Category Archives: news

Amendment 08-B Voting At The One-Third Mark

9 Replies

After several more presbyteries voted this past Saturday we are now at a total of 57 that are reported to have voted on Amendment 08-B to the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  This is pretty close to one-third of the 173 total.  Since my last update nothing has really changed but a few trends are becoming clearer.  As always, the official word can be gotten from the Office of the General Assembly but the hot-off-the-press unofficial info can be found at PresbyWeb, Yes On 08B, Presbyterian Coalition, and the Layman.

1) Officially 08-B is running 9 yes and 25 no but the current reporting has the voting at 20 yes and 37 no as of Saturday February 14.

2) After this past weekend there are 6 of the 20 presbyteries voting yes that voted against the last proposal to change G-6.0106b.  If this ratio of “flipped” presbyteries continues the final vote would be about 63 yes and 110 no.  Some of the presbyteries that are on my “could switch” list, like Southeastern Illinois that voted this past week, have switched while others, like Pines and Cincinnati, were close but no change.  (Cincinnati was a tie at 83 on each side so is in the “no” column.)  And then there were surprises like Western North Carolina and Lake Huron that I don’t think were on anyone’s watch list.

3) The latest presbytery to switch was Charlotte this past Saturday.  There was a lot of local press coverage of the meeting and vote and you can see some samples of the reports at the Charlotte Observer (complete with a slide show of five commissioners faces, but it has four ministers and only one elder (and by-the-way a great picture of you there Robert)) and WSOC-TV.  It is difficult to gage the degree of shift in the presbytery since the vote last time on 01-A was a voice vote with out a reported count, but it passed this year 133-124 suggesting a notable shift.

Presbytery Moderator Robert Austell has posted a great piece on the process, discussion and the vote on his blog.  There is a lot of good information in the piece and he has a lot of objective observations.  For example, the first two of his overall observations:

1. Tone: on the whole, the pro-B folks
were warm, genuine, full of faith, and focused on Jesus, Scripture,
people, church unity, and justice (in that order); those against
Amendment B, on the whole, were saying what was wrong with the pro-B
folks and their arguments.

2. Content – Scripture: the pro-B
folks lived up to their declared attentiveness to Scripture; the pro-B
5-min. presenter demonstrated how she interpreted each of the nine
passages mentioning homosexuality and why she was voting consistent
with her beliefs; the rebuttal to that was dismissive (“that’s poor
exegesis”) rather than demonstrating equal or better attentiveness to
Scripture.

He reports that the presbytery used a process similar to what others report using by beginning with longer presentations, four in this case with two on each side, before going to open debate.

4)  With each vote, particularly the close ones, reaction to the voting builds.  The More Light Presbyterians web site announces each yes vote and celebrates the victories when one changes from last time.  And you will find reaction among the letters to the Layman (an example) with criticism of the process and theology when a presbytery flips.  By the same token there are progressive reactions when a presbytery shows no shift, as a blogger this weekend lamented the intransigence of her presbytery.

5)  Finally, if you have been following my comments on the voting you know that I am intrigued by patterns that are developing in the vote counts.  What is interesting is the decrease in the number of votes cast.  Early on there was a parallel decrease in both the number of yes votes and the number of no votes.  However, in the last couple of weeks the number of yes votes has rebounded and it is currently at 95% of the number of yes votes cast for 01-A.  The number of no votes is now at 74% of those for 01-A giving 84% of the total number of votes cast last time.

What is interesting is that I can not find a correlation with presbytery membership declines over the last seven years.  I tried correlating membership numbers for presbyteries against anything I can find and there is nothing statistically meaningful.  For example, this past weekend Pines had 92% of the votes cast in 01-A yet has a large, 27% membership drop over that time.  Eastern Virginia had a similar vote drop with 90% of the number of votes cast with only an 8% membership drop.

A trend is developing as more presbyteries vote — most presbyteries fall into two very distinct groups.  In both groups there is a similar decrease in the number of no votes, but in one group the number of yes votes remains about the same while in the other the yes votes decrease by an amount similar to the no votes.  An example of the first is Washington which voted 27-82 on 01-A and 27-70 on 08-B.  An example of the second case is Cayuga-Syracuse which voted 54-21 before and 33-12 this year.  That is 61% of the number of yes votes and 57% the number of no votes.  And this is not just a feature of the yes presbyteries:  Foothills was previously 41-132 and this time 34-99, that is 83% and 75% of the yes and no vote numbers respectively.  In all, I would place about 22 presbyteries in the group with no decrease in yes votes and 16 presbyteries in the both-decrease category.  That leaves 16 more scattered around and three that can’t be counted because there is no recorded numbers on 01-A.  (I’m waiting to do a formal grouping analysis until I have more data.)

