Category Archives: news

What Does It Take To Get Ordained Around Here?

What does it take to get ordained around here?

You can tell that my younger son has grown up in a Presbyterian family. This past weekend he had a telling Freudian slip when he was reading a line in a presentation and instead of saying the correct word “obligation” he substituted the word “ordination.”

But when you get down to it much of the current discussion and debate in the Presbyterian church branches is around what it takes to be ordained an officer in the church and the standards for ordination and ordained officers.

The PC(USA) is wrapping up the vote rejecting the replacement of the “fidelity and chastity” section in the Book of Order. There are also judicial cases (Paul Capetz, Lisa Larges) in process related to declaring exceptions.

The EPC will be discussing transitional and affinity presbyteries at its GA to accommodate the various theological positions permitted under their “local option” and “in non-essentials, liberty” regarding ordination of women as officers.

The PCA is actively debating and discussing women in helping ministries and when their role begins to be comparable to that of a man’s role as an ordained deacon. (This issue has been developing so quickly that I have not had time to properly package it up for posting so here is only one of many recent news items on this topic.)

The moderator designate of the GA of the PCI has received some notoriety for his views that women should not be ordained ministers.

And as the Church of Scotland GA rapidly approaches the discussion continues over the call of a partnered gay man to a church in Aberdeen and the protest of that call to be heard by the Assembly as well as an overture clearly stating the standards for ordination and service.

With all of that GA business, an additional story has taken on a life of its own…

Over the weekend Adam Walker Cleaveland over at pomomusings wrote about “When an M.Div. from Princeton isn’t enough…” and his attempt to come under care of San Francisco Presbytery and the requirement from their Committee on Preparation for Ministry (CPM) to take six more classes to fulfill their education requirements even though he has the degree from a PC(USA) seminary. Getting ordained has been a continuing struggle for him and this is only the latest speed-bump, road block, brick wall, on-coming train… you pick the metaphor.

I have known many people who had trouble with their CPM’s like this but what makes Adam’s current situation interesting is that his friend the Rev. Tony Jones, who has a soap box on beliefnet to broadcast this far and wide, has take up his cause and started a petition to support Adam. It currently has 130 signatories. In the blog entry Mr. Jones writes:

Few things piss me off as much as the sinful bureaucratic systems of
denominational Christianity. When rules and regulations trump common
sense, then the shark has officially been jumped.

But what gets
to me even more is that bright, competent, and pastorally experienced
persons like Adam continue to submit themselves to these sinful
systems. They assure me that it’s not for the health insurance or the
pension. They do it cuz they feel “called.” And if I hear another
person tell me that they’re sticking with their abusive denomination
because, “They’re my tribe,” I’m gonna go postal.

So, it’s time
for us to do something. It’s time for us, the body of Christ, to ordain
Adam. To that end, I’ve started a petition, beseeching Adam to quit the
PC(USA) ordination circus and to accept our ordination of him.

This led another friend of Tony’s (FOT?), PC(USA) minister John D’Elia to argue, among other things…

On the other hand, your friend may have erred in being unwilling to
demonstrate that he could take direction and counsel from a governing
body—something that I believe has a place in the context of the
American religious free market. In the PCUSA, the process of becoming
ordained is partly an exercise in learning healthy submission to peer
authority (I can see the eyes rolling back in your head). Now setting
aside the not-nearly-rare-enough instances where the submission
required is unhealthy, it’s not a bad lesson to learn. More
importantly, once candidates have completed (survived?) that process,
we have enormous freedom to live and serve as our own calling leads us.
It’s OK with me that we disagree on this point. That’s not the problem.

(I should add that Rev. D’Elia has posted an apology to Rev. Jones for drifting into a personal attack in this post.)

Tony Jones has a follow-up post where he writes:

I’ve got a bunch of people upset at me for encouraging my friend, Adam Walker-Cleaveland, to forsake the ordination process of the Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination. I even went so far as to post an online petition
to attempt to convince Adam to drop out of the PC(USA) process and
consider himself “ordained” by the Body of Christ — that is, by all of
his fellow believers.

and then he continues the discussion responding to the Rev. D’Elia. It ends with a “To be continued…”

This publicity provided by Tony Jones has resulted in some additional articles about Adam’s situation and this discussion, including Out of Ur, neo-baptist, and koinonia.

Two observations on all of this:

1) The ordination standards debate is nothing new. It was part of the disagreement in American Presbyterianism that lead to the Old-side/New-side split of 1741. The question there was over, wait for it, THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION and “religious experience.” The Old-side Presbyterians were questioning the preparation and theology of the New-side Presbyterians being produced by the Log College, an educational institution sometimes pointed to as a predecessor of, yes, Princeton. (Note the argument that there is not an administrative lineage between the two schools like the theological heritage they share.) The more things change…

2) “The governing bodies are separate and independent, but have such mutual relations that the act of one of them is the act of the whole church performed by it through the appropriate governing body.” [from PC(USA) Book of Order G-9.0103]

This one sentence is at the heart of these ordination debates in the Presbyterian Churches. In Presbyterianism the idea is that once an individual has been ordained by one governing body the whole church recognizes that ordination. This sets up an appropriate tension between individual ordaining bodies and the broader church to set standards for ordination so that others are comfortable accepting an officer ordained by another governing body.

This is not to say that once ordained you are a “free agent.” On the contrary, you agree to the discipline of the church and if you stray from the church, its standards and its beliefs, the discipline of the church is to restore you and reconcile you with your brethren. Again “the act of one of them is the act of the whole church.”

It is interesting that one of the important points in the discussion between Tony Jones and John D’Elia is that the Rev. Jones was ordained in the Congregational church and the Rev. D’Elia was ordained in the Presbyterian church and that is reflected in their views and arguments. The role of the “institution” is at the heart of their discussion.

