Ecclesiastical Discipline Uprightly Ministered

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I know that most Presbyterian branches have the Westminster Confession as their confessional standard, but regular readers know that I prefer the notes of the True Church found in the Scots Confession which, in addition to the “true preaching of the Word of God” and the “right administration of the sacraments” adds

and lastly, ecclesiastical discipline
uprightly ministered, as God’s word prescribes, whereby vice is
repressed and virtue nourished

As part of the Reformed stream we acknowledge the significance of sin and the necessity of holding each other accountable. We recognize the need for confession, repentance and restoration. Ecclesiastical discipline is not punitive but restorative, that is “virtue nourished.”

With that introduction I want to refer you to the story of one PCA presbytery and a disciplinary proceeding it was involved in brought to us by Kevin at Reformed and Loving It. (Kevin, thank you for this.) Here is a story of ecclesiastical discipline and restorative grace — It is about a minister who was under censure with supervised rehabilitation. I encourage you to read all of the story, but the heart of the story, and what is really the heart of the Gospel, is contained in these lines:

At the last presbytery [the minister] asked the presbytery to demit the ministry.
Today we voted on it. Before the motion was voted on, I offered an
amendment asking that the presbytery, taking his demission as an
evidence of repentance, lift his censure and restore him to the Lord’s Supper. The amendment (and main motion) passed unanimously. The man broke down in tears. He saw this as we did: a step of restoration.

Amen

Debate Preceding The Church Of Scotland General Assembly — Focus Shifts To Web 2.0

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When I last posted on the current controversy headed to this year’s General Assembly of the Church of Scotland I did not realize that I was writing at a point in time when the discussion was shifting from the Mainstream Media reports driving the Web, to the Web driving the media. I’ll not fully rehearse the specifics of the case again. You can check out my previous posts or some of the other links I’ll cite today for that. Let me give the essential information for this discussion that Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen called the Rev. Scott Rennie, a partnered gay pastor, to its vacant charge. Aberdeen Presbytery concurred but a protest was filed and that protest will be heard at the General Assembly that begins in just over two weeks.

In that previous post what I did not realize was that I had found the web site for the Fellowship of Confessing Churches on the day of its launch. Thanks to the Rev. Ian Watson for that information. You can check out his announcement on his blog Kirkmuirhillrev. Anyway, as I mentioned last time, on the Confessing Churches web site there is a petition supporting the dissenters and asking the GA to support the protest. Well this petition has gone “viral,” or at least as viral as something Presbyterian can go, and there are currently 2530 individuals from the Church of Scotland who have signed, 1404 from other Scottish churches, 1104 from other UK churches, and another 1193 from other churches worldwide for a grand total of 6233 as of this writing, and increasing by the minute.

And this petition is now being advertised and debated in the blogosphere. Over on the Reformation 21 blog, Carl Trueman announced the petition but indicated he would not sign. However, other writers on the blog, like Phil Ryken and Rick Phillips did sign and post their comments about why they did. Carl Trueman posted a second, much more extended comment on his view of the situation in response to Rev. Ryken’s post.

But the first post from Carl Trueman found responses from elsewhere in the blogosphere, some supporting his position (e.g. Thomas Goodwin, Joshua Judges Ruth and Knoxville) and some who argue for signing (e.g. Michael Bird at Euangelion). And there is Darryl Hart on Old Life Theological Society who finds positives in both positions. I find it interesting that many of the respondents are associated with the Presbyterian Church in America which will be dealing with ordination standards as they again address the issue of ordaining or commissioning women as deaconesses at their GA this year. In fact the Rev. Dave Sarafolean makes this connection directly in his post at Joshua Judges Ruth (and his quote from Carl Trueman comes from Trueman’s second post):

Having just come back from presbytery
and preparing for General Assembly in a few weeks I found this quote
from Carl Trueman very helpful. I say this because of the on-going
debate in the PCA about the topic of ‘deaconesses’ (which are not
prescribed by our constitution):