Once voting gets closer to the end I’ll put together all the numbers with statistical measures and plots so anyone with a similar geekiness can rip it apart and tell me what I did wrong as would happen with any peer-reviewed article.

But as I said above, the numbers don’t seem to support much attribution of vote decreases to PC(USA) membership decline.  It would appear that commissioner fatigue and mental-resignation are a bigger factor in this.  It is interesting that Robert’s article supports this with anecdotal evidence:

[T]he Presbytery of
Charlotte has a large number of rural and smaller town churches. Many
smaller churches are not involved (ever) in the life of presbytery, and
many did not send elders to vote. Additionally, the presbytery has
given almost all of the smaller churches who ever come to presbytery
meetings an additional elder vote in order to correct the imbalance
between ministers and elders. As many as 50-75 votes were not cast
because small or rural churches did not send two or even one elder.
Many of these would be more conservative. Conservatives did write,
call, and otherwise invite these folks… to no avail.

I am curious if others document this trend.  Stay tuned.

Upcoming PCA General Assembly — Mid-February Update

7 Replies

The 37th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will be held June 16-19, 2009, in Orlando Florida.  I have made a few comments on the Assembly already, but while I have been reading the tea leaves about the EPC GA, the first overtures have been posted on the PCA GA Overtures page.  So far it seems like the usual collection, some familiar, some new, and some of the “Blood on Every Page” variety.  So, here is what is now reported:

Overture 1 is from Missouri Presbytery and at this time there is no text available yet and just the title “Amend BCO 37-7”  We will await the text to say much more, but for information Chapter 37 in the Book of Church Order (BCO) deals with “The Removal of Censure” and section 7 addresses the removal of censure by the new presbytery or church when an officer under censure has relocated.  Wait and see.

Update 2/19/09:  Overture 1 has now been posted and it seems, to a point, a very reasonable clarification.  The current wording refers to when an officer relocates to another “part of the country” and the overture points out that it implies the same country and second that the person could move geographically outside the PCA jurisdiction.  The request is to replace that phrase with “location.” That helps the first, but I am still trying to figure out if a person moves out of the area of PCA jurisdiction what governing body would be there to receive the documentation, hear the repentance, and provide restoration?

Overture 2 asks for modification of the Rules of Assembly Operations (RAO) regarding the debate on minority reports and is from Potomac Presbytery. (The RAO can be found about 2/3 of the way through the BCO document.)  The RAO was substantially revised a couple of years ago and this overture is part of the tweaking process to help adjust parts which may not have worked quite as well as hoped.  In this case, it is to create a longer time for debate on motions with minority reports.  The RAO sets the time of debate at 10 minutes for a main motion while this overture suggests 60 minutes of debate, extendable in 10 minutes increments by a simple majority, for reports or processed overtures with a substitute motion coming from the committee of commissioners.  It seems that some extension of time is reasonable considering one of the points in the overture is:

Apart from the will of the majority, the current rules allow for only 10 minutes on the main question and three minutes per speaker—thus allowing merely three and a third speakers from among hundreds of commissioners on questions that are typically of great importance.

Overture 3 — In overture 3 we have a “Blood on Every Page” type of overture, one that seeks to change the constitution because of something that did, or in this case more appropriately did not, happen.  This one, while not complex, is so loaded with nuances that maybe I should have split it out into its own analysis.  It comes from Central Carolina Presbytery.

The overture seeks to change the BCO language about when a higher governing body may “Assume Original Jurisdiction” (AOJ) over a particular matter of dispute or complaint.  (Note that this pertains specifically to the matter of dispute.  For the PC(USA) readers to “assume original jurisdiction” usually has the connotation taking over the operation of a lower governing body and replacing the lower body with an administrative commission.)  And specifically, this change refers to cases where the matter is about doctrine or cases of public scandal.

First, this overture wants to remove the condition “if the Presbytery refuses to act.”  The argument is made that this is ambiguous, or at least not precise, language.

