The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — The Assembly Business Is Now Live

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While I have been anticipating the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) “going live,” I can now report that within the last week or so it has.

In this case, going live has two components:

1)  The anticipated official web site of the Assembly is now up and running complete with several sub-pages and lots of pictures of the 218th GA.  There is a greeting from GA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons on the front page, a nice set of FAQ’s for commissioners, and the beginnings of an on-line commissioner orientation including a video tutorial of PC-Biz, the on-line business system.  A preliminary schedule is posted and the right navigation bar has a suggestive, but inactive, region titled “GA 219 Social Networking.”  There are still some broken and interesting links on the pages (particularly for the OGA graphic) but the web site represents a good start.

2) Speaking of PC-Biz, I had mentioned that it had been primed for the 219th but now when you check out the business there are three overtures posted.

Overture 1 asks the Assembly to issue an Authoritative Interpretation that essentially restores previous AI and General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission decisions regarding Book of Order section G-6.0106.  The previous AI’s on this section were removed by the 218th GA as part of the action that sent the ultimately unsuccessful Amendment B to the presbyteries for a vote.  This Overture comes from the Presbytery of San Diego with concurring overtures from Central Florida, Cherokee, Washington and Yukon.

Overture 2 is a fairly routine matter of transferring a church from one presbytery to another.  The original location of Community Church of Seattle Presbyterian Church was in the Presbytery of Seattle but in 2003 they relocated to a property that is in the Presbytery of North Puget Sound.  There is a bit of a twist because the transfer did not happen at the time of the move six years ago due to North Puget Sound not being in a position to accept a loan guarantee that would have transfered with the church.  As they say, now the way is clear.

Overture 3 requests a fairly substantial change to the position of Commissioned Lay Pastor (CLP).  At the present time a CLP receives basic theological training and can then be commissioned by the presbytery to serve in a specific congregation.  When the CLP finishes at that congregation they are available for work in another congregation but are not able to do freelance work.  This overture from South Louisiana Presbytery requests a change to the Book of Order G-14.0560 to allow a CLP to have “at-large” status between calls and be free to serve on an as-needed basis, even in their own congregation if requested by the session.  The rational section of the overture says this:

Given the current reality that many of our smaller membership congregations are unable to afford the services of a commissioned lay pastor, even if one were available in or near the community, much less a minister of the Word and Sacrament, it is incumbent upon the denomination to provide avenues where these congregations may be served by trained laity, especially for the celebration of the sacraments. Having adopted the essential tenets of the Reformed tradition, we should exhibit a visible expression of the Reformed tenet of “the priesthood of all believers” or what Scriptures call the “royal priesthood,” (1Peter 2:9; Ephesians 2:19–22; 1Corinthians 6:16–18).

The realities of ordained ministry in the PC(USA) are that many congregations can not afford ordained leadership and those that are seminary trained have less interest in serving small rural congregations.  This is a situation the church will have to address and this is one approach to it.  Personally, I’m not sure yet that this would be my preferred course although it is a very reasonable proposal.  On the other hand I was very much in favor of a parallel move about 12 years ago when the church changed the Book of Order to allow “commissioned” deacons so that individuals could serve in the ministry of the diaconate in a specified means of ministry without the particular congregation having a full board of deacons.

So hold on to your hats as this is only the beginning.  We have almost exactly nine months before the Assembly convenes, lots of overtures to go, I am sure, and several committee and task force reports to be issued.  In addition, I have gone through enough parts of the New Revised Form of Government that the 219th will have to address to begin making some comments, probably tomorrow.

Church Property Case Not Accepted By Supreme Court… At This Time

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It is the first Monday in October and that means two things…

They begin announcing the Nobel Prizes for this year and…
The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term.

Now, I will leave the Nobel Prizes (and their humorous cousins the Ig Nobel Prizes) to you.  (Although it does strike me that there is something theologically significant about the fact that cows with names give more milk than cows without names. See the Ig Nobel award for Veterinary Medicine.)

But with the start of the new Supreme Court year it brings a list of the cases that the court has agreed to hear, and the vastly longer list of those the Court will not hear.

For those looking for a Supreme resolution to the diversity of views and court decisions on church property, the trust clause, and neutral versus hierarchical principles, we won’t have it from the national court this year.  The Court has declined the request of St. James of Newport Beach to have their California high court decision reviewed.  If you look at the list of court orders you will see that their case, 08-1579, is just one in an approximately 80 page list of cases that the court has declined to hear, almost all with out comment.

What this means is that the case goes back to trial court as the California supremes ordered.  It also means that once the trial court has rendered a decision the case can once again make its way through the appeals system and possibly have another shot at the U.S. high court.  There is also a possibility that a different property case could make it there first.

As always, for the legal context, interpretation and decoding into plain English check out the Anglican Curmudgeon.

And the story continues.

Presbyterians Certainly Are A Peculiar People

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After putting my earlier post to bed I continued thinking on the topics I raised in that discussion about Presbyterian reorganization and started to do additional analysis on some of those thoughts.  This is a follow-up based on what I have contemplated and researched in the last couple of days.

To remind you of my thoughts from Saturday, in a nutshell I said that in historical Presbyterian divisions I regularly see certain proportions in the divisions.  Those are generally about 1:1, 2:1, and 19:1.  Put another way, when a division happens it regularly involves either 50%, 33%, or 5% of the Presbyterian branch.

What happened next was that I decided to be a bit ecumenical about this and look at some other Protestant branches:

Observation #1: The split of the Anglican Church of North America from the Episcopal Church is a 5% split.  (Actually it is 4.5% if you use the ACNA membership of 100,000 but only 3.1% if you use the 69,000 number that is also floating around.  This from a total of 2.2 million for the Episcopal Church.)