“The policy of
ceding church courts to the liberals has proved disastrous. I feel for
friends caught in the crossfire in Aberdeen but, as I said earlier, a
petition is too little too late. These battles are not won by petitions
which have no ecclesiastical status; nor are they won by preaching to
the converted at large Reformed conferences or to congregations of the
faithful in the big C of S churches. They are won by the nasty,
brutish, hard labour of fighting in the church courts, face to face,
toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball, with those who would seek to take over
session, presbyteries, synods, and General Assemblies for evil”

There are a number of other facets to this debate that have developed over the past week. The one that hit the mainstream media was a correction and apology that the conservative group Forward Together issued after they said that the Rev. Rennie had left his wife while it was actually the opposite. This correction was widely covered by the press, such as these articles in Scotsman and The Herald. However, the Rev. Louis Kinsey at Coffee with Louis takes issue with the tone of some of the press coverage and the bias he perceives in the reporting of the correction. Similarly, he comments on bias in the headline of another news story about the petition.

From a different perspective Mr. Stewart Cutler has a blog post titled “Not In My Name” where he says why he will not sign the petition and he concludes with

So, no. I won’t be signing your petition. And I hope no-one else does
either. Not because I don’t believe in your right to have one. Not
that because I don’t think you have the right to hold your opinion.
But because I believe that we are called to love one another and to
conduct our discusions with love and respect.

In another blog entry Mr. Cutler points us to the latest OneKirk Journal which has an extended interview with Rev. Rennie. From all the reading that I have done on this story I think these are the most extensive comments by Mr. Rennie since the controversy broke. The comments are serious, heartfelt and honest. When the interviewer ask about the affect on his faith this controversy has had Mr. Rennie says:

Interestingly, it has greatly strengthened my faith. It has heightened my sense of call, opened my eyes to a wealth of kindness and Christian love from other people; some of whom I know, and some of whom I have never met. It is always easy in these kinds of circumstances to focus on the negative, but the reality is that most people are kind, compassionate and good at heart. Through them, God reveals himself to us all. I keep hearing in my mind the verse of that children’s hymn we all grew up with: ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’.

This article and this quote have also been picked up by the print media including an article in The Times Online today with the very attention-getting headline “Gay Church of Scotland Minister Hits Back at Evangelical Critics.” I’m wondering if the Rev. Rennie would consider the OneKirk interview “hitting back” or just “telling his side”?

So as we approach the Assembly meeting the Journal article gives us one additional item — An Order of the Day: This protest will be heard at 1900 on Saturday May 23 and decided in that session. I appreciate the information so that I can rearrange my schedule and referee an earlier football (soccer) match that day. I am still looking for the Blue Book or the docket to know when the related overture will be debated.

Preliminary Comments On The Faith In Flux Report

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I have begun digesting the new report just issued by The Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life titled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.

This survey is a follow up to their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey and involved recontacting about 2800 of the participants in the first survey.

The report has already gotten a lot of coverage in the mainstream media news (e.g. Louisville Courier-Journal), op-ed (e.g. New York Times), the blogosphere (e.g. Vivificat! and Kruse Kronicle) and of course the Presbyterian Outlook.

There is a lot of interesting information in this survey and I am still chewing on it but I would suggest reading the Executive Summary if you are interested or care about church membership trends today and in the future. I am hoping to crunch some of the numbers myself and make some more detailed comments in the future. But the way my life has been going I decided to post a preliminary article about two particular items that particularly struck me.

(Two technical details: 1) The survey give a confidence of +0.6%. 2) My main focus will be on comparing affiliated with unaffiliated so I will frequently give a range for the data in the affiliated group without breaking out individual categories.)

1) What keeps people in the church?
As I have been reading the report I found myself asking an alternate question “How do we keep people in the church?” If the report focuses on what makes people change then how do we turn that around to keep people in relationship with the Covenant Community.