As presently worded, AOJ via 34-1 or 33-1 is essentially unachievable since the phrase “refuses to act” is vague – or at least it has been interpreted variously. Does it mean a Presbytery refuses to: (a) discuss the matter, (b) investigate informally, (c) investigate formally, (d) indict, (e) try and convict, (f) censure appropriately, or (g) something else?  Some men plausibly interpret “to act” as “to indict” since the paragraph begins with the noun “Process” and process begins with indictment and appointment of a prosecutor. But that is not how the PCA’s highest court has interpreted the phrase in two cases.

This requirement would be replaced with GA action being postponed until the presbytery has concluded its action or “been afforded reasonable time to do so.”  However, I can envision similar arguments about ambiguity over that phrase as there is over “refuses to act.”

Second, the overture “adjusts the bar” for GA stepping in on a
presbytery matter from two other requesting presbyteries to five.  For
a presbytery to step into a session matter the bar is left at two other
sessions since some presbyteries are fairly small.

For changes to two paragraphs in the BCO, this overture comes with another 5 1/2 pages of rational arguing for the changes.  This argument includes a review of two judicial cases, the recent one in Louisiana Presbytery and an older one in Tennessee Valley Presbytery, where other presbyteries wanted the GA to step in but the Standing Judicial Commission ruled that the presbyteries had in deed acted.

But there is also an interesting part that takes this issue back even further to the PCUS in 1940 when four presbyteries requested an investigation of the teachings of E.T. Thompson at Union Seminary in Richmond and the GA declined stating that jurisdiction over a member rest solely with the presbytery of membership.  Two other legislative cases are cited as well.

And in an interesting argument, the Overture considers the constitutions of other Presbyterian branches, the ARP, EPC, RPCNA, and the PCUSA and notes that in each of these denominations original jurisdiction can be exercised pretty much unilaterally by a higher governing body (such as upon complaint by any party in the PCUSA).  It also notes that the OPC has no provision for AOJ.

It will be interesting to see how this fares in the Assembly and, if approved by GA, then in the presbyteries.  Remember, for the PCA changes to the BCO require a 2/3 approval of presbyteries.

Overture 4 from Heritage Presbytery seeks to formalize the usage of the term “Interim Pastor,” a term that currently does not exist in the BCO.  In the index under Interim Pastors is says “see Stated Supply.”  At the present time the BCO only provides for Stated Supply for a full-fledged temporary pastor, but the overture points out that people refer to them as Interim Pastors anyway.  It is interesting to note that this is just being suggested as an alternate term with no definitional distinction being made between the two terms.  I am curious to see if the Assembly thinks that these two terms refer to different types of temporary pastors.  (Or that may just be a PC(USA) thing.)

Overture 5 from James River Presbytery is another request to “Appoint Study Committee on Role of Women in the Church.”  This is more general than the four overtures related to this last year where two of those were specific to studying the role of deaconesses and the other two had deaconesses in mind as well.  I had one post last spring that referenced all four of those overtures.  I would describe the action taken at last year’s Assembly as saying that there was no need for further GA action at this time, but that the Assembly would be keeping in touch with the presbyteries on this through the review process.  If you want more info from last year you can check out my post after the decision, but be sure to read the comments where my interpretations are corrected by ones closer to the action than I.

We will see if more overtures concerning the role of women are coming, but this one asks for a study committee that would report to the next Assembly and address:

  1. What sorts of roles may women fill in the life of the church?
  2. What are some models of local church practices that have developed as ways of employing the gifts of women in the lives of their congregations that might be exemplary and encouraging to other local churches?
  3. What elements of organization and accountability to ordained leadership can be commended to PCA churches that are consistent with the BCO?
  4. What modifications, if any to the BCO might be desirable for achieving the best utilization of the gifts of PCA women in light of the teaching of Scripture?

This overture does not ask for a study of the ordination of women but notes the sufficiency of the current practice.  Whether intended or unintended this study committee, if approved, could open that door.  I could see the Assembly adding another condition that would explicitly keep that door closed if this overture is approved.

Overture 6, another one from Central Carolina Presbytery, is the overture that has circulated already.  It would decouple the BCO Directory for Worship section on marriage from the civil definition of marriage and begin the process to give the marriage section full constitutional authority instead of the advisory authority it has now.  I have a more detailed discussion in my previous comments.