Observation #2:  As I went looking for historical divisions in other traditions I started looking for the “family tree” type charts for other churches.  Short answer, they are few and far between.  There are charts for all of Christendom (example 1, example 2 – note the Pentecostals with no connection to the trunk of the church).  There are a few that show division or union on a particular branch.  But with the exception of a great chart for the United Church of Christ, I could find nothing comparable to the Presbyterian charts.  Why?

The answer could be operational – I might not have found the right search terms for the search engines or things like this for other denominations might not be on line.

But I think the answer is also likely denominational.  Are Presbyterians peculiar in some way that we need these charts?

One explanation could be retention of our shared tradition:  Often, when divisions occur in denominations a new denomination is formed. (And it would therefore leave the chart.)  A prime example of this is the creation of the Methodists from the Anglican church.  Even within the Presbyterian tradition we have the Disciples of Christ originating from Presbyterianism, but never recorded on our family trees.  But for Presbyterians that seems to be the exception rather than the rule and usually when Presbyterians split there is simply another flavor of Presbyterians formed.  Our complexities of tradition could be attributed to dividing branches staying “in the neighborhood,” so to speak.

Another possible explanation is that there is something about Presbyterian governments that make our divisions, multiple branches, and reunions more likely than in other forms of church government.  (It actually would be an interesting discussion of whether it is the polity itself or if it reflects the type of people who are attracted to that polity.)  But given the recognition that, within the bounds of the collective judgment, a governing body can not bind an individual conscience the stage seems set for disagreements leading to a parting of ways.  More on that another time.

So are Presbyterians just more inclined to these divisions and mergers that, if we are to keep track of our tradition, give us a need for these complicated charts?  And can we take this a step further and ask if because we have these charts and are aware of our heritage of reorganizations, has that lowered our resistance to future divisions?

Put it another way, how much is it a part of, or maybe even inherent in, our system and how much is it because “that’s the way we have always done it?”

The bottom line is that as far as I can find on the web Presbyterians seem to corner the market, or at least dominate it, in diagrams showing our reorganizations over the last five centuries.

This led to the third point for today, (WARNING: this is about to get very geeky) I started thinking about the use of fractal behavior in numerical models of church division and recombination.

The numerical modeling of church division is not new to the last post — As you may have noticed from other posts I have some numerical models of mainline decline which I am working on to make them independent of denomination.  One of the features of these models is that the decline of a mainline church is not linear to zero but will reach an equilibrium point.  What I have been struggling with is what conditions to place on the calculation of that “plateau.”  My recent thoughts on the possible fractal nature of denominational size may help provide those conditions.

It was at this point in my previous post that I made a logical jump that may have left a lot of my readers behind.  I began by talking about proportions in church divisions and then turned to seeing if various Presbyterian traditions might be fractal.  The thing I should have added there is that if divisions regularly occur with about the same proportions then the various branches that develop will have similar ratios of their sizes.  That is to say that two small branches would have the same relative proportions compared to each other as two large branches.  This “self-similarity” is what is known in the jargon as “fractal” behavior.  A concrete example in a moment.

So what would the development of a fractal church look like?

A quick answer is taking the beginning population (Scottish churches in 1560?) and progressively divide them according to some ratio over a certain number of cycles.  If you take five cycles you end up with 32 different churches that each has one of six possible sizes.  Using a 70:30 split the continuing “main” church has 17% of the members and the “always minority” church has 0.2% of the population.  For a 95-5% split (19:1) the numbers change to 77% “always majority” and an effectively zero “always minority.”

But the interesting thing is that if you compare the largest branch to the second largest branch it will have the same ratio as comparing the second smallest branch to the smallest branch.  For the 70:30 split that ratio is 2.33 and for the 19:1 split the ratio is 19.  Going back to the previous post I observed that a number around 6.5 was seen as a ratio for American Presbyterianism in several cases and that would result from an 87-13% division.

Two refinements are immediately obvious:  1)  Provide for merger of branches based on theology and 2) Provide for merger of branches based on practicality when one or both are too small to survive.

How you introduce mergers will clearly influence the outcome.  One simple model is that in each cycle the minority of one branch finds more theological kinship with the majority of the neighboring branch and merges with them.  (Think PC(USA) churches moving over to the EPC.)  This gives six separate branches after five cycles.  The unmerged ends (only splits) have the same proportions mentioned above, but the four middle and successively reorganized branches have varying sizes.  For the 70:30 split the largest branches end up being part of the reorganization with one having 36% and ano
ther 30% of the total population.  For the 19:1 split no other branch has enough membership to grow to rival the unmerged majority with the second-largest branch having 20% of the population.

But with the mergers the ratio of sizes is now varied but lower than it was in the no-merger case.  In the 70:30 split a number around 1.5 is commonly seen and in the 19:1 case there are a few lower numbers (3.8, 9.5, 1.5) but the very smallest branches have very high ratios (such as 473).

From here countless refinements are possible including pruning or merging of branches that fall below a particular threshold of sustainability, the introduction of a virtual coin-toss to decide if two branches would merge and add a component of variability, and some sort of rule or probability that would result in mergers with the edge branches.  Maybe over the Thanksgiving holiday I’ll program up a Monte Carlo simulation.

So there are my extended thoughts on all of this.  I’ll provide future updates on where my reading or modeling takes me with this.

Developments At Coral Ridge — What Does It Say About Confessional Standards?

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If you have not been following this story…

A few months back Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, called a pastor to fill their vacant senior pastor position.  There were some concerns about how the vote of the congregation was presented and conducted so a couple of weeks ago the congregation voted again on the new pastor.  The call was reaffirmed by a 69-31% vote.  At the same time there have been some dissidents in the congregation who have been calling for the removal of the new pastor and disciplinary proceedings were begun against some of them.  That may be moot based on current developments.