One of the statistics that has gotten a lot of coverage, with some justification, is that “Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24.” (It quantifies what many of us know from experience.) But there are a number of related findings that expand on this:

Those individuals who are now unaffiliated were much less likely to have attended worship weekly as a teenager than those who are still affiliated — For those that are still affiliated it is in the 60-70% range that they attended weekly, for the unaffiliated 44% of those raised Catholic attended weekly as a teenager and 29% of those raised Protestant.
For those raised Protestant there is a notable difference between the unaffiliated and those still affiliated on whether they attended Sunday School — 51% for the former and about 65% for the latter. No difference seen for those raised Catholic
Youth group attendance was also important for Protestants with 55% of those “still in childhood faith” having attended youth group, 47% who have switched to another Protestant faith, and 36% of the unaffiliated. Again, for those raised Catholic there was very little variation between the affiliated and unaffiliated.

My conclusion — This stuff matters. This is why we have Sunday School and Youth Group. This is why families need to attend the education hour as well as the worship service. It is why the Youth Group is not just for outreach but for the church kids as well. This is why we do college/campus ministry. It is not to “indoctrinate” but to “strengthen.” For those that were raised Protestant and are now unaffiliated 18% said they had a “very strong faith” as a child and 12% said they had it as a teen. This compares with 35-41% of the affiliated who had it as a child and 32-40% who had it as a teen.

Now the terminology in the next part may annoy orthodox Reformed readers, but this is the language of the culture and how the survey reports it.

When looking at reasons for switching one of the interesting questions is what brought those who were raised unaffiliated into the church. The survey found that of those raised unaffiliated 46% were still unaffiliated, 22% were now affiliated with Evangelical Protestant churches, 13% with Mainline Protestant churches, 9% with “other” faiths, 6% Catholic, and 4% Historically Black Protestant Churches. I must admit that I see this as a bright spot — I was really surprised that 54% of those raised without religious affiliation found one as an adult.

What were reasons that an unaffiliated “first became part of a religious group?” The top three answers

51% Spiritual needs not being met
46% Found a religion they liked more (I’ll leave the interpretation of an unaffiliated finding a religion they liked more as an exercise for the reader.)
23% Married someone from a particular faith

What got them to join? Top five answers

74% Enjoy the religious services and style of worship
55% Felt called by God (another surprise for me, and a pleasant one that a majority did feel God’s call. More on that in a minute.)
29% Attracted by a particular minister or pastor (it is not a specifically listed answer for changing affiliation because a pastor left)
29% Asked to join by a member of the religion (and this is something we all should pay attention to)
25% Married someone from the religion

Lots to chew on there. If this is what gets the “unchurched” to come and stay how can we be more effective in our outreach.

2) Words have meanings
OK, it is another “words have meanings” rant. But as I was reading the Executive Summary this really started grating on my nerves. Your mileage may vary.

I should say two things in their defense first: If you study the survey questions there is no problem there. The questions are as precise and well worded as you would expect from this organization. Second, if they worded it the way I want them to do in the narrative, it would be more precise but the vocabulary would be limited and would not read nearly as well, so I know why they did it.

That being said, consider the first paragraph of the Executive Summary:

Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about
half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least
once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave
their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change
religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a
new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion
& Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious
affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and
reasons for change.

As you can see in this paragraph, and happens throughout the narrative portion, the words “religious affiliation,” “religion,” and “faith” are used pretty much interchangeably. Throughout the report when they use any of these words they always seem to mean “religious affiliation.” The question then is whether they actually investigated whether someone’s personal belief system corresponded to the church they attended. This is like their earlier survey that found that 6% of atheists believe in a personal god.