Overture 7 is another detailed, yet brief, overture that a GA Junkie would appreciate but could have a post of its own.  In summary, Southeast Louisiana Presbytery argues that Section 16 of the Manual of the Standing Judicial Commission (found at the end of the BCO PDF) is unconstitutional.  They consider there to be insufficient safeguards on due process and parts of the section to be in direct contradiction to the BCO.  They keep the Overture brief by using a series of short “whereas’s” referencing other documents and precedents, but it also requires the reader to chase down the references to fully appreciate the nature of the complaint.  The overture requests that the the section be declared constitutionally defective and that the Standing Judicial Commission amend the manual.

Overtures 8 and 9 are both from Ascension Presbytery and concern BCO section 13-6 that deals with the transfer of ministers into the PCA from other denominations.  Specifically, overture 8 would adjust that section to make a distinction between ministers transferring from denominations with fraternal relations and those from other denominations.  Those from branches which the PCA has a relationship with would only be required to stand for the same examination as a PCA minister transferring presbyteries.  Those from other denominations would require a more extensive process and examination, up to the same as is required of PCA candidates for ministry if the presbytery deems it necessary.  Overture 9 adds an aditional requirement to 13-6 that men transferring from other denominations state any specific instances that their doctrine differs from the Westminster Standards.  Again, this is also required of candidates.

So, we await the text of overture 1 and I anticipate that there are a few more overtures coming. We will see how all this business develops.  Stay tuned.

Footnote:  My phrase
“Blood on Every Page” comes from the subtitle of a book on Presbyterian polity by William Chapman and embodies the concept that some of what is in our Book of Church Order results from learning through the conflict in the church.  We are after all “Reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God.”

The EPC General Assembly And Other Developments Related To The Ordination Of Women

Leave a reply

It is widely acknowledged that one of the details that is a point of complexity with churches leaving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and going to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is the ordination of women.  In the EPC this is a point of local option — Teaching elders (ministers) for the presbytery and ruling elders and deacons for the session with presbytery concurrence.  (For more on this you can check out a previous post from last August and the EPC Position Paper on the Ordination of Women.)  Back in November a special announcement from the EPC outlined the current status, or box score:

In the EPC, we currently have two presbyteries that
prohibit women teaching elders, two that will not use gender as a
consideration in approving ministers and candidates, two others who
have a procedure in place that allows consideration of women ministers
and candidates without violating conscience, and two that are still
working on the issue and will have come to a conclusion by the second
week of February 2009. One of these, Mid-America Presbytery, will
consider an overture asking the 2009 General Assembly to approve an
affinity presbytery within its boundaries as a response to women
teaching elders.

This special announcement was about a proposal that would be coming to the General Assembly from the New Wineskins/EPC Transitional Presbytery Commission.  This proposal would create a permanent non-geographic presbytery that would have accepted the ordination of women, a presbytery that would have helped PC(USA) churches that realigned with the EPC.

Well it has now been announced in the last couple of weeks that the NW/EPC Transitional Presbytery Commission has withdrawn this proposal.  The announcement lacks specific details, only that it has been discussed at regular meetings over the last couple of months and “At the conclusion of those discussions the Commission decided to withdraw the proposal.”

The announcement from November says that Mid-America Presbytery is considering an overture for an affinity presbytery within it’s bounds, and there is word that this passed at the presbytery meeting last week.  However, there is as yet no overture information on the EPC GA web site, we are waiting for the next edition of the EP News, and I have not yet gotten responses to a couple of inquiries I have made.  So, we will have to wait a bit longer for official confirmation and the details.

Also in the last couple of weeks we have the news reported by Backwoods Presbyterian (Benjamin Glaser) on PuritanBoard and the Rev. David Fischler at The Reformed Pastor that the Presbytery of the East has approved a policy and guidelines for the ordination of women.  The text of the policy:

1. The Presbytery of the East of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church
(EPC) will honor the Christian liberty of individual congregations to
call their ministers and, therefore, will not prohibit candidates for
ordination as Teaching Elders from being processed and presented to
Presbytery due to their gender.

2. All candidates will be
processed as set forth in the Book of Order of the EPC, the EPC
Procedural Manual for Ministerial and Candidates Committees, and the
Presbytery of the East By-Laws.

3. All candidates will be examined in accordance with the EPC’s
specific criteria for ordination and ministerial preparation and must
agree with the Essentials of Our Faith and subscribe to the Westminster
Confession of Faith;

4. Once presented on the floor of Presbytery, candidates will be questioned as set forth in the Book of Order of the EPC.

5. Members of Presbytery will be allowed to vote their consciences in
regards to their Biblical convictions concerning an individual’s
ordination.

