Category Archives: PC(USA)

The 29th General Assembly Of The Evangelical Presbyterian Church — Upcoming Next Week

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The 29th General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (in the U.S.A.) will convene in Brighton, Michigan this Wednesday June 24 and run through Saturday June 27.  For those following the GA these resources might be useful:

TE Nate Atwood (bio as Word doc) will be installed as the Moderator of the General Assembly when the meeting convenes and RE Rob Liddon (bio as Word doc) will be installed as the Moderator-elect at the conclusion of the Assembly, presuming neither committee nominee is successfully challenged..

Some of the important reports to watch for include a recommended definition of a “missional church” and a proposed Preliminary Position Paper on the Doctrine of Scripture in the Permanent Theology Committee report.  In addition, a referred overture from the last GA concerning creating the position of Co-pastors is being returned with a recommendation to approve from the Theology Committee but the recommendation to not approve from Ministerial Vocation Committee.  The Theology Committee gives no rational for approval but in their recommendation against the Ministerial Vocation Committee gives five arguments against which includes “The need for clearly identified leadership.”  For some of the other business and activities you can check out the GA Preview.

I have not seen anyone mention official Twitter messages or a hashtag.  Following this year’s trend a hashtag would be something like #epcga or #epcga09.  I will update here if either of these happen.
UPDATE:  In checking Twitter it appears that the hashtag people are using is #pcaga29.  Just when you think you have it figured out…

Overtures
There are four overtures for the Assembly to consider:

Overture 09-A from the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic requests that the EPC develop a position paper “setting forth the denomination’s beliefs and position regarding stem cells, the human embryo, and related questions of bioethics and human life.”  This was prompted by the recent Presidential Executive Order changing federal policy on funding stem cell research.

Overture 09-B also from the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic cites five examples from the Book of Order where they believe that the document is not clear and asks “the Moderator to appoint a committee to review the Book of Order with the input of the Stated Clerks of all presbyteries for the purpose of identifying terms, sentences, paragraphs, and/or sections which are not clear and/or may cause confusion when applied.”  It also asks that the review committee recommend appropriate revisions.

Overture 09-C from the Presbytery of the Midwest requests a change to the Book of Discipline which strikes me as possibly resulting from a recent experience.  Briefly, it would change the rules in a disciplinary case so that if the officer renounces jurisdiction before judgment is rendered the court would no longer need the individual’s permission to conclude the case and render judgment if “it is necessary for the purity of the church or the benefit of the offender.”  The condition of the offender’s approval was previously added in response to a state court decision in a case in another denomination and they point out that each governing body should determine the appropriate course of action based on their own state laws.

Overture 09-D from the Presbytery of Mid-America requests that it be allowed to form two affinity presbyteries, one permitting the ordination of women as teaching elders and the other not.  However, the Permanent Judicial Commission has ruled that this is not a request that the General Assembly can act upon but their interpretation of the Book of Order is that it would require amending the Book of Order.  Polity wonks would enjoy reading the basis for this ruling in the PJC Report.  Their first point about a presbytery having jurisdiction in a geographic area and whether two affinity presbyteries represent 1) Two presbyteries, 2) One presbytery with split jurisdiction or 3) Three presbyteries – the two affinity presbyteries plus the “mother” presbytery – is a well presented polity dilemma.

The Assembly will first have an opportunity to uphold this decision and if it wishes to not concur it may then move on to the overture as presented.  My read of the PJC decision is that they are on firm polity ground and the EPC will need to reason through how the diversity of opinions on the ordination of women as teaching elders should be handled.

This is a great segue to my next topic…

The EPC and the PC(USA)
When I discussed the PC(USA) 2008 membership numbers a couple of days ago I noted that for the PC(USA) the loss of ten churches and about 8000 members to the EPC in 2008 was a minor fraction of the total net loss of 69 churches and a bit more than 69.000 members.  The losses alone, not net, from the PC(USA) not counting deaths were close to 139,000 members.  The PC(USA) has other larger avenues of loss than churches realigning with the EPC.