In most Presbyterian branches the Presbyteries are responsible for the admission, preparation and examination of candidates for the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. In the PC(USA) there are certain national standards for education and written examinations in particular areas. But the presbyteries are given some flexibility even in these to set their own standards for candidates. That is where Adam is getting tripped up. And because of the presbytery’s control and authority it is recommended, as Adam points out, that you do not switch presbytery of care during the process. I can point to several cases I know of where that was nearly disastrous for candidates. I also know of cases where an individual was not accepted into the process in one presbytery but was later accepted by another. That is the nature of the Presbyterian system and on-balance we believe that it works.

From my reading of Adam’s transcript I would have accepted his education with the exception of the weak area he notes himself (Greek exegesis). But I’m not on a CPM or in the presbytery he wants to come under care of so I have to trust it to them. So if/when he is finally ordained I do accept the actions of that presbytery as the “act of the whole church.”

Are there problems? “All synods or councils, since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred.” [Westminster Confession, XXXI, IV] So yes, problems arise. But that is also part of our Reformed theology that we are more likely to get it right as a group than we are individually.

Where this is getting difficult at the present time is in declaring exceptions to non-essentials. While the PC(USA) still has “fidelity and chastity” in the constitution one part of the church considers it at least binding if not essential. Clearly there are those with the view that just because it is in the constitution it does not mean it is binding or essential. But there are some on both sides that do recognize that if something so clearly stated in the constitution can be “scrupled” that this at worst will lead to a breakdown of the trust relationship between ordaining bodies, and at best court cases over the obligation of one presbytery to accept the ordination of another when an exception has been declared. It makes an end-run around the established system that holds us in tension and accountable to each other.

So we will see how all of these develop. There is a lot to watch in the coming weeks.

Voting Trends For Amendment 08-B — Part 2 – Summary Statistics For The Presbyteries

2 Replies

In the last week the news on Amendment 08-B includes: (1) Five more presbyteries have voted with one a repeat “yes,” three switching from “no” to “yes,” and one repeat “no.” This puts the unofficial vote at 73-90. (2) The official count at the Office of the General Assembly now confirms Amendment 08-B as being the only Amendment to be defeated in this round.

While the dominant “yes” vote this week has resulted in some minor changes in the summary statistics I discussed last time, the basic conclusions still hold and I will update those statistics later related to the overall conclusions.

I now want to turn to the numbers that first caught my attention and that probably stand by themselves with the least need of dissection or interpretation.

Presbytery vote counts
Much has been made of the change in the percentage of “Yes” votes between the Amendment 01-A vote and the 08-B vote. This “vote swing” has been pointed at as an indicator of changes in the denomination, primarily changes in attitude concerning this issue.

But as I pointed out in the first part of this series, in the total vote numbers the actual number of “Yes” votes is substantially unchanged from the previous vote while the number of “No” votes has decreased by about 3000 or roughly 14%. Now, I do believe it is more complex than just saying the “No” votes are not showing up for presbytery meetings or leaving the presbyteries, but if you want to reduce the changes in the vote numbers to a single cause that would be it — no changed attitudes just changed demographics. (See the first post for a more detailed discussion of possible factors and combinations of those factors.)

Viewing this on a Presbytery level is when you see that it is a more complex situation. (Again, my previous post on every presbytery is different.) But as would be expected the general trend is the same as the combined numbers.

As before, my data comes from the usual sources, PresbyWeb and Presbyterian Coalition. I am still considering 01-A and 08-B as similar amendments so that their voting records can be compared. (As I will show in the second post from now this may not be valid for 100% of the presbyteries, but it looks like a good working hypothesis for most.) And in the analysis I am about to present I use the ratio of the number of votes on 08-B to the number of votes on 01-A. This can result in a divide by zero error if there were no votes in that category for 01-A and can produce large ratios when there were a small number in 01-A. The number of instances of each of these are limited.

So here we go with the charts and graphs and the 27 8×10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one… Or something like that.

The three frequency distribution graphs below illustrate what caught my attention from the very beginning of the voting on Amendment 08-B. They are the distributions of the ratio of the number of votes in each category (yes votes, no votes and total votes). The red arrow is the average and the solid line running vertically through all three is the value of 1.0. (no change) As you can see they are aligned with the same horizontal scale for visual comparison. Frequency count bins are 0.05 wide and the number listed on the x-axis is the upper inclusive value of the bin. For the “yes” votes there are six more presbyteries off the right hand side of the scale but I do not show them so all three graphs can be scaled equally. (The large ratios are mostly due to changes in small numbers.) Those presbyteries are included in the statistics. For the two presbyteries that had no yes votes on either vote their ratio for “yes” is fixed at 1.0. For the one presbytery that changed from no “yes” to one “yes” it was entered as 2.0. (Yes, I probably should have discarded them but I haven’t.)

For the “Yes” votes the average is 1.06, the median is 1.00 and the standard deviation is 0.42. For the “No” votes the average is 0.76, the median is 0.75, and the standard deviation is 0.21. For the total number of votes the average is 0.87, the median is 0.86 and the standard deviation is 0.20. For all three groups the number of presbyteries counted is 147. While the distributions have the general appearance of being normally distributed and follow the central limit theorem I’ll address the exact nature of the distributions later in this series.

For those who are looking for the bottom line — The number of “Yes” votes in the presbyteries shows a slight to no increase, the number of “No” votes shows a significant downward shift, and the total number of commissioners voting show a more moderate decrease. In fact, only 12 presbyteries, 8%, have an increase in the number of commissioners voting no and 43 presbyteries, 29%, show a ratio greater than 0.95 for the ratio of total number of votes cast on 08-B versus 01-A. That would be a low probability of just being random variation.

