Category Archives: PC(USA)

The PC(USA) Does Appear To Have A “Lightning Rod”

I have two polity-heavy posts that I have been working on and decided to take a break from those to exercise the other side of my brain and crunch some numbers…

In the initial letter introducing the Fellowship PC(USA) the statement is made

“Homosexual ordination has been the flashpoint of controversy for the last 35 years.”

On most levels I take issue with this because in a larger sense Presbyterians around the world have throughout their history been debating scriptural and confessional imperatives and implications and this is only the latest specific detail over which the discussion is continuing.

But on a more practical level this statement seems to hold a fair amount of validity to me based on my personal experience. For the last several votes on changing Book of Order section G-6.0106b it has always struck me that my own presbytery had significantly higher attendance for the amendment vote meeting than for regular meetings. Even at the beginning of the debate, for our vote to include the current “fidelity and chastity” language in the constitution we had 284 commissioners vote. A couple of meetings later a very contentious issue had 202 commissioners vote. The pattern still continues today as I have had more than one commissioner ask me when our presbytery is voting and when I mention the different meetings for the different amendments they tell me they only want to know about Amendment 10-A.

Well, with the voting this year I have an ideal data set to test whether this observation holds in other presbyteries as well. Short answer – YES!

First, the usual comments on the data I use: My data is aggregated
from numbers from Twitter as well as vote counts at the Covenant Network, Yes on 10-A, Reclaim Biblical Teaching and the Layman.
This aggregation is available in my spreadsheet through this past weekend’s
reports. Because I will be looking at voting on all three major issues — Belhar, nFOG and 10-A — the Layman and Reclaim Biblical Teaching charts provide the full data set. (Note how this in itself is suggestive of my hypothesis about the focus on the 10-A voting as that is the only one followed by all four of these sources.)

Now there are 55 recorded votes for the Belhar Confession, 62 for the nFOG, and 115 for 10-A. (Again, suggestive of the higher-profile nature of 10-A and the need for a recorded vote.) Of these we have 39 recorded pairings of Belhar and nFOG, 36 pairings of Belhar and 10-A, and 45 pairings of nFOG and 10-A.

For those 39 presbyteries with recorded votes on Belhar and nFOG the ratios between the two range from having 31% more votes for Belhar to having 40% less. But the average and median are right at 1.00 indicating that on balance the turnout is the same for those two issues with a fairly symmetric distribution around that.

For the 36 presbyteries that have recorded votes on both 10-A and Belhar there are, on average, 12% more commissioners voting on 10-A than Belhar with the range from 75% higher to 13% lower. The comparison of nFOG to 10-A for those 45 presbyteries is very similar with the average 13% higher for 10-A and the range from 63% higher to 12% lower. With medians at 7% and 5% respectively, the distributions are clearly not as symmetric, having extended tails at the higher end.

I am sure that several of you have already started complaining about the problem with the analysis that I just did – the three votes are not always three independent events but in many cases multiple votes are taken at the same meeting and so, with the exception of a few commissioners who only come for the one vote they are interested in, the total number of votes cast should be, and in several cases are, nearly identical. (The other thing that could cause minor fluctuations is the fact that I don’t include abstentions.)

So, my first point is that in spite of not accounting for independent events the numbers are so robust that the upward shift is visible in this mixed data set.

Well, as much as I would like to separate these out into independent data sets, I have not personally kept a time history of the voting to be absolutely certain of which votes were take at the same meeting and which were not. (If any of you have that information please do the analysis of independent events and let me know how far off I am.) I can tell you several votes were taken at the same meeting and in fact these are very obvious in the posted spreadsheet having only a vote or two variation in the numbers. But let me try to separate out the different votes using my usual criteria that a 4 vote difference or a 4% difference is normal fluctuation and vote totals within this range will be treated as having happened at the same meeting. Also, from here on I will only consider the comparison of the Belhar and 10-A votes for two reasons: 1) My earlier work showing the closer correlation of these two votes still holds, and 2) it is my impression, and only my impression, that presbyteries are tending to do these votes at different meetings more than splitting nFOG and 10-A. After the voting is over I’ll revisit this topic with the final data set and I suspect that we will find a bimodal distribution to help us answer this question.

So, of the 36 presbyteries with recorded votes on both Belhar and 10-A , 20 have noticeable differences in the number of votes. Eighteen of those are higher for 10-A and two are higher for Belhar. Of the ones higher for 10-A they range from 7% higher to 75% higher and have an average increase of 24% with a median increase of 18%. While tempting to do the full frequency distribution analysis at this point, I will save that for a while until there are more data.

Now, accepting the fact that one of my analyses certainly includes dependent events and the other probably has unfairly eliminated independent events, it is still clear that a vote on “fidelity and chastity” brings out the commissioners more than a vote on changing the Book of Confessions. Like it or not, we have to accept the premise from the Fellowship PC(USA) letter that there is a “flashpoint” or “lightning rod” in the denomination.

Before bringing this exercise to a close, let’s ask the obvious question – “Was the increase in commissioners who voted yes or voted no?” The answer is both, but while there is significant variability between presbyteries, it was the no voters who tended to show up for the vote on 10-A. And yes, this is based on the presumption that a commissioner that voted one way on Belhar was going to vote the same way on 10-A so the other way to look at this is that there was a trend for more uniform commissioner turn-out with some commissioners that voted, or would have voted, yes on Belhar to vote no on 10-A.

In terms of the specific numbers, the average number of yes votes increases 7% while the number of no votes more than doubles, rising 102%. However, these are influenced by a couple of presbyteries with a small number of votes in a given column that when they pick up just a few more votes becomes a large ratio. For example, North Alabama had 3 no on Belhar and 28 no on 10-A giving a nine-fold increase. Another case is Central Washington which went from 7 yes on Belhar to 12 yes on 10-A for a 71% increase. With the extreme values present considering the median value of each data set (the value for which half are above and half are below) is more reasonable. Still, the median number of yes votes is up 4% and the median of the no vote increase is 28%.