6. All members will be treated during the entire process with charity,
grace and the respect due to one who seeks to submit themselves to
Scripture and the calling of the Holy Spirit.

There was some discussion about this on the PuritanBoard and how the influx of PC(USA) churches will put pressure on the EPC regarding complimentarian versus egalitarian views of ordination.

So, I  will keep watching the news and welcome further details or insights on any of these presbytery developments.  And I anticipate an interesting discussion at GA.

Indulgences — You Mean They Are Still Around?

Leave a reply

I am clearly way too immersed in Reformed Theology because when I caught this article in the NY Times today, I did a double take.  You mean indulgences didn’t get discontinued with the Reformation?  That in spite of the logic and arguments of Martin Luther they continued?  I am astounded, and obviously uninformed.

According to the article indulgences were around right up to the Second Vatican Council and now are being reinstated.  The article says:

Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the
traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by
the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church.
Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that
has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict’s recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.

And for those of us uneducated on the topic, the article contains some great background.  For instance, what was affected by the Reformation was the purchase of an indulgence — that was outlawed in 1567.  Now you have to earn it, but you can earn one by giving to charity combined with other good works.  And these are the comprehensive plenary indulgences which eliminate all your purgatory time, at least until your next sin.  And you can only earn one per day.  The Diocese of Brooklyn has it posted on the front page of their web site, but not all dioceses are offering them.  And this is a limited time offer associated with the church’s Pauline Year, but they will probably be offered again at another special anniversary.

The article explains that the indulgence can be an important motivational tool:  An individual who may have drifted from the church and not come to confession for a while can get “caught up” in one fell swoop (although confession is required to get the indulgence) and with a restored status may be more motivated to resume the traditions of the church.  It is a way around the “I’m not good enough to go to church” argument.  And it is a tool to highlight the significance and effects of sin and the value of penance.  The article says:

The latest offers de-emphasize the years-in-Purgatory formulations of
old in favor of a less specific accounting, with more focus on ways in
which people can help themselves — and one another — come to terms with
sin.

As a good introduction to this obscure topic it is a great article and I learned something today.

Clarification:  I did not make it clear that indulgences are for relief from temporal punishment in purgatory, not for forgiveness of sin.  That is why confession is still necessary with the indulgence.  For more technical detail you can find them in Between Two Worlds comments on this story.

Presbyterian Mutual Society To Wind Down

Leave a reply

Well the shareholder vote is in and by a large majority they have accepted the administrator’s plan for an orderly wind-down of the Presbyterian Mutual Society that is related to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.  The shareholders voted on five proposals related to the disposition of the Society and each passed with over 90% approval by the shareholders and with over 88% approval of the creditors.  The PDF copy of the document announcing the results and reporting the vote tallies is available from the Mutual Society.  Additional details are in a Reuters piece.

As I mentioned last time, there are moves to have the British Government back the Society and while no decisions have been made there, it is reported that an agreement in principle has been reached for a meeting with the top political leaders of Norther Ireland.  This is noted in an op-ed piece that the Moderator of the PCI, the Rt. Rev. Donald Patton, wrote for the New Statesman.  The Moderator talks about the situation, the role of the church at this time, and concludes with this paragraph:

Christian faith is being tested, and, just as the principle of
mutuality in financial terms has been under severe pressure, so the
bond of caring fellowship is under strain. At such a crucial time, it
is vital for all in the Church ‘…to carry each other’s burdens and in
this way…fulfil the law of Christ.’ (St Paul’s letter to the Galatians
chapter 6, verse 2)

Status Of The Controversal Call To A Charge In The Church Of Scotland

2 Replies

Like the PC Ireland post from earlier today, this is more of a status report and we are awaiting significant decisions to be made.

For more background you can check my first and second posts on the situation as it developed, but in brief Queen’s Cross Church called the Rev. Scott Rennie to be their pastor and the Presbytery of Aberdeen concurred.  The issue is that the Rev. Rennie is, to use the PC(USA) jargon, a “self-acknowledged practicing homosexual” and intends to live in the manse with his partner.  This was controversial and not everyone approved, including 24 of the 84 members of presbytery that voted on the concurrence.