Another interesting feature is how much wider the spread of values is on “Yes” votes than “No” votes with a standard deviation of 0.42 for the former and 0.21 for the latter. Some of this can be attributed to presbyteries that have very low numbers of “Yes” votes so a change of one or two votes can produce a very large ration. But in spite of that a visual comparison of the “Yes” and the “No” distributions shows a markedly wider distribution for the “Yes” differences. So it can be said that the number of “No” votes more uniformly declined while the “Yes” vote showed no decline in the average but more variability in the changes.

Changes in vote percentages
As I mentioned above the percentages of yes and no votes, without regard to the changing size of the populations, has been a focus in this voting round. So here for your viewing pleasure are those frequency distributions for the presbyteries.

For 01-A the average “Yes” vote was 0.42 and for 08-B it was 0.48. While the average shifted upward the standard deviations were relatively close at 0.16 on the first and 0.19 on the second. In this view the distributions show somewhat different shapes but the upward shift is still visible.

Total vote ratio with time
I throw in the following graph for fun. It shows how the ratio of the total number of votes changed as voting proceeded.

It is tempting to attribute higher turnouts later in the voting to increased awareness, get-out-the-vote campaigns, or people getting nervous/hopeful about the outcome. But note that the scatter also increases. This slight, and maybe statistically insignificant (R-squared is only 0.01)
increase can be nearly completely accounted for by the fact that “No” presbyteries voted earlier and “Yes” presbyteries generally voted later so the sustained level of “Yes” votes late in the process tilts the trend line.

Well, now that I have gotten your eyes to glaze over properly today I will leave you with that data to ponder until next time. No further discussion or conclusions now — I’ll leave that until I’ve spread a bit more data before you. Having now looked at the numbers as the whole group of presbyteries next time I’ll split the presbyteries apart into a couple of different groupings and see if that shows anything interesting. After that I’ll expand the study to include all four votes and ask whether any given year is different, or different enough.

Church Property Case Headed For The U.S. Supreme Court

Debate Preceding The Church Of Scotland General Assembly — Focus Shifts To Web 2.0

2 Replies

When I last posted on the current controversy headed to this year’s General Assembly of the Church of Scotland I did not realize that I was writing at a point in time when the discussion was shifting from the Mainstream Media reports driving the Web, to the Web driving the media. I’ll not fully rehearse the specifics of the case again. You can check out my previous posts or some of the other links I’ll cite today for that. Let me give the essential information for this discussion that Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen called the Rev. Scott Rennie, a partnered gay pastor, to its vacant charge. Aberdeen Presbytery concurred but a protest was filed and that protest will be heard at the General Assembly that begins in just over two weeks.

In that previous post what I did not realize was that I had found the web site for the Fellowship of Confessing Churches on the day of its launch. Thanks to the Rev. Ian Watson for that information. You can check out his announcement on his blog Kirkmuirhillrev. Anyway, as I mentioned last time, on the Confessing Churches web site there is a petition supporting the dissenters and asking the GA to support the protest. Well this petition has gone “viral,” or at least as viral as something Presbyterian can go, and there are currently 2530 individuals from the Church of Scotland who have signed, 1404 from other Scottish churches, 1104 from other UK churches, and another 1193 from other churches worldwide for a grand total of 6233 as of this writing, and increasing by the minute.

And this petition is now being advertised and debated in the blogosphere. Over on the Reformation 21 blog, Carl Trueman announced the petition but indicated he would not sign. However, other writers on the blog, like Phil Ryken and Rick Phillips did sign and post their comments about why they did. Carl Trueman posted a second, much more extended comment on his view of the situation in response to Rev. Ryken’s post.

But the first post from Carl Trueman found responses from elsewhere in the blogosphere, some supporting his position (e.g. Thomas Goodwin, Joshua Judges Ruth and Knoxville) and some who argue for signing (e.g. Michael Bird at Euangelion). And there is Darryl Hart on Old Life Theological Society who finds positives in both positions. I find it interesting that many of the respondents are associated with the Presbyterian Church in America which will be dealing with ordination standards as they again address the issue of ordaining or commissioning women as deaconesses at their GA this year. In fact the Rev. Dave Sarafolean makes this connection directly in his post at Joshua Judges Ruth (and his quote from Carl Trueman comes from Trueman’s second post):

Having just come back from presbytery
and preparing for General Assembly in a few weeks I found this quote
from Carl Trueman very helpful. I say this because of the on-going
debate in the PCA about the topic of ‘deaconesses’ (which are not
prescribed by our constitution):

“The policy of
ceding church courts to the liberals has proved disastrous. I feel for
friends caught in the crossfire in Aberdeen but, as I said earlier, a
petition is too little too late. These battles are not won by petitions
which have no ecclesiastical status; nor are they won by preaching to
the converted at large Reformed conferences or to congregations of the
faithful in the big C of S churches. They are won by the nasty,
brutish, hard labour of fighting in the church courts, face to face,
toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball, with those who would seek to take over
session, presbyteries, synods, and General Assemblies for evil”

There are a number of other facets to this debate that have developed over the past week. The one that hit the mainstream media was a correction and apology that the conservative group Forward Together issued after they said that the Rev. Rennie had left his wife while it was actually the opposite. This correction was widely covered by the press, such as these articles in Scotsman and The Herald. However, the Rev. Louis Kinsey at Coffee with Louis takes issue with the tone of some of the press coverage and the bias he perceives in the reporting of the correction. Similarly, he comments on bias in the headline of another news story about the petition.

From a different perspective Mr. Stewart Cutler has a blog post titled “Not In My Name” where he says why he will not sign the petition and he concludes with

So, no. I won’t be signing your petition. And I hope no-one else does
either. Not because I don’t believe in your right to have one. Not
that because I don’t think you have the right to hold your opinion.
But because I believe that we are called to love one another and to
conduct our discusions with love and respect.