Well the dissident group has now left and is starting their own worshiping fellowship at a local auditorium, having held one worship service on their own so far.

Something like this does not usually make the national news but in this case it helps that Coral Ridge was founded by the late TE D. James Kennedy, the new pastor is a grandson of Billy Graham, and some of the leaders of the splinter group are the children of Rev. Kennedy.  It is, as we sometimes say, “As The Pulpit Turns.”

That is the background information.  Now a few comments related to church polity, confessional standards, and church reorganizations.

Beginning at reorganizations:  As I have been working on the nature of church reorganizations I commented that the recent reaffirmation vote is close to the 2:1 ratio I have seen in multiple circumstances elsewhere.  Being only one church vote I am not inclined to put a lot of weight on it by itself.  A recent article on the dissident group says that attendance at the first worship service was about 400 people.  While it would be better to consider the number at some point in the future after the attendance stabilizes, or we at least have more than one data point, that number does fall very close to the 422 “no” votes in the recent vote.  Now, it could be a stretch to say that only congregation members that voted are now attending worship with the new group, but the number is still in the region of the 2:1 split.  It will be interesting to see what the ratios are in about a month.

Regarding polity — the article twice mentions a meeting of an organizational committee and that the meeting was “closed.”  I am going to make a jump here, but from the article this is sounding like the leadership of the new church, a proto-session if you will.  I would be curious to know the make-up of this body:  Are they ordained elders of the PCA?  Do they follow PCA leadership standards and so all the members of this organizational committee are male?  And while session meetings need not be open, are these leaders willing to discuss issues with the members of this developing congregation or is all the business being kept under wraps?

This brings me to a couple of lines in the news story that really drew my attention:

Denominational outlines of the embryonic congregation haven’t been
determined yet. However, one of the leaders, Jim Filosa, said they plan
to pattern it on the Westminster Confession of Faith, the backbone of
Presbyterian belief.

“We’ll do everything we did at Coral Ridge,” Filosa said. “What happens down the road depends on what denomination contacts us.”

This opens up all sorts of questions.  First, if they are patterning it on the Westminster Confessional Standards and doing what they did at Coral Ridge I would expect the leadership group to be exclusively male and conform to the PCA Book of Church Order.  And when they say “pattern” it on the WCF what does that mean?  Is it truly a confessional standard, or just a pattern or template that will provide guidance but not a subscription standard?

But, the line that sent a chill down my spine, as a confessional Presbyterian, was the comment that “What happens down the road depends on what denomination contacts us.”

Is this to say that their confessional standards are flexible or fluid enough to accommodate a range of interested suiters?  Would it not be more doctrinally sound to decide what exactly their standards are and then find the denomination that fits them best?  And I may be completely off the mark, but the way this quote comes across in the article it sounds like what they are saying is “Look, we are the true Coral Ridge.  You make us an offer.”

Anyway, I am curious to see how this develops in the coming weeks.

Patterns Of Proportionality In Presbyterian Partition — Or — Are Fractures Fractal?

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With mild apologies for the alliteration in the title, I wanted to take a look at a couple of patterns I have seen as I looked at Presbyterian history.

One of the concepts that I have been studying is the “reorganization” of denominations.  As I have commented before, this is more than just the divisions and schisms that probably first come to mind, but also a couple merger-related reorganizations that formed whole new denominations as well as reorganizations that merged multiple branches together.  I find it instructive that the “family trees” for American Presbyterianism and Scottish Presbyterianism are equally convoluted and the Presbyterian branch of the United Church of Canada is almost as full. (And the Canada chart does not even include the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada.)

But as I have been studying the partitioning a couple of patterns have jumped out at me:

The first are splits that are about two-to-one.  There are a few famous ones that are described as 30% or one-third (33%).  Maybe the most famous is the Scottish Disruption of 1843 where 450 ministers walked out of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and formed the Free Church of Scotland.  As with most of these splits the number in the minority are easy to find, but the number remaining is more difficult.  The departing group is widely described as one-third of the ministers, but thanks to Iain Campbell we know that 752 ministers remained, so the departing minority was close to, but slightly more than, one-third at 37.4%.

In that same ball park are the proportion of Presbyterian churches that chose not to join the United Church of Canada or the Uniting Church in Australia.  In both cases these are reported as about 30% for Canada and one-third for Australia.  (Canada, Australia)

Finally, while this is a single data point for a whole category, and it does represent a fairly unusual occurrence, it did catch my attention that last week’s vote on a pastor in a high-profile call ended up 69%-31%, a repeat of the 2:1 general proportions.

In American Presbyterianism the pattern seems to be either about 1:1 or a very small minority.

The two most famous breaks, the Old Side/New Side and Old School/New School, were closer to even breaks but when you dissect the numbers they are very complicated and some numbers are uncertain.  In addition, they were not so much departures as expulsions.

The date for the Old Side/New Side break is set at 1741, although the following year is interesting as well.  Charles Hodge gives us a very detailed account of the events leading up to the Synod (first GA was in 1786) and the commotion at the meeting.  For 1741 Hodge names the 25 clergy present from five of the six presbyteries (p. 176).  Hodge also lists those who met later to reform their excluded presbytery (p. 195) giving the names of the 11 clergy who were at the meeting, of which one was not on the Synod list.  If you use the 10-15 split of the Synod it would be a 40% minority or 2:3 split.  But the overall situation is more complicated.

One of the interesting aspects of this rupture is the dynamics related to the missing New York ministers.  While absent in 1741 they represented seven of the 25 clergy present at the 1742 Synod (28%).  Over the next several years, and throughout the 17 years of separation, several of the New York ministers were integral in healing the division.  While theologically with the Old Side, they felt that justice was not done to their New Side brethren and so in 1745 they left the Old Side to help form the New Side Synod of New York.