But the EPC Statistical Report is fascinating reading and the same is not true for the EPC.  The EPC grew from 207 to 247 churches between 2007 and 2008, an increase of 19% and it grew from 77,482 to 92,864 members, an increase of  20%.  Most of this growth was in the transitional presbyteries, including the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery.  The total churches in transitional presbyteries grew from 17 to 36 and membership from 8014 to 19,178.  In all, the 36 churches in the New Wines
kins Presbytery represent 15% of all the EPC churches.  And looking through the list several churches were accepted directly into other geographic presbyteries.  Clearly the substantial growth in the EPC can be tied to churches realigning from the PC(USA).

Now, in case you are asking – if the PC(USA) only had 10 churches realign in 2008 according to the Layman’s list what about the other 30?  Two reasons:  The first is that the Layman’s list is not always clear when the church gets dismissed or unilaterally departs.  So there is some uncertainty in the numbers regarding which year to count.  But the explanation in many cases is the fact that 27 churches with about 16,000 members departed the PU(USA) for the EPC in 2007 but many were received by the EPC in 2008.  At some point I’ll find time to reconcile the two lists but a summary comparison makes clear that those listed on the departing list eventually appear on the EPC list.

Anyway, the bottom line is that while the departure of churches for the EPC is a disturbing but small part of the membership drop for the PC(USA), it is a major issue for the EPC.  Like it or not, the EPC is being PC(USA)-ized.  The clear implication for the EPC is the influx of churches with ordained women.  (Although, as I looked at it several months ago I found that very few of the churches had women as teaching elders so it is not as pressing for the denomination as it may at first seem.) I’ll take up the question of other transfers of PC(USA) culture another time.

From the PC(USA) side there has been extensive discussion, administrative commissions, civil law suits over the property, and judicial commission reviews of what has been happening.  I won’t cover that ground again here, but I do want to mention one other issue and that is the charge that the EPC is actively recruiting PC(USA) churches.

It needs to be pointed out that the EPC has on the front page of their web site a link to information for churches thinking of joining the EPC.  That combined with a perception in some presbyteries that the EPC was making inappropriate contact with churches thinking of leaving the PC(USA) led Peace River Presbytery to send an overture to the last General Assembly.  The overture asked for an investigation and action regarding the EPC actions by the Executive Office of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.  Instead, the GA committee recommended and the General Assembly approved a referral to the PC(USA) Committee on Ecumenical Relations.  Their investigation is in progress now but not without controversy.  Viola Larson talks about missing a meeting with the representatives of the investigating team because the meeting was not widely announced and posted on the presbytery’s web calendar with very short notice (and if you read the comments to her post others checked cached copies of the calender that suggest it was actually posted after the meeting).  On the PC(USA) end we will have to see how this investigation develops.

On the EPC end the influx of PC(USA) churches puts stress on geographic presbyteries that do not ordain women.  The EPC does not consider whether or not to ordination of women as an essential of the Reformed faith so it is left up to the appropriate governing body.  (For more on that check out their position paper.)  To accommodate ordained women is one of the reasons for the transitional presbyteries.  But the transitional presbyteries are intended to be transitional and disappear in a few years and then have the churches move into the geographic presbyteries.  What then?

As mentioned above, Overture 09-D is one approach that the Presbytery of Mid-America would like to try.  The EPC will be struggling with that at this meeting.  And remember that back in February the Presbytery of the East approved new guidelines for the ordination of women.  The EPC is showing a movement in that direction.  We will have to see what else the former-PC(USA) churches bring into this branch of American Presbyterianism.

I will update as I find more sources of information on the EPC GA.

PC(USA) Releases 2008 Membership Statistics

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Today the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) released the general membership statistics for 2008.  There  is the full table of membership numbers and financial information, a table that breaks out the financial information, and a table of miscellaneous information, like the largest presbyteries and racial ethnic breakdown.

In addition there is a statement from the Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons, another from the Director of Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries Rhashell Hunter, and one from the Director of Evangelism and Church Growth Eric Hoey.

I expect that we will have to wait a bit longer for the presbytery breakdowns on the Comparative Statistics site.

First the numbers:
Membership declined from 2,209,546 at the end of 2007 to 2,140,165 at the end of 2008.  That is a net decline of 69,381 members or 3.1%.  This is slightly higher than the 2.5% loss in 2007.