In another blog entry Mr. Cutler points us to the latest OneKirk Journal which has an extended interview with Rev. Rennie. From all the reading that I have done on this story I think these are the most extensive comments by Mr. Rennie since the controversy broke. The comments are serious, heartfelt and honest. When the interviewer ask about the affect on his faith this controversy has had Mr. Rennie says:

Interestingly, it has greatly strengthened my faith. It has heightened my sense of call, opened my eyes to a wealth of kindness and Christian love from other people; some of whom I know, and some of whom I have never met. It is always easy in these kinds of circumstances to focus on the negative, but the reality is that most people are kind, compassionate and good at heart. Through them, God reveals himself to us all. I keep hearing in my mind the verse of that children’s hymn we all grew up with: ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’.

This article and this quote have also been picked up by the print media including an article in The Times Online today with the very attention-getting headline “Gay Church of Scotland Minister Hits Back at Evangelical Critics.” I’m wondering if the Rev. Rennie would consider the OneKirk interview “hitting back” or just “telling his side”?

So as we approach the Assembly meeting the Journal article gives us one additional item — An Order of the Day: This protest will be heard at 1900 on Saturday May 23 and decided in that session. I appreciate the information so that I can rearrange my schedule and referee an earlier football (soccer) match that day. I am still looking for the Blue Book or the docket to know when the related overture will be debated.

Two Additional Overtures To The 37th General Assembly Of The PCA

2 Replies

With about a month and a half to go before the opening of the 37th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America two additional overtures have been posted to the overtures web page.

Overture 14 – Amend BCO 25 by adding Section 25-12 regarding Giving Notice to Presbytery of Intention to Withdraw from the PCA
This overture from North Texas Presbytery seeks to add a new section to Book of Church Order Chapter 25 on Congregational Meetings. The overture recognizes the different nature of the relationship of a teaching elder with the presbytery and that of a congregation. Section 25-11 permits congregations to vote to leave the denomination, but teaching elders as members of the presbytery are not automatically released with the congregation but must be released by the presbytery. In fact, this overture would encourage teaching elders to leave without taking the congregation where it says in one whereas: “ministers participating in, instigating, and leading congregations out of the denomination are not being faithful to the Scriptures or their ordination vows. If they can no longer remain in the denomination then they should seek their own dismissal without seeking to create schism and take a church as well.”

The proposed language for the BCO would require teaching elders to “give reasonable advanced notice to the Presbytery of the intentions of the local church to withdraw.” With this notification the Presbytery “shall assist the local church in making an orderly withdrawal.” The proposed new section closes with this:

It should always be the desire of a faithful minister of Christ to effect reconciliation between all bodies of Christians but especially those of his own denomination.

Overture 15 – Direct Philadelphia Presbytery to Adopt Specified Policy on Role of Women in Mercy Ministry
First, it must be pointed out that this overture comes directly to the GA from a session (Crossroads Community Church, Upper Darby, PA) after it was unanimously adopted by the session but rejected by their presbytery (Philadelphia). The Session adopted it on August 11, 2008, it was received by the Presbytery at their meeting of September 10, 2008 and then rejected at a special meeting on March 31, 2009. The Session then voted to send it to the GA themselves on April 13, 2009.

The overture itself is actually an overture to the Presbytery, not the
General Assembly, which was moved up when the Presbytery rejected it. While clearly unusual I’m not sure if this is a proper use of the overture process. It is my understanding that the appropriate response would be to take an overture addressed to the Assembly to the Presbytery for endorsement and then if rejected send it on to the Assembly from the Session.

This overture comes with an arriving note that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and the Committee on Constitutional Business ( CCB ) advise that the overture is out of order. The reasons are not given here but will appear in the Clerk’s Report. One possible reason is that based on the Rules of Assembly Operations Chapter 11 this overture, since it does not propose a change to the Book of Church Order, should have been submitted 90 days before the Assembly convened and it was barely submitted 60 days before (RAO 11-7). It appears that from a timing perspective it was held up by the scheduling of the special meeting of Presbytery, but I am not familiar with the history and that is only an interpretation based on the reported dates of meetings. Another possible reason for the advisory may be related to the nature of the overture as I discuss in the preceding paragraph. The GA Junkie in me eagerly awaits the rational for the opinion.

The overture begins by running through the BCO references to the different ordained offices and the requirements, including that they are only open to men, for those offices. It then points out that some candidates and transfered elders hold opinions contrary to this. Finally, it includes the decisions from the last GA that arose from the records review of Northern California and Philadelphia Presbyteries where their records showed women commissioned to the diaconate.

The overture asks Philadelphia Presbytery to acknowledge the BCO requirements for deacons, to have candidates and ministers transferring in to affirm these standards and promise to “conform their practice” to this position, to remind elders that have a substantive exception to these confessional standards that exceptions are in belief only and not practice, and that Sessions be reminded of these standards. Finally, it requests that churches not presently in accord with the BCO present a plan to come into compliance.

It will be interesting to see the Clerk’s opinion on this overture and to see if the Assembly agrees. It will also be in the mix with the other three overtures related to women in the church and a consistent response across all of these would be expected. We will have to wait and see.

Finally, it is always interesting to see how certain elements of the polity issues one Presbyterian branch is working through are echoed in another branch. In this case the aspects of reconciliation and church departure in Overture 14, and the reminder that exemptions can be in belief but not practice as mentioned in Overture 15 are both issues the PC(USA) is also dealing with.