In all, Hodge tells us (p. 253) that there were a total of 40-45 ministers before the schism of which nine (20.0-22.5%) were excluded in 1741 and 11 or 12 more withdrew in 1745 ( about 50% total).

The 18th Century split can be viewed as a 50-50 division looking at the totals, but let me take the analysis a step further.  (And this is preliminary, based mainly on Hodge, so a true church historian may have better information.)  I find it interesting that at the 1742 Synod the ratio of Old School to moderate (previously absent) New York ministers was not quite, but approached, 2-to-1.

I am not going to do a detailed analysis of the Old School/New School split of 1837 and 1838 at this time except to note a few things:  1) It was an exclusion more than a parting of ways, 2) The NY Times reported that the original expulsion of Western Reserve was by a vote of 138-107 (56.3-43.7%) 3) But in the end the division was close to a 50-50 split based not on the Assembly vote but on the wider church that followed Western Reserve in the division.

The final pattern that I see is the very small minority.  I mentioned before the vote for a pastor that was about a 70-30 split.  In my experience working with several congregations there are always 1-2% of the members of the congregation that dissent on any vote to call a pastor.  Denomination-wide dynamics seem similar.  For example:

In 1846 when the Scottish Relief Churches merged with the Seceder Churches 14% did not agree.  (This is an exception since it is more than the “small minority.”)

In 1875 when four streams of Canadian Presbyterians merged 21 of 623 ministers (3.3%) did not agree and withdrew from the new denomination.

In 1936 there were 34 ministers out of almost 10,000 that left the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to form what would become the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

In 1973 260 churches, out of 4230 churches, (6.1%) left the Presbyterian Church in the United States to form the Presbyterian Church in America.

In 1981 67 churches formed the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, out of almost 9000 churches in the United Presbyterian Church.

One thing that happens when many groups split off is that there is a small group that initially forms but others may later join them when they see how things are working out.  One example of this is the Seceders in Scotland in 1733.  While they began small the Associate Presbyterians grew in number over the next few decades, and suffered their own divisions until by 1820 they had split into four groups giving a total of seven Presbyterian branches in Scotland.  By 1875 the membership breakdown in Scotland is recorded as:

Church of Scotland – 460,464
Free Church of Scotland – 256,554
United Presbyterian Church – 187,761

I find it interesting that the ration of the Established Church to the other two major branches is almost 50-50.&nb
sp; I would like to make the case that the membership pattern is fractal at 2:1, but with ratios of 1.79 and 1.37 there is a suggestion of semi-fractal nature in the 1.5 area.  (Or maybe I’m just making the data fit my theory.)

For the five branches coming off the mainline of American Presbyterianism in the 20th century the membership and congregation numbers are:

PC(USA) – 2,140,165 in 10751 congregations
PCA – 340,852 in 1693 congregations
EPC – 82,884 in 247 congregations
OPC – 27,990 in 255 congregations
BPC – 3000 est. in <30 congregations

This gives ratios of:

PC(USA)/PCA – 6.28 members, 6.35 churches
PCA/EPC – 4.11 members, 6.85 churches
EPC/OPC – 2.96 members, 0.96 churches
OPC/BPC – 9.33 members, 8.5 churches

Numbers are suggestive but not really close enough to declare it as fractal. (But I am interested by those ratios a bit over 6.)  And for a set of Presbyterian churches in major flux at the moment (although looking at history are Presbyterian churches ever not in flux?) ratios are changing so this may not be a good comparison of “stable” population.

So, all this comes with the usual disclaimers:  I put this together with a variety of data with varying quality.  It is intended to be an overview and summary and present areas for future exploration.  This discussion is by no means comprehensive of all the events that could be considered.  And finally, there is no statistical control on any of this so I could just be finding patterns in what is actually random numbers, a common human behavior.

None the less, I do wonder if there is something to certain of these patterns.  If these numbers are real does it represent something about the Presbyterian system of government?  Does it represent something about human nature in general?  Does it reflect something about how humans structure or organize themselves?

Questions to ponder.

    

PC(USA) Committees And Task Forces Getting Ready For GA

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With nine months before the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the pace of work is picking up and reports, preliminary and final, are being issued.

In particular, the PC(USA) has several special committees and task forces working on various tasks from the 218th GA or the General Assembly Mission Council.

Recent press releases about the various groups and their progress include:

At this time one committee, the New Revised Form of Government Task Force, has reported out in final form for the input of the denomination.  Their full report is posted and commended to the church for study ahead of the Assembly.  I have begun studying the 2009 version relative to the 2008 version and will have comments on the revisions in the near future.

But I have not gotten very far into that yet since I have been otherwise occupied, because…

The Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage met last week and has released their preliminary report for review and input by the church.  Input can be sent to civilunion.marriage@pcusa.org.  It should be 1000 words or less and received by Nov. 15.

The report begins:

As members of Christ’s church, we differ profoundly; but can we also see that those who disagree with us are seeking to love one another with God’s grace, advance the radical inclusiveness of the gospel, and promote biblical faithfulness? Though we reach very different conclusions, can we rejoice that our church is willing to wrestle together prayerfully with the question: How do we extend the grace of God to all, calling all persons—regardless of sexual orientation—to repentance and conversion, so that all will experience God’s gracious intention for humanity?

And the concluding section says:

What is the place of covenanted same-gender partnerships in the Christian community? The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) cannot agree. But the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is not ours. It is Christ’s. We did not choose Christ; Christ has chosen us, and appointed us—each and every one—to go and bear fruit that will last in this part of Christ’s vineyard. We have no right to destroy what is not ours. Knowing this, we believe that it is our Christ-given duty to stay at the table, especially when we disagree.