Gains by profession or reaffirmation of faith were 64,701.  Gains by certificate transfers were 28,691. And gains by other means were 10,136.  All of those categories showed a decrease from their 2007 numbers.

The church transferred 34,101 members from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant (i.e. deaths), and transfered 34,340 members to other denominations that we are in communication with by certificated transfer.  An additional 104,428 were simply removed from the rolls.  And every one of these values was higher than in 2007.

The denomination had a net loss of 69 churches, or 0.64%, decreasing from 10,820 to 10,751.  And the denomination had a net loss of ministers of 82, or 0.38%, from 21,368 to 21,286.  The number of ministers per church stayed about even at 1.97 in 2007 and 1.98 in 2008.  The average number of members per church declined from 204.2 in 2007 to 199.1 in 2008.

In the financial numbers the contributions declined slightly from $2.162 billion to $2.137 billion, a decrease of $24 million or 1.1%.  However, on a per-member basis the giving rose from $978.54 to $998.94.  A ray of hope in though economic times.

The other significant improvement is highlighted by the Rev. Rhashell Hunter where she points out that racial ethnic membership has risen from 4.7% in 1998 to 7.5% in 2008.  Not the hoped for 10% but still a significant improvement.

Now, the reality check:  For those that are looking for an easy answer to the decline by saying that churches are moving to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church take a close look at the numbers.  From the Layman’s chart I count at most 10 churches and about 8,000 members that have left the PC(USA) in 2008 to find a better theological fit.  Interestingly the just-released 2008 statistics show 25 churches transferred in 2008 and 65 dissolved.  That leaves 59 churches and 130,768 members who left under other circumstances.  While theological differences may be one cause for membership decline the numbers don’t show a mass exodus to a sister denomination.  In fact in his piece Gradye Parsons correctly points out that people tend to drift away from the church.  That is where the PC(USA) must concentrate to stop the membership loss.

Now, down off soap box and on to other things.

Presbyterians Do Things Differently

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Love it or hate it Presbyterians are big on committees.  That is how we do things as a Covenant Community.  That is how we hold ourselves accountable.  And it allows the church to discern together God’s will as we listen to each other and are guided by the Holy Spirit.  And the PC(USA) has an open meetings policy.

And you probably know that back in February the Moderator of the General Assembly of the PC(USA) named a Special Committee to study civil unions and Christian marriage.  It met back in March and will meet again in two weeks.

Being on that Special Committee myself I had to laugh when I read this news about the Episcopal Church today:

The House of Bishops Theology Committee is refusing to release the
names of members of a sub-committee it has appointed to study same-sex
relationships. The existence of the panel was first reported in the Blue Book,
which contains information relevant to General Convention, 2009.
However, the Rt. Rev. Henry Parsley of Alabama, chair of the Theology
Committee has refused several requests to disclose the names of its
members.

Thanks to The Lead for this information.  It seems that since it is a sub-committee of the Theology Committee the possible members of the sub-committee are known.  Still, an interesting way to do business.  The LGBT advocacy group Integrity responded, in part, with this:

“If this isn’t the height of absurdity and insult I don’t know what
is,” said the Reverend Susan Russell, President of Integrity USA, the
LGBT advocacy group within the Episcopal Church. “It sends a horrific
message to gay and lesbian people – both inside and outside the church.
The very concept of “secret studies” elicits painful memories of secret
studies done on other minority groups in the past and is utterly
contrary to our baptismal promise to respect the dignity of every human
being. There is absolutely nothing dignified about a secret study of a
group already being discriminated against. It is suspect, disingenuous
and dishonest.”

This has “gone viral” on the Episcopal and Anglican blogs:  The Friends of Jake, Preludium, Telling Secrets, Thinking Anglicans, are ones I have seen so far and I am sure there are many more to come.

I will update as news develops.

Update – 6/4/09:
There has been a response from the chair of the Theology Committee, the Rt. Rev. Henry N. Parsley, Jr. The official statement says, in part:

…I wish to assure those concerned that the panel very intentionally
represents a robust range of views on the subject and includes gay and
lesbian persons.

and

This project has been designed in full communication with the House of
Bishops. It has always been the committee’s intention to publish the
names of the panel when the work has reached the appropriate stage. We
believe that for a season the work can best be accomplished by allowing
the panel to work in confidence. This supports the full collegiality
and academic freedom of the theologians and provides the space they
need for the deep dialogue and reflection that is taking place among
them.

