I was checking out the redesigned web site of The Layman.  It is a clean looking site that uses ASP and CSS and no longer uses the frames.  It is a nice design, navigation seems good, and I like the “Other Headlines” section where they have consolidated all their news together.  I’m not a big fan of having that top navigation bar big and black, but that is my opinion.

Anyway, I was checking out the web site and having a look at their chart on the voting for Amendment B and noticed an interesting trend.  No, it is not the fact that the vote currently stands at no presbyteries for and six against.  What I noticed, and have now crunched the numbers on, was the total number of votes cast and how it differs from the last go-round.

Briefly, if you compare the number of votes cast in each presbytery with the total number cast in 2001-02 you find that the numbers are all between 72% and 87% of the votes cast last time.  Why?

The two obvious culprits are the drop in PC(USA) membership and “issue fatigue.”  I think it is probably a combination of the two.

If you consider the statistics between the end of 2001 and the end of 2007 you find that in 2007 the number of churches was 97% of what it was in 2001 and the number of members was 89% of what it was in 2001.  The number of commissioners to presbytery will reflect both of these numbers since each church is assured of two, the pastor and an elder, but larger churches have extra commissioners.

[OK, this is a “back of the envelope” calculation and I am well aware of several other issues that make my description above not as simple as I have presented.  These include:  The fact that a church with an empty or shared pulpit may only have an elder commissioner.  That presbyteries may have “extra” clergy because of seminaries, retirement communities, larger numbers of ministers in validated ministries, that sort of thing.  That would be adjusted under the redress of imbalance.]

The drop is larger than the membership drop so that can’t be it alone.  To address the “issue fatigue” I looked at the changes in the numbers of Yes and No votes.  I consider it interesting that every count of No votes declined, and it falls in the same range as the total vote decline.  On the one hand, this is not surprising since each of these presbyteries voted “No” so the majority of no votes will have the greater influence on the total numbers.  But there is some variability with the drop in negative votes sometimes higher and sometimes lower than the drop in total.

This is in marked contrast to the affirmative votes where in some cases a small number of votes causes the percentages to swing wildly.  The votes range from 22% of the number from last time to 106%, but in the case of the 22% and a 44%, these are less than 10 votes so small changes can be amplified.  Two of the other four are in the range of the total decline, and one shows only minor decline (98% – one vote) and one showed a slight increase (106% – one vote).  In general, the affirmative votes are holding steadier than the negative votes.

To summarize, negative votes show a fairly consistent decline in excess of the membership decline, the more substantial yes votes show a change that is at worst in the range of the negative vote decline.

I do realize that there are numerous other explanations for the drop in voting.  It could be because these are early votes and “get out the vote” campaigns have not been active yet.  It could be because these presbyteries have implemented an “active participation” policy among the honorably retired ministers under G-11.0101b and so have a smaller “redress of imbalance.”  (You will probably see this in my presbytery.)  Anyway, membership decline and “issue fatigue” may not be the only reason numbers are down.

What does this mean?  I’m not really sure yet but I’ll keep an eye on the trend.  It at least reflects the decline in the membership of the denomination.  But since the numbers are in excess of the decline there appears to be something else going on here which I would attribute to “issue fatigue.”  It would make sense that both of these effects would show up more in the negative votes since those are the churches realigning or thinking about it.