Christmas.)

On a personal note, I appreciate the application of the regulative principle and the fact that there are non-Christian influences and origins of the celebrations of Advent, Christmas and Easter that argue against the celebration of specific Holy days. However, I also find spiritual focus in the seasons and feasts of the old covenant as applied to the Christian liturgical year and the celebration of special days. Back to this in a moment.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we have begun a new year in the lectionary which provides weekly scripture passages for worship on the Lord’s Day. I was reflecting on this because there does seem to be an association between the use of the lectionary and the “DNA” of a particular Presbyterian branch. But as I reflected on it more and how it impacts our worship it seemed to me that the lectionary has certain benefits, but also certain limitations, in its use. It seems important to understand each of these and how they impact our community life. And it should go without saying that it impacts the “true preaching of the word of God.”

In most mainline congregations it seems that the Revised Common Lectionary is the default position. In a couple of respects this is the “bastion” or “safe” approach. In one respect it is safe because it guides a congregation through the three-year cycle of scripture readings providing broad, though hardly complete, coverage of the Bible appropriate to the liturgical season. (My friend David Gambrell over at Linen Ephod has a nice summary of each lectionary year.) It also provides a ready defense for a preacher when a congregant did not like text for that day — all you have to say is “that is the lectionary text for today.”

The lectionary also provides a “paring” of scripture passages from the three sections and these selections are supposed to relate to each other. (Sometimes it is tough to see the relationship, other times you can probably think of a better pairing.) Some preachers will include two or more readings and then expound on all of them in the sermon, some will only chose one to preach on. In the lectionary there is also the annual rhythm in the reading that takes us through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and “tells us the story” repeated every year. And I am told that by having congregations use a common lectionary it gives pastors something to talk about when they get together.

But one of the biggest practical benefits of the lectionary is that it keeps a preacher from falling into the pattern or habit of preaching on what they want to preach on. In this way the lectionary acts as a “border,” “fence,” or “hedge” around the preaching. It works as a tool to keep from always hearing a message based on the pastor’s favorite scripture passage or selecting texts that simply provide another avenue for the pastor to once again advocate their favorite theme or message. In fact, by using the lectionary a conscientious preacher can work the three weekly readings (Old Testament, New Testament and Gospel) into nine years of distinctly different sermons. (Twelve years worth if you include the weekly Psalm as a unique sermon, but from what I have seen most pastors use the Psalm as a supporting text to the primary text that they preach on.)

Now, to be clear, I don’t have a fundamental objection to a well planned and executed sermon series that is outside the lectionary. My own church has done a couple of very effective ones including the series last year of preaching through the Lord’s Prayer one phrase at a time. When properly done this style does have the elements of the “true preaching of the word of God” in my understanding.

Where the “free-form” approach is dangerous is when it is not implemented with any long-term plan or accountability – especially when a pastor just spends the week deciding what to preach on and choosing relevant passages to base it on as they go. That is, they let the sermon drive the texts that will be used. One of the best sermons I have ever heard preached at a General Assembly was delivered by the Rev. James Costen titled “The problem of deferred maintenance” and addressed the Great End of the Church of The Maintenance of Divine Worship. In that sermon he spoke of a variety of sermon that he called “Saturday Night Specials” that he said could be just as deadly as the street firearm variety. An interim pastor I once had took this to the extreme when we would regularly find him in his office Sunday morning writing out the sermon. Again, I know of cases where the Holy Spirit has led preachers to completely rewrite their messages at the last moment and I have no problem with that. But to regularly write the sermon like that I believe does a disservice to the preaching of the word.

So on the one hand the lectionary provides a framework to help pastors preach through scripture in an organized and systematic manner while letting scripture have its way with us rather than the other way around. But there are limitations on the other side as well. If you and you preacher have both been there over nine years you might begin hearing the same things again. Or if the pastor is not systematic you could hear them again in three. And even with good planning, there will come a point where the cycle begins repeating itself. You young’uns may not have been through too many cycles but I’ll admit to being old enough to have been through over 15 lectionary cycles (although the Revised Common Lectionary is not as old as I am having a first version in 1983 and the Revised version in 1992).

So the lectionary will still lead to repetition given enough time. Some may argue that the repetition is good, that it reinforces important passages of scripture. But instead
of repeating, what if you were to cover passages of scripture that have not been preached on yet – passages that are not included in the lectionary?

I have not found detailed statistics for the Revised Common Lectionary, but there is a great page that gives the statistics for the Roman Lectionary, which the RCL is based upon, concerning how much of the Bible is covered. It turns out that of the Roman Lectionary covers only 3.7% of the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible and 40.8% of the New Testament. If you consider the Scripture to Lectionary cross-index for the RCL is quickly becomes apparent that of the 66 books in the Protestant Bible, several (17 by my count) are used only once or twice and 8 are never used — there will be no lectionary reading from I or II Chronicles, Ezra, Nahum, Obadiah, II or III John or Jude.

Now, I’m sure some of you are saying “of course not everything can be covered on Sunday morning, that is what personal Scripture reading is for.” I do not dispute the importance of regular Bible reading for personal study and I recommend that every Christian have a plan to read or hear the complete Bible in a one or two year cycle. But my focus is “the true preaching of the word of God.” Is it a problem that some of the word is never preached if you use the lectionary? Has the lectionary become a “barrier” to hearing some sections of scripture preached?

It is here that I am beginning to have a appreciation for congregations that instead of using the lectionary make it their practice to systematically preach through individual books of the Bible. The congregation hears large sections, at least chapter length, read through in sequence from week to week. And while every single verse is not necessarily touched on in the preaching, a regular, sequential set of sermons allow for the development of the word in the order recorded.

I don’t know how many preachers would consider the lack of coverage of the RCL a problem and that a solution is necessary. But if you do, here are a couple of different approaches to this.

One is of course multiple services per week. If the word is preached three times a week (Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening) a preacher, or preaching team, could cover three times as much territory.

Another approach is to make the lectionary cycle longer and include everything. For the 1189 chapters in the Bible that could be covered in 22.8 years if one chapter is covered every Sunday morning. Preaching multiple chapters per week – either multiple services, larger pieces (two chapters say), or pairing OT and NT passages in a sermon would shorten the cycle.

But here is my modest proposal for an “extended lectionary.” This would not necessarily be tied to a liturgical year and therefore precise order would not be important. However, since the Gospels are the heart of the Bible for Christians, I would suggest that one is Gospel is preached in its entirety each calendar year. That would set up a four year cycle with between 16 and 28 weeks each year in a contiguous block being taken up for the Gospel reading and direct preaching. Considering the Psalms the worship book of the Bible, I would suggest they be included each week as a second scripture passage that is read or sung by the congregation. That leaves 941 chapters of Scripture that when preached at one chapter per week, and working around the regular reading and preaching of the Gospels, would take about 34 years to cover. That is about one generation to cover the preaching of the whole Bible, and then a congregation would start over again.

Well, its an idea anyway. Do you have a better one to systematically cover the whole Bible? (And yes, systematic preaching 3 times per week would pull that down to less than a decade to complete the cycle.)

But getting back to the central idea of this commentary, as we start a new lectionary year I simply wanted to review the benefits and the draw-backs of the use of the lectionary. There is a tension between the order and fence provided by the use of the lectionary that helps to keep us from having our way with the holy word. On the other hand, this border is narrow and only covers a small part of the Scriptures possibly presenting a barrier to preaching more of God’s word. It raises the question “if we only cover 12.6% of the volume of Scripture in three years cycles and then start over again, is that the ‘true preaching of the word of God’?”

Three Decisions From The GA Permanent Judicial Commission Of The PC(USA) — Ordination Standards And More

Leave a reply

The Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) heard appeals in three cases last Friday, October 30, and yesterday published their decisions in the three cases, all of which were unanimous.

While the two decisions dealing with ordination standards were highly anticipated, and one of those does finally clarify a point in the PC(USA) ordination process, it is my assessment that for anyone following the polity closely they would not be surprised by the decisions handed down. And while this closes the book on two of these cases the third decision does explicitly anticipate the possible continuation of the judicial proceedings.

This first one is unlike the other two…

In remedial case 219-12 Phinisee v. Presbytery of Charleston-Atlantic as you read through the history of the case it begins to sound like a comedy of errors. Unfortunately, for anyone who has served on a Committee on Ministry for any length of time several of the aspects begin to sound too familiar.

In this case the church that the Rev. Phinisee was pastoring developed a conflict in the congregation which they were trying to work through with a consultant and the COM. The pastor and session requested an Administrative Commission, the COM wanted to handle the process themselves. So far fairly standard.