So when presbyteries have important issues to discuss it appears from this data that commissioners are more likely to show up when the issue is G-6.0106b. I have to agree that for the last few decades the “issue de jour” for the mainline Presbyterians has been sexual orientation and practice, particularly as it applied to those who hold ordained office. But throughout the history of Presbyterianism other issues, such as church-state relations and confessional subscription and standards, have been the flashpoint over which we have debated, and divided. (It would be interesting to know if presbytery meeting attendance increased for votes on modifications to the Westminster Standards earlier in our history.) It also leads to the interesting question of what will become the “issue de jour” if 10-A passes. I think many would see the denomination moving on and rather than staying with modifications to G-6.0106b the next discussion point will probably be the definition of marriage (W-4.9001). But maybe it is something else that does not come to my mind at the moment. And the question of whether we Presbyterians need an issue as the focus of our debate is a topic for another time. We will see what develops over the next few years.

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

The Fog Around nFOG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Déjà vu all over again. Sound familiar?

Over the past year, a group of PC(USA) pastors has become convinced that to remain locked in unending controversy will only continue a slow demise, dishonor our calling, and offer a poor legacy to those we hope will follow us… Our purpose is to LIVE INTO new patterns as they are created, modeling a way of faith: the worship, supportive fellowship, sharing of best practices, and accessible theology that brings unity and the Spirit’s vitality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned…

Cross-Issue Correlation In PC(USA) Amendment Voting

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OK, I need to get two things onto the table right at the beginning of this post:

Yes, this is an extremely geekish and polity wonkish post, but that’s what interests me and this analysis is the one I have really wanted to do since the 219th General Assembly adjourned last July. I do think there is something important about the PC(USA) in here so if you want to skip the data analysis and jump to the end you will find my discussion there.
I posted a preliminary result on Twitter on Saturday but got the variables confused. Sorry about that. I posted a correction on Twitter and will point out the error when I come to it in this post.

So, the question that has had me on the edge of my seat is the degree to which each of the three high-profile amendments is correlated with the other two. I took an initial pass at this question a couple of weeks back and found a strong correlation. That correlation has weakened a bit but is still present, stronger in some relationships than others. While it still may be a bit premature to make strong conclusions from the data at this point in time, I think I’ve got enough data to do a preliminary analysis.

Now, if you are looking for just the vote results after last Saturday here is the “word on the street.” Belhar is still not getting the 2/3 it needs with 32 yes and 28 no. The New Form of Government continues to have weak support and still trails, currently at 25 to 31. The story of the last week is that support for Amendment 10-A continues at the pace we have seen throughout the month and with three more presbyteries switching their votes a total of 12 presbyteries have shifted to “yes” with only one shifting to “no.” At this point enough presbyteries have shifted (a net of nine was needed) that with all the rest of the presbyteries voting as they did in the last round Amendment 10-A will be approved. At the end of the weekend the vote stood at 55 to 41. No further analysis of that today, I’ll come back to that in another week or two. (Particularly in light of the question about the vote totals that is raised at the end of the next paragraph.)

First, the usual details regarding data: For my data I have aggregated numbers from Twitter as well as vote counts at the Covenant Network, Yes on 10-A, Reclaim Biblical Teaching and the Layman. This aggregation is available in my spreadsheet. I have also updated my cross-vote spreadsheet through Saturday’s reports. The analysis below is more sensitive to the exact vote count and where the tally sheets sometimes differ a bit I have used either a majority among them, the Twitter reports, or a consistency in total votes to select a preferred number. This is also probably a good place to add that the voting is not finished yet and this analysis is only preliminary based on the current data. And in a very interesting development today as I was finishing this up, the official vote tally from the Office of the General Assembly was posted. It has caught the attention of several of us because it has numbers significantly different than the unofficial sites — nFOG 38 to 25, Belhar 38 to 18, and 10-A 47 to 33. The difference is presumably due to reports by presbytery stated clerks not reflected in the unofficial counts. Hopefully with time the two sets of lists will converge.

So, let’s take the three comparisons from strongest to weakest (and if you want to see the graphs in more detail they are larger in their original form and you can open them individually):

Belhar to nFOG
The strongest relationship between the issues is between the votes on the Belhar Confession and the New Form of Government. (This is the one I should have pointed out in the tweet on Saturday.) So far 33 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 27 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes. Looking at the numbers you can see the strength in both the cross-tabulation and the linear regression:

n=33	Belhar yes	Belhar no
nFOG yes	10 30%	2 7%
nFOG no	1 3%	20 60%

Bottom line: The strength of a presbytery’s vote on nFOG is going to be very close to the strength of a presbytery’s vote on Belhar. The fit of the linear line is good with an R² = 0.73 (a number very much like correlation that I talked about in a previous post with 1.0 as a good and 0.0 as not correlated, but this number is always positive), and a slope pretty close to 1 (the two vote percentages increase in the same proportion). This is seen in the yes/no comparison where 30 presbyteries have voted the same way on both issues and only 3 (10%) have voted opposite on them.