At the present time the report contains no recommendations to the Assembly — The committee will decide on those at their final meeting in January.

Now, I am going to take a step back and make some personal comments:  As many of you are aware I am a member of that Special Committee.  I have no comments about the content of the report — the committee worked very hard on it, was unanimous in support of the draft version, and that is our word to the PC(USA) at this time.  We have made our comment as a committee, we now welcome your comments back.

What I do want to say is that it was a privilege to work with the other 12 members of the committee.  I had to laugh yesterday when Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal referred to us as a “blue-ribbon” committee.  It has always felt more like I was a lowly sinner in need of God’s grace, mercy and salvation in the midst of a group of fellow sinners.  Yet, though we are all sinners, the members of the committee are a wonderful bunch of passionate, gifted, intelligent, thoughtful brothers and sisters in the faith.  And I would emphasize that Bruce Reyes-Chow did a great job of making the committee theologically diverse.  But despite our different viewpoints, when we speak in the report of “seeking to love one another with God’s grace,” we really do mean that.

I also want to commend the report to you because a lot of very hard work went into it.  Writing teams worked all summer, we read more than a thousand items of input that individuals sent in, and the four day meeting was a marathon.  (Sometimes revisions were posted to our collaborative software at 3 AM.)  In one of her good summaries of the meeting Leslie Scanlon of the Presbyterian Outlook picked up my comment about “the month of the last two days”.  (Leslie has a second article about the meeting as well.)  We did not sleep much, and when I did sleep it was not very soundly.  (Although I understand I was not alone in that regard.)  I can honestly say it was the most intense four days I can remember, even more intense than being a commissioner to GA.  And based on my notes, I would point out that in those four days every sentence in that report was reviewed by the full committee, page-by-page, and most of the sentences in there were modified in some way in the course of that review.  As I said, the full committee owns the full document.

I also want to thank the church for their input over the summer.  More than a thousand comments came in and we read them all.  Several of them were very moving – thank you for sharing your passions and hurts with us and I will carry those comments with me for a long time to come.

So read the report, let us know what you think.  And when you do there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • The landscape we are trying to describe was constantly changing as this report was written.
  • The content of the report reflects the
    mandate the 218th GA gave us    .  Don’t expect stuff that isn’t there.
  • That mandate includes the provision that we can not recommend modifying W-4.9001, the definition of Christian marriage.
  • And we have to do it in 10,000 words or less.     (It is like the standing joke in academics about reviewers of journal articles asking that you discuss this, that, and the other thing in more detail, and by the way, make the paper 10% shorter.

Thanks.

A Great Summary Of Church Property Law

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If you follow the news and analysis of church property cases floating around right now you probably already read the Anglican Curmudgeon.  Mr. Haley’s legal knowledge, analysis and insights are very helpful in tracking and understanding the developing and sometimes confusing court cases that are out there.  And while he primarily tracks the twists and turns of the Anglican/Episcopal legal disputes, property and otherwise, as I have regularly observed there are implications for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) cases as well.

Well, in a recent post Mr. Haley noted and included the recent (Sept. 18) decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court case of All Saints v. Campbell.  For those who view the law to say that church property belongs to the local congregation this is one of the rare higher court decisions in their favor.  But I bring this decision, and Mr. Haley’s blog post, to your attention because it is also a very clearly written decision with a very good discussion of the current case law regarding hierarchical denominations.  As the Curmudgeon says:

The opinion is so clear and well-written, in fact, that there is
scarcely any need to translate the greater part of it for a lay person.

So, if you want a nice introduction to the legal background in these cases I can do no better than to refer you to either the decision, or his mildly annotated presentation, and suggest you begin at the section that is headed “Law/Analysis.”  Towards the end it does get specific to South Carolina when it reviews and elaborates on a previous ruling in that state court which presented the rule to apply for neutral principles cases in that jurisdiction.  But it is really only at that point that the legal jargon really starts to be used.

You will notice that although this is a state court decision, it does a nice job of explaining the U.S. Supreme Court decisions and their application to previous state cases.  In addition, you will also see how many of these cases involve disputes at Presbyterian churches, probably more than any other denomination, going back over 100 years to the original U.S. Supreme Court decision in Watson v. Jones in 1871.

As with many of these cases the decision involves details specific to this church and South Carolina (e.g. Colonial English Law still in effect) which the Curmudgeon points out is not applicable elsewhere.  If you are interested in these matters it does make for interesting reading, but for the general national perspective you can stop at the end of the Law/Analysis section.

Very interesting reading.  Thanks for the pointer and the commentary Mr. Haley.

A First Look At A Uniting Church

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One of the areas that I have been trying to explore, as my time permits, is how to characterize the United/Uniting churches around the world.  These are denominations generally formed by the uniting or merging of a few Protestant, although not necessarily Reformed, denominations into one Christian witness.  I have had multiple people suggest that they are essentially Presbyterian in nature and therefore should be on my radar.  So I am starting to ask the question “How Presbyterian are they?”

To answer this questions I have started to chip away at reading the Constitution and Regulations of the Uniting Church in Australia.  The Uniting Church was formed in 1977 by the gathering of Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian churches.  The union did not bring all the congregations into the merger and 44 Congregationalist congregations formed the Fellowship of Congregational Churches,  some Methodist congregations not happy with the union switched to the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia, and about one-third of the Presbyterians chose not to join the Uniting Church and continue as the Presbyterian Church of Australia.  (Interesting note:  That is about the same proportion of Presbyterians that chose not to join the United Church of Canada in 1925 and continue there as the Presbyterian Church in Canada.)