The issues of the case revolve around 1) a request in writing by three elders to the moderator of the session (Rev. Phinisee) to call a session meeting and Rev. Phinisee not calling the meeting and 2) the COM calling a session meeting to call a congregational meeting to dissolve the pastoral relationship with Rev. Phinisee. This happened in December 2006 and the Rev. Phinisee filed his remedial complaint with the Synod PJC in early January 2007. The case was further complicated by the Synod PJC failing to act within 90 days and the complainant then asking the GAPJC to assume jurisdiction. The GAPJC then told the SPJC to get moving. The SPJC did and basically found that everything was done according to process.

The appeal to the GAPJC had six specifications of error of which the GAPJC did not sustain five of them. This included the error that the Presbytery should have appointed an Administrative Commission with the GAPJC noting that the appointment of a commission is “a discretionary function that resides solely with the presbytery.” Where the GAPJC did sustain the error is in the SPJC’s finding that the congregational meetings were properly called. In brief, they noted that a COM does not, of its own authority, have the power to call a special session meeting (which in this case called the special congregational meeting). The presbytery may delegate that to the COM but the record is clear in this case that they had not. The GAPJC also noted that the Rev. Phinisee was at fault as well for not calling the session meeting after receiving the legitimate written request from three elders. Due to the passage of time no direct relief could be granted in this case but the GAPJC did order the Presbytery to establish an administrative commission to review policies and procedures.

In closing the GAPJC says:

This case demonstrates the consequences of failing to follow the Book of Order for calling meetings and dissolving pastoral relationships. The flaws of the COM procedure were exacerbated by the failure of the Synod to respond in a timely manner to Phinisee’s grievances. Justice delayed was an impediment to the process and a fair proceeding throughout the course of this matter. Governing bodies are reminded that “all participants are to be accorded procedural safeguards and due process” (D-1.0101).

Case 219-08 – Bierschwale, Lenz and Shanholtzer v. Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area is a remedial case related to the process for restoring the Rev. Paul Capetz to the exercise of ordained ministry. Without covering the full history, Mr. Capetz had, at his request, been released from the exercise of ordained ministry because of his conscientious objection to the “fidelity and chastity” section G-6.0106b. With the 2006 GA Authoritative Interpretation allowing the declaration of an exception he requested, and was granted by the presbytery, his restoration to the exercise of ordained office.

The complainants filed their case with the SPJC on the grounds that in granting Mr. Capetz’ declared exception the presbytery failed to “adhere to the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity under G-6.0108.” The SPJC initially dismissed the case on the failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted but an earlier GAPJC decision sent it back to the SPJC for trial on one of the three points, the specifics of declaring an exception. In their decision in the trial the SPJC found that the presbytery had properly carried out the process in G-6.0108 and were correct in their decision to grant the exception. However, in conducting the trial the SPJC took the unusual step of excluding the public from the proceedings.

At this point is it important to note that the Constitutional standards, the GA Interpretations, and the previous GAPJC cases as they apply to process are nearly unanimous in their application to the ordination process only. The declaration of an exception is something that is normally considered when an individual is being examined for ordination. In addition, the application of these standards in the call process of a previously ordained individual is limited by the Sallade v. Genesee Valley decision to a “position that presumes ordination.” Mr. Capetz was previously ordained and seeking validation of ministry in a position teaching at a seminary. In short, this case does not easily fall under any of the established polity and interpretations. As has been pointed out in such cases before, if there is a question about Mr. Capetz’ manner of life under G-6.0106 that would be handled as a disciplinary case.

In their decision the GAPJC noted that all parties agree that the presbytery process was unique to this individual. Consequently, the GAPJC concurred with the SPJC that granting the exception did not “infringe on the views of others and did not obstruct the constitutional governance of the church.” Further, “There is nothing in the record to show that he [Capetz] has taken any action that could be deemed to be an act in violation of G-6.0106b.” and “This Commission reaffirms what it previously held in Bierschwale I that Capetz’ future conduct is not at issue in this case.” The GAPJC did sustain the specification of error that the SPJC trial should not have been closed under the PC(USA) open meetings policy. (The proceedings in a remedial case may be closed only for reasons of maintaining decorum.)

With that background we come to the third decision which revisits much of this under other circumstances…

Remedial case 219-11 – Naegeli, Stryker and Gelini v. Presbytery of San Francisco does deal with a candidate in the ordination process.

In this case Ms. Lisa Larges, who has been in the process for ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament for 20 years, was certified ready to receive a call with a declared exception by San Francisco Presbytery.

A couple of polity notes at this point. The first is that previous GAPJC decisions have generally held that candidates that can not affirm the standards for ordained of
fice in G-6.0106 should not even be in the process. With the 2006 Authoritative Interpretation explicitly introducing the declaration of an exception it has been ambiguous at what point the presbytery should act upon the declaration. The second item to note is that the status of “certified ready” is one usually conferred by the Committee on Preparation for Ministry and need not be voted upon by the presbytery as a whole. Both of these are noted in the decision.

To briefly summarize the history the CPM voted 12-9 on December 5, 2007 to certify her ready for examination for ordination pending a call. At the January Presbytery meeting both a majority report for certification and a minority report to remove her from the rolls were presented and by a vote of 167-151 the Presbytery accepted the majority report. In the remedial case heard by the SPJC that Commission rescinded the status of “certified ready” but did not rule on the declaration because an examination had not taken place. (Ms. Larges was not present and therefore not examined at the January 2008 Presbytery meeting.) (And in another side note, if you read the story as currently posted on the More Light Presbyterians web site you will note that they have the timing off — the original AI was from the 2006 GA and it was reaffirmed by the 2008 GA. The CPM and Presbytery actions took place before the 2008 GA.)

The GAPJC grouped the nine specifications of error into four groups. For the two related to the actions of the Presbytery, neither were sustained. The GAPJC agreed that the proper time for declaring an exemption was at the time of examination for ordination. Part of the reasoning was that the examination was the time when other waivers or exceptions were considered.

The GAPJC partly sustained one of the two specifications of error related to Constitutional Interpretation of G-6.0106b. While noting that an examination had not formally taken place, they did note that in the action the Presbytery had followed they had not completely fulfilled the requirements of G-6.0108 for the policy and process of declaring an exception.

There were two specifications of error regarding the actions taken by the CPM and one of those was sustained in part. On one level, actions of a committee of presbytery are not reviewable by a higher governing body since the principle of review applies to governing bodies themselves. However, as noted in this case, when the action of a committee is the action of the governing body acting through the committee, in this case the CPM, it is reviewable. However, the GAPJC concurred with the SPJC that while the CPM presentation to presbytery was “not as clear as it could have been,” there was no misrepresentation.

Finally, of the three specified errors related to the Procedures of the SPJC, two were sustained. One related to the handling and admission of certain confidential documents in what was referred to as “Envelope B.” The GAPJC decision notes that there are procedures for handling confidential and sensitive material, that the material need not be made public, but that at least the substance of the material (documents or testimony) must be disclosed to all parties even if it is only offered but not admitted to evidence. If offered but not admitted it still becomes part of the record of the case. In the point that was not sustained it was agreed that it was acceptable, but not necessarily advisable, to not have a verbatim transcript of pre-trial hearings.

So the result is that the previous action of the Presbytery has been rescinded but the Presbytery is now free to examine Ms. Larges for ordination, including in the examination her Statement of Departure from G-6.0106b. This is expected to happen next week.

One of the points that the complainants wanted was for the SPJC to instruct the Presbytery that G-6.0106b was a standard of the church and a declared departure from that was not permissible. Both the SPJC and the GAPJC declined to do so.

However, while emphasizing that each examination must be handled on a case-by-case basis, as part of the decision the GAPJC took pains to reiterate previous decisions about the process and procedures of the ordination process and examination. They included an extended section from the Bush decision that begins:

It would be an obstruction of constitutional governance to permit examining bodies to ignore or waive a specific standard that has been adopted by the whole church, such as the ‘fidelity and chastity’ portion of G-6.0106b, or any other similarly specific provision. On the other hand, the broad reference in G-6.0106b to ‘any practice which the confessions call sin’ puts the responsibility first on the candidate and then on the examining body to determine whether a departure is a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity and the remainder of G-6.0108a with respect to freedom of conscience.

And the Commission also cited additional cases on this aspect including Buescher v. Olympia, and Wier v. Second Pres.

The Commission also made a point of cautioning against acting too hastily to ordain so as to preclude a judicial challenge to the way the examination was handled. Again, there was a good length quoted from a previous case, this time McKittrick v. West End Pres., which includes the caution:

[When] an installation occurs immediately following the examination process, there may be no practical opportunity for a protesting or dissenting party to seek a stay of enforcement of the decision to install. The Presbyterian custom of conducting business ‘decently and in order’ should not be converted into a race in which the swift prevail.