The Current Church of Scotland Controversy Remains Active

4 Replies

In many ways I regard the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as very similar branches of global Presbyterianism. They are both the largest and most visible Presbyterian denomination in their respective countries and both have a wide theological diversity in their membership. But they have differed in two significant respects. First, the Church of Scotland is a national church while the PC(USA) is one mainline denomination among many. The second is that the Church of Scotland seemed, at least from this distance, to have a much less vigorous debate going on regarding the place of GLBT individuals in the church. Until now…

Back in 2006 the CofS General Assembly sent to the presbyteries an item approving the blessing of same-sex unions. The item was defeated. But what made the business interesting, and in some ways telling, was that it came from the Legal Questions Committee which deals with civil legal issues, not from a theological or polity committee. In a sense, the issue was co-opted for the church to make a statement on same-sex unions. The Kirk has had several groups working on reports related to aspects of human sexuality, principally the 1994 and 2007 reports, but most have been accepted only for reflection and discussion and they have not lead to statements or acts concerning polity or theology.

Now a relevant issue has come up regarding ordination standards and clergy lifestyle when a previously ordained minister was called to a church in Aberdeen and he will be bringing his gay partner with him. The presbytery approved the call, some of the commissioners protested to the Commission of Assembly, and the Commission decided (correctly in my opinion) that this was too significant in issue for it to decide and they sent it on to the full, new General Assembly less than a month from now. So far all done in a very Presbyterian manner, decently and in order.

The issue “blew up” when an editorial appeared in the CofS official, but editorially independent, monthly magazine Life and Work that expressed the opinion that the Kirk should be broad and accepting and that this call should be approved by the GA. Conservative ministers in the CofS were upset about the editorial and the Scottish press ran with the story.

Well, the press is still running with it, but more about that in a moment. Decently and in order stuff first…

The Presbytery of Lochcarron and Skye have overtured the General Assembly in this matter. The overture is short and the “whereases” are telling so here is the full text, courtesy of The Fellowship of Confessing Churches:

OVERTURE

ANENT MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

From the Presbytery of Lochcarron-Skye

Whereas:

1. the Church’s historic understanding of the Biblical teaching on homosexual practice has been questioned in recent years.

2. a lengthy period of reflection has elapsed without a resolution of the issue.

3. it is undesirable that the courts of the church should be asked to judge on individual cases in advance of any such resolution.

It is humbly overtured by the Reverend the Presbytery of
Lochcarron-Skye to the Venerable the General Assembly to receive the
Overture set out below,

“That this Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit,
re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone
involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between
a man and a woman”.

Polity wise this is a simpler, yet broader, version of the PC(USA) “fidelity and chastity” requirement. The PC(USA) standard applies only to candidates for ordination. The GAPJC extended preceding statements to apply to “positions that presume ordination.” As you can see in this overture it proposes applying a standard to ministers only, but applying the standard to both the ordination as well as the call process. (That would be the “induct” or “introduce” for the American readers who “install” pastors.)

In addition to the overture there is also a statement/online petition from The Fellowship encouraging the GA to oppose the call and another conservative group, Forward Together, has a statement on their home page also opposing the call. The liberal group Affirmation Scotland has a statement posted on their website supporting the call.

In the popular press this issue continues to make headlines and apparently The Sunday Times surveyed CofS ministers and found a significant number that said they would consider leaving the church if the call was upheld by the General Assembly. The survey is reported on-line by Pink News (I searched and could not find an original reference to it at The Times Online so I have to wonder if it was only in the print edition of the paper.) According to the report 50 ministers were surveyed, 23 said they opposed the call and eight said they would consider leaving. (GA Junkie note: Pink News, and maybe The Times, refers to it as a question about the “ordination.” In this case the minister is already ordained so the question is about the call to this pastoral position.) There is independent on-line verification of this survey from the Rev. Jim Dewar’s blog. He reports that he was one of the ministers contacted by The Times and that he told them he was opposed but not considering leaving. In regards to whether he would leave he says that he told the reporter “No; there is more to the Christian faith, more to my ministry and the mission of the Church than sexual ethics!”

So the story continues. The General Assembly convenes three weeks from tomorrow and more than one story I read predicts that this could be the most controversial, or at least the most closely watched, in two decades. As an indicator, this story has been picked up by blogs not specific to Scotland (Reformation 21) and other denominational writers (Anglicans United, Virtue OnLine, Clerical Whispers). Let us pray that by the time GA gets here the commotion will have calmed down so the commissioners can focus and discern God’s will.

Voting Trends For Amendment 08-B — Part 1 – Summary Statistics

2 Replies

I would suspect that most of you have heard by now that the unofficial vote tracking on Amendment 08-B places the count as 69 yes and 89 no as of last Saturday, a sufficient number to defeat the amendment. It appears that the “fidelity and chastity” section in the Book of Order for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will remain for another two years. That still needs to be verified by the Office of the General Assembly, but based on the official vote tally this appears to be the only item sent to the presbyteries that will not pass. (At this time amendment 08-I is listed as very close to passage but not yet.) But voting is not over yet — there are still 15 presbyteries that need to vote and the General Assembly recognized that the process, and not just the vote, was important.

However, the results appear certain enough that the Presbyterian News Service has issued an article and the reports are spreading around the news services (exempli gratia Associated Press, The Christian Post, Advocate.com, Dallas Morning News), the advocacy groups (exempli gratia More Light Presbyterians, Presbyterian Coalition, Witherspoon Society), and the blogs (exempli gratia Presbylaw, Psalms Modern, A Classical Presbyterian, Ray’s Net, Mark Time).

Having now had 158 presbyteries vote, and 143 of those presbyteries with vote counts on both 08-B and 01-A recorded at PresbyWeb or the Presbyterian Coalition counting sites, there is a significant amount of data to crunch to compare the two votes and see if it says anything about the PC(USA).

Now, while I have some questions that the two amendments are really comparable since the text of the two is significantly different in content and action, it is still my conclusion that in many quarters they are viewed as similar actions. For most of this analysis I will take it as a precondition that the two amendments are similar enough in their perceived intent, if not their text, that it is valid to compare the voting numbers.

