Category Archives: commentary

135th General Assembly Of The Presbyterian Church In Canada — Summary And Comments

How can a GA Junkie not love a General Assembly with its own soundtrack…

For the 135th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada held this past week in Hamilton, Ontario, they introduced the CD Some Assembly Required – Songs about General Assembly by the Rev. Angus Sutherland. They have been kind enough to post two tracks on-line. The first, “The Clerk’s Rant” will bring a smile to any GA Junkie’s face as the singer raps on parliamentary procedure in a very appropriate tone, and the back-up singers provide a chorus with the delicious double entendre “wrap/rap it up Mr. Clerk, wrap/rap it up.” The second is an Elvis-ish number titled “First Time Commissioner at the General Assembly Blues.” I suspect that the name is self-explanatory. For more info check out the Presbyterian Record page, and it is listed as available through the denomination’s book store, The Book Room. (I don’t see a listing yet.) Cost is CA$15 and proceeds go to Presbyterian World Service and Development.

On the General Assembly page you can find a nice photo gallery of the Assembly, and at the bottom of the page the GA 2009 News articles including the Daily Digest. Minutes of each sederunt as well as the reports are available on the Documents Page. There was a nice set of official Twitter messages (around 175 total), mostly posted by Matt Donnelly and some others chimed in on the hashtag #pccga09. The Communications Office also had the Twitter messages with #pccga09 fed to a webpage using an application from Cover It Live. The live feed was useful, especially for us who would just keep it in the corner of our screen and not want to keep reloading it. While the coverage did not include webcasting audio or video the Twitter conversation went a long way in helping us feel like we knew what was going on.

There were 129 clergy commissioners and 121 elder commissioners at the Assembly, a number that was comfortably seated around round tables in the Assembly hall. However, the opening worship and business were held at near-by Regent University College. Following worship the Rev. A. Harvey Self, pastor of Tweedsmuir Memorial Presbyterian Church in Orangeville, Ontario, the selection committee’s nominee, was elected Moderator of the Assembly. In his comments the Rev. Self described his upbringing as the son of a military chaplain and his intent to highlight the work of the chaplains in his moderatorial year.

The first full day of the Assembly was a Briefing Day where the commissioners have the opportunity to hear information about the reports they would be discussing later in the week. That evening there was the traditional banquet that provided a time of fellowship and socializing before the full business sessions started.

Tuesday’s business sessions had a heavy emphasis on military chaplains with the presentation by the Rev. Dr. Brig. Gen. David Kettle who talked about chaplains as “agents of grace, offering a human face in inhuman situations.” There was also a presentation on the Emmaus Project: Open Eyes, Burning Hearts that is planning an event for presbyteries next spring to help “refresh, renew and transform” presbyteries. At the luncheon the E. H. Johnson Award was presented to His Excellency Archbishop Elias Chacour. He spoke on the plight of Palestinians in the Middle East. From the Twitter messages about his 30 minute speech I recognized several of the lines from the sermon he preached at the last PC(USA) GA.

Thursday marked the first anniversary of the Government of Canada’s Apology to
Aboriginal people for residential school legacy as well as the fifteenth
anniversary of the PCC’s Confession to residential school survivors. The day included a
“special program of reflection” to commemorate these anniversaries and continue the healing and reconciliation necessary.

In terms of polity business it is interesting to compare the personal reflection of a Young Adult Representative via the Presbyterian Record and a brief post from a church about the meeting. Both highlight the discussion over Lay Missionaries and whether they should be authorized to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. As Allyssa de Bruijn, the YAR, describes it the session had a spirited debate with motions, counter motions, and amendments with the result being that motion was referred back to committee for further study. (For the record, this sounds like the PC(USA) Commissioned Lay Pastor position who may celebrate the Lord’s Supper if they are already an elder, trained to do so, and authorized by the presbytery.)

The other issue mentioned by Central Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, was the salary/stipend structure for National Employees on which a compromised was reached.