On close reading I get the distinct impression that they are trying to send a message. Whether that message is “be sure you sweat the details because this will be reviewed” or whether it is “we aren’t saying this in as many words but remember G-6.0106b is on the books” will have to be seen. (And maybe they are saying both.) But it is important to remember that up to, and including, these decisions the GAPJC has ruled unanimously but really only on technicalities. The substance and handling of a declaration of departure has not been formally ruled upon. If the exception is granted in this case, and a new remedial case is filed there is the very real possibility that it would work its way through the church judicial process parallel to the church taking another vote on G-6.0106b that might remove that section and render the judicial cases moot.

Just another day as we strive to be “reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Exit Strategy? Parallels In Institutional Realignment And Consequences

3 Replies

The parallels are very interesting, if not striking…

For the past week the big news in religion circles has been the Roman church establishing a structure to bring into full communion Anglicans that are now at theological odds with their own denomination and are looking for a more conservative church.

But consider this Anglican-Roman possibility compared to the PC(USA)-EPC situation.

At the top level there is the structural similarity. In each case the receiving church has created a specific auxiliary structure within the church to accommodate the beliefs, polity and practices of the immigrants. While Rome is still ironing out the details, it has been announced that the post-Anglican branch will have a “personal ordinariate” (read bishop or other episcopal type person)(update: a good note on personal ordinareates from Called to Communion) for that branch. The EPC has of course set up the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery.

Now, yes, I am fully aware of a couple of points where these two cases are reversed. First in size, the larger Roman church is offering to receive from the smaller Anglican church while it is the other way around for the PC(USA)/EPC relationship. But there is a historical relationship in each of these cases with the smaller denomination braking away from the larger at some point in the past. One other important difference in this situation is the speed that each developed. While the founding of the New Wineskins Presbytery was not immediate, it did happen relatively quickly by church history standards. The reunification of the Roman and Anglican branches has probably been a goal of Rome for, oh, say 500 years, and this most recent move should be viewed as something specific that has been in the works for a while, maybe a couple of decades.

But beyond the structural parallels there are at least two dynamics in this where we may see parallel activity as well.

The first is the effect on the receiving institution. Interestingly, in both cases the receiving institution will have to make accommodation for women serving in ordained positions. While the EPC had this as a local option, we have seen some question about how former PC(USA) churches would be integrated into EPC presbyteries that do not currently have women ordained to church office. For the Roman church, it will have to accommodate not only women serving as priests but the reality of married clergy. And while Rome has previously accepted married clergy that have realigned to them from the Anglican church, this will require a whole new level of accommodation.

But what this really does is raise the possibility of questions from the established side. ~~“If they can be part of us and have women clergy, why don’t we?”~~ “If they can be part of us and the priests can be married, why can’t we?” I have previously spoken of the PC(USA)-ization of the EPC, it will be interesting to see what the ramifications are for the Anglican-ization of the Roman church. How much interest will there be in members and clergy drifting from the established side to the new branch?

(Correction: After multiple contacts about my line above about women priests (see the comment below) I did some more looking and 1) can not now locate my original source for that and 2) located a lot of commentary that implies no women priests. Accordingly, I have struck that comment. If I can locate my original source I will reinstate the above line and cite a reference. Until then it is not an issue. Sorry about that.)

The second parallel is the one of pragmatism and practicality — The idea looks good on paper, but will they come? Put another way — How much will this be viewed as the better of two imperfect options?

Within the PC(USA) the situation is still developing. The church has, for the moment, retained the ordination standards but the majority view seems to be that when in all likelihood the PC(USA) presbyteries vote on it again a year from now there is the distinct possibility that G-6.0106b will be modified or removed. At the present time not all of the churches who are part of the New Wineskins Association of Churches have moved to the EPC New Wineskins Presbytery — many see their calling to remain with the PC(USA) for the moment. And Presbyterians for Renewal has proposed a non-geographic synod for churches to be able to remain in the PC(USA) while holding differing views on ordination standards. While the EPC option is available it appears that so far a minority has viewed it as the appropriate way forward.

There is a similar situation in the Anglican Communion even without the offer from Rome. In the U.S. there is both the Anglican Church in North America that broke away from the Episcopal Church as well as some dioceses that are looking at staying, but just barely. The Diocese of South Carolina has a special convention this weekend where it will consider five resolutions that would keep them in the church but withdraw from many of its functions. Similarly, within the Church of England there are groups within the church that are eying the announcement from Rome, but seem to be leaning towards the loyal opposition route. And then there is the Global South where the “liberal trajectory” in parts of the Communion is an issue, but not for them at home.

One area which does not seem to be a parallel is the politics of the exit strategy. In the PC(USA) the EPC option seems to really be viewed as just that, an option. Despite charges of recruiting PC(USA) churches, and the effort by the PC(USA) to hold onto property, it has seemed to be something that churches consider for the sake of their ministry.

Now maybe I am reading too much into some of these stories (or the media is writing too much into these stories), but over the last week I have gotten the impression that many of the conservatives in the Anglican Communion see the offer from Rome in political terms and a development to be used as a bargaining chip. Maybe it is just me, but from the comments welcoming the new option (e.g. ACNA) it almost seems like some members of the Communion are using the Roman Church as a “white knight.” They are not so much interested in joining Rome as to use its offer to put pressure on the Anglican Communion to reinforce conservative views. But maybe this is just me reading some conspiracy theory into all this.

If you are interested in more of the practical realities of this offer to the Anglicans from Rome I would suggest a piece by Diana Butler Bass on Beliefnet and Peter Smith at the Louisville Courier-Journal. And of course, one of my favorite reads, GetReligion, has five different articles analyzing the coverage of the announcement. (One, two, three, four and five)

Now, if you are regular readers of my blog you probably realize that I have an analytical interest in church realignments. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I think that my first Ph.D. degree is probably enough so I won’t be doing the comprehensive research and analysis, but there are probably a couple of good dissertations about church structure and realignment that will come out of this and I look forward to that research.

In addition, it will be interesting to see what develops in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over the same issues after this past summer’s Churchwide Assembly. So far about ten ELCA churches have had a first vote on realigning with the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. But I need to start closely following another denominational branch like I need…

Anyway, it is interesting to see how both the structures and practicalities of these realignments are developing. We will see what the actual outcome of all this will be.

Presbyterians Certainly Are A Peculiar People

8 Replies

After putting my earlier post to bed I continued thinking on the topics I raised in that discussion about Presbyterian reorganization and started to do additional analysis on some of those thoughts. This is a follow-up based on what I have contemplated and researched in the last couple of days.

To remind you of my thoughts from Saturday, in a nutshell I said that in historical Presbyterian divisions I regularly see certain proportions in the divisions. Those are generally about 1:1, 2:1, and 19:1. Put another way, when a division happens it regularly involves either 50%, 33%, or 5% of the Presbyterian branch.

What happened next was that I decided to be a bit ecumenical about this and look at some other Protestant branches:

Observation #1: The split of the Anglican Church of North America from the Episcopal Church is a 5% split. (Actually it is 4.5% if you use the ACNA membership of 100,000 but only 3.1% if you use the 69,000 number that is also floating around. This from a total of 2.2 million for the Episcopal Church.)

Observation #2: As I went looking for historical divisions in other traditions I started looking for the “family tree” type charts for other churches. Short answer, they are few and far between. There are charts for all of Christendom (example 1, example 2 – note the Pentecostals with no connection to the trunk of the church). There are a few that show division or union on a particular branch. But with the exception of a great chart for the United Church of Christ, I could find nothing comparable to the Presbyterian charts. Why?

The answer could be operational – I might not have found the right search terms for the search engines or things like this for other denominations might not be on line.

But I think the answer is also likely denominational. Are Presbyterians peculiar in some way that we need these charts?

One explanation could be retention of our shared tradition: Often, when divisions occur in denominations a new denomination is formed. (And it would therefore leave the chart.) A prime example of this is the creation of the Methodists from the Anglican church. Even within the Presbyterian tradition we have the Disciples of Christ originating from Presbyterianism, but never recorded on our family trees. But for Presbyterians that seems to be the exception rather than the rule and usually when Presbyterians split there is simply another flavor of Presbyterians formed. Our complexities of tradition could be attributed to dividing branches staying “in the neighborhood,” so to speak.

Another possible explanation is that there is something about Presbyterian governments that make our divisions, multiple branches, and reunions more likely than in other forms of church government. (It actually would be an interesting discussion of whether it is the polity itself or if it reflects the type of people who are attracted to that polity.) But given the recognition that, within the bounds of the collective judgment, a governing body can not bind an individual conscience the stage seems set for disagreements leading to a parting of ways. More on that another time.

So are Presbyterians just more inclined to these divisions and mergers that, if we are to keep track of our tradition, give us a need for these complicated charts? And can we take this a step further and ask if because we have these charts and are aware of our heritage of reorganizations, has that lowered our resistance to future divisions?

Put it another way, how much is it a part of, or maybe even inherent in, our system and how much is it because “that’s the way we have always done it?”

The bottom line is that as far as I can find on the web Presbyterians seem to corner the market, or at least dominate it, in diagrams showing our reorganizations over the last five centuries.