Since my last post the presbytery vote has been appealed by 12 members of presbytery because of Mr. Rennie’s lifestyle and the appeal has been accepted by the Commission of Assembly.  The council will hear the appeal on March 25 and decide what will happen.  My thanks to Louis Kinsey and his explanation of what could happen from there on his blog Coffee with Louis.  Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

The Commission of Assembly is appointed by the General Assembly each
year and comprises one tenth of the ministers, elders and members of
the diaconate of that General Assembly, plus members ex officiis of
the General Assembly, minus the previous Moderator.  The powers of the
Commission are considerable and its judgements are not subject to
review:

‘provided that any case in which, in the opinion of the
Commission, an important issue of principle is at stake may be referred
by the Commission to the General Assembly.’

It may therefore be the case that the complaint is upheld or denied
there and then, or it may be referred to the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland in May.  Only the Lord knows.

So, at this point we are waiting for the Council meeting on March 25 to see what will happen next.

Update On The Presbyterian Church In Ireland — Moderator Designate And Mutual Society

Leave a reply

I was trying to decide if there was enough here to spend the time writing this post, but I decided that I should close the loop on the Moderator election and do a status update on the Presbyterian Mutual Society.

As I already posted, last Tuesday night the Rev. Stafford Carson of First Portadown was selected by the presbyteries as the Moderator Designate for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.  What is unusual is that this year both the position and the candidate come with a bit of baggage and, as would be expected, both came up at yesterday’s news conference.

The Rev. Carson brings with him some history from his church and his theological view point against the ordination of women.  At the press conference he said:

There’s a minority within the Presbyterian Church who have not been
persuaded about the rectitude of the ordination of women and I am among
that minority. We have had really a
truce on the issue for all my ministry in the Church.

The
Church ordains women and those of us who have a conscience about that,
we don’t frustrate or stand in the way of the Church in doing that.
(From The Independent)

He also said that while he would not have a women preach at his church as a matter of conscience he would listen to women clergy at other churches.

In a matter of more current importance he also addressed the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society.  At the press conference Rev. Carson said that his own church has around £1,000,000 invested in the society.  He emphasized that the church should not stay clear of the crisis, as it initially appeared, but needs to “recover its position with the people” and have a concern for those, primarily the elderly, who lost their life savings in the collapse.  The Belfast Telegraph article also quotes the Moderator Designate as saying he would be willing to go with current Moderator Dr. Donald Patton to a meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown to appeal for government help.

Since my last update on the Mutual Society crisis not much progress has been made on the issue, but there have been a flood of calls for help and relief asking the British Government for help.  From within the PC Ireland this includes a letter from the current Moderator asking for government assistance and a letter from 23 former Moderators echoing the request.  While they acknowledge that there is no legal obligation for the government to get involved they invoke the moral obligation.  The Very Reverend John Dunlop is quoted as saying:

Whenever Gordon Brown became prime minister he said he would be guided by the ethics and morals of his father. Now Gordon Brown was raised in a Presbyterian manse, his father was a Presbyterian minister. So Gordon Brown understands what moral and ethical obligations are. It may be that there is no technical legal obligation to help the mutual society but we believe that there is a moral obligation to
help the mutual society.

But the cries for help are coming from several directions:  In an open letter to the church the Moderator encourages signing an on-line petition and circulation of  the printed version asking Gordon Brown for help for all Mutual Societies.  [Side note that this was pretty interesting.  At the Prime Minister’s official web site, Number10, you can create online e-petitions for people to sign.  Don’t know of anything like this at whitehouse.gov yet.]

And it is not just the church asking for help:  Both the Belfast City Council and the top political leaders in Norther Ireland, the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, are asking Brown to step in.  The argument is that the government should back the Mutual Societies the same as they do banks.  We will see if they decide to, but this issue has a while to run yet and will certainly be a major one for the Rev. Carson.

An Account Of The Amendment 08-B Process In The Presbytery of Western North Carolina

Leave a reply

My thanks to the Rev. Carolyn Poteet and The Layman Online for a good description of the process and deliberations regarding Amendment 08-B in Saturday’s meeting of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina.  The presbytery voted 144 to 108 in favor of the amendment becoming the first presbytery to change their general stance from the vote in 2001-2002.

What does Rev. Poteet identify as a critical or central point?  Here she says:

The
pro side consisted of those wanting to remove the current G-6.0106b and
its fidelity and chastity clause, and put in its place new language
approved by the General Assembly last June. The single most effective
point they made was this: the new language called for obedience to
Jesus Christ first and foremost, while the old language doesn’t mention
Jesus at all. They have a point.

She describes the process the presbytery followed:

I
do want to applaud the way the debate was handled. Two ministers, one
from each side, were allowed seven minutes each to present their cases.
This was followed by a time of silent prayer.