I found it interesting looking through the minutes and seeing the dispositions of the various overtures from presbyteries. They are broken into two groups, overtures 1-9 which are referred immediately and overtures 10-18 which where sent to the full assembly and then most of them were referred. While there are many interesting issues raised in the overtures I will highlight just two. The first is overture 12 from the Presbytery of Prince Edward Island which asked to have the days of assembly changed to include a weekend to make it easier for elders to attend. I personally am always interested in how we structure our business to best encourage elders to be a part of the process, especially younger elders who already have many demands on their time. The Assembly adopted the recommendation of the Bills and Overtures Committee to refer it to the Assembly Council in consultation with the Clerks of Assembly.

As far as I can tell from the minutes the one overture to be directly decided by the Assembly was overture 16 concerning the definition of marriage. It is also the only piece of business I saw with the possibility of being sent to the presbyteries for concurrence. Specifically, the Session of St. Andrew’s, Ottawa, overtured the General Assembly:

[The Session] humbly overtures the Venerable, the 135th General Assembly, praying that the General Assembly make and ordain the following Declaratory Act, after remitting the same to the presbyteries:

1. Our understanding of the rite of marriage is the solemnization before Almighty God of the vows of commitment and loyalty of two persons, the one for the other, for the duration of their lives and to the exclusion of all others;
2. The subordinate standards of this church are to be interpreted in the light of this principle;
3. Ministers of Word and Sacrament may for reasons of religious understanding decline to solemnize a marriage;

And that on the website of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, those passages of the Westminster Confession and Living Faith that are contrary to the wording herein, in particular Chapter 24, Parts I and III of the Westminster Confession, each contain a footnote referring to the adoption of this Act, or to do otherwise as the General Assembly, in its wisdom, may deem best.

The overture was transmitted by the Presbytery of Ottawa without comment. The Committee on Bills and Overtures recommended referral to the Committee on Church Doctrine in consultation with the Clerks of Assembly. There was an amendment from the floor to also refer to Justice Ministries which was defeated. The recommendation was amended from the floor to not receive the overture. The Twitter posting is brief and I have found no other source about this action, but the Assembly agreed and the overture was not received. There was clearly some strong feelings on this overture since 39 commissioners asked to have their dissents recorded in the minutes, including that by M.W. Gedcke who asked that his dissent be recorded with the following reason given:

Overture No. 16 raises important issues in regards to marriage that our church needs to discuss and seek God’s guidance in our discernment and decision making.

While similar issues have been discussed at other Presbyterian GA’s what I found interesting about this overture is the added wording to footnote the subordinate standards regarding this decision. I am not aware of other branches considering the annotation of their confessional standards in accord with such a change in polity.

Finally, the Assembly considered switching to biennial meetings. At the present time the Assembly Council has been undertaking a study and has produced several benefits and recommendations if biennial meetings are adopted. It appears that with the adoption of the Assembly Council report the issue will be sent out to the presbyteries for discussion.

Finally, a comment on following an Assembly as a GA Junkie. This GA had no webcast but daily updates and a nice Twitter feed. In addition there were a few more tweets from people both present at the GA and following at a distance, who commented using the hashtag. What I have decided is that the webcast gives you the details, the twitter feed give you the play-by-play and maybe some colour commentary, but being present for the GA gives you the nuance and the “flavor” of the event. The contrast in the Twitter feeds has been interesting this year for the three GA’s with a major twitter presence. Now on the #pcaga starting to ramp up today.

About One In Ten Thousand Presbyterians A Presbyterian Blogger

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OK, I had a long commute home yesterday — an L.A. “get away Friday” and all that. And as I was thinking about my quest for sources for perspectives on the General Assemblies or Synods of some of the smaller Presbyterian branches I began to wonder how many I should be looking for. I did a quick back of the envelope calculation and my conclusion is:

Roughly one in every 10,000 Presbyterians blogs on Presbyterian matters.

Beyond this it also appears that there are about the same number of institutional blogs from churches, governing bodies, or affiliated organizations.

Now this is a rough estimate and not very scientific. If you want evidence of that I rushed to Wikipedia for the membership numbers.