This led to the third point for today, (WARNING: this is about to get very geeky) I started thinking about the use of fractal behavior in numerical models of church division and recombination.

The numerical modeling of church division is not new to the last post — As you may have noticed from other posts I have some numerical models of mainline decline which I am working on to make them independent of denomination. One of the features of these models is that the decline of a mainline church is not linear to zero but will reach an equilibrium point. What I have been struggling with is what conditions to place on the calculation of that “plateau.” My recent thoughts on the possible fractal nature of denominational size may help provide those conditions.

It was at this point in my previous post that I made a logical jump that may have left a lot of my readers behind. I began by talking about proportions in church divisions and then turned to seeing if various Presbyterian traditions might be fractal. The thing I should have added there is that if divisions regularly occur with about the same proportions then the various branches that develop will have similar ratios of their sizes. That is to say that two small branches would have the same relative proportions compared to each other as two large branches. This “self-similarity” is what is known in the jargon as “fractal” behavior. A concrete example in a moment.

So what would the development of a fractal church look like?

A quick answer is taking the beginning population (Scottish churches in 1560?) and progressively divide them according to some ratio over a certain number of cycles. If you take five cycles you end up with 32 different churches that each has one of six possible sizes. Using a 70:30 split the continuing “main” church has 17% of the members and the “always minority” church has 0.2% of the population. For a 95-5% split (19:1) the numbers change to 77% “always majority” and an effectively zero “always minority.”

But the interesting thing is that if you compare the largest branch to the second largest branch it will have the same ratio as comparing the second smallest branch to the smallest branch. For the 70:30 split that ratio is 2.33 and for the 19:1 split the ratio is 19. Going back to the previous post I observed that a number around 6.5 was seen as a ratio for American Presbyterianism in several cases and that would result from an 87-13% division.

Two refinements are immediately obvious: 1) Provide for merger of branches based on theology and 2) Provide for merger of branches based on practicality when one or both are too small to survive.

How you introduce mergers will clearly influence the outcome. One simple model is that in each cycle the minority of one branch finds more theological kinship with the majority of the neighboring branch and merges with them. (Think PC(USA) churches moving over to the EPC.) This gives six separate branches after five cycles. The unmerged ends (only splits) have the same proportions mentioned above, but the four middle and successively reorganized branches have varying sizes. For the 70:30 split the largest branches end up being part of the reorganization with one having 36% and ano
ther 30% of the total population. For the 19:1 split no other branch has enough membership to grow to rival the unmerged majority with the second-largest branch having 20% of the population.

But with the mergers the ratio of sizes is now varied but lower than it was in the no-merger case. In the 70:30 split a number around 1.5 is commonly seen and in the 19:1 case there are a few lower numbers (3.8, 9.5, 1.5) but the very smallest branches have very high ratios (such as 473).

From here countless refinements are possible including pruning or merging of branches that fall below a particular threshold of sustainability, the introduction of a virtual coin-toss to decide if two branches would merge and add a component of variability, and some sort of rule or probability that would result in mergers with the edge branches. Maybe over the Thanksgiving holiday I’ll program up a Monte Carlo simulation.

So there are my extended thoughts on all of this. I’ll provide future updates on where my reading or modeling takes me with this.

Patterns Of Proportionality In Presbyterian Partition — Or — Are Fractures Fractal?

9 Replies

With mild apologies for the alliteration in the title, I wanted to take a look at a couple of patterns I have seen as I looked at Presbyterian history.

One of the concepts that I have been studying is the “reorganization” of denominations. As I have commented before, this is more than just the divisions and schisms that probably first come to mind, but also a couple merger-related reorganizations that formed whole new denominations as well as reorganizations that merged multiple branches together. I find it instructive that the “family trees” for American Presbyterianism and Scottish Presbyterianism are equally convoluted and the Presbyterian branch of the United Church of Canada is almost as full. (And the Canada chart does not even include the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada.)

But as I have been studying the partitioning a couple of patterns have jumped out at me:

The first are splits that are about two-to-one. There are a few famous ones that are described as 30% or one-third (33%). Maybe the most famous is the Scottish Disruption of 1843 where 450 ministers walked out of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and formed the Free Church of Scotland. As with most of these splits the number in the minority are easy to find, but the number remaining is more difficult. The departing group is widely described as one-third of the ministers, but thanks to Iain Campbell we know that 752 ministers remained, so the departing minority was close to, but slightly more than, one-third at 37.4%.

In that same ball park are the proportion of Presbyterian churches that chose not to join the United Church of Canada or the Uniting Church in Australia. In both cases these are reported as about 30% for Canada and one-third for Australia. (Canada, Australia)

Finally, while this is a single data point for a whole category, and it does represent a fairly unusual occurrence, it did catch my attention that last week’s vote on a pastor in a high-profile call ended up 69%-31%, a repeat of the 2:1 general proportions.

In American Presbyterianism the pattern seems to be either about 1:1 or a very small minority.

The two most famous breaks, the Old Side/New Side and Old School/New School, were closer to even breaks but when you dissect the numbers they are very complicated and some numbers are uncertain. In addition, they were not so much departures as expulsions.

The date for the Old Side/New Side break is set at 1741, although the following year is interesting as well. Charles Hodge gives us a very detailed account of the events leading up to the Synod (first GA was in 1786) and the commotion at the meeting. For 1741 Hodge names the 25 clergy present from five of the six presbyteries (p. 176). Hodge also lists those who met later to reform their excluded presbytery (p. 195) giving the names of the 11 clergy who were at the meeting, of which one was not on the Synod list. If you use the 10-15 split of the Synod it would be a 40% minority or 2:3 split. But the overall situation is more complicated.

One of the interesting aspects of this rupture is the dynamics related to the missing New York ministers. While absent in 1741 they represented seven of the 25 clergy present at the 1742 Synod (28%). Over the next several years, and throughout the 17 years of separation, several of the New York ministers were integral in healing the division. While theologically with the Old Side, they felt that justice was not done to their New Side brethren and so in 1745 they left the Old Side to help form the New Side Synod of New York.

In all, Hodge tells us (p. 253) that there were a total of 40-45 ministers before the schism of which nine (20.0-22.5%) were excluded in 1741 and 11 or 12 more withdrew in 1745 ( about 50% total).

The 18th Century split can be viewed as a 50-50 division looking at the totals, but let me take the analysis a step further. (And this is preliminary, based mainly on Hodge, so a true church historian may have better information.) I find it interesting that at the 1742 Synod the ratio of Old School to moderate (previously absent) New York ministers was not quite, but approached, 2-to-1.

I am not going to do a detailed analysis of the Old School/New School split of 1837 and 1838 at this time except to note a few things: 1) It was an exclusion more than a parting of ways, 2) The NY Times reported that the original expulsion of Western Reserve was by a vote of 138-107 (56.3-43.7%) 3) But in the end the division was close to a 50-50 split based not on the Assembly vote but on the wider church that followed Western Reserve in the division.

The final pattern that I see is the very small minority. I mentioned before the vote for a pastor that was about a 70-30 split. In my experience working with several congregations there are always 1-2% of the members of the congregation that dissent on any vote to call a pastor. Denomination-wide dynamics seem similar. For example:

In 1846 when the Scottish Relief Churches merged with the Seceder Churches 14% did not agree. (This is an exception since it is more than the “small minority.”)

In 1875 when four streams of Canadian Presbyterians merged 21 of 623 ministers (3.3%) did not agree and withdrew from the new denomination.

In 1936 there were 34 ministers out of almost 10,000 that left the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to form what would become the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

In 1973 260 churches, out of 4230 churches, (6.1%) left the Presbyterian Church in the United States to form the Presbyterian Church in America.

In 1981 67 churches formed the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, out of almost 9000 churches in the United Presbyterian Church.

One thing that happens when many groups split off is that there is a small group that initially forms but others may later join them when they see how things are working out. One example of this is the Seceders in Scotland in 1733. While they began small the Associate Presbyterians grew in number over the next few decades, and suffered their own divisions until by 1820 they had split into four groups giving a total of seven Presbyterian branches in Scotland. By 1875 the membership breakdown in Scotland is recorded as:

Church of Scotland – 460,464
Free Church of Scotland – 256,554
United Presbyterian Church – 187,761

I find it interesting that the ration of the Established Church to the other two major branches is almost 50-50.&nb
sp; I would like to make the case that the membership pattern is fractal at 2:1, but with ratios of 1.79 and 1.37 there is a suggestion of semi-fractal nature in the 1.5 area. (Or maybe I’m just making the data fit my theory.)