I will break this analysis into several different posts primarily so as not to overwhelm the casual reader with extensive statistics. As a research scientist I am used to providing and drinking numerical data through a fire hose. I am going to try to spare you the experience. Also, some of the individual case studies will wait until all the presbyteries have voted. But with over 90% of the data in I will go ahead today with the summary statistics of the population.

Finally, as a research scientist I accept peer review and as a Presbyterian I welcome accountability. If anyone does want to see my raw data I will gladly send you a copy of my source spreadsheet once I have most of my analysis presented.

And a word on philosophy: I sometimes wonder if some of my readers view this as “dwelling on the past,” “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” “majoring in the minors,” or “analyzing the obvious.” I however consider this interesting (yes, I am weird), I am concerned about some of the other statistics and their interpretation I see out in the news, and I do feel that taking a serious look at these things is part of the third note of the True Church – “ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered.”

Summary Statistics
From the data sources listed above there are 143 presbyteries that have voted on Amendments 08-B and 01-A for which vote counts are listed in the sources. In the discussion that follows I will only be addressing presbyteries that have reported numbers for both votes. There are 15 presbyteries that do not have reported numbers for one or both votes.

On 01-A 42 (29.4%) of these presbyteries voted “yes” and 101 (70.6%) voted “no.” On 08-B 64 (44.8%) of these presbyteries voted “yes” and 79 (55.2%) voted “no.” Of the presbyteries that voted “yes” on 01-A two (1.4%) have voted “no” on 08-B. Of the presbyteries that voted “no” on 01-A 24 (16.8%) voted “yes” on 08-B.

Looking at the number of reported votes, on 01-A there were 21,732 total commissioners voting in these presbyteries. Of these 9,375 (43.1%) commissioners voted “yes” and 12,357 (56.9%) voted “no.” For 08-B there were 18,562 total commissioners voting in these presbyteries. Of these 9,189 (49.5%) voted “yes” and 9,373 (50.5%) voted “no.” (Note: the data sources do not include blank or “abstain” ballots. From experience these are <5 per presbytery and using an average of 3 per presbytery it could be another 429 ballots or roughly 2% of each vote that I would estimate as an upper limit.)

Between 01-A and 08-B the number of total voting commissioners in these presbyteries declined by 3,170 which represents a loss of 14.6% of the 01-A total votes. The decline in commissioner “yes” votes is 186, a 1.9% drop relative to the 01-A “yes” total and a 0.8% decline relative to the total number of votes cast. The decline in commissioner “no” votes is 2,984, a 24.1% drop relative to the 01-A “no” total and a 13.7% decline relative to the total number of votes cast.

Preliminary Analysis Comments
I don’t want to make any substantial comments on the analysis and conclusions until I have spread out some more detailed statistics in front of you. However, let me set the framework in which I have been studying these numbers.

In modeling the data I have selected five different factors that I think are influential. These five factors pretty much cover any of the reasons for changes in the vote numbers and so as a whole probably introduce too many degrees of freedom. However, in working with the numbers it seemed that relying on only the three “general” factors still left out some identifiable variation. This is part of what prompted my “every presbytery is different” post a bit over a month ago.

The nice thing about working with the overall statistics is that the larger population size should minimize the influence of the special cases and that individual special cases might average, or cancel, out. I will investigate each of these in detail later, but briefly the three general
factors that I am working with are:

1) Overall, uniform membership changes. This is the documented membership change (generally decline) in the membership of the PC(USA) and how it would translate into changes in the number of commissioners voting.

2) Vote changes. This is the switching of commissioner votes from “yes” to “no” or “no” to “yes” between the two votes.

3) Selective decline due to realignment of churches. This is not the uniform membership decline but the selective departure of churches and individuals of one particular theological perspective that has been happening over the past few years. The theory is that it is primarily conservative churches that are leaving the denomination so this should manifest itself as a preferential decline in “no” votes.

There are also two special cases that I am considering.

A – Fundamental change in the presbytery. In some (probably limited) cases there are changes the presbytery has made, apart from typical membership changes, that would influence the number of commissioners voting. The changes to counting active membership in San Gabriel Presbytery would fall into this category (I discussed that back in March.)

B – Special circumstances of that meeting. Situations where some external cause influences the number of commissioners at that particular meeting. There was discussion that the number of commissioners at the John Know Presbytery meeting was significantly reduced (60%) by a winter storm and that there were conflicting conferences that influenced the attendance at the San Francisco Presbytery meeting.

It appears that both of these special cases are very limited. While it is tempting to consider the factor as uniform across “yes” and “no” votes, if a special circumstance was involved in the San Francisco vote change is was clearly not uniform. I will drop the special cases for now and return to that topic a few posts from now.

So, looking at the changes in the summary statistics what can we say as a first pass? The number of both the “yes” and the “no” votes declined but the “yes” only slightly and the “no” substantially. You can not explain the difference with only changes in the vote. You can not explain the difference in the votes with any one of these three factors alone. A combination of two or more is required.

(Factors 1&2) If you want to say that the difference in the total is uniform decline then you could expect about 8000 “yes” votes on 08-B based on the 01-A percentages. That would mean that there was a net change of 1200 commissioners (6.5% of the 08-B total) changing votes from “no” to “yes.”

(Factors 1&3) You could also interpret the numbers to say that there was no changing of votes, but rather the differences in votes reflects a 0.8% uniform decline (the 186 vote decrease in the “yes” votes) and then an additional 12.9% decline in the “no” votes due to conservative departure. (That would be the 2984 total “no” vote decline split between 188 uniform decline and 2796 selective decline.) With a total uniform decline of a bit less than 400 votes in this scenario the conservative departure is clearly dominant and this comes closest to explaining the voting differences with a single factor.