This probably struck a nerve because of my personal faith journey. I call myself a “life-long Presbyterian” even though I was a member of a Methodist church for a few years. My wife was raised both Methodist and Presbyterian and when we moved to a new community we felt that God was calling us to help a Methodist church plant. However, even though I was a member of a Methodist church my ingrained thinking in terms of Presbyterian polity frustrated the District Superintendent, I annoyed the pastor and a candidate for the ministry with my confessional theology, I was personally troubled by the lack of a regular prayer of confession, and I’m sure I entertained one of the most senior pastors in the Conference as he watched all this transpire. And we firmly believe that God got us out of there before my Presbyterian tendencies would have lead to a major conflict with a new pastor. I will leave it to another time to ask if I was being theologically honest or religiously faithful to have been in that situation, but the bottom line is that I considered myself a Presbyterian in a Methodist environment.

And I know that I am not the only one. I know of multiple Presbyterians that now serve, or have served, in Methodist churches in ordained and non-ordained capacities. We have had Methodist ministers attend my current Presbyterian church. For a survey such as this how is that classified?

So, bringing it back to the survey, in my case my “religion” and “faith,” while evolving over the years as it is normal to do, has remained denominationally stable. But my affiliation, like 28% of the still-affiliated Protestants in the survey, has changed twice. (49% have changed once.)

Now I do realize that individuals are more likely to be on the other end of the theological “firmness” spectrum, particularly in the Protestant denominations. In this post-modern age specifics of confessional beliefs and church government will matter little to many of the “people in the pews.” After all, 85% of those switching within Protestant denominations listed “Enjoy the religious services and style of worship” as one of the reasons for joining their religion and I am willing to bet that only a very small portion of those mean that they found a church that follows the regulative principle of worship or has Exclusive Psalmody. Individuals don’t even think of it as changing religions, only changing congregations, because the theological lines are blurring in peoples’ thinking and congregations’ exposition.

What I am expressing here may be a subtle distinction, but as I read through the questions and methodology what this survey measures is not truly a persons religious faith, but their religious affiliation, their church membership. As has been mentioned many times before what does church membership really mean in this post-modern or post-Christian period? That is my musing.

Don’t hold your breath, but as I worked though the Amendment 08-B voting numbers I was surprised by the “churn” in the PC(USA) membership and I am working on that and some other related numbers that I hope to correlate with this survey in a later post. We’ll see if I can actually find time amid all the GA news to make that happen. So until next time…

Two Additional Overtures To The 37th General Assembly Of The PCA

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With about a month and a half to go before the opening of the 37th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America two additional overtures have been posted to the overtures web page.

Overture 14 – Amend BCO 25 by adding Section 25-12 regarding Giving Notice to Presbytery of Intention to Withdraw from the PCA
This overture from North Texas Presbytery seeks to add a new section to Book of Church Order Chapter 25 on Congregational Meetings. The overture recognizes the different nature of the relationship of a teaching elder with the presbytery and that of a congregation. Section 25-11 permits congregations to vote to leave the denomination, but teaching elders as members of the presbytery are not automatically released with the congregation but must be released by the presbytery. In fact, this overture would encourage teaching elders to leave without taking the congregation where it says in one whereas: “ministers participating in, instigating, and leading congregations out of the denomination are not being faithful to the Scriptures or their ordination vows. If they can no longer remain in the denomination then they should seek their own dismissal without seeking to create schism and take a church as well.”

The proposed language for the BCO would require teaching elders to “give reasonable advanced notice to the Presbytery of the intentions of the local church to withdraw.” With this notification the Presbytery “shall assist the local church in making an orderly withdrawal.” The proposed new section closes with this:

It should always be the desire of a faithful minister of Christ to effect reconciliation between all bodies of Christians but especially those of his own denomination.

Overture 15 – Direct Philadelphia Presbytery to Adopt Specified Policy on Role of Women in Mercy Ministry
First, it must be pointed out that this overture comes directly to the GA from a session (Crossroads Community Church, Upper Darby, PA) after it was unanimously adopted by the session but rejected by their presbytery (Philadelphia). The Session adopted it on August 11, 2008, it was received by the Presbytery at their meeting of September 10, 2008 and then rejected at a special meeting on March 31, 2009. The Session then voted to send it to the GA themselves on April 13, 2009.