For the five branches coming off the mainline of American Presbyterianism in the 20th century the membership and congregation numbers are:

PC(USA) – 2,140,165 in 10751 congregations
PCA – 340,852 in 1693 congregations
EPC – 82,884 in 247 congregations
OPC – 27,990 in 255 congregations
BPC – 3000 est. in <30 congregations

This gives ratios of:

PC(USA)/PCA – 6.28 members, 6.35 churches
PCA/EPC – 4.11 members, 6.85 churches
EPC/OPC – 2.96 members, 0.96 churches
OPC/BPC – 9.33 members, 8.5 churches

Numbers are suggestive but not really close enough to declare it as fractal. (But I am interested by those ratios a bit over 6.) And for a set of Presbyterian churches in major flux at the moment (although looking at history are Presbyterian churches ever not in flux?) ratios are changing so this may not be a good comparison of “stable” population.

So, all this comes with the usual disclaimers: I put this together with a variety of data with varying quality. It is intended to be an overview and summary and present areas for future exploration. This discussion is by no means comprehensive of all the events that could be considered. And finally, there is no statistical control on any of this so I could just be finding patterns in what is actually random numbers, a common human behavior.

None the less, I do wonder if there is something to certain of these patterns. If these numbers are real does it represent something about the Presbyterian system of government? Does it represent something about human nature in general? Does it reflect something about how humans structure or organize themselves?

Questions to ponder.

Presbytery Judicial Decision In A Same-sex Marriage Case

Leave a reply

Two weeks ago, on August 22, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Boston Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) heard the disciplinary case of Presbytery of Boston versus Jean K. Southard. The Rev. Southard was charged with 1) conducting a public worship service that was effectively a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple and 2) by doing so violating her ordination vows.

The decision of the PJC was that the charges were not sustained and the Rev. Southard was found not guilty. (Thanks to Church and World, aka PresbyWeb, for publishing the decision.)

The reasoning of the majority was expressed as follows:

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

And continues

In addition, there is no mandatory language in the Constitution, nor in any Authoritative Interpretation, prohibiting Ministers of Word and Sacrament from performing same-gender marriages in states where this is allowed by law.

Note carefully the wording — The decision was not about whether a same-sex marriage was preformed, but given that it was preformed is that prohibited by the constitution and therefore cause for discipline?

There is a Dissenting Dpinion that begins:

In rendering this decision, the majority has taken the liberty of legislating change in the Constitution through the judicial process. W-4.9001 definitely does define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Later says

Because of this changed legal state in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (The General Laws of Massachusetts, Chapter 207), the importance of the definitions within the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) become more important, not less so. Further, the argument that the definition of marriage being between a man and a woman is only descriptive and reflects the ideals and mores of a bygone age cannot be sustained. The claim stands without proof, and can only be maintained through dependence on the argument from silence. This sets a dangerous precedent, that any part of the Constitution that has not recently been sustained by legislative action can be assumed to have lost validity. In the absence of that legislative action, the commission has substituted its judgment for the clear words of definition. This makes a mockery of the prescriptive language of W-4.9004, wherein the Directory for Worship orders that “The man and the woman shall declare their intention to enter into Christian marriage and shall exchange vows of love and faithfulness.”; and “In the name of the triune God the minister shall declare publicly that the woman and the man are now joined in marriage.”

And concludes:

We disagree with the commission decision and do not join in it. While we find that Rev. Southard found herself in a difficult position given the request of two valued elders of her church, we do not find that tension to be sufficient reason to grant release from the strictures of the discipline of the Constitution. Her action of social justice came at the cost of her obedience to her ordination vows, (W-4.4003e), and created a situation that worked against the peace, unity and purity of the Church.

Three other important points in this case: 1) According to the Dissenting Opinion the facts of the case were not contested. Both sides stipulated and “provided and accepted evidence that this was intentionally a Christian marriage.” 2) Note that the participants in this ceremony are both described as elders in that church, leading to… 3) This was a disciplinary case against the pastor. While there is no indication that additional cases are contemplated, disciplinary cases against the two elders who were married and a remedial case against the session would be possible, but unlikely, especially in light of the decision in this case.

OK, that presents a summary of what I see as the key points of the decision. If you are not a GA Junkie, you can probably stop reading now. However, as a GA Junkie, I want to dissect this decision a bit and make some comments.

There seem to be two distinctives to this case that distinguish it from previous cases. One of these is that the worship service was held in the church sanctuary and, as the charge implies, had all the distinctions of a wedding ceremony. The second is that this is the first case brought to trial where a same-sex marriage was preformed in a state that allows civil same-sex marriage. (But I would point out that one of the withdrawn charges in the Spahr case (218-12) was a same-sex marriage preformed in Ontario, Canada, where civil marriage is legal.)

Now I will acknowledge from the onset that the PC(USA) has a problem right now with its definition of marriage. This case hinged on that section of the Directory for Worship (W-4.9001):

Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family. Marriage is a civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship. In a service of Christian marriage a lifelong commitment is made by a woman and a man to each other, publicly witnessed and acknowledged by the community of faith.

Clearly now with a few states permitting civil same-sex marriages the part that reads “a civil contract between a woman and a man” has certain problems. That will have to be addressed by the next General Assembly.

That problematic phrase was the main point that the PJC appears to have focused on, and they did so in two ways.

Their first argument was that unless the Directory for Worship uses language making something mandatory, like the wording of vows or formulae for sacraments, then the Directory is “descriptive.”

That the Directory is in a sense descriptive is certainly true, and as they point out it says so in the Preface. Section b reads:

b. In addition to the terms defined in the Preface to the Book of Order, this directory also uses language about worship which is simply descriptive.

But what does it mean to be descriptive? Look at the preceding section a, which says in part:

A Directory for Worship is not a service book with fixed orders of worship, a collection of prayers and rituals, or a program guide. Rather it describes the theology that underlies Reformed worship and outlines appropriate forms for that worship. This directory suggests possibilities for worship, invites development in worship, and encourages continuing reform of worship. It sets standards and presents norms for the conduct of worship in the life of congregations and the governing bodies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As the constitutional document ordering the worship of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), this Directory for Worship shall be authoritative for this church.

Note some of the things that the Directory does: “describes the theology that underlies Reformed worship,” “sets standards,” “presents norms,” and “shall be authoritative for thi
s church.” The majority decision seems to equate “descriptive” with “optional.” The first few lines I quoted would seem to equate “descriptive” with “not a service book with fixed orders of worship, a collection of prayers and rituals, or a program guide.” In fact, a widely used book on Presbyterian polity co-authored by Joan Gray (former GA Moderator) and Joyce Tucker says “The Directory for Worship contains our standards relating to worship…” (Presbyterian Polity for Church Officers, p. 7) and later “…it has now become part of the standards of our church.” (p. 172) I read and understand the Directory for Worship to be “flexible” not “optional.” And that flexibility would be in form but not in function.

In the Dissenting Opinion section I quote above there is also a clear argument for the applicability and mandatory nature of W-4.9001 when the refer to W-4.9004 and the prescriptive nature of that section which does use the “shall” language and refers to “the man and the woman.”

Finally, the prescriptive nature of W-4.9001 is reinforce by the Spahr decision which regularly, including in the Headnotes, says that “Marriage is defined” by this section. As this present decision points out there are certain procedural issues with leaning on the Spahr decision too heavily, but the Spahr decision presents this definition not as their conclusion, but as a given, the accepted starting point from which they draw the conclusion that in light of this definition there can be no such thing as same-sex Christian marriage.

The second part of the majority’s argument was that not only was it not mandatory to begin with, but since conditions in the civil sphere were not in alignment with one part of the section then the whole section could be safely ignored. Furthermore, they argued that the situation in this case was different enough that the conclusion in the Spahr decision was not applicable. This strikes me as saying that civil law will determine theology and doctrine.

The signatories to the dissenting opinion strongly disagreed with this assertion. However, I think they overlook an important additional argument. In response to the majority argument that the laws of the State of Massachusetts have rendered this section of the Directory for Worship moot, they say:

This sets a dangerous precedent, that any part of the Constitution that has not recently been sustained by legislative action can be assumed to have lost validity. In the absence of that legislative action, the commission has substituted its judgment for the clear words of definition. (emphasis mine)

I would argue that the definition of Christian marriage being between a man and a women was upheld twice by the most recent General Assembly, even after Massachusetts had adopted civil marriage. In response to an overture from the Presbytery of Baltimore the assembly voted 540-161 not to change “a man and a woman” in W-4.9001 to “two people.” And again, in the action that created the Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage the Assembly added the sentence “This overtures advocates for equal rights and does not seek to redefine the nature of Christian marriage.” To me this is strong evidence that even with the presence of same-sex civil marriage there was Assembly endorsement of the man and woman language for Christian marriage. In light of that I have trouble accepting the argument that if one clause does not apply then none of it applies.

Regarding the Spahr decision, it is clear that in a legal sense it can not serve as precedent in this present case. In the present case the alleged actions took place on March 1, 2008, which was almost two months before the GAPJC ruled in the Spahr case. In addition, as both the majority and minority decisions point out, application of the Benton decision (212-11) to this case is tricky because this is a disciplinary case and Benton was remedial.