And if you want to do this scientifically you would have to decide matters such as: Does BRC get counted one, two, or three times? Does a church or organization blog get counted as institutional if it is predominantly written by one individual? Does an institutional blog count if it is mostly just news and not reflection?

So here is my initial back-of-the-envelope calculation. The PC(USA) lists 2.2 million members. Presbyterian Bloggers lists 144 “Members of our Community.” Beyond that I have about 42 more blogs on my feed reader not in their list. That brings the total to 186. Knowing that there are several more blogs that I don’t follow it strikes me that a number in the 225 to 250 range is probably about right. Hey, I said this was back of the envelope. It’s got to be close to an order of magnitude. So 220 blogs for 2.2 million members is one for every 10,000.

How does this hold up in other branches? A quick check of the OPC gives a membership of about 29.000 and I can identify three individual and three church blogs. I’m probably missing a couple individuals so it is a bit better than the 1:10,000, but still order of magnitude close. How about the PCA? Membership – 346,000. I can identify 41 blogs by individuals and I’m probably missing a few, but it still appears closer to 1:10,000 than 2:10,000. The ARP? It looks like 30,000 members and three individuals blogging as well as three churches. For the EPC they are listed as having 85,000 members and I read the blogs of four individuals. A search only turned up a couple more so this appears to be a case where the estimate is ballpark but over estimates. Or I need to look harder.

Moving outside the US the numbers, or my ability to find the blogs, drop off. For instance, for the Presbyterian Church in Canada I can only find a couple of blogs by individuals for a church of 120,000 members. Again, for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland I can again only find a couple of blogs for a church of 300,000. I don’t think I am missing the other 28 if the ratio holds. For the Church of Scotland I follow 18 and there are probably a few more, but still for a church of 500,000 it still seems short of the 50 expected blogs.

So does this serve a purpose? For me as a researcher it does. Coming from the field of seismology we have several empirical mathematical relationships that tell us how many earthquakes to expect in particular situations. We use them for calculating earthquake hazard and seeing if we are “short” of earthquakes and so should expect the earth to catch up. In this case I now have an empirical relationship that tells me about how many bloggers to expect in a denomination. If I’m short, as in the EPC, maybe I should be checking around for a few more that I am missing. If I’m on the number, like the ARP, I’ll keep my eyes open for more, but won’t put excessive effort into “finding the one lost blogger.” And for social scientists and “new media” people out there maybe this tells you something. And hey, if I messed something up here I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Thoughts from the mind of a research scientist. Your mileage may vary.

Communications And Connectionalism — Implications Of A “Real-Time Church”

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I am easily distracted… I intended to spend my lunch hour working on one of my saved drafts but that will have to wait.

In reading through some blogs over my morning coffee (I’m still trying to figure out why the Reformers didn’t make “coffee prayerfully consumed” or something like that the fourth note of the True Church) I came across a very interesting article that got me thinking about a whole host of things, but for my purposes here the “real-time governing body.”

The article is an essay from the Armed Forces Journal by P.W. Singer titled “The Rise of the Tactical General.” The essay is about robotic warfare and how modern electronic communications brings the battlefield back to the commanders behind the front line. It touches on the implications of robotic warfare:

But like any major change in war, the robot revolution is not turning
out to be the frictionless triumph of technology that some would
describe it. Unmanned systems are raising all sorts of questions about
not only what is possible but also what is proper in politics, ethics,
law and other fields.

It touches on leadership development:

Even more, we have to ponder the long-term consequences. What happens
when the young officers now being cut out of the chain, or micromanaged
in the midst of battle, advance up the ranks, but without the
experience of making the tough calls?

And there was a quote that really gave me pause that talked about the units controlling UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) in Iraq from here in the States having a higher incidence of combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder than some units deployed to Iraq.

If you are interested in either of these issues from a religious context you might want to have a look at the full article. It is a quick read but might start you thinking.