Belhar to Amendment 10-A
The next strongest relationship between the issues is that between the votes on the Belhar Confession and Amendment 10-A. (This is the one I incorrectly pointed to in the tweet.) So far 35 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 25 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes. Here is what the numbers look like:

n=35	Belhar yes	Belhar no
10-A yes	17 49%	3 9%
10-A no	3 9%	12 34%

Bottom line: The strength of a presbytery’s vote on Amendment 10-A is going to be related to the strength of a presbytery’s vote on Belhar, but not as strongly as for the last case and not in 1:1 proportion. In this case, the fit of the linear line is not as good, but still moderate, with an R² = 0.62 and a slope 0.51. There is also a significant upward shift in the trend line of almost 20%. What this means is that for presbyteries not strongly in favor of Belhar, on average there is a 20% “base” in favor of Amendment 10-A. On the other end, a presbytery strongly in favor of Belhar has, on average, a 30% “base” opposed to Amendment 10-A. The yes/no comparison also shows that the linkage is not as strong and direct where 29 presbyteries have voted the same way on both issues and six (18%) have voted opposite on them. From these results, the association of these two issues is only partial and the attitudes on one are not driving the other as strongly as might be suspected.

nFOG to Amendment 10-A
The weakest relationship is between the votes on the nFOG and Amendment 10-A. So far 36 presbyteries have voted on both of these issues, and 23 of those have recorded vote numbers on both votes. Here is what the numbers look like:

n=36	nFOG yes	nFOG no
10-A yes	12 33%	5 14%
10-A no	5 14%	14 42%

Bottom line: There is a weak, positive relationship between a presbytery’s voting strength on nFOG and the vote strength on 10-A. However, as can be seen in the scatter of the data on the graph, especially at the higher end the relationship is weak. The scatter in the data is evident with R² = 0.39 and the lower slope of 0.46 also suggestive of a weaker linkage. The yes/no comparison supports that the association is not as strong and direct with almost 1/3 of the presbyteries voting opposite ways on the two issues.

Discussion and Conclusions
I must admit that the strength of the Belhar/nFOG association was a bit of a surprise to me. With the on-going discussion of the synergy between Belhar and 10-A I was expecting to that to have the strongest correlation. And the very nearly 1:1 association means that they two issues probably elicit the same response from any given commissioner. One thought that occurred to me is the similar nature of these two issues in regards to their impact on PC(USA) polity. While the impact of each is still being debated and is, to a certain degree, unknown, if approved they each would leave a significant mark on the constitutional documents. There could also be a less tangible factor in the willingness to preserve the status quo — since these two amendments have similar impacts on the established order of things it is reasonable to presume that if a commissioner had a particular comfort level with changing one of them, they would have a similar comfort level changing the other. But whether it is related to those explanations, or other factors, the data appear to show that even if presbytery commissioners don’t necessarily explicitly link them, they still seem to think about them in the same way.

Having said that, and recognizing the vote tally differences from today’s announcement, I need to point out that it appears point twice as many presbyteries have voted against both of them as have approved them. This raises a couple of questions when we look at the voting trends for the issues by themselves since the votes overall are more even. The first thing is that as the double-issue voting catches up the close agreement could go away. But if the close agreement continues, and considering that one currently has a majority and the other does not, we might expect the vote margins to narrow. We also open up the possibility that Belhar might not even receive a majority vote if nFOG continues to not receive a majority. The opposite could also be true – that nFOG will be pulled up by future positive voting on Belhar.

We could also ask the question about the strength of Belhar from the 10-A relationship. Doing a back of the envelope calculation and extrapolating out the 10-A voting based on current proportions a 99 to 75 final vote (56.6% yes vote) would be a reasonable conclusion. If we then mix apples and oranges and ignore whichis the the dependent and which the independent variables, plugging 56.6% yes vote on 10-A into the regression formula gives a 73% yes vote on Belhar. Fun to speculate but I just violated too many mathematical and data rules to really believe that. A more valid approach would be to take the presbytery yes/no vote cross-tabulation as a guide where we see that at the present time the opposite voting categories would off-set each other. This would suggest that for presbyteries (apples to apples) the Belhar final vote could would be very close to the 10-A final count, in which case 56.6% won’t get it approved.

I’m not sure there is much to say about the weak correlation between nFOG and 10-A. This is more of what I was initially expecting since the two issues do not have a lot in common polity-wise. The weak linkage seen could be some polity point I am overlooking or a desire to preserve the status quo. Either way, there is not enough strength in that correlation to risk making any conclusions about one from the outcome of the other.

So that is what I see at this point. I will point out again that this is truly preliminary since at this time for each pairing only around 1/5 of the presbyteries have voted on both amendments. I look forward to seeing how this progresses as the voting continues filling in the missing data. Stay tuned…

PC(USA) Amendment 10-A Voting About To Reach Half-Way Point

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There has been a flurry of presbytery voting this past week with some interesting developments. Here is a quick summary and some observations.

Following presbytery meetings last Saturday it appears from the reports that 81 out of the 173 presbyteries have voted on Amendment 10-A, quickly approaching the half-way mark of 87 presbyteries. A potentially bigger development is the flurry of presbyteries that have voted “yes” on 10-A after voting “no” on 08-B in the last round. The number of presbyteries switching now stands at a net change of eight towards “yes,” with nine total switching to “yes” and one switching to “no.” Since a net change of nine is necessary for the passage of 10-A (it was 78 “yes” and 95 “no” last time) if the current trend continues it is reasonable to expect that 10-A will be approved. However, don’t take that as a done deal because 1) part of being Presbyterian is the process and 2) just as there was a flurry of “yes” changes this weekend there could as easily be a momentum shift with a number of “no” switches in the future. Oh, and if you are keeping count I think the vote is 46 “yes” and 35 “no.”

One of the interesting things in the past few weeks was how the three votes were tracking together — That has changed somewhat. The first observation is that while there was a burst of voting on 10-A, there was not a corresponding burst on Belhar or nFOG. At the present time 51 presbyteries have voted on Belhar and 47 have voted on nFOG. Breaking it down, I have 12 presbyteries that have voted on all three amendments, 14 that have voted on Belhar and nFOG but not 10-A, 15 that have voted only on nFOG and 10-A, and 13 that have voted on 10-A and Belhar only. That gives a total of 61 presbyteries (including my own) who have not voted on any of the amendments yet.