As I said, I have been chipping away at the basic constitutional document of the UCA, the Constitution and Regulations, and have finished studying the first three chapters.  The first section is the Basis of Union, which is also available as a free-standing HTML page.  This section, as the name implies, outlines in broad sweep the structure of the church and the basic components and understandings on which the church is structured.  It was first written in 1971 and the notes and various versions available indicate that it has been updated a few times since then.  It appears that most of the changes have been in the use of inclusive language or of an editorial and formatting nature.

The next two chapters are the first two parts of the constitution proper, the Preamble and Division 1 on Membership.

Reading through all this a Presbyterian very quickly gets the idea that the church is Presbyterian in structure.  (I would be curious if the language is such that a Congregationalist or Methodist, reading through their filter, would also perceive their structure in the language that is used.)  All the typical governing bodies – church councils, presbyteries, synods and the assembly – are included by those names and described as a “series of inter-related councils.”  The officers of the church are likewise what a Presbyterian would expect: minister, elder, deacon and deaconess.  There are clear references to the other polities because deacon and deaconess are split out as separate classifications and elder is always used in the phrase “elder or leader.”  In addition, there is the category of Lay Preacher.  While Presbyterians have lay preachers, sometimes under other names like licentiate or commissioned lay pastor, of the three churches that joined it has been my experience that the position of lay preacher is more often associated with the Methodist tradition.  I don’t know what place it may hold in the Congregationalist tradition.

These sections are fairly broad and general in nature setting down the larger framework.  Looking ahead, but not having studied it in detail, it is clear that the fine points of the polity are set out in the remainder of the document, the Regulations.  For reference, the Basis of Union is just over eight pages long, the Constitution is 17 pages long, and the Regulations are 168 pages long.  And, while there are clearly sections dealing with Government and Discipline, I don’t see as part of this document any sections that describe Worship.

While the structure may be Presbyterian the real test will be in studying the details of the polity, which I have not really gotten to yet.  An update when I have had a chance to reflect on those.  However, two interesting details do jump out at me so far.

In the Preamble to the Constitution the last section is called Purposes and it reads in full:

The purposes of the Church are to provide for the worship of God, to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to promote Christian fellowship, to nurture believers in the Christian faith, to engage in mission, to assist in human development and toward the improvement of human relationships, to meet human need through charitable and other services and to do such other things as may be required in obedience to the Holy Spirit.

Now I don’t know if anything jumps out to other readers, but to me this has significant parallels to a formula that is part of American Presbyterianism – The Great Ends of the Church.  Here is a side-by-side comparison with the Great Ends reordered to match the Purposes:

The purposes of the Church are

to provide for the worship of God,

to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,

to promote Christian fellowship,
to nurture believers in the Christian faith,

to engage in mission,

to assist in human development and toward the improvement of human relationships,

to meet human need through charitable and other services

and to do such other things as may be required in obedience to the Holy Spirit.

 The great ends of the church are

3) the maintenance of divine worship;

1)the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;

2)the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;

5) the promotion of social righteousness;

6) and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

4) the preservation of the truth;

While the UCA “mission” clause is a one-to-many match and the PCUSA “truth” clause is not a one-to-one match either, most of the rest have fairly, if not very, close matches between the two constitutions.  And yes, these are probably general enough all the way around that almost any Christian church’s “purpose” could be made to fit the parallels.

The second detail of interest is not actually something I read first in the Constitution and Regulations but in a news article.  Thanks to the Illawarra Mercury we find out that the Rev. Gordon Bradbery was not granted an extension of his call by his synod and presbytery.  So, after 23 years in the ministry and 15 at the Wesley Uniting Church on the Mall his tenure at the church will conclude at the end of 2010.

If the above description left other G.A. junkies scratching your heads, here is the interesting polity behind it.  Under the UCA Regulations, beginning at section 2.7.6, it has an interesting phrase that says “The placement of a Minister in a pastoral charge shall normally be made for an undefined term but shall not continue beyond ten years except as provided in Reg. 2.7.10.”  So does this mean even though the term is undefined, there is an expectation that it will last no longer than ten year
s?

Now, jumping down to Reg. 2.7.10, it says that a placement may be extended beyond ten years if everyone – pastor, congregation and presbytery – agree.  If further says: “Any extension shall require a two-thirds majority by secret ballot of those present in each of the meetings of the Church Council, the Congregation and the Presbytery.”  And, an extension is normally for five years according to this section.

On the details of this, if the Regs. say five years and the news article says three I’m not sure where the answer lies.  The news article numbers actually add up for a ten year placement with two three-year extensions.

Now, before I proceed further, let me acknowledge that these are the regulations of that denomination.  I am not being critical and I’m not out to change them or make them Presbyterian.  My only questions here is “How Presbyterian is this?”

My reaction at this point is that while the UCA seems to broadly have the marks of a Presbyterian style structure, this whole thing about placement, initial terms and extensions where the governing bodies have such a significant hand strikes me more like the control in a hierarchical appointment system.  While the presbytery has an approval and review role in typical Presbyterian pastoral calls, usually the session has no say in the final selection, while in this case the church council also approves.  It is typically a given of a Presbyterian system that the full body of people chose their officers, including the teaching elder.  The presbytery only reviews the decision and if everything is going well the presbytery has no hand in deciding how long the pastor stays.

Reading through this polity I keep asking myself “Why is it like this?”  With these precise controls I get the distinct impression that there is a story behind why this section of the Regs. was written like this or how it developed.  Can anyone point me to an historical profile of the Regs. or the equivalent of the annotated version that might answer this question?  (In my own research this does not appear to be a feature brought from the Presbyterian side.  The Code of Regulations for the Presbyterian Church of Australia does not deal with the call process, but rather it is detailed at the state level.  For the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of New South Wales the call process in the Code of Regulations is very much what I would describe as typical Presbyterian with a search committee, congregational vote, and presbytery approval.  It does have some very interesting nuances but that is material for another time.  But in it there is no sign I can find of the term length or extension to be approved by the three different bodies.  Interestingly, it is specified that the minimum expectation of the time in a call will be three years.)