The debate that followed was to be an hour long, with two minutes per
speaker, alternating between pro and con sides. All was decently and in
order. Both sides had excellent moments and awkward moments.



Following the debate, we had another silent prayer and then we voted by
secret ballot. They asked that no one applaud when the results were
announced. We continued on to the rest of our docket, interrupted
briefly by the moment when the counters returned with the news, then
back to our regularly scheduled meeting reports. We were deeply
disappointed, but having a fair hearing did make the results a little
easier to take.

She has a lot of description of the debate itself but makes these observations about the general tone:

Listening
more closely, though, it seemed like the pro arguments sought to mold
Jesus and Scripture into the image of today’s world. If anyone in
history was ever counter-cultural, it was Jesus – followed closely by
Paul. Neither of them was afraid to tell the culture that what they
were doing was wrong.

and

When
it came down to it, the line at their [the pro] microphone was longer than ours.
They had more people with prepared, precisely-timed, two-minute
speeches. And their arguments fit well into the strong current in which
our whole culture has been drifting.


I also thank Ms. Poteet for filling in a significant piece of demographic information for me:

Perhaps
Saturday’s result was because we have lost several of our brothers and
sisters to the greener pastures of the EPC. Perhaps it was because the
heart of our presbytery, Asheville, N.C., is living up to its title of
the “San Francisco of the East.” Perhaps God is at work in ways we
can’t understand right now.

I would note that three churches have departed from the presbytery since the last vote, the largest being Montreat Presbyterian Church.

There is lots more in the piece and while Ms. Poteet’s viewpoint is clear, it is labeled as commentary after all, it strikes me as a very fair and informative assessment of the meeting.  Thank you.

Looking Forward To GA Season — PCA, PC Canada, EPC

Leave a reply

While the PC(USA) is trying to sort itself out after its last General Assembly, most of the rest of the world is starting the cycle over again and preparing for their 2009 GA’s.  And news is starting to filter out.

The Presbyterian Church in America will hold its 37th General Assembly June 16-19 in Orlando Florida.  Registration is now open.

Business is beginning to develop and last week Presbyterians Weekly News reported that Central Carolina Presbytery passed an overture that would:

remove wording that binds obedience to civil law on matters of marriage, and enjoins ministers to perform only marriages that “do not transgress the laws of God”; then begins the process of granting Chapter 59 full constitutional authority.

As civil courts and legislatures begin allowing same-sex marriages the church is looking to protect their religious understanding of the ceremony.

The reference to Chapter 59 of the Book of Church Order (BCO) is interesting:  The Directory for the Worship of God begins at Chapter 47 and not all parts have constitutional authority.  As a preface says:

Temporary statement adopted by the Third General Assembly to preface the Directory for Worship: The Directory for Worship is an approved guide and should be taken seriously as the mind of the Church agreeable to the Standards. However, it does not have the force of law and is not to be considered obligatory in all its parts. BCO 56, 57 and 58 have been given full constitutional authority by the Eleventh General Assembly after being submitted to the Presbyteries and receiving the necessary two-thirds (2/3) approval of the Presbyteries.

So the overture would begin the process to add Chapter 59 on Marriage to the other three that do have authority.  For you information, Chapter 56 deals with baptism, Chapter 57 addresses “The admission of persons to sealing ordnances,” and Chapter 58 is about the Lord’s Supper.

No official list of overtures has appeared yet but I think we can expect that shortly.

Today the Presbyterian Church in Canada issued a press release announcing the four candidates for Moderator of their 135th General Assembly to Convene on June 7 in Hamilton, Ontario. The Moderator is elected ahead of the GA by the presbyteries.  Of the four candidates, the lone elder, Ms. Marilyn Clarke, is from St. Catharines right next to Hamilton.  The other three candidates are all ministers, the Rev. Karen Hincke from Peterborough, Ontario, the Rev. Richard Sand from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and the Rev. Harvey Self from Orangeville, Ontario.

Finally, I mentioned back in November that the Evangelical Presbyterian Church was studying ways to handle the varying viewpoints on ordination of women to church office.  Again, no official list of overtures has been posted for the 29th General Assembly to be held June 25-27 in Brighton, Michigan, but there is the earlier news item about a proposal to create non-geographic affinity presbyteries that is expected.  I’ve gotten word that individual presbyteries are considering things like this as well and it will be interesting to hear the GA discussion on this.  As I’ve speculated before, the PC(USA) migration to the EPC will force some adjustments and this looks like the leading edge.

