The official vote tally on the amendments to the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was updated yesterday afternoon and enough presbyteries have now reported their votes that two of the amendments have passed.  It probably goes without saying that these are the two least controversial amendments:  08-D – to change the name of the General Assembly Council to the General Assembly Mission Council; and 08-J – to clarify some language in the Book of Discipline section on Alternate Forms of Resolution.  At my presbytery meeting yesterday, where we voted on the amendments, I had one person ask if there was an argument to vote against the name change.  I don’t have one, my son who as a YAD at the last GA was on the committee that dealt with it doesn’t have one, the Association of Stated Clerks doesn’t have one, but the tally lists five presbyteries that voted against it so there is something that I am missing.

The other amendments are in a variety of places.  Amendment 08-B is the only one listed as failing, more on that in a minute.  The vows of membership (08-A) and the two Certified Christian Educators amendments (08-F and 08-I) all have similar votes with a significant number of no votes.  In each case the vote is around 55 yes and 35 no.  And I am still intrigued that these votes, and especially the vote on membership vows, are so close to the mirror image of the vote on 08-B.  Again, some other time.

The remaining four amendments are all very close to adoption and we can expect to see those with the requisite number of presbyteries in the next update.  That would include 08-C on replacing “sympathy” with “compassion,” 08-E regarding non-geographic presbyteries, 08-G about synod membership on permanent committees, and 08-H on ordination exams.  The discussion yesterday at my presbytery was enlightening on some of these.  For example, it was pointed out that while I had been thinking exclusively about having the proper academic preparation for the ordination exams, 08-H actually has the CPM consider all forms of preparation to determine if a candidate is ready to take the exams.  Also, concern was expressed by members of my presbytery about 08-E mixing the non-geographic presbyteries issue with the unqualified reduction in the number of members necessary to form a presbytery.  But my favorite comment of the day was regarding 08-C with “sympathy” and “compassion.”  A friend asked if there was a significance to substituting the Latin form for the Greek form of words that mean essentially the same thing in their etymology.  For the record, my presbytery voted non-concurrence, sticking with the Greek by 30-150.

In addition, three of the four ecumenical statements have been agreed to, and the statement with the Episcopal Church is only four votes from being adopted as well.

So where is Amendment B?  While the official tally is 36 to 54, the “reliable sources” give the vote count at 42 to 69.  There have now been 19 presbyteries change from a no vote on 01-A to yes on 08-B.  And while last weekend had only one of eight previous no presbyteries switch, last night saw two of five presbyteries switch.  I’m not going to do my geeky statistics thing for this post, just note that the trends continue and my previous estimate of a final vote of 72-101 still looks good.  The other interesting occurrence statistically was that for the fourth vote in a row Eastern Korean Presbytery was unanimous in support of “fidelity and chastity.”  I had to laugh because the total lack of yes votes caused havoc in my spreadsheet with division by zero errors in several of my normalization equations.  Yeah, it’s a geek thing. Sorry.

Speaking of the sources of the data, it has been interesting to watch the various web sites update on a busy day of voting.  My two favorite web sites are the chart at PresbyWeb (thanks Hans) and the results page from the Presbyterian Coalition (thanks for your hard work as well).  The reason I like the Coalition site is easy:  of the many charts out there it is the only one I know of in chronological order.  I just scroll to the bottom and see what is new.  The PresbyWeb chart has all four votes listed and has the color coding to quickly tell how each vote went.  There are several other bloggers that have picked up the color scheme and talk about “switching from yellow to blue.”  Following the various sites throughout the voting season these two sites seem to pick up the results first.  For example, last night I was watching the two sites and the Coalition site had the Transylvania and Nevada votes up in the course of the afternoon.  PresbyWeb and the Coalition updated this morning to have the rest, with the exception that as of this writing the Coalition is still missing the New Brunswick vote.  Note:  I mention this for comparison’s sake only and not as a criticism.  There are a limited number of us G.A. Junkies out there who really care about it “as it happens.”  For the most part both of these sites are fully updated the next day which is very reasonable for any sane person.