The second thing that struck me was a bit of a weakening of the cross-issue correlation I commented on a little while ago. While I have not done a full recalculation of my chart to include Saturday’s voting, looking at the numbers it seems there have been a few presbyteries who have voted “yes” on 10-A and “no” on nFOG, to the point that while 10-A is currently passing nFOG is trailing 21-26. I don’t know if it is this trend, or just a coincidence, that a few days ago GA Moderator Cynthia Bolbach in her monthly column encouraged passage of the new Form of Government and pointed readers to the nFOG blog. ( And yes, Ms. Bolbach’s statement to avoid nFOG advocacy applied only to the sessions of the General Assembly and not the voting period.) And if you are keeping score at home, both Belhar (needs 2/3 to pass) and nFOG are currently trailing, the former 28 to 23 and the latter 21 to 26.

I will leave further analysis of Belhar and nFOG for another time as well as the cross-issue trends. But taking a more detailed look at 10-A voting we have 73 presbyteries with reported numbers for their votes on both 08-B and 10-A. I have aggregated these numbers from Twitter as well as vote counts at the Covenant Network, Yes on 10-A, Reclaim Biblical Teaching and the Layman. This aggregation is available in my spreadsheet.

At the present time the total reported number of voting commissioners is 8635, down 8% from the corresponding 08-B total of 9337. Votes for 10-A have increased slightly from last time, 4602 to 4726, a 3% increase. Votes against have dropped 17% from 4735 to 3909.

In the chart below I try to graphically show the different results from the presbyteries. I use my usual margin of a 4% change (or 4 votes for small numbers) being random variation, and so the numbers in that range are considered equivalent for this analysis. And for the chart below, the comparisons mentioned (Y>N, Y<N, Y=N) are the magnitude or the absolute value of the change in Yes and No votes. For example, if Yes votes decreased by 15 votes and No votes increased by 6 votes, that would be counted under the “Y decrease, N increase, Y>N” box. I hope that makes sense.

Y increase
N decrease
Y > N

n=8
11%

Y increase
N decrease
Y < N

n=13
18%

Y increase
N decrease
Y = N

n=4
5%

N no change
Y increase

n=7
10%

Y increase
N increase
Y > N

n=1
1%

Y increase
N increase
Y = N

n=0
0%

Y increase
N increase
Y < N

n=0
0%

Y no change
N decrease

n=13
18%

Y and N
no change

n=4
5%

Y no change
N increase

n=3
4%

Y decrease
N decrease
Y < N

n=4
5%

Y decrease
N decrease
Y = N

n=6
8%

Y decrease
N decrease
Y > N

n=4
5%

N no change
Y decrease

n=3
4%

Y decrease
N increase
Y = N

n=2
3%

Y decrease
N increase
Y < N

n=0
0%

Y decrease
N increase
Y > N

n=1
1%

See any patterns? There is a tendency for “no” votes to decrease — in 10% of the presbyteries they increase, in 19% the no votes are constant, and 71% of the time they decrease. And there is a weaker tendency for yes votes to increase — in 45% of the presbyteries it increases, in 27.5% they remain the same, and in 27.5% they decrease. But if you are looking for patterns of no decreases or yes increases it is tough to make a strong argument for a consistent behavior across all the presbyteries. The best we can say is that the two cases of decreases in “no” with stable “yes” and decreases in “no” with smaller increases in “yes” comprise about 1/3 of the presbytery vote changes. The other 2/3 are more evenly distributed across a greater variety of cases.

OK, eyes glazed over? The object of this extensive enumeration is to make the point that there is little in the way of strong trends that one can point at. Is the trend for shifting from “no” votes to “yes” votes? Yes, in several presbyteries like Central Florida where the total number was stable (a 3 vote/1% drop) but there were 17 more “yes” votes and 20 fewer “no” votes. And then there is Stockton where there were 50 votes each time but five votes shifted from “yes” to “no.” Yes, we can say that there are fewer “no” votes overall, but sometimes that comes at no increase in “yes” votes, as in the case of Cimarron, and sometimes with a substantial decrease in “yes” votes as well, such as happened in Heartland.

Bottom line – there are a few trends but if you are looking for easy explanations (like “the conservatives are leaving” or there is a “shift to equality” ) it is hard to tease that out as a simple rule when you look on a case-by-case basis at presbytery voting. Presbyteries are amazingly unique entities — that is what I have found in my years of tracking this stuff. (And that does not even include consideration of weather conditions, wind direction, what show in on in prime time that evening, or who is having a conference in Phoenix.) Believe me, I would love easy answers. But I have lost count of the number of numerical models I have made that are either solvable but too simplistic or complex but underdetermined.

So we will see how the voting goes in the next few weeks. We are getting enough data that I can start calculating robust statistics and frequency distributions like I have in the past. And I will try to keep the cross-tabulation above updated as well as the cross-issue correlation chart. So stay tuned…

Strong Cross-Issue Correlation In PC(USA) Amendment Voting To Date

New PC(USA) GAPJC Decision — The Southard Decision

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Yesterday the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released their decision in disciplinary case 220-102:

Southard v. PC(USA) through Presbytery of Boston

If you are looking for a sound-bite length summary of the whole case you will not find one. The Commission has given us a multi-layered decision, but has done us the favor of helping to define the layers.

The facts of the case are agreed by both sides: That on March 1, 2008, the Rev. Jean Southard officiated at a marriage ceremony between two women in Waltham, Massachusetts. The ceremony was characterized by the participants as a “Christian Marriage.” Further details are enumerated in the history section of the opinion to show that this same-sex ceremony was represented as a marriage ceremony.

Two additional legal details are important to keep in mind here:

At the time of this ceremony same-sex civil marriage was legal in the state of Massachusetts.
The decision in disciplinary case 218-12, Spahr v. PC(USA) through Presbytery of Redwoods, was decided on April 28, 2008, about two months after this ceremony was preformed.

In the Presbytery Permanent Judicial Commission trial the Commission acquitted the Rev. Southard saying in part:

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

This was overturned on appeal by the Presbytery to the PJC of the Synod of the Northeast. The Rev. Southard appealed that decision to the GAPJC.

