Yesterday at the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) two high-profile business items were approved that will now require the concurrence of the presbyteries.  As a change to the Book of Order, or maybe better expressed as a revision of a major portion of the Book of Order, the new revised Form of Government and new Foundations of Presbyterian Polity sections will require a majority vote of the presbyteries to be adopted.  On the other hand, the Belhar Confession will require two-thirds of the presbyteries to agree to be included in the Book of Confessions.  After these were approved by the Assembly plenary I was musing on my commute home from work on the basic question – “Will the presbyteries concur?”

Well, if I ponder something long enough I usually head in an analytical direction and this was no different.  So in the spirit of the alternate hashtag for GA – #presbynerdfest10 – this post is about to get really geeky really fast.

Let me begin with the data:  The nFOG passed the plenary by a vote of 468 yes to 204 no, a 69.6% yes vote.  The Belhar Confession was endorsed by the plenary with a 525 to 150 vote, a 77.8% yes vote.  Clearly, if the presbyteries mirror the Assembly in their voting than both will be approved.  However, we know from past experience that this is not the case.  In the most recent example the 218th General Assembly approved the change to G-6.0106b by a 380 to 325 margin, a 53.9% yes vote but the presbyteries voted 78 to 94 on 08-B with only a 45.3% yes vote.  The ratio of presbytery “yes” to assembly “yes” is 0.840.  If we apply that to the nFOG vote we get 58.5% yes in the presbyteries and for Belhar 65.4%.  nFOG passes and Belhar is very close.

Why is there a difference between Assembly and presbytery votes?  As polity wonks know, this is really a comparison of apples to oranges.  In the presbytery voting each presbytery has equal weight regardless of their size.  The smallest presbyteries’ votes count just the same as the largest and as a general rule the smaller presbyteries tend to be more conservative.  The other element in play here is that past voting patterns have shown that commissioners to the General Assembly are, on balance, more progressive than the average elder back home — or at least the elders back home are more resistant to change.  Finally, there is more time before the presbytery votes allowing for more organizing and educating of commissioners that can influence the final vote.

While I won’t go into the details, mathematicians will quickly realize that the ratio is not the only, and probably not the best, way to go in this case and rather we would be better served by having more data.  Much to my surprise, there is none from the 218th GA — Until I went searching I did not realize that every other item from that Assembly that went to the presbyteries for concurrence was approved by the plenary on voice or other non-recorded vote.  (There is something interesting in that alone but I need to do some more thinking about that.)

So, as another measure of the Assembly’s strength of opinion let me turn to the vote in the committee for each item since that is required to be a recorded vote.  Here is what happened in the Assembly committee and the presbyteries.  The link for each item takes you to the PC-Biz page for that item.

Item	Comm. % Yes	Presby. % Yes
08-A	96.1%	64.3%
08-B	78.8%	45.3%
08-C	94.7%	88.9%
08-D	98.3%	93.6%
08-E	100%	89.5%
08-F	100%	65.3%
08-G	100%	88.3%
08-H	100%	89.1%
08-I	79.3%	57.6%
08-J	100%	95.9%
08-K	100%	98.8%
08-L	100%	93.6%
08-M	100%	99.4%
08-N	100%	98.2%

So looking at 08-B, the only one with counted votes in all three arenas, we have 78.8% yes in committee, 53.9% yes in full Assembly, and 45.3% yes in the presbyteries.

Taking this data and graphing it gives the chart below. It is a bit busy but the primary data are the blue squares.  I’ve included the full Assembly vote on  08-B as a red square for reference.  Statisticians will quickly see that while the left-hand blue data points are nicely clustered together, they are away from the other points and do leverage the best-fit line in blue.  I’ve put on the bounding lines in black.  The two thresholds, 50% and 66.7% are marked in purple.

Now, using this as a predictor, we see that a Book of Order change should get greater than 78% in committee and for Confessions above 87%.  nFOG was 37-5, 88% so probable passage.  Belhar was 43-11, 79.6% so it would fail on the main trend and closer on the upper bound.  Revisions to ordination standards was 69.2% so also a predicted failure by presbyteries to approve.

But is this valid?  This was the correlation for the PC(USA) after the 218th GA, does this correlation still hold for the church today?  I don’t know but we will see what happens in the next year.

Anyway, some speculative geekiness.  I will say that I do think the church has changed enough that the correlation probably won’t hold.  We will see how close it is.  Stay tuned.  Now, out of geek mode and back to polity wonk — next topic: the defeat of a non-geographic presbytery today.

Update:  Between the time I wrote this and when I proofed and posted it the 219th GA voted on item 06-09 to propose a change to G-6.0106b.  As I said above the committee vote would predict not enough presbyteries concurring based on past trends.  With full Assembly approval by 373 to 323, a 53.6% yes vote.  This is almost identical to the vote on the corresponding item for the 218th General Assembly and may suggest little shift in the church since then.  If the ratio from the last Assembly holds this Book of Order change would again fail. Time will tell.