It has been a long day so I will be making my comments this evening brief.

The highlight of the Assembly action today was the final approval of the addition of the Belhar Confession from South Africa to the PC(USA) Book of Confessions. It has been a long journey including a first attempt that was not supported by the requisite two-thirds of the presbyteries. This second round began right after the first try failed and has take four years from approval of the study committee to today’s final vote.

There were representatives from the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa in attendance tonight to see the historic vote adopting a confession that they adopted 30 years ago this year. The final speaker was the Rev. Allan Boesak, who was in the moderator’s chair when the URCSA adopted the confession. It was an emotional moment for many.

One of the interesting things about the business today was that it included several business items, including the Belhar, for which there were corresponding votes in previous assemblies. I probably will not get a chance to correlate all these numbers this week during the assembly, but over the following couple of weeks I am hoping to merge a lot of information into a larger model – if the last data set I want to use is released. Today I had a conversation with Research Services and I am hopeful I can get what I want fairly soon.

But as a first pass, you can see that progression of the PC(USA) when you consider that the determining vote for changing the language of the marriage section at the last GA was 372 to 237 for change. That is 61% yes vote. Today the Assembly not to change it back to “one man and one woman” by a vote of 443 to 119. That is 79% yes. The Belhar shift is not that dramatic but present none the less.

It should be noted that the voting pads are having problems again and a very close vote went from a close no to a more substantial yes as the vote was retaken four times. We will see what happens with that.

And finally, if an army runs on its stomach a GA runs on coffee, at least if the trash bins are any indication

Have a good evening. We are back at it at 8:30 AM Portland time tomorrow.