And the church has issued a press release referring to this statement.

The response from within the Episcopal Church continues and outside the Anglican circles a few others, besides myself, who have commented include more media-oriented blogs BibleBeltBlogger, Desert’s Child, and Daily Religious.

Update – 6/6/09
There are now reports that the Episcopal Church web site which previously promised transparency in their operations has removed that claim.  The story from BibleBeltBlogger and a response from Preludium.

And a little humor from The Lead about selecting the members of the secret committee.

A Shared History And Blogging Presbyterians

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There are times when I start talking about the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, that people’s eyes glaze over and sometimes complain that “he was a Catholic theologian” (usually not in as many words though).

Well, besides the fact that John Calvin incorporated a lot of Augustine’s thinking in his own work, many in the Reformed Tradition seem to forget the fact that in the roughly 2000 years of the Christian Church, the present Reformed Church has only been around for one-quarter of that time.  (And I say “present Reformed Church” because the object of the Reformation, and of our “always being reformed” is to more closely follow the pattern of the early New Testament church.  But that is a topic for another time…)

In the same manner many in the mainline American Presbyterian Church think that all those other Presbyterian branches running around are just groups that “broke off from us.”  They forget that the mainline has split and merged three times itself and that at the time of the American Civil War there were four parts to the mainline church (if it can be thought of as mainline at that time) and the present PC(USA) has, as a merged body, only been in existence for less than 10% of the history of American Presbyterianism.

(As an interesting aside, with the controversy in the Church of Scotland this past week I have been correlating their history with the American Presbyterian history.  The major Scottish split, “The Disruption of 1843” is about the same time as the American Old School/New School split of 1837.  I’ll be looking into that further to see about connections.)

All of this to say that there is a whole bunch of American Presbyterian history that the majority of modern Presbyterian branches share.  With that in mind the following three blogs may be of interest to others who share an interest in Presbyterian history, or at least what got us to the point we are now at polity-wise.  Don’t expect these blogs to always be “mainline friendly,” but they provide great historical insights into where we are now.

Old Life Theological Society – The moment I heard that Darryl Hart was a contributor to this blog I was hooked.  The material is a mix of current events and historical information, but even the posts about current topics come with a good dose of historical perspective.

The PCA Historical Center has just started two new blogs as well.  (Remember that shared history?  If you want the historical background on the PC(USA) Book of Order that came from the PCUS branch they have all of that online.)  Thanks to Mr. Wayne Sparkman, the director of the PCA Historical Center for overseeing these two new blogs.

The first one is the PCA History Blog and the description says that this is a place for people to share their stories about the PCA.

The second one is The Continuing Story and the purpose says that it  “. . . is to provide a convenient place to share some of the wealth of
treasure to be found in the archives at the PCA Historical Center.”  Among the information posted so far are pictures of the oldest item in the collection, a 1641 Calvin medal struck for the centennial celebration of Calvin’s return to Geneva.

So here is more information to keep us GA Junkies educated.  Thanks for the blogs and happy reading.

Presbyterians Amid Web 2.0 — The Institution And The Web

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As I put the list of resources together earlier today and then followed the progress of the Church of Scotland GA on the webcast and on twitter (#ga2009) it struck me that different Presbyterian branches seem to follow very different paths in putting together their web presence.

While the Church of Scotland has been delivering the GA materials over the web for a number of years, has had their audio updates available on-line, and was an early adopter of webcasting the assembly, the official presence is still very much web 1.0.  There is one web site, and although they have a great extranet area with a lot of publicly available documents, everything is in a fairly typical web format.  And while the Moderator’s “blog” is nice, from a technical standpoint it is still one-dimensional being just a web page without RSS feed or comments.  Got to give them credit for the new twitter feed this year though, but at last fall’s National Youth Assembly the twitter feed was one of the top trending feeds.