These are only three of the many upcoming GA’s and I look forward to moderator elections and the posting of business in the next few weeks.  I’ll let you know when I see something interesting.

Amendment 08-B Voting At The 20% Mark

2 Replies

Over the weekend we reached, actually almost reached, the 20% mark of presbyteries voting on Amendment 08-B to change the “fidelity and chastity” section, G-6.0106b, in the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  With the five presbyteries voting on Saturday, 33 out of the 173 presbyteries have now voted, at least according to the unofficial vote counters (Layman, PresbyWeb, Presbyterian Coalition, More Light Presbyterians).  As always, the official tally reported by the stated clerks can be found at the Office of the General Assembly.  There has been an noticeable and expected acceleration in the rate of
voting:  The first 18 voted over the course of three months while the
next fifteen voted in the last week and a half.  At this moment the voting stands at 11 yes and 22 no.

Two interesting developments:
1)  On Saturday we had the first presbytery to approve the new language after voting against changing G-6.0106b in 2001-2002.  The Presbytery of Western North Carolina voted in favor of 08-B by 144 to 108 after voting 100  yes and 187 no for Amendment 01-A.  On both my list and the list kept by Bruce Hahne (and quoted by More Light Presbyterians) this presbytery was not expected to change this much and I will be curious to hear what it was about their process or the situation this time that led to a significant swing.  (I’ll update here if I find anything)

2) Saturday January 24 and Tuesday January 27 must have been good days to attend presbytery meetings because after a string of vote totals that were lower than previous years (with one even), there were two presbyteries each day that exceeded their vote totals on 01-A.  On the 24th Albany had one additional vote and New Castle had ten more.  On the 27th Carlisle had six more.  So not all presbyteries are showing the decline in voting totals.  (In perspective of the long-term totals including the older votes Albany shows a decrease and the other two are fairly constant totals.)

The last presbytery of the four is Utica which voted by voice vote so only an approximate number is available.  A voice vote was appropriate since it was overwhelmingly yes.  The unofficial sites that list the vote totals for Utica all agree on 70 yes and 3 no.  This is a significantly larger total number of votes than the last time which was 24 yes and 8 no.  Checking out the presbytery, it has 35 churches so a minimum of 70 commissioners and then there would be additional for multi-staff churches, those in validated ministries, H.R.’s, and at-large members.  A total of 73 votes would be a high turn-out but seems reasonable to me and I have included it in my statistics, even though the ratio of 2.28 is significantly above all the rest.  I’m considering “correcting” the vote on 01-A.  Going back to the two votes before 01-A the totals are similar, 57 and 61, so 08-B is high and 01-A is low. It would be interesting to see if there was weather or other factors that might have depressed the attendance for voting on 01-A. 

However, in spite of those four increased totals, vote totals are still running below those for 01-A.  The numbers are averaging 86% of what they were last time and enough presbyteries have reported now that a normal distribution (Gaussian) is developing with a mean of 0.86 and a standard deviation of 0.28.  The Utica number is included in there but is a significant outlier and an “adjusted” number brings the standard deviation down to 0.14.

Finally, I am interested in the discernment process that presbyteries are using in voting on 08-B.  A member of Newton Presbytery, the Rev. Mitch Trigger, who is also an officer of the Witherspoon Society, provided the Witherspoon Society web site an account of how the Newton Presbytery discernment process worked.  He notes that it was borrowed from Mid-Kentucky Presbytery.  The process involved responding to three questions about the current language and proposed language using mutual invitation.  In response to this description, Viola Larson at Naming His Grace has posted her own her view of the “spiritual manipulation” involved in the Newton Presbytery process.  I have to agree with a couple of her points about using mutual invitation in a deliberative setting.  From my own experience I have found mutual invitation a useful tool for group study of scripture but it broke down when a task force I was on tried using it for conducting business.

Well, if you thought the last two weeks were busy you should brace yourself because there are still 140 presbyteries to go and most will probably vote in the next two months giving about 18 per week.  While my projections and conversations still seem to be trending against passage, the flip by Western North Carolina has caused the Layman to reevaluate their numbers and admit the possibility of passage of 08-B if more major swings occur.  Needless to say, those that favor 08-B take the Western North Carolina swing as a hopeful sign.  We will see.  Stay tuned.