Please allow me to be cynical about the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for a moment as I reflect on my observation that most of the items before the Assembly and how the Assembly dealt with them were pretty much “business as usual.”  There was of course that unique session where both the Final and Minority reports of the Special Committee on Civil Union and Christian Marriage were commended to the whole church. But for the most part I frequently found myself thinking “been there, done that.”

Part of this was because so many high-profile items were really reports back from committees and task forces the last Assembly created.  Some of the deja vu was because these are items that keep coming back to every Assembly, like the ordination standards. And some is because the business contains a lot of routine items  like approving minutes, transferring churches, and creating presbyteries.  That is, until that last one stops being business as usual…

On the morning of Thursday July 8 the Committee on Middle Governing Body Issues late in their report brought a simple request from the Synod of South Atlantic, item 04-08:

The Synod of South Atlantic overtures the 219th General Assembly (2010) to approve the organization of a new non-geographic Korean language presbytery pursuant to its powers under G-13.0103n.

The Synod had passed this overture on a unanimous vote and the Assembly committee had also approved it by a wide margin, 43-2.  Seemed like a slam-dunk but it was not.

A few commissioners, including two young second-generation Asian-American women pastors, rose to speak against forming the non-geographic Korean language presbytery and their pleas were so persuasive that the Assembly disapproved the item 125-514-7. (If you want to watch yourself check out the Video On Demand, Session 5, Part 9, at 1:09 except the video cuts out before the end)  Every Assembly holds a few surprises and for the 219th this was one of the biggest for me.

There were a couple of arguments against the new presbytery – lack of women leadership and challenges for clergy who serve in English ministry in Korean congregations.  The speakers argued that it is difficult to advocate for women clergy and young leadership in language presbyteries that tend to not favor those in their culture.  In addition, for ministers that speak English and serve second-generation ministries in Korean churches but do not speak Korean, or do not speak it well, participating in the life of the presbytery is difficult to impossible.  It makes it challenging to develop new young second-generation leadership speaking English in a language presbytery.

As you may be aware the GA’s relationship with non-geographic language presbyteries is a bit conflicted.  For example, the 218th GA sent a mixed message.  On the one hand they passed a Book of Order amendment which would provide a bit more flexibility in membership in non-geographic presbyteries but in doing so made sure to include a clause that non-geographic presbyteries should have an end date – they are to be transitional and not permanent.  On the other hand, the Assembly, from the same committee, approved another item that granted the continuation of Hanmi Presbytery without term limit.  So what message is being sent here?

Returning to the 219th GA, I should note that later in the day on Thursday there was a report on Twitter, but I have not verified it from a second source, that one of the women who spoke against the motion was physically assaulted for taking that position against the non-geographic presbytery.

Related to this is the rough time the PC(USA) has, and maybe American Presbyterians in general have, with being a racially diverse church.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I was a bit surprised that the Rev. Jin S. Kim, a minister with extensive service to the denomination and high name recognition, would have polled the lowest in the voting for Moderator of the GA.  A friend suggested that maybe this was not in spite of his name recognition, but because of it.  This could be very true — He directly speaks of the lack of racial diversity in the PC(USA) and what that means in terms of the changing demographics of the U.S.  In his candidating speech to the GA I heard him say what he has said before about this.  Here are excerpts from that speech (Video on demand, Session 3, Part 1, 53:40)

Those of you who know me know that I have no shortage of critiques of our denomination.  I quarrel with this church every day… I quarrel with our sense of entitlement to the prestige of a bygone era.
…
I quarrel with a racism that makes us even now a 92% white Eurocentric denomination in the 21st century, unable to embody the sovereignty of God and the priesthood of all believers in our local congregations.
…
The U.S. Census estimates that whites will be a minority by 2042 — are you making the connection? While the liberals blame the close-mindedness and homophobia of conservatives for our decline, and the conservatives blame the lack of commitment to biblical orthodoxy of the liberals, both seem to miss the massive demographic shift that really is the critical reason for our decline… The basic problem in my view is that we remain a Eurocentric, white, middle-class church wedded to a way of doing faith as deeply dependent on enlightenment rationalism.  But since the sixties the U.S. has become a post-modern nation in which the rational is only one of many competing ways of interpreting God.

This is his concern for the church and the starting point for where he sees that the denomination needs to go.  You will see similar themes in the news article about his sermon to the 218th GA.

And finally, American Presbyterianism has a segregationist past as well.  While there are a number of resources related to this, let me just mention that a bit of a fuss has recently arisen over a new book that looks at some of this history.  Yes, the focus is on institutions that are now affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, but the history is longer than either the PCA or the PC(USA) and extends back to our common ancestor, the Presbyterian Church in the United States.  In the extensive comments on the post I would point you to one in particular by TE Ligon Duncan, the current pastor of one of the churches prominant in the book talking about how the church has moved on.

So somewhere between our past history and being the Body of Jesus Christ in the future where there is no majority ethnic group in the U.S., the church finds itself today.  What can we learn from the past to help us move into the future?  Are non-geographic presbyteries a useful tool for transition or a structure that allows congregations to isolate themselves – a form of modern segregation – that is holding us back?  While I don’t know if this GA made the right decision, it was refreshing to hear the arguments and see them faithfully wrestling with the question.  Prayers that they did faithfully discern the will of God.

UPDATE: The Rev. Theresa Cho, the first commissioner to speak against the new presbytery, has posted on her blog about this item and her perspective on it.