The overture itself is actually an overture to the Presbytery, not the
General Assembly, which was moved up when the Presbytery rejected it. While clearly unusual I’m not sure if this is a proper use of the overture process. It is my understanding that the appropriate response would be to take an overture addressed to the Assembly to the Presbytery for endorsement and then if rejected send it on to the Assembly from the Session.

This overture comes with an arriving note that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and the Committee on Constitutional Business ( CCB ) advise that the overture is out of order. The reasons are not given here but will appear in the Clerk’s Report. One possible reason is that based on the Rules of Assembly Operations Chapter 11 this overture, since it does not propose a change to the Book of Church Order, should have been submitted 90 days before the Assembly convened and it was barely submitted 60 days before (RAO 11-7). It appears that from a timing perspective it was held up by the scheduling of the special meeting of Presbytery, but I am not familiar with the history and that is only an interpretation based on the reported dates of meetings. Another possible reason for the advisory may be related to the nature of the overture as I discuss in the preceding paragraph. The GA Junkie in me eagerly awaits the rational for the opinion.

The overture begins by running through the BCO references to the different ordained offices and the requirements, including that they are only open to men, for those offices. It then points out that some candidates and transfered elders hold opinions contrary to this. Finally, it includes the decisions from the last GA that arose from the records review of Northern California and Philadelphia Presbyteries where their records showed women commissioned to the diaconate.

The overture asks Philadelphia Presbytery to acknowledge the BCO requirements for deacons, to have candidates and ministers transferring in to affirm these standards and promise to “conform their practice” to this position, to remind elders that have a substantive exception to these confessional standards that exceptions are in belief only and not practice, and that Sessions be reminded of these standards. Finally, it requests that churches not presently in accord with the BCO present a plan to come into compliance.

It will be interesting to see the Clerk’s opinion on this overture and to see if the Assembly agrees. It will also be in the mix with the other three overtures related to women in the church and a consistent response across all of these would be expected. We will have to wait and see.

Finally, it is always interesting to see how certain elements of the polity issues one Presbyterian branch is working through are echoed in another branch. In this case the aspects of reconciliation and church departure in Overture 14, and the reminder that exemptions can be in belief but not practice as mentioned in Overture 15 are both issues the PC(USA) is also dealing with.

The Current Church of Scotland Controversy Remains Active

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In many ways I regard the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as very similar branches of global Presbyterianism. They are both the largest and most visible Presbyterian denomination in their respective countries and both have a wide theological diversity in their membership. But they have differed in two significant respects. First, the Church of Scotland is a national church while the PC(USA) is one mainline denomination among many. The second is that the Church of Scotland seemed, at least from this distance, to have a much less vigorous debate going on regarding the place of GLBT individuals in the church. Until now…

Back in 2006 the CofS General Assembly sent to the presbyteries an item approving the blessing of same-sex unions. The item was defeated. But what made the business interesting, and in some ways telling, was that it came from the Legal Questions Committee which deals with civil legal issues, not from a theological or polity committee. In a sense, the issue was co-opted for the church to make a statement on same-sex unions. The Kirk has had several groups working on reports related to aspects of human sexuality, principally the 1994 and 2007 reports, but most have been accepted only for reflection and discussion and they have not lead to statements or acts concerning polity or theology.

Now a relevant issue has come up regarding ordination standards and clergy lifestyle when a previously ordained minister was called to a church in Aberdeen and he will be bringing his gay partner with him. The presbytery approved the call, some of the commissioners protested to the Commission of Assembly, and the Commission decided (correctly in my opinion) that this was too significant in issue for it to decide and they sent it on to the full, new General Assembly less than a month from now. So far all done in a very Presbyterian manner, decently and in order.