In my mind there are clear grounds for appeal on the basis of an error in constitutional interpretation. However, I also recognize that the circumstances of civil marriages make the Directory definition a problem that the next General Assembly will have to address. Therefore it may be advisable to simply let this constitutional issue be addressed legislatively rather than have a legislative and judicial interpretation proceeding in parallel.

I think that does it. Those are my thoughts on this case. Your mileage may vary.

What Changed In The Sixties? The Implications For The Mainline

Leave a reply

OK, this is one of those “critical mass” posts I do — I’ve got a bunch of stuff in my notes and suddenly something brings it all together.

This time the “something” is a great Religious News Service article “40 Years Later, Woodstock’s Spiritual Vibes Still Resonate” by Steve Rabey. (H/T GetReligion) In the article, the symbolism of Woodstock can be best presented with these paragraphs:

[Rock historian Pete] Fornatale sees the festival as a massive communion ceremony featuring drugs as sacramental substances, hymns like “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” performed by Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez, sermons by musical prophets like Sylvester Stewart of Sly and the Family Stone, and a modern-day re-enactment of Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes exhibited in the communal ethos of festival-goers who shared food with “brothers and sisters” who were hungry.

And the conclusion of the article, that Woodstock marked a shift from “religion to spirituality,” would be summed up in this quote:

“There was a pervasive shift from the theological to the therapeutic,” said [Don] Lattin, author of “Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today.” “It was all about feeling good rather than being good. It was about stress reduction, not salvation.”

Today, the legacy of Esalen can be found at “seeker-sensitive” churches that market to congregants based on their felt needs and Catholic retreat centers that offer sessions on yoga, meditation and the Enneagram.

And don’t miss the interesting twist that Woodstock was held near the town of Bethel, N.Y., a Hebrew word meaning “House of God.”

It has struck me, and the article mentions, how certain religious songs have been incorporated by the culture and in the process losing their strong religious meaning. Amazing Grace may be the hymn most integrated into American culture. Over 20 years ago at an international meeting in Europe I got into a group discussion about the song (no relation to the meeting subject of European and Mediterranean earthquakes) and one of my European colleagues called Amazing Grace “America’s unofficial national anthem.” So even though it was written by an English minister, it has come to be associated with American culture.

While I have not read the book Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song by Steve Turner, a review of the book does talk about the song’s dissemination into American culture first in the Second Great Awakening, then with the early 20th Century revivals by preachers such as Dwight Moody, and finally it pin-points the transition to pop-folk popularity a bit before Woodstock.

Note the characteristics that make the song so accessible, even by the non-religious: It has a great “back story” about John Newton’s conversion from slave trader to minister. I have heard that story many times, not just in sermons but at folk concerts and social justice meetings and rallies. But in secular settings they do seem to leave off the fact that it was a religious conversion experience and he became a minister. Note also the lack of references to God in the song. You can sing four verses without referencing one of the members of the Trinity. As people of faith we inherently read God into the Grace that the song is about. Consider how differently a non-religious person would still sing about grace, but with a completely different perception of the grace it talks about. (I once saw a promotional item put out by a major soap company — It was a waterproof songbook for use in the shower that included Amazing Grace, but did not include verses that mentioned God.) And the simplicity and sing-ability of the common tune certainly help as well.

However, I would comment that Amazing Grace is not the first religious song to find a mostly secular following or application. A century earlier the Battle Hymn of the Republic became a Civil War rallying song and it continues today to appear in non-religious settings. While packed with sacred imagery, imagery regularly used by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his sermons, in the song the references to God are mostly minimized by the use of the pronouns “He” or “His.” And there is no question that the tune is catchy — Julia Ward Howe wrote the lyrics after hearing the popular tune. (Although it can be legitimately argued that Howe never intended it’s primary use to be in religious services despite the imagery.)

Regarding music in the sixties it is also interesting to note the rise of CCM (contemporary Christian music) at about this time as well. As much as revivals had previously made use of popular and catchy words and music, there was now the shift in instrumentation to guitars and drums. In fact, in the spirit of the “religion to spirituality” shift, CCM artist Scott Wesley Brown even has a 1976 song “I’m not religious, I just love the Lord.”

I find it hard to separate societal events like Woodstock from religious “Sixties Things” like the writing and adoption of the Confession of 1967 by the UPCUSA. By itself, this confession was viewed by many as a step towards liberalism. As Hart and Muether say in one of their Presbyterian history articles:

…Cornelius Van Til, took the Confession of 1967 as proof of his charge (made in a 1946 book) that the theology of Karl Barth had infiltrated the PCUSA as the “new modernism.” Indeed, neo-orthodoxy had proved to be more triumphant in the Presbyterian Church than liberalism. Liberalism undermined the church’s confidence in the Westminster standards, but never to the point of crafting a new confession. However, the largely Barthian Confession of 1967 entailed the rejection of the Westminster standards-and indeed of all that the historic Christian creeds affirmed.

Evangelical Barthians disagreed with this assessment. They charged that Van Til exaggerated the new confession’s Barthian roots. Geoffrey Bromiley of Fuller Seminary conceded that there were parallels to Barth’s theology. But upon closer inspection, he claimed, Barth’s teaching on Scripture and the Trinity was far more orthodox. Bromiley went on to argue that the Confession of 1967 accommodated itself to liberalism and Romanism in ways that Barth never did.

On the other side, Arnold B. Come writes this about the state of confessional standards in the Journal of Presbyterian History:

James H. Nichols has said that C-67 is necessary because “the Westminster Standards are obsolescent.” Hardly anyone could subscribe to them as “containing the system of doctrine taught in Scripture” (Christianity and Crisis, 17 May 1965, p. 108). For this reason, Brian Gerrish has noted, “retention of the Westminster Confession has encouraged—not hindered—doctrinal laxity. If the Presbyterian Church should persist in retaining the Confession…as the sole confessional norm, it will cease altogether to be a confessional church” (Christian Century, 4 May 1966, pp. 583f.). The adoption of the Book of Confessions reminds us that in contrast to the Lutherans, “the Reformed have never had a single pre-eminent statement of belief…nor a
closed symbolic collection…[but] has always been ‘open’—subject…to a policy of continuous revision and addition” (Gerrish, op. cit., p. 582). The Book also helps us to “break out of the provincialism of British Reformed tradition to the wider Reformed church…[and to] define common ground with Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches” (Nichols, op. cit., p. 109).

As the last quote points out, along with this one contemporary statement was the adoption of a Book of Confessions with multiple statements from across church history that now provided “guidance” and not “standards.” While there is discussion over the value and effect of this move (some previous comments) it strikes me that parallels could be drawn to the RNS article’s comments concerning the shift from “religion to spirituality” and “the theological to the therapeutic.” If nothing else, the UPCUSA traded a theological exactness for an historical perspective and diversity.

Let me finish with another transition — that of the “message to the medium.” To put it bluntly there was the recognition that we wanted to be entertained.

Consider this comment in a New York Times op-ed piece by Paul Krugman:

In 1994 [technology guru] Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product — software, books, music, movies — the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to “distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships.”

For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because “enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market.” (emphasis added)

In other words, what the Grateful Dead knew back in the 60’s was that if given the content people would still pay to be entertained — the experience was more profitable than the material. Whatever you might think of the Grateful Dead as a band, their business model was far ahead of its time. Fast forward to today and the current situation. On the secular side, you can purchase a song for download for 99 cents or look for it for free on a (probably illegal) peer-to-peer file sharing site. On the sacred side churches provide their sermons as free podcasts and worship services at megachurches look like rock concerts with well-practiced musical groups and preachers as celebrities. In fact, one of the characteristics of some seeker-sensitive worship services is that there is no audience participation. It is expected that attendees will just show up and watch, not be participants in worship. Throughout American history there have been revival meetings with great numbers of people. But I’m not aware that the present trend of 10,000+ member individual churches has any parallel.

My discussion here is clearly not exhaustive, but in this year of looking back at the events of 1969, it is interesting to see how the secular culture and the religious culture moved in parallel ways with the change in American mind set. The question of whether the culture is driving the church, or the church is changing so that it can faithfully minister in a new age is important, but a topic for another time. But it is the Church’s job to be faithful to Jesus Christ while still speaking to the changing world around us.

What Is Your Strategy For Mission? Some Thoughts On The Call Of Clergy In The Mainline Church

2 Replies

“Because that’s where the money is”
Quote attributed to bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why he robbed banks.
That quote came to mind this morning over coffee as I read an interesting article, “If cooking slowly and growing organically are in, why is rural ministry out?” by Darryl Hart on Front Porch Republic. (And a quick note – if you are not familiar with this blog but enjoy well written and thought provoking essays about contemporary culture that sometimes have something to do with religion check the blog out.) The article is about why clergy would rather pastor suburban and urban churches than rural ones.

from Wikimedia Commons

I do not mean to imply that all clergy with a preference for urban churches are there because of the salary, although it might be the case. As the article discusses, and I was running through in my mind while reading it, you could fill in the blank in the sentence “Because that is where the (blank) is/are” with any number of other things, including “people,” “resources,” “opportunities.” In fact, the article itself focuses mainly on the people and the large, urban multi-site churches.