So my initial opinion?  The Uniting Church in Australia has a broadly Presbyterian-like structure, but in examining this particular detail there are typical elements of Presbyterianism lacking and the upper governing bodies wield a lot of influence in pastoral calls.  And I repeat, this is not a criticism of that system, only an analysis of the system by a Presbyterian G.A. Junkie.  So I currently have some questions about classifying the UCA as Presbyterian in polity, but that is not a final conclusion but I’ll have more to say after I’ve read more of the Regs.

The 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — The Build-up Begins

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Yes, you read that title correctly.  I hope you have caught your breath from the last General Assembly and all the amendment voting because the cycle for the next GA begins… NOW!

The 219th General Assembly (2010) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will meet from July 3-10, 2010.  It will be hosted by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area at the Minneapolis Convention Center and the Committee on Local Arrangements (COLA) has put out the call for volunteers. (I have not found the COLA web site yet.)  And as we found out from the ELCA this past summer, watch out for the tornadoes.

The sure sign that GA was coming was the change in the default setting on the electronic business tracker, PC-Biz, from the 218th to the 219th GA.  No business, including overtures, has been posted to the system yet.

However, there are overtures waiting in the wings to be posted and one, two, maybe three of them, are floating around on web sites.  And it would probably surprise no one that the visible ones are all related to ordination standards in general and G-6.0106b in particular.

While the Office of the General Assembly has no GA 219 web page yet, at least that I can find, if they keep naming conventions consistent I would expect to find it here.  They have however announced the scriptural theme, “Rivers of Living Water” based on John 7:38, and have presented the logo.

I know that entities are working hard to get their assigned tasks completed and the one that has now released its product is the New Revised Form of Government Task Force.  Remember that their report came to the last Assembly and raised so many questions and concerns that the Assembly decided a more extensive input process was needed and so continued the process for another two years while adding a few of the Assembly commissioners to the nFOG Task Force.  Well, the new report was released last week and the church is invited to study it.  In fact, there is a letter from Task Force member Elder Carol Hunley specifically addressed to fellow elders explaining some of the motivation for the revision and encouraging them to study the new report and to take it seriously.  I have too much on my plate at the moment to digest that report but I’ll study it myself in the next month or two.  You can have a look at the full report or each of the new sections, Foundations of Presbyterian Polity and Form of Government, separately.  For comparison, the report to the previous GA is still available on-line, or should that disappear it will be available in a less-readable form on PC-Biz.

I think that covers all the signs of the next GA that I have found.  As I have time and more overtures and reports appear we will begin again the analysis of the upcoming business.

Presbytery Judicial Decision In A Same-sex Marriage Case

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Two weeks ago, on August 22, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Boston Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) heard the disciplinary case of Presbytery of Boston versus Jean K. Southard.  The Rev. Southard was charged with 1) conducting a public worship service that was effectively a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple and 2) by doing so violating her ordination vows.

The decision of the PJC was that the charges were not sustained and the Rev. Southard was found not guilty.  (Thanks to Church and World, aka PresbyWeb, for publishing the decision.)

The reasoning of the majority was expressed as follows:

The Prosecuting Committee has not proven beyond reasonable doubt that W-4.9000 contains mandatory language that would prohibit a Minister of Word and Sacrament from performing a same-gender marriage.
Since the Preface to the Directory of Worship (clause b) states that the Directory uses language that is “simply descriptive”, this Commission takes this to mean that the definition of Christian marriage in W-4.9001 is merely descriptive; there is no mandatory language in this article.

And continues

In addition, there is no mandatory language in the Constitution, nor in any Authoritative Interpretation, prohibiting Ministers of Word and Sacrament from performing same-gender marriages in states where this is allowed by law.

Note carefully the wording — The decision was not about whether a same-sex marriage was preformed, but given that it was preformed is that prohibited by the constitution and therefore cause for discipline?

There is a Dissenting Dpinion that begins:

In rendering this decision, the majority has taken the liberty of legislating change in the Constitution through the judicial process. W-4.9001 definitely does define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Later says

Because of this changed legal state in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (The General Laws of Massachusetts, Chapter 207), the importance of the definitions within the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) become more important, not less so. Further, the argument that the definition of marriage being between a man and a woman is only descriptive and reflects the ideals and mores of a bygone age cannot be sustained. The claim stands without proof, and can only be maintained through dependence on the argument from silence. This sets a dangerous precedent, that any part of the Constitution that has not recently been sustained by legislative action can be assumed to have lost validity. In the absence of that legislative action, the commission has substituted its judgment for the clear words of definition. This makes a mockery of the prescriptive language of W-4.9004, wherein the Directory for Worship orders that “The man and the woman shall declare their intention to enter into Christian marriage and shall exchange vows of love and faithfulness.”; and “In the name of the triune God the minister shall declare publicly that the woman and the man are now joined in marriage.”

And concludes:

We disagree with the commission decision and do not join in it. While we find that Rev. Southard found herself in a difficult position given the request of two valued elders of her church, we do not find that tension to be sufficient reason to grant release from the strictures of the discipline of the Constitution. Her action of social justice came at the cost of her obedience to her ordination vows, (W-4.4003e), and created a situation that worked against the peace, unity and purity of the Church.

Three other important points in this case:  1) According to the Dissenting Opinion the facts of the case were not contested.  Both sides stipulated and “provided and accepted evidence that this was intentionally a Christian marriage.”  2)  Note that the participants in this ceremony are both described as elders in that church, leading to…  3) This was a disciplinary case against the pastor.  While there is no indication that additional cases are contemplated, disciplinary cases against the two elders who were married and a remedial case against the session would be possible, but unlikely, especially in light of the decision in this case.

