Heads up GA Junkies, Presbyterian polity wonks, and stated clerk wanna-be’s: First thing last Monday morning the Presbyterian Church in America filled out its Overtures Page for the upcoming 36th General Assembly and there are some items in there that only a polity wonk and parliamentarian can fully appreciate.
In my first Assembly preview I mentioned that there were three overtures that we only had the titles for, and shortly after that post three new overtures were posted, of which only one had text provided. Well, now the full text of the five title-only overtures is posted so now there is some interesting stuff to dissect. If your eyes glaze over easily at the pure polity business, you can jump a bit further down for church membership overtures, or all the way to the end for the latest in the discussion of deaconesses.
There are two overtures from Potomac Presbytery that address changes to the PCA Rules of Assembly Operations (RAO). If you want the current version you can find it bundled with the Book of Church Order, starting on page 246, towards the back before the Standing Judicial Commission Manual.
Overture 13 is simply titled: Revise RAO 14-6 k.; 14-9 g.; 15-8 e.; 14-9 e.; 15-8 c. The overture begins with the observation that the revised RAO has basically been successful, but a few “minor adjustments” are needed. If you look at the proposed changes it involves some pretty specific and subtle changes in the rules. The first change, adding 14-6.k, would permit commissioner committees of Assembly to adopt resolutions commending persons or agencies. This is a power the committees traditionally have had and was omitted in the new rules as an oversight according to the rational. The second change, adding 14-9.g, makes explicit that the Assembly answers Presbytery overtures. The first part declares that if the Assembly fails to adopt a recommended response to an overture then “the overture shall be considered to have been answered in the negative” The second part says that if the commissioner committee proposal is a negative answer to the overture and the full Assembly does not adopt it, then a no to a no does not make a yes so the proposal is sent back to the commissioner committee. And the next, 15-8.e, makes the same change in another place.
OK, that was warm up. The other two changes deal with consequences of particular parliamentary motions. Specifically, the changes to 14-9.e and 15-8.c clarify what the full Assembly can do with a committee recommendation. The section specifies that the subsidiary motions the full Assembly can not use are postpone indefinitely, amend, and commit, as well as some incidental motions. It does say that the Assembly can recommit, also know as refer, back to the commissioner committee that dealt with it. This overture would specify that “recommit with instructions” would not be permitted since this could be a undesirable exercise for the full Assembly and possibly provide an end-run on the prohibited amending. (If you want a good write up on these subsidiary motions from a slightly different venue there is one from the U.S. House of Representatives.) The reasons for recommitting the recommendation would be implicitly known according to the rational for the change:
A motion to recommit with instructions would open the floor to the emendation process the new rules were designed to prohibit. The overtures committee will have sufficient information to address a recommendation recommitted from the debate on the motion to recommit.
As I said, language only a polity wonk could love. Have you ever used or heard “emendation” in a sentence? (Essentially changing the document trying to correct the mistakes.) The last item in the overture would make the same change in a parallel section, 15-8.c.
There is also the closely related Overture 14, also from Potomac Presbytery, which addresses the RAO, connectionalism and the constitution of the church. The overture points out that the RAO, adopted by the Assembly, has a section, 16-3.e.5, that has instructions for Presbyteries. (In an interesting twist, or maybe what brought this to everyone’s attention, this is the section dealing with recording in Presbytery minutes the examination of elders and their departures from the Confessional Standards that was cited in one of the indictments against Louisiana Presbytery in the recent Federal Vision Controversy trial. (If you want to follow that thread check my last post on that)) The polity issue here is why are requirements that Assembly places on the Presbyteries contained in the Rules of Assembly Operations when they should be in the Book of Church Order since the RAO is adopted by the Assembly for its own procedures. Procedures for Presbyteries must either be adopted by the Presbytery itself or adopted by the whole church through the process of amending the Book of Church Order. This overture asks for the appointment of an ad interim committee to review the RAO and get rid of or move to the BCO any parts that place requirements on other governing bodies. As a GA Junkie and polity wonk I think they are absolutely right. Just open up the overture and check out the Where As sections. For the PC(USA) folks, heads up on this for the Form of Government revision.
Now I will jump back to Overtures 1, 2, and 3 from Southeast Alabama Presbytery. These all deal with sections related to membership in the church. Overture 1 proposes changes to BCO Chapter 6 to more clearly define how individuals join the church, especially by letter of transfer or reaffirmation of faith. The overture would add, among other language, two sections that define each of those. It is interesting to note that there is also a line added to BCO 6-2, the section that addresses “children of believers.” The added language says “It is [the children’s] duty and privilege personally to receive and rest upon Christ, to confess Him before men, and seek admission to the Lord’s Table.” I won’t elaborate at this time but I could read this addition as a clarification of the covenant community in a way that opposes the Federal Vision Theology.
Overture 2 would make some changes to the “membership vows” in BCO 57-5. To the current five questions it would add three more at the beginning that have the new members affirm the three sections of the Apostles Creed, one section per question. But it would also completely rewrite qu
estion 6 from relying in the grace of the Holy Spirit to promising to “make diligent use the means of grace” to live peacefully in the community and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to be a faithful disciple to the end of your life. A last question is added for those who are joining by affirmation of faith and baptism for them to explicitly declare their intent. Finally, in an interesting touch this overture would add “I do” as the required response to each question. Note that this is the same section that overture 4 proposes to change the line about the pastor asking these questions from a “may” to a “shall.”
And overture 3 appears to play clean-up in other sections of the BCO where the changes from 1 and 2 would need to be reconciled with current language. It makes corresponding changes to parts about letters of transfer and the membership vows in other places and moves some sections, including the membership vows in 57-5, to chapter 46.
Finally, there is Overture 15 from Western Canada Presbytery which concurs with Overture 9 asking for study and clarification of the scriptural guidance concerning women serving as deacons, or a position very similar to a deacon. This is the high-profile issue of the Assembly and the PCA web magazine byFaith has a note about it as well as continued low-level interest in the blogosphere, like recent posts on Post Tenebras Lux and Omnia ad Dei Gloriam.
And on a technical note, if anyone who works on the PCA web site sees this, you might want to do a check on your title meta-tags. The overtures page says “Exhibitors” and many of the pages for this year’s GA still say 35th General Assembly.
So stay tuned. Of the large-church GA’s this one comes before the PC(USA) but after the Church of Scotland. We are getting closer.