But the problem of finding clergy for rural churches is a real one, as Adam Copeland pointed out in his blog post “The huge problem of the clergy shortage that doesn’t exist.” The problem is not one of numbers — at the end of 2008 the PC(USA) had 10,751 congregations and 21,286 ministers. The problem is that too few of them sense a call to serve in the rural areas or that rural congregations are less able to afford a full-time minister.

But the problem is a bit more complex than just saying “we have more ministers than churches so there should be no problem.” Going back to 2007, the last year that the full comparative statistics are available, and looking at the breakdown by call, we can see that there are 21,368 clergy. But of those, 7,753 are honorably retired (and for the non-junkies reading this honorably retired is a call) leaving 13,615 active ministers. To find how many are active in parish ministry as a senior pastor, co-pastor or solo pastor you can add up the categories of Pastors (6,100), Supply Pastors (626), and Interim Pastors (484) for a total of 7,210 filling some of the 10,751 pulpits. So from this viewpoint there is a clergy shortage because only 67% of the pulpits are filled.

(I would note that there a lots of other ways that a pulpit could be filled and it would not show up in this analysis including commissioned lay pastors, yoked churches, union churches, part-time interim and supply pastors who would be counted by their regular job category, and retired ministers serving in a supply or interim capacity.)

So only 53% of the active ministers in the PC(USA) are helping lead congregations as their primary call. Add to that the 1,395 Associate Pastors and the way these statistics are reported there are 8605 ministers primarily in parish ministry, or 63% of the total. (This does not include, or intend to minimize, the role of ministers in other calls who still contribute on a congregation level, whether they do so as a Parish Associate or in other ways.) (And while other validated ministries like chaplains and seminary instructors are vital, it does make me wonder when over one-third of the active ministers are not in parish ministry. Another time.)

Taking this one step further and looking at the filled pulpits geographically by synod you get the following, ranked by % filled:

Synod	No. Congregations	No. Filled Pulpits	% Pulpits Filled	% of active in pulpit	Median size of Congregation
So. Cal. and Hawaii	298	297	99.7%	41.8%	158
Pacific	463	421	90.0%	44.6%	119
Alaska-Northwest	268	223	83.2%	49.8%	107
Rocky Mountains	239	185	77.4%	51.1%	102
Northeast	1160	865	74.6%	56.2%	110
Boriquen de Puerto Rico	73	54	74.0%	63.5%	84
South Atlantic	978	680	69.5%	48.6%	125
Covenant	783	542	69.2%	61.7%	120
Lincoln Trails	661	455	68.8%	51.0%	100
Southwest	164	112	68.3%	48.9%	91
Mid-Atlantic	1450	926	63.9%	53.2%	105
Sun	883	540	61.2%	54.3%	89
Trinity	1279	783	61.2%	60.6%	108
Lakes and Prairies	908	502	55.3%	57.6%	95
Living Waters	745	391	52.5%	48.9%	65
Mid-America	468	234	50.0%	54.5%	73

Looking at this data you get the strong sense that metropolitan areas are more successful at filling their pulpits even though no single synod is exclusively urban or exclusively rural. The Synod of Southern California and Hawaii is almost certainly the most urban of all the synods covering the urban areas of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Diego and the surrounding areas. And while the synods with the lower percentages of filled pulpits do have urban centers, their geographic location in the mid-continent means those urban areas are generally smaller and that there are a substantial number of small-town congregations in those synods as well.

I include the last two columns of data as possible proxies for a measure of the rural/urban blend of the synod. The median size of the congregations is an easier metric to tie to the rural/urban mix with the conventional wisdom being that rural areas have smaller congregations. Indeed, there is a strong statistical correlation of 0.77 between the % of pulpits filled and the median congregation size. My theory behind the second metric, the % of active ministers fi
lling pulpits, is that urban areas should have a lower percentage because there are greater opportunities for other validated ministry in more urban settings. And indeed, while the correlation is not as good, the -0.50 inverse correlation between % of pulpits filled and % of active ministers filling pulpits is still respectable.

Now I fully realize that there are other interpretations of these correlations. For instance, higher median size of congregation correlating with more filled pulpits could be seen as an aggressive program of consolidating churches so as to fit the available pastoral resources. Likewise, the inverse correlation between filled pulpits and the percentage of ministers serving in parish ministry may not be a sign of more and varied opportunities, but rather a greater surplus of ministers available to fill open positions.

OK, so I just set about trying to prove what we think we already know. Now, what are the implications for ministry and mission?

I would be curious if detailed numbers such as these are available for other Presbyterian branches. In my search over the lunch hour I was more successful at finding congregation statistics than clergy statistics. But the anecdotal evidence suggests that mainline churches in general, not just the PC(USA), have more ministers serving in positions outside the parish. Therefore, if we need more parish ministers we must (1) recruit new individuals with a call for congregational work, (2) convince those presently serving in other ministries that parish work is valuable, rewarding, important, etc. (3) keep ministers in the congregation rather than leaving because of financial needs, burnout, or conflict. Are the mission priorities such that we value parish ministry enough to recruit individuals to serve congregations and find ways to keep gifted individuals in those congregations, especially when it is in rural areas?

While the PC(USA) may have this surplus to try to work with other areas are not so lucky. It is a well publicized issue within the Church of Scotland that there are not enough ministers, especially for the islands. Possible solutions being discussed there include video links to island churches for worship and changing the understanding of the Scottish church so that it does not need to be a national church with a presence in every community, no matter how small. Within the last week The Herald published an article that indicated its sources say the Special Commission studying the territorial church will recommend altering that section of the Articles Declaratory. This was followed by some letters to The Herald, some of which advocated keeping the territorial church, but being more creative in providing leadership. Then today there was a letter to The Herald from the Principal Clerk of the General Assembly pointing out that if the Special Commission recommends it there is still a long process of three GA votes and two sets of presbytery votes to approve the change.

But returning to the essay by Mr. Hart — in it he makes some strong comments about our concept of mission, particularly the interests of those who call themselves evangelicals. It is not just that the big city has the population and the resources, it is the opportunity for celebrity or the brush with celebrity, the “L.A. moment” as my family calls it. Mr. Hart writes:

Of course, the reasons why evangelicals fawn over the city may stem from sources other than the obvious appeal of bright lights and big buildings. One of them may be a born-again infatuation with celebrity and the disillusionment that follows when public figures like Mark Sanford or Miss California, Carrie Prajean, fall from grace. Evangelicals are disposed to understand grace and faith in extraordinary categories and so overlook stories of ordinary believers, routine piety, and even rural congregations as insignificant. Discontent with the average and routine aspects of natural life and of grace appears to breed a similar dissatisfaction with humble ministries in places of little interest to the editors of the Times.

So what are our mission objectives and our mission priorities? Do we “go out into all the world” or just where it is easy, convenient, or even possibly exciting and rewarding? Is a big urban church better than a small rural congregation? And maybe most importantly, when a minister makes the commitment to serve a rural parish do we support that decision and find ways to encourage and help them in that ministry?

If all congregational ministry matters equally we need to be ready to support it equally.

Preliminary Comments On The Faith In Flux Report

1 Reply

I have begun digesting the new report just issued by The Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life titled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.

This survey is a follow up to their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and involved recontacting about 2800 of the participants in the first survey.

The report has already gotten a lot of coverage in the mainstream media news (e.g. Louisville Courier-Journal), op-ed (e.g. New York Times), the blogosphere (e.g. Vivificat! and Kruse Kronicle) and of course the Presbyterian Outlook.

There is a lot of interesting information in this survey and I am still chewing on it but I would suggest reading the Executive Summary if you are interested or care about church membership trends today and in the future. I am hoping to crunch some of the numbers myself and make some more detailed comments in the future. But the way my life has been going I decided to post a preliminary article about two particular items that particularly struck me.

(Two technical details: 1) The survey give a confidence of +0.6%. 2) My main focus will be on comparing affiliated with unaffiliated so I will frequently give a range for the data in the affiliated group without breaking out individual categories.)

1) What keeps people in the church?
As I have been reading the report I found myself asking an alternate question “How do we keep people in the church?” If the report focuses on what makes people change then how do we turn that around to keep people in relationship with the Covenant Community.