OK, that presents a summary of what I see as the key points of the decision.  If you are not a GA Junkie, you can probably stop reading now.  However, as a GA Junkie, I want to dissect this decision a bit and make some comments.

There seem to be two distinctives to this case that distinguish it from previous cases.  One of these is that the worship service was held in the church sanctuary and, as the charge implies, had all the distinctions of a wedding ceremony.  The second is that this is the first case brought to trial where a same-sex marriage was preformed in a state that allows civil same-sex marriage.  (But I would point out that one of the withdrawn charges in the Spahr case (218-12) was a same-sex marriage preformed in Ontario, Canada, where civil marriage is legal.)

Now I will acknowledge from the onset that the PC(USA) has a problem right now with its definition of marriage.  This case hinged on that section of the Directory for Worship (W-4.9001):

Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the well-being of the entire human family. Marriage is a civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to live out together before God their lives of discipleship. In a service of Christian marriage a lifelong commitment is made by a woman and a man to each other, publicly witnessed and acknowledged by the community of faith.

Clearly now with a few states permitting civil same-sex marriages the part that reads “a civil contract between a woman and a man” has certain problems.  That will have to be addressed by the next General Assembly.

That problematic phrase was the main point that the PJC appears to have focused on, and they did so in two ways.

Their first argument was that unless the Directory for Worship uses language making something mandatory, like the wording of vows or formulae for sacraments, then the Directory is “descriptive.”

That the Directory is in a sense descriptive is certainly true, and as they point out it says so in the Preface.  Section b reads:

b. In addition to the terms defined in the Preface to the Book of Order, this directory also uses language about worship which is simply descriptive.

But what does it mean to be descriptive?  Look at the preceding section a, which says in part:

A Directory for Worship is not a service book with fixed orders of worship, a collection of prayers and rituals, or a program guide. Rather it describes the theology that underlies Reformed worship and outlines appropriate forms for that worship. This directory suggests possibilities for worship, invites development in worship, and encourages continuing reform of worship. It sets standards and presents norms for the conduct of worship in the life of congregations and the governing bodies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). As the constitutional document ordering the worship of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), this Directory for Worship shall be authoritative for this church.

Note some of the things that the Directory does:  “describes the theology that underlies Reformed worship,” “sets standards,” “presents norms,” and “shall be authoritative for thi
s church.”  The majority decision seems to equate “descriptive” with “optional.”  The first few lines I quoted would seem to equate “descriptive” with “not a service book with fixed orders of worship, a collection of prayers and rituals, or a program guide.”  In fact, a widely used book on Presbyterian polity co-authored by Joan Gray (former GA Moderator) and Joyce Tucker says “The Directory for Worship contains our standards relating to worship…” (Presbyterian Polity for Church Officers, p. 7) and later “…it has now become part of the standards of our church.” (p. 172)  I read and understand the Directory for Worship to be “flexible” not “optional.”  And that flexibility would be in form but not in function.

In the Dissenting Opinion section I quote above there is also a clear argument for the applicability and mandatory nature of W-4.9001 when the refer to W-4.9004 and the prescriptive nature of that section which does use the “shall” language and refers to “the man and the woman.”

Finally, the prescriptive nature of W-4.9001 is reinforce by the Spahr decision which regularly, including in the Headnotes, says that “Marriage is defined” by this section.  As this present decision points out there are certain procedural issues with leaning on the Spahr decision too heavily, but the Spahr decision presents this definition not as their conclusion, but as a given, the accepted starting point from which they draw the conclusion that in light of this definition there can be no such thing as same-sex Christian marriage.

The second part of the majority’s argument was that not only was it not mandatory to begin with, but since conditions in the civil sphere were not in alignment with one part of the section then the whole section could be safely ignored.  Furthermore, they argued that the situation in this case was different enough that the conclusion in the Spahr decision was not applicable.  This strikes me as saying that civil law will determine theology and doctrine.

The signatories to the dissenting opinion strongly disagreed with this assertion.  However, I think they overlook an important additional argument.  In response to the majority argument that the laws of the State of Massachusetts have rendered this section of the Directory for Worship moot, they say:

This sets a dangerous precedent, that any part of the Constitution that has not recently been sustained by legislative action can be assumed to have lost validity. In the absence of that legislative action, the commission has substituted its judgment for the clear words of definition. (emphasis mine)

I would argue that the definition of Christian marriage being between a man and a women was upheld twice by the most recent General Assembly, even after Massachusetts had adopted civil marriage.  In response to an overture from the Presbytery of Baltimore the assembly voted 540-161 not to change “a man and a woman” in W-4.9001 to “two people.”  And again, in the action that created the Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage the Assembly added the sentence “This overtures advocates for equal rights and does not seek to redefine the nature of Christian marriage.”  To me this is strong evidence that even with the presence of same-sex civil marriage there was Assembly endorsement of the man and woman language for Christian marriage.  In light of that I have trouble accepting the argument that if one clause does not apply then none of it applies.

Regarding the Spahr decision, it is clear that in a legal sense it can not serve as precedent in this present case.  In the present case the alleged actions took place on March 1, 2008, which was almost two months before the GAPJC ruled in the Spahr case.  In addition, as both the majority and minority decisions point out, application of the Benton decision (212-11) to this case is tricky because this is a disciplinary case and Benton was remedial.

In my mind there are clear grounds for appeal on the basis of an error in constitutional interpretation.  However, I also recognize that the circumstances of civil marriages make the Directory definition a problem that the next General Assembly will have to address.  Therefore it may be advisable to simply let this constitutional issue be addressed legislatively rather than have a legislative and judicial interpretation proceeding in parallel.

I think that does it.  Those are my thoughts on this case.  Your mileage may vary.