First layer: The specific actions of Rev. Southard
The GAPJC wrote this regarding the charges related to the ceremony preformed by Rev. Southard:

This Commission concluded in Spahr that prior authoritative interpretations lacked mandatory language. Southard conducted this ceremony two months prior to Spahr. Sensitive to the authoritative interpretation in Spahr, this Commission agrees with the SPJC that Spahr cannot be applied retroactively to the facts of this case. Therefore, Southard did not violate the Book of Order or her ordination vows by erring in her constitutional interpretation. She did not commit an offense because the applicable authoritative interpretation (Spahr) had not yet been promulgated.

So, a definite line has been drawn in PC(USA) polity at April 28, 2008, when the GAPJC decision in the Spahr case provided an authoritative interpretation that the language in the Directory for Worship is mandatory.

Based on this conclusion the charges against the Rev. Southard are not valid and she is acquitted of violating the constitutional requirements of the PC(USA). The first two specifications of error in the appeal, the ones dealing with the specific charges, are sustained.

Second layer: Constitutional Interpretation
Here is the “but” that the GAPJC seems to be putting in the decision. The third specification of error deals not with the specifics of the ceremony preformed by with more general constitutional interpretation:

The SPJC erred in constitutional interpretation by determining that a minister of the Word and Sacrament who performs (participating in and directing) a same-gender marriage as a Christian marriage commits an offense prohibited by the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Authoritative Interpretations and violates his or her ordination vows.

This specification of error was not sustained. The decision essentially says that the status quo, the current prohibition made mandatory in the Spahr decision, is in effect. The new polity twist in this case was the fact that same-sex marriage is legal in some states, but the GAPJC says that when it comes to Christian Marriage in the PC(USA) that does not matter:

The question before this Commission, then, is whether the Massachusetts law defining this relationship as a legal marriage changes the impact of the definitions in W-4.9001. This Commission holds that it does not. While the PCUSA is free to amend its definition of marriage, a change in state law does not amend the Book of Order. It is the responsibility of the church, following the processes provided in the Constitution for amendment, to define what the PCUSA recognizes as a “Christian marriage.” Consequently, Spahr’s holding, “By the definition in W-4.9001, a same sex ceremony can never be a marriage,” remains in effect.

This Commission further held in Spahr, for prospective application, “that the liturgy should be kept distinct for the two types of services.” In light of the change in the laws of some states, this Commission reiterates that officers of the PCUSA who are authorized to perform marriages, when performing a ceremony for a same-gender couple, shall not state, imply, or represent that the same-gender ceremony is an ecclesiastical marriage ceremony as defined by PCUSA polity, whether or not the civil jurisdiction allows same-gender civil marriages.

So, it was not an offense back in March of 2008, and it might not be prohibited at some future point, but the Commission reasserts that it is prohibited now in the church, even if civil same-sex marriage is permitted by the state. This also seems to imply that while the officiating pastor may not be guilty of an offense, if the Spahr decision is extended to this one, no marriage ceremony was actually preformed since “a same sex ceremony can never be a marriage.”

Technical details
There are four more specifications of error which were decided on procedural grounds. In the case of specifications 4 and 5 they were not sustained because they “do not accurately reflect the holding of the SPJC as to the matters involved.” In the case of specifications 6 and 7, the errors were sustained. These dealt with the decision of the SPJC which reversed the PPJC’s decision when it should have remanded the case back to the PPJC for a new trial and in doing so did not provide specificity on one of the charges. With the dismissal of the charges these are rendered moot.

Concurring Opinions
There are three concurring opinions attached to this decision.

1) This opinion, signed by five commissioners, expresses the sentiment that this is at its core a human rights issue and in light of that urges the PC(USA) to “amend the constitution to allow for the marriage of same sex couples in the PCUSA, and otherwise welcome gay, lesbian, and bisexual people into the full fellowship of the church.”

2) This is the longest concurring opinion, running a full page in narrative, signed by six commissioners. Four of these six also signed the first concurring opinion. As the authors say, “[Our] concern is whether W-4.9001 provides an effective and unambiguous definition of Christian marriage.” To the point they write later on:

To claim that this paragraph is primarily and intentionally legal in nature places a strain upon its obvious narrative purpose. As a fourfold theological outline of Christian marriage in narrative form, it is arguable that it propose
s either regulatory imperative or legal intention. Certainly, it does not have the kind of language or format that the church has come to expect in definitional statements, for the language in this paragraph is not obviously legislative, in the sense of providing regulatory lines that define boundaries or proscribe behavior.

and

Thus, W-4.9001 has become contested regarding whether it can bear the interpretive weight that judicial process and decision has put upon it. The church needs a sharper degree of clarification and guidance that precisely defines how it understands marriage, especially in light of the high financial and personal burden involved.

For all the polity wonks out there, I recommend having a look at this concurring opinion — you may or may not agree with it, but they have done a good job of clearly stating where there might be problems when theological narrative is applied as polity for judicial process. (And now I am going to have a look at nFOG and see how it would stand up to this test.)

3) I will let the opening paragraph of the third concurring opinion, signed by three commissioners, speak for itself:

We concur with the Decision of the Commission, and with the holding that Spahr is not applicable as precedent because the actions taken by Southard took place before the Spahr Decision was rendered. However, it is disingenuous of Southard to claim that no guidance was available from the larger church on the advisability of performing a same-gender marriage.

Their point is that the Spahr Decision is not the first one and enough guidance is present in the 1991 Authoritative Interpretation and the 2000 Benton Decision to have discouraged this ceremony from happening. The opinion concludes “While Southard may be commended for her desire to provide compassionate pastoral care, a failure to seek out the guidance of the larger Church would raise a concern about Southard’s willingness to ‘be governed by our church’s polity, and to abide its discipline.'”

Personal Comments
Having served on the PC(USA) Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage I want to add just a brief comment about the polity situation the PC(USA) now finds itself in.