Now, what got my attention, especially after watching GA webcasts and following tweets for the last couple of weeks, was this paragraph:

The ripple effects of robotics on leadership even affect the strategic
level. Many have discussed the idea of “strategic corporals,” younger
and younger troops who are being given greater and greater power and
responsibility. But the rise of robots has created an opposite
phenomenon — a dirty little secret that people in the service are
somewhat afraid to talk about for risk of their own careers. I call it
the rise of the tactical generals. Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.
One four-star general, for example, talked about how he once spent a
full two hours watching drone footage of an enemy target. He then
personally decided what size bomb to drop on it. Similarly, a special
operations forces captain talked about how a one-star, watching a raid
on a terrorist hideout via a Predator, radioed in to tell him where to
move not merely his unit in the midst of battle, but where to position
an individual soldier.

OK, follow me here through a hyper-space jump back to the church. Read this line again from the context of the church institution:

Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.

Now I know that the Church here on earth is sometimes referred to as the Church Militant. And one denomination has even organized themselves into an “army.” But even though some would argue that there are those at the “highest level” who are trying to control the lowest-level operations that is not quite my focus today. Heaven knows that as a synod moderator I only have the power the body gives me to run the meeting.

Instead I ask what are the ways that simply viewing the operations of the church in real-time help and hurt our connectionalism and polity?

There must be something because both the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Church of Scotland turned off their webcast and Twitter updates when they went into judicial session. (Yes, the primary reason is that judicial proceedings in the UK are not broadcast and the church judicial sessions follow that pattern as well.)

Clearly I am one for real-time observations as I try to catch as many webcasts as my schedule allows, follow the GA’s that have Twitter tweets, have been know to live-blog GA sessions, and have a Google alert for “General Assembly.” (The Google alert produces mostly political news articles and not Presbyterian ones in case you are wondering.)

What are the benefits of this instantaneous information? One is that is allows the virtual observers to carry on an educated discussion while the information is still fresh in our minds. I think that the result is a greater interest in the Assembly and its work. I also believe that doing it in real time has more people seriously thinking about the issues as they follow the commissioners and in some ways try to think their thoughts. Getting the information about the Assembly a week or three later would probably result in most reading it and thinking “that is interesting” but not thinking it through as fully and almost certainly not engaging in the online discussion at that time. And for us bloggers it gives a second set of eyes and helping us get things right when we say one thing on line and someone comes back with “I don’t think so, I understood it this way.”

Another benefit gained from the viewing of the GA is the ability to see the whole meeting. This allows someone to follow business of interest to them. Other wise at best they get the news through the filter of another source and at worse may not get any substantial information at all if they are interested in business that would not make it into reporting sources.

So the primary benefit as I think about it is to those outside the body, raising interest and provoking fuller thought about the Assembly business. And clearly it helps make the process more transparent if anyone can look in on the proceedings. Let me know if you see other benefits of sharing GA’s over the web.

Is there a downside to the real-time sharing of the Assembly business?

I would argue that if the commissioners to an Assembly are also watching or participating in the real-time virtual discussion it does impinge on a basic premise of Presbyterian polity. Our governing bodies are deliberative bodies and the members of that body have been chosen by God through the voice of the people to seek together God’s will. When the body is not in session it seems perfectly appropriate for commissioners to educate themselves on issues from a variety of sources. But we believe that something special happens when the body gathers as a court of the church and they deliberate together. It would seem then that, besides the problem of distraction from the discussion, that outside voices would not be appropriate at that time especially if only a few of the commissioners were in on the virtual discussion. Or from another perspective, the virtual observers are at a disadvantage because they were not able to view the committee meetings for those Assemblies that first break the commissioners up into committees.

And I have not decided if another issue could be a positive as well as a negative, but it is the issue of the “observer effect.” As a concept in science it considers whether the observation or measurement of something influences that object or field. In this case, does the observation of a governing body affect the functioning of the body? Does the fact that you are being webcast as you make a comment at the microphone influence how you make the comment or whether you make the comment? Does the fact that there are observers and media in the back of the room watching your committee meeting change the dynamic of the functioning of the committee? As I said, I am a bit undecided on this factor and am still weighing the benefits and drawbacks.

So that is my initial thinking on this. At the moment I think that the benefits of transparency and real-time interaction outweigh the issues of impairing the functioning of the body. So as I Twitter this coming week and watch the webcast the next week I’ll keep this in the back of my mind and try to refine my thoughts. Your mileage may vary.