The other “as it happens” site seems to be the spreadsheet on YesOnB.  The data there seems to lag the first two by a bit, but still usually has the data the next day.  I will say that I don’t find the spreadsheet format as easy to read as the web page format, but the spreadsheet is intended for viewing the analysis and not the play-by-play.  The “old reliable” is of course the table at The Layman, but it also seems to lag just a bit — for example, last night’s results have not been posted yet today.  Finally, the Covenant Network has their vote count as well, which also has not been updated.  All the sites will probably be current within the next few hours.

One positive from last weekend is that there seems to be a lot of encouraging comments about the presbyteries’ processes for debate.  John Shuck comments “It was a good meeting with a good process” regarding the Holston Presbytery meeting.  He also says “OK. I am glad I am here. One colleague said to me: ‘I disagree with you about almost everything but I like you.’ I like him, too. I think that matters.”

Over at The Corner Muffin Shop the pastor that writes it says of the Heartland Presbytery meeting

I have to give great kudos to my colleagues and friends on the Church
Order and Listening Division for their work in putting together today’s
Called Meeting of Presbytery to vote on the 14 Amendments to the Book
of Order. The meeting was designed around worship and it was an
excellent meeting if any Presbytery meeting can be described as
excellent.

I think most of the members of San Gabriel Presbytery were pleased with how our process went last night.  This had been in the works since the conclusion of GA with some form of discussion about the amendments at every presbytery meeting in the last nine months.  In fact, we had been laying the ground work with preliminary small-group discussions for the last two years.

There was a time of discussion before the business meeting began and I was the lead-off batter as the facilitator for a group discussion of all the other amendments.  We then broke into groups and spent 45 minutes discussing three questions about ordination and how that informs our views of 08-B.  The formal debate for 08-B was an order of the day, began with intro remarks by our EP framing our presbytery history and reminding us we are family, and then one speaker for and one against each spoke for five minutes.  It helps to know that the 1996 overture that resulted in G-6.0106b came from our presbytery so there are references to that, implied and explicit, made throughout the debate.  Debate was set, by previously approved rules, at 30 minutes and 12 individuals each made 2 minute speeches, evenly divided between for and against.  There were a variety of arguments presented and arguing from scripture on both sides.  Four of the six commissioners arguing against 08-B were from racial ethnic churches and more than one mentioned that passage of the amendment would harm ecumenical relations with partner churches around the world.  There were no racial ethnic speakers for the amendment but at least one was waiting when debate was ended.

Probably the only glitch of the evening was the closing of debate.  The previously approved rules of debate allowed for extending debate twice in 15 minute increments.  The vote was taken and a slight majority, as viewed from my seat, favored extending debate.  The moderator ruled that 2/3 was necessary and there was then no little discussion about whether 1/2 or 2/3 was needed as that was not spelled out in the adopted rules.  The final ruling from our team of clerks, a high-powered brain trust if there ever was one, was that 2/3 was needed because the rules of debate required a 2/3 vote originally.  (I hope this does not go down as “stifling the Spirit” because we did have 30 minutes of good, civil debate where much was presented.)  The vote was taken and in the end we did not concurr with 08-B by a vote of 79-136.  While the numbers are smaller this is fairly close to the ratio of the 97-181 vote on 01-A. 

Regarding numbers, 215 commissioners voted on 08-B last night while 278 voted on 01-A.  There were several people at the meeting last night that I had not seen for a while and attendence was clearly higher than usual.  For example, in January there were 136 commissioners registered (75 ministers and 61 elders).  Last night there were also a lot of observers, some of whom appeared to be students from our local seminaries watching the system work.  Why the lower number than the last vote?  In our case it is almost certainly due to a new policy.  To lower our redress of imbalance our presbytery has adopted a policy that H.R.’s that have difficulty attending meetings may opt-out so they don’t need to be compensated for by an additional elder.  Because of this, since the last vote the number of elder commissioners has been reduced by close to the amount that the vote was reduced.  In addition, while the retired pastors that chose the non-participation option could attend and vote, they are still members of presbytery after all, I did not notice many of them last night so that would help account for the decrease.  In our case I think the change to the redress policy can explain almost all of the drop and I did not discern any changes due to fatigue or departures.

The rejection of Amendment B is still not final by any means but the current trends continue to point in that direction.  But, The Layman has worked out a scenario where passage of 08-B would be possible.

Time will tell.  Stay tuned…