As the second concurring opinion points out so clearly, section W-4.9001 of the Book of Order provides a theological definition of marriage where even the civil dimension is part of God’s order. Our committee was painfully aware that there are on-going changes in the civil realm that those of us of faith can speak to, but the church as an institution can not control. This means that the second point of the four-fold definition of marriage is something we as a church can not specify and yet we have it in our constitution. While some of us would have liked to have seen something done, with the theological diversity on the committee the exact nature of the adjustment was not immediately clear. The discussion was however moot since our charge from the General Assembly was to make our report a social witness document and the charge excluded from our purview constitutional changes. As you are probably aware, the 219th General Assembly accepted our report for study and took no further action on constitutional changes.

Looking Forward
If you are following these issues in the PC(USA) then you are no doubt aware that another, similar case is working its way through the judicial process. Back in August there was a new trial for the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr where she was charged with, and found guilty of, conducting same-sex marriages. The circumstances are similar because such marriages were permitted under California law at the time they were preformed. She has filed an appeal to the Synod PJC and there is every expectation that whatever the decision is there an appeal to the GA PJC will be heard at some point in the next year or so.

As you might expect this case comes with an additional twist of its own. The presbytery sustained the charge that Rev. Spahr had “persisted in a pattern or practice of
disobedience concerning the aforementioned authoritative interpretation
of the Book of Order.”

At first glance, it appears that the GAPJC has now clearly set the legal tests for hearing this case. The PPJC seems to have thought so in finding her guilty but expressing their personal disagreement with the outcome. But as we know, there is still the appeal to be heard by the Synod PJC and there may be other procedural issues that arise. We will see how the process plays out.

Well, I think you see why I described this decision as defying simple sound bites. On the one hand, this case is over and the defendant has been found not guilty. On the other hand, the PC(USA) constitutional standard – as currently understood by judicial commission interpretation – has been reiterated, including the understanding that earlier same-sex marriage ceremonies could not, by definition, actually be marriage ceremonies in the PC(USA). Stay tuned to see where this legal standard takes us in the future…

Further Thoughts On The Fellowship PC(USA)

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Well, I have had a couple of days to reflect on the Fellowship PC(USA) letter, announcement, and white paper. I have also had a bit of time to reflect on my own reaction and ask if I jumped too quickly. The answer to that is maybe yes and maybe no. More on that at the end. But first, some comments on the white paper and the developments so far.

Time For Something New – A Fellowship PC(USA) white paper

I have now read the white paper referenced in the original letter and for those who have not read it, it is essentially an extended discussion of the same material as the letter. In fact, the letter is pretty much a condensed version of the white paper with the meeting announcement and the signatures added.

On the side that maybe I did respond too quickly, I was interested to see that the extended discussion in the white paper addresses a couple of the issues I had with the letter. On the topic of the conflict and decline in the PC(USA) being about more than the homosexuality issue, the white paper contains this paragraph which the letter does not:

Certainly none of these issues are unique to the PCUSA, [sic] but are all part of larger cultural forces. But what is the way forward? Is there a future beyond the decline as yet unseen? Is there a way to avoid endless fights, to regain consensus on the essence of the Christian faith? We see no plan coming from any quarter, leaving a continued drift into obsolescence.

While it does not seem to consider the broad range of issues the mainline/oldline faces, at least it acknowledges the “larger cultural forces” that are in play here.

Likewise, a couple of my other concerns are moderated in the white paper. Regarding the diversity and inclusively, they say that they are speaking as a group of pastors but explicitly say “We call others of a like mind to envision a new future…” Regarding the reference to the PC(USA) as “deathly ill” that was a lightning rod in the letter, the phrase is not used in the white paper but instead they say “The PCUSA [sic] is in trouble on many fronts.” (And as you can see the white paper uses my less-preferred acronym PCUSA instead of the PC(USA) used in the letter.) And finally, there is more acknowledgement of similar predecessor organizations and explanation of why a new one:

We recognize that there are still islands of hope across the church, but they do not seem to represent a movement. Many faithful groups and organizations have been devoted to the renewal of the PCUSA, and they have offered valuable ministry for many years. Yet it appears they have simply helped slow down a larger story of decline. Is it time to acknowledge that something in the PCUSA system is dying?

and

In many ways this [new] association may resemble some of the voluntary organizations of the past (PGF, PFR, etc.) but it is only a way station to something else. It is an intermediate tool to begin to bring together like minded congregations and pastors to begin the work of another future, different than the current PCUSA.

So some of these ideas are more developed in the 3 1/2 page white paper than they are in the 2 page letter.

Response

It was interesting to see how quickly word spread about the original letter on Twitter and the concerns that many people expressed. This seems to have led to two rapid responses.

The Fellowship PC(USA) saw a need to respond quickly and the day following the distribution of the letter they put out a one-page FAQ addressing some of the concerns I and others had. Specifically, they address the narrow demographic of the original group (white, male, pastors mostly of larger “tall-steeple” churches). The response is that this letter was only the beginning of a conversation that they want to broadly include all aspects of the church. Of course, they get another negative comment from me because in an apparent effort to say that the conversation should include more than clergy they use the phrase “clergy/non-ordained as equal partners.” (Ouch! That hurt this ruling elder.) This has now been changed to “clergy/laity.” Sorry, no better. At best this comes off as a technical glitch that in either wording does not include ruling elders as ordained partners in governance with teaching elders (clergy). At worst, while probably not intended to be so, it strikes me as a Freudian slip or condescending comment that teaching elders are somehow superior to ruling elders in all this. OK, soapbox mode off. (And yes, if you think I am being super-sensitive about this one little detail, this GA Junkie is by nature super-sensitive to that one little detail. Sorry if that bothers you.)

The FAQ also addresses the relationship to the New Wineskins Association of Churches, other renewal groups, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and why their plan is better, different, reasonable, or something like that.