The issue “blew up” when an editorial appeared in the CofS official, but editorially independent, monthly magazine Life and Work that expressed the opinion that the Kirk should be broad and accepting and that this call should be approved by the GA. Conservative ministers in the CofS were upset about the editorial and the Scottish press ran with the story.

Well, the press is still running with it, but more about that in a moment. Decently and in order stuff first…

The Presbytery of Lochcarron and Skye have overtured the General Assembly in this matter. The overture is short and the “whereases” are telling so here is the full text, courtesy of The Fellowship of Confessing Churches:

OVERTURE

ANENT MINISTERIAL CONDUCT

From the Presbytery of Lochcarron-Skye

Whereas:

1. the Church’s historic understanding of the Biblical teaching on homosexual practice has been questioned in recent years.

2. a lengthy period of reflection has elapsed without a resolution of the issue.

3. it is undesirable that the courts of the church should be asked to judge on individual cases in advance of any such resolution.

It is humbly overtured by the Reverend the Presbytery of
Lochcarron-Skye to the Venerable the General Assembly to receive the
Overture set out below,

“That this Church shall not accept for training, ordain, admit,
re-admit, induct or introduce to any ministry of the Church anyone
involved in a sexual relationship outside of faithful marriage between
a man and a woman”.

Polity wise this is a simpler, yet broader, version of the PC(USA) “fidelity and chastity” requirement. The PC(USA) standard applies only to candidates for ordination. The GAPJC extended preceding statements to apply to “positions that presume ordination.” As you can see in this overture it proposes applying a standard to ministers only, but applying the standard to both the ordination as well as the call process. (That would be the “induct” or “introduce” for the American readers who “install” pastors.)

In addition to the overture there is also a statement/online petition from The Fellowship encouraging the GA to oppose the call and another conservative group, Forward Together, has a statement on their home page also opposing the call. The liberal group Affirmation Scotland has a statement posted on their website supporting the call.

In the popular press this issue continues to make headlines and apparently The Sunday Times surveyed CofS ministers and found a significant number that said they would consider leaving the church if the call was upheld by the General Assembly. The survey is reported on-line by Pink News (I searched and could not find an original reference to it at The Times Online so I have to wonder if it was only in the print edition of the paper.) According to the report 50 ministers were surveyed, 23 said they opposed the call and eight said they would consider leaving. (GA Junkie note: Pink News, and maybe The Times, refers to it as a question about the “ordination.” In this case the minister is already ordained so the question is about the call to this pastoral position.) There is independent on-line verification of this survey from the Rev. Jim Dewar’s blog. He reports that he was one of the ministers contacted by The Times and that he told them he was opposed but not considering leaving. In regards to whether he would leave he says that he told the reporter “No; there is more to the Christian faith, more to my ministry and the mission of the Church than sexual ethics!”

So the story continues. The General Assembly convenes three weeks from tomorrow and more than one story I read predicts that this could be the most controversial, or at least the most closely watched, in two decades. As an indicator, this story has been picked up by blogs not specific to Scotland (Reformation 21) and other denominational writers (Anglicans United, Virtue OnLine, Clerical Whispers). Let us pray that by the time GA gets here the commotion will have calmed down so the commissioners can focus and discern God’s will.

Voting Trends For Amendment 08-B — Part 1 – Summary Statistics

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I would suspect that most of you have heard by now that the unofficial vote tracking on Amendment 08-B places the count as 69 yes and 89 no as of last Saturday, a sufficient number to defeat the amendment. It appears that the “fidelity and chastity” section in the Book of Order for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will remain for another two years. That still needs to be verified by the Office of the General Assembly, but based on the official vote tally this appears to be the only item sent to the presbyteries that will not pass. (At this time amendment 08-I is listed as very close to passage but not yet.) But voting is not over yet — there are still 15 presbyteries that need to vote and the General Assembly recognized that the process, and not just the vote, was important.