Ecclesiastical Discipline Uprightly Ministered

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I know that most Presbyterian branches have the Westminster Confession as their confessional standard, but regular readers know that I prefer the notes of the True Church found in the Scots Confession which, in addition to the “true preaching of the Word of God” and the “right administration of the sacraments” adds

and lastly, ecclesiastical discipline
uprightly ministered, as God’s word prescribes, whereby vice is
repressed and virtue nourished

As part of the Reformed stream we acknowledge the significance of sin and the necessity of holding each other accountable. We recognize the need for confession, repentance and restoration. Ecclesiastical discipline is not punitive but restorative, that is “virtue nourished.”

With that introduction I want to refer you to the story of one PCA presbytery and a disciplinary proceeding it was involved in brought to us by Kevin at Reformed and Loving It. (Kevin, thank you for this.) Here is a story of ecclesiastical discipline and restorative grace — It is about a minister who was under censure with supervised rehabilitation. I encourage you to read all of the story, but the heart of the story, and what is really the heart of the Gospel, is contained in these lines:

At the last presbytery [the minister] asked the presbytery to demit the ministry.
Today we voted on it. Before the motion was voted on, I offered an
amendment asking that the presbytery, taking his demission as an
evidence of repentance, lift his censure and restore him to the Lord’s Supper. The amendment (and main motion) passed unanimously. The man broke down in tears. He saw this as we did: a step of restoration.

Amen

Preliminary Comments On The Faith In Flux Report

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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…

The Future Of Mainline Protestant Churches — I Am Trying To Decide If A Recent News Story Says Anything About It

Reflections On The Amendment 08-B Voting — Preliminary Musings On The Text

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While not quite finished, at this time the voting on Amendment 08-B to modify the “fidelity and chastity” section (G-6.0106b) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Order is closing in on the conclusion. Yesterday there was a split vote, San Jose Presbytery voting “Yes” and the Presbytery of South Louisiana voting “No.” This brings the unofficial tally to 65 Yes and 82 No. (Presbyterian Coalition, PresbyWeb)

If you look at the remaining 26 presbyteries, there are five that have solidly voted against “fidelity and chastity,” and another six that have split votes in the last two votes (i.e. voted once for it and once against it). In addition, Boise tied on 01-A and Pacific was one vote away from a tie. Of the remaining 13 that voted no on the last two votes, five presbyteries did overwhelmingly in near or total unanimity. Those five, if they again vote “No”, should give the necessary 87 votes to defeat 08-B. So after yesterday’s results I, and some others (e.g. John Shuck), consider the passage of 08-B somewhere between highly unlikely and miraculous. I won’t say “impossible” because that word is not in God’s vocabulary.

This vote was much closer than I and many of those I talk with initially felt it would be. At the present time 25 presbyteries have changed their votes from 01-A. Why? This question has been rolling around in my head for almost two months now and I’ll give some numerical analysis when the voting concludes. Related to what I talked about a couple of weeks ago, and what I see in the numbers, there is probably no single explanation. Where there is truly a swing in votes why did the votes change? One explanation is a greater “pro-equality” sentiment — that is that commissioners have switched views from “pro-fidelity and chastity” to “pro-equality.” But I want to have a detailed look at something else first: The text of the Amendment.

Looking back at the history of G-6.0106b, and it is laid out in the Annotated Book of Order and Constitutional Musings note 8, you can see that attempts to add fidelity-like wording date back to 1986. The current wording was added from the 208th General Assembly, approved by the presbyteries 97-74. The next year the 209th GA sent out to the presbyteries an “improved” wording that would have left “fidelity and chastity” but removed the “which the confessions call sin” line. At that GA the Advisory Committee on the Constitution advised against making the change. The Assembly approved the change and sent it out to the presbyteries who did not concur by a 57-114 vote. The 213th GA sent out Amendment 01-A to strike G-6.0106b and add a line to the remaining G-6.0106a about suitability for office and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but that too was not affirmed by the presbyteries, this time 46-127.