The Fellowship has also updated the letter (the old link is broken) with a revised one that appears to be the same text but has a longer list of signatories that now includes ruling elders and women. The original seven names are there for the steering committee, but the 28 names for concurring pastors has grown to 95 (including a couple of women) and there is now a category for Concurring Elders, Lay Leaders and Parachurch Leaders with 15 names. (And I suspect that this will be a dynamic document that will be updated as more individuals sign on.)

The Fellowship letter and viral response, possibly influenced by the concurrent meeting of the Middle Governing Bodies Commission, elicited a response from the PC(USA) leadership with a letter on Friday from Moderator Cynthia Bolbach, Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, and GAMC Executive Director Linda Valentine. This message, titled Future of the church: GA leaders invite all Presbyterians to join in conversation, cites not just the letter but several more conversations going on in the PC(USA) through the MGB Commission, and other task forces. One of their concluding lines is “We ask that those who would challenge us also join with all of us across the church as we work together to make that happen.” I also applaud their openness to the whole of the Presbyterian family as they address the letter to “All Presbyterians” and part-way through the letter say “Presbyterians everywhere long for vibrant congregations and communities
of faith, and relationships built upon trust and our common faith in
Jesus Christ.”

I mention this broad-mindedness since these developments have caught the attention of the wider Presbyterian family in the blogosphere and there are comments about it by David Fischler at Reformed Pastor and Benjamin Glaser at Mountains and Magnolias. Within the PC(USA) ranks there is a nice analysis by Katie Mulligan who has a summary of the demographics of the churches represented by the original signatories. (Thanks Katie. It was something I started to do, but as the signatory list became a moving target I reorganized my thoughts and it will appear as a slightly different statistical analysis in the future.)

There is also an unofficial response
from the affinity group Voices for Justice. They reject the viewpoint
the Fellowship letter has of the PC(USA) and urge working together as
one denomination.

A Case Study in Social Media

Probably what interests me the most in all of this is how it played out. As best as I can tell, this went viral, or as viral as something can go within the denomination, within about five or six hours. The letter and the Fellowship group itself seem like somewhere we have been before and we will see if it plays out any differently. How this played on Twitter is something else altogether and I’m not sure anything like this has spread through the PC(USA) Twitter community in the same way.

So here is the timeline from my perspective (all time PST)(note: items marked * have been added or updated):

Feb. 2, 10:46 AM – Fellowship letter hits my email box
Feb. 2, 11:32 AM – Tweet from @preslayman announcing their posting of the letter – The first tweet I can find.
Feb. 2, 12:32 PM – John Shuck posted his first blog entry, tweeted announcement at 1:25 PM
Feb. 2, 3:00 PM – Tweet from @ktday that asks “what do you think of this” – quickly and heavily retweeted; beginning of the flood of tweets
Feb. 2, 3:17 PM – @lscanlon of the Outlook puts out a series of tweets reporting the letter
Feb. 2, 3:32 PM – My first blog post, I tweeted announcement of it at same time
Feb. 2, 7:12 PM – Time stamp on the Outlook article.*
Feb. 3, 2:31 PM – First tweet I saw about the Fellowship FAQ, from @CharlotteElia
Feb. 4, 8:56 AM – @leahjohnson posts first tweet I found about the PC(USA) leadership response*
Feb. 4, 9:01 AM – @Presbyterian official announcement by tweet of the denomination leadership response
Feb. 4, 10:10 AM – Katie Mulligan posted her blog article
Feb. 4, 11:07 AM – @shuckandjive announces the Voices for Justice response

Now that is what I saw. Please let me know if you have other important events in this history that should be on the time line. And I am going to keep researching it myself and it may grow.

So, I have to give credit to the Fellowship leadership, or at least their response team, for being able to turn around a response FAQ in 27 hours. Nice job also by the denominational leadership for having a comment out in less than 48 hours.

In the realm of social media this is a very interesting development – that in the course of a day or two a topic could gather so much attention that the major parties each feel the need, or pressure, to weigh in on the subject. And that the originating organization received enough criticism and critique that they so quickly issued a clarification and updated list of names. In case you don’t think the world of communications has changed you need to take a serious look at how a topic, admittedly a hot one but one of limited interest outside our circle of tech-savvy and enthusiastic participants, has played out in just 48 hours.

And I would note that the PC(USA) is not alone in this. In my observation of the PCA voting on their Book of Church Order amendments this year, and the ultimate non-concurrence by the presbyteries, social media, especially the blogosphere, played a major role.

So here I am commenting on it 72 hours after it broke. Was my first response reasonable? As I comment above, it was on only one piece of the evidence and it took me a couple more days to find time to read the white paper. But then again, maybe it was. The situation developed rapidly and having my own rapid response to the letter meant that the initial concerns I raised were among those addressed in the clarification the next day.

Now the big question – is all of this a good thing? I will leave the ultimate answer up to each of you. I have, in a bit of a play within a play, personally demonstrated what I see as both the negatives and the positives — my initial response was not as well developed as it could have been but in the reality of the new social media world it helped (I would hope) to propel the conversation forward. Don’t we live in interesting times…

So where from here? It will be very interesting to see what further role social media plays in this going forward. Will this discussion become a topic for more narrowly focused groups who continue their work off-line, or will the new realities force or require this topic to remain viable in the extended social media community of the PC(USA). It will be interesting to see, and I would expect that if this Fellowship initiative is to really propel discussion of the future of the PC(USA) they will need to embrace the reality of the connected church. I think we need a hashtag.

An Interesting Invitation And Some Of My Preliminary Reactions

2 Replies

I got an interesting invitation in my e-mail today, and I’d bet that at least a few of my regular readers got it as well. As I read it over I had some pretty quick reactions to some of the items, both positive and negative, and thought I would spend my lunch hour reflecting on these a bit. For me, this can be dangerous because my first reaction often is sarcastic and snarky. So either move along to other reading or enable your snark filters before going any further if that might be a problem for you.