However, the results appear certain enough that the Presbyterian News Service has issued an article and the reports are spreading around the news services (exempli gratia Associated Press, The Christian Post, Advocate.com, Dallas Morning News), the advocacy groups (exempli gratia More Light Presbyterians, Presbyterian Coalition, Witherspoon Society), and the blogs (exempli gratia Presbylaw, Psalms Modern, A Classical Presbyterian, Ray’s Net, Mark Time).

Having now had 158 presbyteries vote, and 143 of those presbyteries with vote counts on both 08-B and 01-A recorded at PresbyWeb or the Presbyterian Coalition counting sites, there is a significant amount of data to crunch to compare the two votes and see if it says anything about the PC(USA).

Now, while I have some questions that the two amendments are really comparable since the text of the two is significantly different in content and action, it is still my conclusion that in many quarters they are viewed as similar actions. For most of this analysis I will take it as a precondition that the two amendments are similar enough in their perceived intent, if not their text, that it is valid to compare the voting numbers.

I will break this analysis into several different posts primarily so as not to overwhelm the casual reader with extensive statistics. As a research scientist I am used to providing and drinking numerical data through a fire hose. I am going to try to spare you the experience. Also, some of the individual case studies will wait until all the presbyteries have voted. But with over 90% of the data in I will go ahead today with the summary statistics of the population.

Finally, as a research scientist I accept peer review and as a Presbyterian I welcome accountability. If anyone does want to see my raw data I will gladly send you a copy of my source spreadsheet once I have most of my analysis presented.

And a word on philosophy: I sometimes wonder if some of my readers view this as “dwelling on the past,” “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” “majoring in the minors,” or “analyzing the obvious.” I however consider this interesting (yes, I am weird), I am concerned about some of the other statistics and their interpretation I see out in the news, and I do feel that taking a serious look at these things is part of the third note of the True Church – “ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered.”

Summary Statistics
From the data sources listed above there are 143 presbyteries that have voted on Amendments 08-B and 01-A for which vote counts are listed in the sources. In the discussion that follows I will only be addressing presbyteries that have reported numbers for both votes. There are 15 presbyteries that do not have reported numbers for one or both votes.

On 01-A 42 (29.4%) of these presbyteries voted “yes” and 101 (70.6%) voted “no.” On 08-B 64 (44.8%) of these presbyteries voted “yes” and 79 (55.2%) voted “no.” Of the presbyteries that voted “yes” on 01-A two (1.4%) have voted “no” on 08-B. Of the presbyteries that voted “no” on 01-A 24 (16.8%) voted “yes” on 08-B.

Looking at the number of reported votes, on 01-A there were 21,732 total commissioners voting in these presbyteries. Of these 9,375 (43.1%) commissioners voted “yes” and 12,357 (56.9%) voted “no.” For 08-B there were 18,562 total commissioners voting in these presbyteries. Of these 9,189 (49.5%) voted “yes” and 9,373 (50.5%) voted “no.” (Note: the data sources do not include blank or “abstain” ballots. From experience these are <5 per presbytery and using an average of 3 per presbytery it could be another 429 ballots or roughly 2% of each vote that I would estimate as an upper limit.)

Between 01-A and 08-B the number of total voting commissioners in these presbyteries declined by 3,170 which represents a loss of 14.6% of the 01-A total votes. The decline in commissioner “yes” votes is 186, a 1.9% drop relative to the 01-A “yes” total and a 0.8% decline relative to the total number of votes cast. The decline in commissioner “no” votes is 2,984, a 24.1% drop relative to the 01-A “no” total and a 13.7% decline relative to the total number of votes cast.

Preliminary Analysis Comments
I don’t want to make any substantial comments on the analysis and conclusions until I have spread out some more detailed statistics in front of you. However, let me set the framework in which I have been studying these numbers.

In modeling the data I have selected five different factors that I think are influential. These five factors pretty much cover any of the reasons for changes in the vote numbers and so as a whole probably introduce too many degrees of freedom. However, in working with the numbers it seemed that relying on only the three “general” factors still left out some identifiable variation. This is part of what prompted my “every presbytery is different” post a bit over a month ago.