(Factors 2&3) The other possibility is that there is no uniform decline but the 3170 vote drop in numbers reflects the loss of only conservative “no” votes combined with 186 “yes” votes switching to “no” votes to account for the drop in the number of “yes” votes.

From the summary statistics we can probably say all three of these factors are present but it is difficult to distinguish the level of influence of any of these three factors individually. As this series of posts progresses I will work my way up to my model where individual presbyteries can be classified as having one or two of these factors dominate the vote changes. The factors will get limited on a presbytery level so we have an over-determined rather than an under-determined matrix for the model. (That is mathematical jargon, not a psychological analysis of the matrix.) And I have found that there are a couple of presbyteries where there is statistically no change in the vote pattern.

But all that is in the future. For today it is enough to say that from my analysis of these summary numbers the statistic that really jumps out is the 13.7% drop in the number of “no” votes between 01-A and 08-B. Based on other membership numbers it appears unlikely that this drop could be accounted for in uniform decline alone and it can not be purely vote changes since the total numbers show a similar 14.6% decline. The question then is how much of the vote shift seen between 01-A and 08-B is truly a shift at the individual level, and how much is a mathematical result of the departure of conservative churches.

Stick with me and I’ll give you an answer to that question. Next time we move from the denominational level to the presbytery statistics and start including pretty pictures with charts and graphs.

Episcopal Polity Statement From The Anglican Communion Institute — The Rest Of The Story?

And You Think Presbyterian Polity Is Confusing…

2 Replies

It has been a while since I commented on the Anglican Communion, but those who closely watch the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issues know that there is a very close and parallel situation in The Episcopal Church (TEC) at the moment. Close enough that we write amicus briefs on each others court cases and we have churches realigning in the same places that Episcopal dioceses are realigning, such as the San Joaquin valley of California.

There are two different, but related, tracks of controversy developing in the Anglican world at the moment. The first involves the Episcopal Church and an effort by conservatives to demonstrate that it is not a “hierarchical church.” This is of course important because one of the legal theories for a national church retaining control of the local church property, the “principle of government,” is the trust clause for a hierarchical church. If the church is not hierarchical the trust clause is harder to argue.

This news was broken earlier this week by the Rev. Mark Harris in his blog Preludium. He said:

In
the next few days a position paper signed by a number of bishops
connected to the “Communion Partners” bishops group will be published,
in all likelihood by the Anglican Communion Institute. It will
challenge the notion that dioceses of TEC are part of TEC
in any other way except by voluntary association, and that therefore
they are free to independently subscribe to the Anglican Covenant and
maintain pastoral visitation and oversight independent of any agreement
with TEC or its leadership. At least that is the conclusion to be reached from a thread of emails send to Preludium today (April 21).

And the Rev. Harris says later

The
second point of reference is the belief that Episcopal Church polity
legitimately arises out of the autonomy of dioceses who gather in
voluntary association at The Episcopal Church in General Convention. In
this view it is the diocese and not The Episcopal Church that is the
“basic unit” of The Episcopal Church. In this argument TEC is not a metropolitical entity, but rather a free association of dioceses.

Note here the parallel to the PC(USA) principle that the presbytery is the “central governmental unit.” (I wrote a bit about that earlier in the week.)

Well, there was a bit of an uproar on both sides about the information leakage. The Rev. Harris mentions it yesterday as does the Rev. Susan Russell. But the Anglican Communion Institute has released the statement signed by fifteen bishops. At the present time there does not appear to be an official statement from the national office, but there is a press release with unofficial critical quotes. I should also point out that Mr. Haley, the Anglican Curmudgeon, has a two part post (Part 1, Part 2) about why the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical.

But looking at this debate there is more than one implication if the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical. The property is one thing but realigning a diocese with the Worldwide Anglican Communion is another part of it. And related to that the Worldwide Anglican Communion is now writing a new Anglican Covenant that is conservative in its tone. I won’t go into all the nuances of this, but for the purposes of the preceding news, if a diocese is the core unit of the church than it would be free to associate by itself with the covenant without being associated through the national church.

This is important because based on the current draft of the Covenant the leadership of the Episcopal Church has indicated that it might not sign on. An article from Episcopal Life, the official Episcopal News Service, says

Should the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council] accept the draft during the Jamaica meeting, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said
that she would “strongly discourage” any effort to bring such a request
to the 76th General Convention in July 2009. The Episcopal Church’s
Executive Council agreed in
January, saying that such a decision would need the full three years
between meetings of General Convention to “prayerfully engage the
faithful of all the dioceses of the Episcopal Church as to their
discernment in respect to the covenant” and listen to other provinces
“as they discuss and wrestle with the generalities and particularities
of an Anglican covenant.”

Ruth Gledhill of The Times points out that the Church of England may not be able to legally sign the covenant either because it “might subvert the authority of the Queen as Supreme Governor.”

So, if you think you have now reached the complexity of this polity think again. Ms. Gledhill also reports on the likely implementation of this covenant:

The covenant, by virtue of a quasi disciplinary process, is likely
create a multi-layered communion, with the ‘conservative’ provinces in
the inner circle, with full voting rights at all the communion bodies,
and the pro-gay liberals on the outer circle and presumably some rights
removed, if they insist on consecrating more gay bishops or sanctioning
gay marriage and refuse to sign up to the covenant in all its biblical
orthodoxy.

And for a more elaborate exposition (and I gather he is being a bit tongue-in-cheek) there is Damian Thomas over at the Telegraph picking up where Ruth left off:

What I didn’t know is that the proposals are tied to an intricate scale
of “degrees of communion” – full, impaired, partial and broken – that
will ascribed to different provinces by a Lambeth Communion Review
Commission, which will itself be multi-layered, supervising Review
Sub-Committees based on the Indaba model that will ascribe State of
Communion Assessments to individual dioceses, non-territorial episcopal
oversight areas and parishes. It would, of course, be inappropriate for
the same Review Sub-Committees to cross the boundary between inner and
outer circles of the Anglican Communion, and so – in a radical proposal
drafted by Dr Rowan Williams himself – the Lambeth Communion Review
Commission will divide into inner and outer circle Areas of Special
Responsibility that will shadow each other’s assessments.