The Presbyterian branch that really thought this through is the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  They have “branded” the denomination with PCConnect which contains various blogs, podcast, and PCConnect-TV weekly segment, all with a unified look and feel.

You have to give the PC(USA) credit for trying Web 2.0 out.  There are multiple official blogs from various leaders in the denomination, great on-line video segments about important issues, and Facebook pages.  But while all of this is great I have trouble finding a unified strategy, message, or feel in it.

Having said that it is only fair to say that the Church of Scotland and the PC(USA) are revising their web sites.  It will be interesting to see how much they integrate, unify, or at least brand the content, and introduce new Web 2.0 content.

(I probably should define Web 2.0.  There is not a completely agreed upon definition that I am aware of, but it is a web presence that is interactive in the sense that there are RSS feeds, comment sections, and individual publishing like blogs, twitter or Facebook.  The traditional static, or at least slowly changing, web pages are thought of as Web 1.0.)

But while following the CofS GA today I was reading an older post by Chris Hoskins on his blog “What is Freedom?”  In that post, Church of Scotland and Social Media, he muses about what more the CofS could be doing on-line.  There is a nice comment on the post from CofS leader and techie Stewart Cutler who says:

At present the CofS doesn’t allow Councils to have their own sites. No
‘brands’ allowed. NYA isn’t allowed its own site. COSY isn’t allowed
it’s own site. That limits the ways in which people can interact
because the CofS doesn’t understand that people don’t want to interact
with static, out of date websites. They want to discuss, share, link,
download, upload and all that web2.0 stuff.

So how do you solve the tension between central oversight to maintain uniformity in appearance, presentation and message, versus a more independent approach where lots of stuff gets out there and you need to figure out what is official and what is individual.  The PC Canada does the former well, the PC(USA) does the latter well.  It seems the CofS is trying to figure it out.

Voting Trends For Amendment 08-B — Part 3 – Breakout Sessions

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Since I posted the analysis last week eight more presbyteries have voted with the unofficial tally at 77-94.  There are only two more presbyteries left to vote.  This past week there were two more presbyteries that switched from “no” to “yes” bringing the total of presbyteries to switch in that direction to 33.

In the first post I looked at the total votes without regard to presbytery groupings.  In the second part I discussed the distribution of voting patterns for the presbyteries.  In this post I want to focus on the groupings of presbyteries and a couple of interesting features that appear.

From the usual sources 154 of the 171 presbyteries that have voted have numbers reported for both the 01-A voting and the 08-B voting. 

In the following frequency distribution plots the vertical and horizontal axes are the same in all the plots (except the All Presbyteries/Total vote plot has an extended vertical axis) and the horizontal axes are aligned with a reference line through the 1.0 (no change) point.  Data are binned and counted on intervals of 0.05 with the number on the horizontal axis the upper inclusive limit of the bin.

To look at the details the presbyteries have been grouped by those that voted “Yes” on 08-B and those that voted “No” on 08-B.  There are also subgroups of each of these for the presbyteries that switched their votes from the previous round of voting.  Since the “Yes” to “No” subgroup has only two presbyteries those are briefly discussed but not plotted.

Total Presbytery Votes

First the note that the top chart has a vertical axis from 0-30 while the upper limit on all of the other vertical axes is 20.

Looking at these distributions it can be seen that the changes in the total number of votes cast was very similar whether you are looking at the total population or the split-out groups.  Total votes are slightly higher in “Yes” presbyteries but it is not much.  All have averages and medians in the 0.86 – 0.90 range and while the standard deviations show a bit more variation ranging from 0.15 to 0.24, the difference is not extreme.

Presbytery “Yes” Votes

Here is where the division into groups and subgroups shows the most interesting results.  Just splitting the population into “yes” and “no” presbyteries shows no significant changes in the population.  The total, “yes” group and “no” group all have averages a bit above 1.00, medians very close to 1.00, and standard deviations in the 0.35 – 0.47 range.  It is tough to make a case that much is different between the “yes” and “no” presbyteries.

But if we split out the “yes” presbyteries that previously voted “no” it is clear that these presbyteries had a clear increase in the number of “yes” votes.  Of the 29 presbyteries, 7 had no change or a decrease and the other 22 had in increase in the “yes” vote.  I’ll return to this group at the end and take a detailed look at the behavior.