So here is my hypothesis: I wonder if Amendment 08-B is having more success because it is more of a compromise text. The previous two attempts to amend dealt with removing all or part of G-6.0106b. Amendment 08-B would replace G-6.0106b with new language:

Those who are called to ordained service in the church, by their assent to the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003), pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, striving to follow where he leads through the witness of the Scriptures, and to understand the Scriptures through the instruction of the Confessions. In so doing, they declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church. Each governing body charged with examination for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240 and G-14.0450) establishes the candidate’s sincere efforts to adhere to these standards.

The new language does have a number of theological points that make it attractive and that are being used by those advocating for 08-B as benefits. These include a pledge to “live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church,” and stating the hierarchy of Jesus, scripture and confessions, in that order. While the opposition argues that this now leaves important standards up for interpretation and heterogeneous application across the denomination, I can see how this would be a more palatable form of standards for many in the church.

So I do have to wonder whether comparing 08-B to 01-A or 97-A is comparing apples to oranges. While it is frequently viewed or portrayed as a battle of “good versus evil” (you define the sides for yourself), when it comes down to the vote by a particular commissioner in a given presbytery if the decision and vote is much more nuanced. How many commissioners have not changed their opinions but have changed their vote because the language has changed? Because the wording changes from one vote to the next do these black and white decisions have many more shades of gray than we want to admit.

Something to think over until my next post on this topic when I’ll put numbers on these shades of gray.

Appointments To PC(USA) Special Committees And Task Forces

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

Brief Update on PC(USA) Amendment 08-B Voting — A Tale Of Two Weekends

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One was the best of weekends, the other the worst of weekends — And which was which depended on which side of the Amendment 08-B debate you are on…

Well, bad literary parody aside (although I considered continuing like this and letting you count the clichés) I would not have had another update this soon, except that the voting patterns this weekend were so strikingly different from last weekend.

Last weekend many of us were marveling at the number of presbyteries that switched their votes – nine out of the sixteen presbyteries that had previously voted no. This strong trend in switched votes led the Presbyterian Outlook and The Layman to seriously consider the passage of 08-B.

Now the voting ending this weekend: With results in from the last few days of voting there were two yes votes and 12 no votes, and neither of the yes votes were switches. In fact a couple of presbyteries that were believed to be prime targets to switch votes went back to a stronger “no” vote. For example, Indian Nations was tied at 52 last time and voted 38-43 this time. (That could just be about the same vote ratio within the statistical variation.)

(And on another note, I was intrigued by the difference between there being some significant mainstream media coverage of the voting the last couple of weekends and none this week that I could find.)

With the drought in presbytery swings this week, the proportions in the current voting trend would mean another 11 presbyteries switch for a final vote of 72 to 101. At the moment, the amendment is sitting at 36-57. For Amendment 08-B to pass would require 51 more votes. There are still 25 presbyteries left to vote that voted yes the last time on 01-A. If they all vote yes again that means that 26 of the remaining 55 presbyteries that voted no last time would have to switch votes. That is by no means out of the question, but it means that all the remaining voting needs to have presbyteries switch at the same rate we saw in the week ending February 21 and not like this week.

I’m not sure I, or anyone else, is ready to announce the defeat of Amendment 08-B yet. But with these two weeks showing that the switching of votes was not necessarily a trend I do consider passage of 08-B fairly unlikely at this point. Its supporters have a major up-hill climb ahead of them. But we are only a bit more than half-way through and who knows how the Holy Spirit will move through the presbyteries as they discern the will of God. After all, it ain’t over ’till it’s over and that’s why we play the game. My prayers that God will help the remaining presbyteries discern His will.

Update: Responding to the discernment process in Newton Presbytery, Viola Larson wrote about “Spiritual Manipulation When Voting On 08-b.” After this weekend’s voting Bruce Hahne has a post on “Weekly 08-B Wrapup: The Anti-equality Deck Stacking Begins” highlighting how he views the process in Indian Nations Presbytery “Stifling the Spirit” because adequate debate was not allowed.

The GA Junkie

The Politics of Presbyterianism