The invitation came in the form of a letter from “A Fellowship of Presbyterian Pastors” inviting me to a gathering next summer. (If you don’t have a copy of the letter you can download one.) Those of you who know me realize that this in itself throws up a red flag in my mind. Not the gathering but that it is coming from a group that contains exclusively teaching elders — no ruling elders. Now to be clear, the invite is to ruling elders as well as teaching elders, so this is not another case of receiving mail incorrectly addressed to “Dear Rev. Salyards.” But I must admit that as I looked through the letter and read through the signatories the first thing I thought of was RE Beau Weston’s thought piece Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment. More on the signatories in a moment, but on to the content.

The letter begins

To say the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is deathly ill is not
editorializing but acknowledging reality.

Interesting. We are “deathly ill?” OK, read on and I’ll address that in a moment…

Over the past year, a group of PC(USA) pastors has become convinced that
to remain locked in unending controversy will only continue a slow
demise, dishonor our calling, and offer a poor legacy to those we hope
will follow us.

I tend to think that it is not the presence of controversy itself, but the process by which we wrestle with the controversy. (And there’s that thing about this coming only from teaching elders again.)

Skipping down to the next paragraph

Our denomination has been in steady decline for 45 years, now literally
half the size of a generation ago.

It then goes on to further detail the decline.

Holding here for a moment let me first compliment them on using the acronym PC(USA) instead of PCUSA. The latter (Presbyterian Church in the United States of America) was of course a predecessor denomination that ceased to exist with a merger in 1958 when the UPCUSA was formed. But that brings me to asking the question about who is in decline? The PC(USA) has only been in existence for 28 years so going back 45 years means that we have to consider all the predecessor denominations and their children if we want to be faithful to the lineage. That would be the UPCUSA and the PCUS (northern and southern in the vernacular) and out of them in the last 45 years has come the PCA, PC(USA), and EPC.

Am I just being picky? Maybe. But let’s skip over the next paragraph and the following begins…

Homosexual ordination has been the flashpoint of controversy for the
last 35 years. Yet, that issue – with endless, contentious “yes” and
“no” votes – masks deeper, more important divisions within the PC(USA).
Our divisions revolve around differing understandings of Scripture,
authority, Christology, the extent of salvation amidst creeping
universalism, and a broader set of moral issues.

While I don’t argue with what is said here, so far in the letter two things stand out to me as being a bit, shall I say, short-sighted. First, Presbyterians – be it American, Scottish, or others – have always argued. Does the Adopting Act and the New Side/Old Side debate ring a bell? American Presbyterianism was imported in three or four separate streams and over 300 plus years we have recombined and realigned numerous times to double or triple that number, depending on how you count. And many of the topics mentioned – understandings of Scripture, authority, Christology – have been part of these arguments the whole time. Presbyterians seem prone to disagree by our very nature. Our problem is not that we have disagreements but how we work through them.

My second point here is that all mainstream, or oldstream, denominations are in decline. The reasons are complex and I think to simplify it to our divisions does not recognize the full nature of it and the changes in society that are also a part of the formula.

In light of this, are we “deathly ill?” While we will continue to decline to an unsustainable level if current trends continue we must also recognize that many of the individual churches represented in the list of signatories, as well as others, are doing well individually and there are strong ministries within the PC(USA). The question is more about how we get things done and what course we chart for the future.

So speaking of what the future course will be, the letter goes on to state five “new things” the PC(USA) needs and the four values that this group of pastors is proposing. The first of the new things is really not new — A clear concise theological core was what the Adopting Act of 1729 was trying to attain. The other four things are a commitment to nurture leadership, a passion to share in the larger mission of the people of God, a dream of multiplying healthy missional communities, and a pattern of fellowship. I can get behind each of these characteristics. Moving on to their four stated values, members across the spectrum of the PC(USA) will find these a bit more problematic.

The letter concludes with a discussion of what these pastors are looking at implementing — A Fellowship, New Synod/Presbyteries, Possible New Reformed Body and/or Reconfiguring the PC(USA). To some degree, in fact in my mind to a large degree, this sounds like the New Wineskins Association of Churches so I would be interested to hear how this proposed fellowship would be different.

Maybe one way that it would be different would be the size of the churches. NWAC contained some fairly large churches. The signatories to this letter, while clearly stating they represent only themselves, do have connections to eight of the fifteen largest churches in the PC(USA) with several more recognizable congregation names in the bunch. The significance and implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

In addition to the letter this group, Fellowship PC(USA), has a temporary web page as well as a four page white paper titled Time For Something New. (Although I find it interesting that the current name of this file itself is “PCUSA Problem Internal 3 5b.pdf.”) A few mentions have popped up on Twitter, there is a web copy of the letter over at the Layman, and John Shuck has given us his opinion.

Those are my initial thoughts, but I want to digest the letter and white paper some more. Maybe I’ll have more to say later. The meeting is August 25-27 in Minneapolis (nicely outside GA season). I am curious to find out more of what is behind this and curious enough to mark the date on the calendar, but not so enticed yet to make my airline reservations.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. As the polity wonks will quickly recognize, a couple of the proposals are ideas that have been brought to GA but have not gone any further. Recognizing that holding the PC(USA) together as an organization of something even near its current size will require restructuring and compromise on both sides, this, like the Middle Governing Bodies Commission, may be a valid forum for exploring the way forward.

I’m interested to see what other reaction there is to this initiative both within and outside the denomination.

Stay tuned…

n=52	Belhar Yes	Belhar No
nFOG yes	25 48%	3 6%
nFOG no	4 8%	20 38%

n=48	Belhar Yes	Belhar No
10-A yes	27 56%	3 6%
10-A no	4 8%	14 29%

n=65	nFOG Yes	nFOG No
10-A yes	28 43%	6 9%
10-A no	10 15%	21 32%

n=16	Belhar Yes	Belhar No
nFOG Yes	2	1
nFog No	0	13

n=14	Belhar Yes	Belhar No
10-A Yes	4	1
10-A No	1	8

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An Interesting Invitation And Some Of My Preliminary Reactions