Presbytery “No” Votes

While the patterns in the “Yes” vote were not seen and the differences in the Total was slight, there is a bit more difference to be seen in the break out of the “No” vote.  All the presbyteries together had an average no-vote ratio of 0.76 while the average in presbyteries that voted “No” on 08-B was 0.83 and the average for “Yes” presbyteries was 0.68.  The numbers for the presbyteries that switched were statistically close to those for all the “Yes” presbyteries.

So presbyteries that voted “No” on 08-B generally had a lower decline in “No” votes, presbyteries that voted “Yes” had a higher decline, and no appreciable difference from that was seen for the subgroup that switched from “No” to “Yes.”  In other words, as a group a “No” to “Yes” switch was characterized by a statistically greater increase in “Yes” votes with a “No” vote decrease characteristic of the other “Yes” vote presbyteries.  This in contrast to a possible switch due to no increase in “Yes” votes but a statistically greater decrease in “No” votes.

Details of the “No” to “Yes” Switch
Taking a look at the 29 presbyteries that switched votes, two (6.9%) appear to be pure swing with almost equal numbers of lost “no” votes and gained “yes” votes.  (In this discussion “almost equal numbers” means a difference of usually zero or one, but no more than two votes.)  Six (20.7%) show little to no change in the number of “yes” votes and only a decrease in “no” votes, and five (17.2%) show a notable decrease in both “yes” and “no” votes with a larger “no” vote decrease.  These 11 (37.9%) appear to be more related to differential losses.  One (3.4%) shows a significant increase in both “yes” and “no” with a more pronounced increase in “yes,” but looking at previous votes 01-A has a significantly lower vote total and this is probably a special circumstance for 01-A.  Half the presbyteries, 15, show a more complex behavior with a gain in “yes” votes and decrease in “no” votes.  Five of those have a “yes” gain greater than the “no” loss and ten of those had a larger “no” loss than “yes” gain.  These, plus the two pure swing, suggest that 17 (58.6% of the switches and 11.0% of the total) presbyteries changed their vote from “no” to “yes” at least in part by a significant switch of voters between those positions.

Details of the “Yes” to “No” Switch
With only two presbyteries making the switch in this direction it is impossible to make generalizations, especially since their patterns of change are totally different.  In the case of San Francisco Presbytery the vote went from 216-186 on 01-A to 167-177 on 08-B.  There was a significant preferential decrease in the number of “Yes” votes attributed variously to complacency or attendance at conferences.  The case with Sierra Blanca is exactly opposite with the number of both “Yes” and “No” votes increasing, but the “No” vote increasing dramatically and preferentially.  On 01-A Sierra Blanca voted 18-17 while on 08-B they voted 23-30.  Again, special cases, but when you look at the details of many of the presbytery votes you begin to think that there is a back story to the voting.

Changes Relative to Strength of Voting
I will do a lot more with multi-variant statistics later, but this one jumped out at me and I thought it appropriate to include here.  I have previously commented that looking for correlations between various factors has yielded little, but here is a case where something of interest does appear.


I hope that this graph is not too confusing.  On the x-axis I have the “yes” vote on 08-B in percent.  All of the blue squares represent presbyteries that voted yes and so are above the 50% line, and all the red squares are presbyteries that voted no and so are on or below the 50% line.  On the top plot I show the change in the number voting in opposition from one vote to the n
ext as a ratio of 08-B votes to 01-A votes.  So on the left is the change in the number of “Yes” votes in presbyteries voting “No.”  And on the right are the change in the number of “No” votes in presbyteries voting “Yes.”  For the subgroup of presbyteries that switched from “No” to “Yes” the plot did not differ significantly so I did not include that data as a separate plot.

In the upper plot the trend for “No” votes to decline in presbyteries voting in the affirmative is strong with an R-squared=0.32 for the correlation.  The trend for the other half is not as strong and while visually suggestive the higher scatter results in an R-squared=0.02.  But based on the grouping of points in the down-to-the-left trend an argument could be made for some presbyteries with similar behavior, but a closer look at the outlying points for special cases would be necessary to really verify that.  It should be recognized that changes in small numbers of votes as is found near the ends of the X axis are amplified more than similar changes near the middle of the axis.