One of the statistics that has gotten a lot of coverage, with some justification, is that “Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24.” (It quantifies what many of us know from experience.) But there are a number of related findings that expand on this:

Those individuals who are now unaffiliated were much less likely to have attended worship weekly as a teenager than those who are still affiliated — For those that are still affiliated it is in the 60-70% range that they attended weekly, for the unaffiliated 44% of those raised Catholic attended weekly as a teenager and 29% of those raised Protestant.
For those raised Protestant there is a notable difference between the unaffiliated and those still affiliated on whether they attended Sunday School — 51% for the former and about 65% for the latter. No difference seen for those raised Catholic
Youth group attendance was also important for Protestants with 55% of those “still in childhood faith” having attended youth group, 47% who have switched to another Protestant faith, and 36% of the unaffiliated. Again, for those raised Catholic there was very little variation between the affiliated and unaffiliated.

My conclusion — This stuff matters. This is why we have Sunday School and Youth Group. This is why families need to attend the education hour as well as the worship service. It is why the Youth Group is not just for outreach but for the church kids as well. This is why we do college/campus ministry. It is not to “indoctrinate” but to “strengthen.” For those that were raised Protestant and are now unaffiliated 18% said they had a “very strong faith” as a child and 12% said they had it as a teen. This compares with 35-41% of the affiliated who had it as a child and 32-40% who had it as a teen.

Now the terminology in the next part may annoy orthodox Reformed readers, but this is the language of the culture and how the survey reports it.

When looking at reasons for switching one of the interesting questions is what brought those who were raised unaffiliated into the church. The survey found that of those raised unaffiliated 46% were still unaffiliated, 22% were now affiliated with Evangelical Protestant churches, 13% with Mainline Protestant churches, 9% with “other” faiths, 6% Catholic, and 4% Historically Black Protestant Churches. I must admit that I see this as a bright spot — I was really surprised that 54% of those raised without religious affiliation found one as an adult.

What were reasons that an unaffiliated “first became part of a religious group?” The top three answers

51% Spiritual needs not being met
46% Found a religion they liked more (I’ll leave the interpretation of an unaffiliated finding a religion they liked more as an exercise for the reader.)
23% Married someone from a particular faith

What got them to join? Top five answers

74% Enjoy the religious services and style of worship
55% Felt called by God (another surprise for me, and a pleasant one that a majority did feel God’s call. More on that in a minute.)
29% Attracted by a particular minister or pastor (it is not a specifically listed answer for changing affiliation because a pastor left)
29% Asked to join by a member of the religion (and this is something we all should pay attention to)
25% Married someone from the religion

Lots to chew on there. If this is what gets the “unchurched” to come and stay how can we be more effective in our outreach.

2) Words have meanings
OK, it is another “words have meanings” rant. But as I was reading the Executive Summary this really started grating on my nerves. Your mileage may vary.

I should say two things in their defense first: If you study the survey questions there is no problem there. The questions are as precise and well worded as you would expect from this organization. Second, if they worded it the way I want them to do in the narrative, it would be more precise but the vocabulary would be limited and would not read nearly as well, so I know why they did it.

That being said, consider the first paragraph of the Executive Summary:

Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about
half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least
once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave
their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change
religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a
new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion
& Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious
affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and
reasons for change.

As you can see in this paragraph, and happens throughout the narrative portion, the words “religious affiliation,” “religion,” and “faith” are used pretty much interchangeably. Throughout the report when they use any of these words they always seem to mean “religious affiliation.” The question then is whether they actually investigated whether someone’s personal belief system corresponded to the church they attended. This is like their earlier survey that found that 6% of atheists believe in a personal god.

This probably struck a nerve because of my personal faith journey. I call myself a “life-long Presbyterian” even though I was a member of a Methodist church for a few years. My wife was raised both Methodist and Presbyterian and when we moved to a new community we felt that God was calling us to help a Methodist church plant. However, even though I was a member of a Methodist church my ingrained thinking in terms of Presbyterian polity frustrated the District Superintendent, I annoyed the pastor and a candidate for the ministry with my confessional theology, I was personally troubled by the lack of a regular prayer of confession, and I’m sure I entertained one of the most senior pastors in the Conference as he watched all this transpire. And we firmly believe that God got us out of there before my Presbyterian tendencies would have lead to a major conflict with a new pastor. I will leave it to another time to ask if I was being theologically honest or religiously faithful to have been in that situation, but the bottom line is that I considered myself a Presbyterian in a Methodist environment.

And I know that I am not the only one. I know of multiple Presbyterians that now serve, or have served, in Methodist churches in ordained and non-ordained capacities. We have had Methodist ministers attend my current Presbyterian church. For a survey such as this how is that classified?

So, bringing it back to the survey, in my case my “religion” and “faith,” while evolving over the years as it is normal to do, has remained denominationally stable. But my affiliation, like 28% of the still-affiliated Protestants in the survey, has changed twice. (49% have changed once.)

Now I do realize that individuals are more likely to be on the other end of the theological “firmness” spectrum, particularly in the Protestant denominations. In this post-modern age specifics of confessional beliefs and church government will matter little to many of the “people in the pews.” After all, 85% of those switching within Protestant denominations listed “Enjoy the religious services and style of worship” as one of the reasons for joining their religion and I am willing to bet that only a very small portion of those mean that they found a church that follows the regulative principle of worship or has Exclusive Psalmody. Individuals don’t even think of it as changing religions, only changing congregations, because the theological lines are blurring in peoples’ thinking and congregations’ exposition.

What I am expressing here may be a subtle distinction, but as I read through the questions and methodology what this survey measures is not truly a persons religious faith, but their religious affiliation, their church membership. As has been mentioned many times before what does church membership really mean in this post-modern or post-Christian period? That is my musing.

Don’t hold your breath, but as I worked though the Amendment 08-B voting numbers I was surprised by the “churn” in the PC(USA) membership and I am working on that and some other related numbers that I hope to correlate with this survey in a later post. We’ll see if I can actually find time amid all the GA news to make that happen. So until next time…

A Word Of Hope From The Amendment 08-B Voting Trends

Leave a reply

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

First, for anyone looking
for my word of hope being in the fact that approval of 08-B is
trailing in the voting or that a significant number of presbyteries have switched
their votes from the negative to the affirmative in this round of
voting, you won’t find that here.

Instead, I have been
reflecting on some of the voting trends to see what it means for the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

While what I have
previously written about the amendment voting, especially the
analysis of the numbers, I view as data-driven and analytical, I do
realize that there is the potential for it being take as negative or
pessimistic because of the focus on membership decline and
theological controversy — the “doom and gloom” if you will. It is my motivation and intent that using my skills to drill down into
the numbers would help us better understand what is going on and
would lead to “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). So
in a more explicit spirit of that let me offer what I see as a word
of hope:

In tracking the votes and
looking for correlations with membership trends my working hypothesis
was that declines in membership would be reflected in the voting
trends. However, as I discussed in another recent post this is not
the case. Hypothesis busted! While I do see trends that I can break into categories of behavior, looking for this broadly across the
denomination’s presbyteries does not show it. I consider that good news for the
PC(USA).

I do not mean to minimize
the challenges that are before the denomination. Membership is
declining in almost every presbytery. Amendment 08-B is an issue
with strong feelings on both sides. Total membership decline numbers do suggest some association. But the presbytery data indicate that we can not take these and
paint across the denomination with too broad a brush. To paraphrase the
Tolstoy quote above, “every presbytery has its challenges in its
own way.” No broad generalizations can be made about relationships
between 08-B, theological viewpoint, and membership decline. This
leads me to the broad generalization that every presbytery is unique,
has its own individual challenges and stories, and should be worked with
on its own terms. It is just like one of our basic principles of
Presbyterian polity, it all comes down to the presbyteries.

What this effectively
means could be expressed in a couple of well-used phrases:

All politics is local

Think globally, act
locally.

If every presbytery is
unique, don’t look to the General Assembly or the Headquarters for
your solution. They are there to help, but not come up with the silver bullet to solve every
problem if there are 173 different problems. Look for what you can
do where you are to work on the challenges in your presbytery. These data suggest that we need to change the denomination by starting at the bottom because this issue does not register as being the unique problem across the church.

(Having said that, there are
some general categories of behavior but nothing that is seen across the board. I’ll go back to my geeky data analysis and
lay those out in the next couple of weeks.)

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism

Category Archives: Analysis

The Lectionary – Border, Bastion, Or Barrier?

Three Decisions From The GA Permanent Judicial Commission Of The PC(USA) — Ordination Standards And More

Exit Strategy? Parallels In Institutional Realignment And Consequences

Presbyterians Certainly Are A Peculiar People

Patterns Of Proportionality In Presbyterian Partition — Or — Are Fractures Fractal?

Presbytery Judicial Decision In A Same-sex Marriage Case

What Changed In The Sixties? The Implications For The Mainline

What Is Your Strategy For Mission? Some Thoughts On The Call Of Clergy In The Mainline Church

Preliminary Comments On The Faith In Flux Report

A Word Of Hope From The Amendment 08-B Voting Trends