Got that? He keeps going so if you want the whole thing check it out. It sort of reminds me of my favorite Monty Python game show parody where the rules are so complicated there is not time for the contest itself. An earlier version is available on line.

So is this an Anglican version of the PUP report? Is this modeled on Dante’s circles of Hell? What will the Anglican Communion look like in a few years? The PC(USA) and the Episcopal situations are so close and somewhat linked so it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

Amendment 08-B One Vote From Failing With More Presbyteries Switching Votes Yesterday

8 Replies

It ain’t over until it’s over… But it is now very close with the unofficial vote at 68 yes and 86 no. That is one “no” vote away from being defeated.

The headline from yesterday is that of the four presbyteries voting, three switched votes from their previous position.

The part of that which is the real headline is that the first presbytery switched from “yes” to “no,” and the really surprising news is that it was San Francisco Presbytery that switched.

So, thanks to PresbyWeb, here is what happened yesterday…

National Capital voted “Yes” with numbers very consistent across the years: 222-102 yesterday, 220-116 on 01-A, 212-71 on 97-A, and 105-226 on 96-B. (For all of these remember that pro-equality is a yes except on 96-B when it is a no vote.)

Salem and Wabash Valley switched from no to yes.
Salem: 156-149 on 08-B, 160-187 on 01-A, 141-156 on 97-A, and 153-143 on 96-B. (Interesting to note the spike in turnout for 01-A. They other votes are strikingly similar in numbers, with the reversal on 08-B.)

Wabash Valley: 84-67 on 08-B, 83-102 on 01-A, 76-125 on 97-A, 116-100 on 96-B. (Wabash Valley has had a number of churches depart the denomination and the change in no votes from 01-A to 08-B may reflect that. It is notable that the switch occurred not because the yes votes increased, they are statistically identical. This may be one of the few cases that a significant decrease in no votes can be clearly tied to churches realigning.)

San Francisco: 167-177 on 08-B, 216-186 on 01-A, 207-167 on 97-A, 179-214 on 96-B. (The previous votes show a significant consistency, as does the no vote with the past vote numbers. In this case it appears that the yes voters were not there because it shows a decrease of 40+ votes from the typical level.)

Anyway, to have San Francisco vote no took many people by surprise. There is a lot of reaction on Facebook, which I won’t link to. The vote results must have been announced late because the news media has not picked it up yet. (The results had not been posted when this left-coaster went to bed at a later than normal hour.)

East coast blogs are starting to pick it up and you can count on John Shuck for a lively response:

This is an embarrassment. The presbytery of San Francisco

Home of the PCUSA moderator…

Home of out candidate, Lisa Larges…

Home of the Covenant Network…

Home of Jack Rogers…

And well it’s freaking San Francisco…

voted No on amendment B last night 167-177. San Francisco has the honor of being the only presbytery
to switch from equality to inequality in this year’s voting. Last time
the vote was 216-186. That means 40 commissioners decided they had
better things to do than to show up for the meeting.

Looks to me like they took it for granted while the opposition organized.

[Editorial note: We down here in SoCal claim Jack Rogers now. ]

As news and blogs respond to the vote I’ll add updates to this post.

Update:
The Layman has posted an article that Amendment 08-B has now failed with 86 negative votes. They say at the end of the article that 171 presbyteries are voting, which would require 86 on one side or the other. Not sure where they got that from because the official PC(USA) vote tally page sets 87 as passage.

In addition, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, the Layman seems to extract a bit of “turn-about” in the article, citing San Francisco as the home presbytery of GA Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow. This could be interpreted as a “back at you” for John Edward Harris‘ observation that the first presbytery to switch, Western North Carolina, is the home of the Layman’s long-time editor. Or maybe I’m just too into conspiracy theories and reading articles for hidden meanings. I very well could be wrong and it is all innocent reporting.

Update: I must confess my surprise that now almost 24 hours out there is not more reaction in the news or on the blogs. The PC(USA) Presbyterian News Service did release an article about the vote in general that included yesterday’s votes in the tally but no reporting on any of the presbytery meetings themselves.

Probably the most interesting comment so far has been by Clay Allard on his blog The Right Side of the Trinity. (For those not familiar with the geography of Dallas, TX, the title is a clever turn of phrase on the Trinity River that flows through the city.) The best thing about Clay’s comments is that he takes a bigger view – “The amendment has failed, now what?” He writes:

Now That the Voting Is Over

What an interesting sense of humor God has. As Amendment 08-B moves to
defeat, I was sure that the Puerto-Rican presbyteries would deliver the
coup-de-grace. But instead– it’s SAN FRANCISCO?! I think that it’s
time to examine all the ideas and attitudes that have been slain by
this vote.

and he closes with

Let’s spend some time outside of our own echo chambers, not acting like
this is a football game and we are just “fans” of our side. Instead of
figuring out a strategy of beating “them,” why don’t we find out who
“they” are, and what they want? Why don’t we act like we are not
competing for some prize, but that we are trying to be faithful to
Christ? The voting is over– let the learning begin.

Also, More Light Presbyterians has an article up about the San Francisco vote and the significance of the presbytery meeting being held at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church.

Elsewhere, Wrestling With Wrelevance and Life Along The Homeschooling Journey comment on the San Francisco vote and the almost-defeat of 08-B. The Reformed Pastor has reaction to both the San Francisco vote as well as the Layman article.