In the lower plot the change in concurring votes is plotted and for both the trend is statistically indistinguishable from flat.  In the “No” votes in “No” presbyteries there is a slight, but statistically insignificant, upward trend to the lower percentage votes that if true, and combined with the decreasing “Yes” vote in the upper plot, would actually suggest a swing from “Yes” to “No” in the presbyteries with the strongest “No” votes.  It is clear, both visually and statistically, that no such conclusion is even hinted at in the “Yes” presbyteries.  So there is a trend seen in “Yes” voting presbyteries, and suggested in “No” voting presbyteries, for the greater the strength of vote is the fewer opponents showed up, or were still around, for the vote on 08-B.

Well, enough of this for now.
One of the things I keep getting asked about all of this is something like “Wasn’t the vote on 01-A ‘different.'” There have been several ways that people have suggested the last vote was different but the most often mentioned one is that presbyteries voted “No” because the PUP Task Force was beginning work and they wanted to let that process play out.

Well, in multiple respects the voting on 01-A was different and in my next installment in this series I will look at that quantitatively and show, well, that every presbytery is different.  Actually, I’ll show that there are several different sets of behaviors seen for 01-A voting of which a shift to vote “No” is just one of them.  Sometimes that “No” shift came with no change in total vote, a true swing.  And sometimes that shift in percentages came with a significant increase in the total number of commissioners voting, a behavior that looks like a “get out the vote” campaign for those favoring the retention of the “fidelity and chastity” requirement.  My point right now is that an “undoing” of either of these would support some of the behavior seen in the data for 08-B voting.  So next time I’ll lay out those numbers.

 

What Does It Take To Get Ordained Around Here?

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What does it take to get ordained around here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two observations on all of this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are also two special cases that I am considering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I had a professor in graduate school who commented how much he really liked the articles in the magazine Scientific American.  Except, he said, for articles in his discipline and then he found that they had errors or were incomplete.  The implication is that we can analyze and critique what we know but in other areas we may miss the full story.

This is how I feel after reading the new Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of the Episcopal Church issued by the Anglican Communion Institute.  Reading through it I found the Statement interesting and I learned a lot.  In fact, in many of the sections I was drawing the parallels to the polity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  But then I hit the short section on PC(USA) polity and I found it superficial and incomplete causing me to call into question the document as a whole.  They are not very good at the area I know and I can’t properly critique the rest where I am not experienced.

The purpose of the Statement is to argue that The Episcopal Church (TEC) is not a hierarchical church — that the dioceses and their bishops are autonomous and that the General Conference is a voluntary association of dioceses. This is argued with a number of lines of reasoning, some of which make a lot of sense to me and a couple that don’t seem to support the point.

Now I know a lot about Presbyterian polity but very little about the fine points of Anglican or Episcopal polity so I am not going to do a point-by-point analysis.  But as I read through the document there were clear parallels to American Presbyterianism.

1. They discuss “ordinary power”

“Ordinary” is a term of art in Anglican and Roman Catholic ecclesiology and canon law that refers to the power inherent in the office given by the Lord to Peter and the Apostles. (p. 3)

There is clearly no direct Presbyterian parallel to the office of the bishop as an individual with apostolic power, but the Presbyterian concept of “permissive powers of the congregation” appears similar to the “ordinary power” discussed here.  (That would be G-7.0304a(5) in the PC(USA) Book of Order and check out my discussion at the end of my post on congregational power for more on the various thoughts about permissive powers.)]

2. Historically dioceses were organized earlier and later associated into a national structure similar to presbyteries being the first higher governing body in American Presbyterianism predating synods and the general assembly.

3. In the Episcopal General Convention each diocese has an equal vote while in the PC(USA) it is apportioned by membership.  But maybe more important, in the PC(USA) each presbytery has an equal vote when it comes to agreeing to confessional or constitutional changes.

4. The Principle of Subsidiarity — there is a difference in the nuances here, but the parallel with the PC(USA) is still striking.  This document says (p. 11):

“Subsidiarity expresses a preference for governance at the most local level consistent with achieving government’s stated purposes.”

This is reflected in two ways in the PC(USA) Book of Order.  From G-9.0402b

b. The administration of mission should be performed by the governing body that can most effectively and efficiently accomplish it at the level of jurisdiction nearest the congregation.

And from G-9.0103

All governing bodies of the church are united by the nature of the church and share with one another responsibilities, rights, and powers as provided in this Constitution. The governing bodies are separate and independent, but have such mutual relations that the act of one of them is the act of the whole church performed by it through the appropriate governing body. The jurisdiction of each governing body is limited by the express provisions of the Constitution, with powers not mentioned being reserved to the presbyteries, and with the acts of each subject to review by the next higher governing body. [emphasis added]

So far all well and good.  There are these points that I see as strong parallels between TEC and PC(USA) polity.  And then…

I hit the section where they compare TEC to other churches.  The discussion makes sense to me when they talk about clearly hierarchical churches, like the Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox Churches.  But in the Protestant branches they include the PC(USA).  It is not the inclusion of the PC(USA) that irked me but the way they did.  Here is the complete discussion of the church:

Likewise, the constitution of the Presbyterian Church USA indicates unequivocally the hierarchical relationship of its bodies:

The General Assembly is the highest governing body of this church and is representative of the unity of the synods, presbyteries, sessions, and congregations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). [G-13.0101]

The General Assembly is also given the explicit power “to provide authoritative interpretation of the Book of Order which shall be binding on the governing bodies of the church….” [G-13.0103]

Where do I begin…

What may be the most surprising to you is that if I had to provide a Book of Order citation to “prove” the PC(USA) was hierarchical I would have used something out of G-4.0300, the Principles of Presbyterian Government.  For example:

f. A higher governing body shall have the right of review and control over a lower one and shall have power to determine matters of controversy upon reference, complaint, or appeal; [G-4.0301f]

So what are the problems with the citations they use?  First, as I have mentioned above, while the General Assembly may be the “highest governing body,” it bears many similarities to the General Convention which they argue is not a hierarchical power.  These similarities include the presbytery/diocesan representation to the body and the fact that the higher body can not unilaterally change the confessions or constitution.  They are correct that the General Assembly is given the power to interpret the constitution but as Presbyterians know there are subtleties here, especially over the last few years with alternate and superseding interpretations by the Assembly itself and the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission related to ordination standards.  It also should be noted that constitutional changes are not only ratified by the presbyteries but nearly all begin as overtures from the presbyteries.  Finally, in Presbyterianism the term “higher governing body” is a term of art and is understood not to be an entity unto itself but a part of our connectionalism, a sign of unity of the church since it is comprised of commissioners from the lower governing bodies.

In analyzing the arguments in this Statement I thought back on the oral arguments before the California Supreme Court on the Episcopal Church Cases regarding church property and the trust clause.  I tried to review the arguments to give a direct quote but the video appears to have been removed from the web.  But, as I reported at the time, when the lawyer for the churches was answering justices’ questions about the principle of government theory and the hierarchical church he said that break-away churches would prevail under that legal theory because even though they have left TEC they are still part of the Worldwide Anglican Communion
.  They are still part of a global hierarchy.

Now, I am not arguing that under their arguments and logic the PC(USA) is not a “hierarchical church.”  One of their marks of a hierarchical church is review of lower bodies by higher bodies which is a hallmark of Presbyterianism.  But from a legal point of view for civil litigation I don’t know if that is either necessary or sufficient to pronounce a body a hierarchical church.  Similarly, while I understand and appreciate the arguments made in the Bishops’ Statement at least a few state supreme courts have not seen it the same way.  (Although California sort of dodged the issue by using neutral principles to side with the denomination in the majority decision.)  And if scrupling is upheld we may see how hierarchical the PC(USA) is if a presbytery is forced to accept an officer ordained in another presbytery after declaring an exception.

It is an interesting article and I enjoyed reading it, especially the sections related to the shaping of the church in the late 1700’s.  Historically their argument seemed to hold up.  But after finishing the document I had to ask myself “what is the rest of the story?”  I know what it was for American Presbyterianism.  What else is left out regarding the Episcopalians?