The nice thing about working with the overall statistics is that the larger population size should minimize the influence of the special cases and that individual special cases might average, or cancel, out. I will investigate each of these in detail later, but briefly the three general
factors that I am working with are:

1) Overall, uniform membership changes. This is the documented membership change (generally decline) in the membership of the PC(USA) and how it would translate into changes in the number of commissioners voting.

2) Vote changes. This is the switching of commissioner votes from “yes” to “no” or “no” to “yes” between the two votes.

3) Selective decline due to realignment of churches. This is not the uniform membership decline but the selective departure of churches and individuals of one particular theological perspective that has been happening over the past few years. The theory is that it is primarily conservative churches that are leaving the denomination so this should manifest itself as a preferential decline in “no” votes.

There are also two special cases that I am considering.

A – Fundamental change in the presbytery. In some (probably limited) cases there are changes the presbytery has made, apart from typical membership changes, that would influence the number of commissioners voting. The changes to counting active membership in San Gabriel Presbytery would fall into this category (I discussed that back in March.)

B – Special circumstances of that meeting. Situations where some external cause influences the number of commissioners at that particular meeting. There was discussion that the number of commissioners at the John Know Presbytery meeting was significantly reduced (60%) by a winter storm and that there were conflicting conferences that influenced the attendance at the San Francisco Presbytery meeting.

It appears that both of these special cases are very limited. While it is tempting to consider the factor as uniform across “yes” and “no” votes, if a special circumstance was involved in the San Francisco vote change is was clearly not uniform. I will drop the special cases for now and return to that topic a few posts from now.

So, looking at the changes in the summary statistics what can we say as a first pass? The number of both the “yes” and the “no” votes declined but the “yes” only slightly and the “no” substantially. You can not explain the difference with only changes in the vote. You can not explain the difference in the votes with any one of these three factors alone. A combination of two or more is required.

(Factors 1&2) If you want to say that the difference in the total is uniform decline then you could expect about 8000 “yes” votes on 08-B based on the 01-A percentages. That would mean that there was a net change of 1200 commissioners (6.5% of the 08-B total) changing votes from “no” to “yes.”

(Factors 1&3) You could also interpret the numbers to say that there was no changing of votes, but rather the differences in votes reflects a 0.8% uniform decline (the 186 vote decrease in the “yes” votes) and then an additional 12.9% decline in the “no” votes due to conservative departure. (That would be the 2984 total “no” vote decline split between 188 uniform decline and 2796 selective decline.) With a total uniform decline of a bit less than 400 votes in this scenario the conservative departure is clearly dominant and this comes closest to explaining the voting differences with a single factor.

(Factors 2&3) The other possibility is that there is no uniform decline but the 3170 vote drop in numbers reflects the loss of only conservative “no” votes combined with 186 “yes” votes switching to “no” votes to account for the drop in the number of “yes” votes.

From the summary statistics we can probably say all three of these factors are present but it is difficult to distinguish the level of influence of any of these three factors individually. As this series of posts progresses I will work my way up to my model where individual presbyteries can be classified as having one or two of these factors dominate the vote changes. The factors will get limited on a presbytery level so we have an over-determined rather than an under-determined matrix for the model. (That is mathematical jargon, not a psychological analysis of the matrix.) And I have found that there are a couple of presbyteries where there is statistically no change in the vote pattern.

But all that is in the future. For today it is enough to say that from my analysis of these summary numbers the statistic that really jumps out is the 13.7% drop in the number of “no” votes between 01-A and 08-B. Based on other membership numbers it appears unlikely that this drop could be accounted for in uniform decline alone and it can not be purely vote changes since the total numbers show a similar 14.6% decline. The question then is how much of the vote shift seen between 01-A and 08-B is truly a shift at the individual level, and how much is a mathematical result of the departure of conservative churches.

Stick with me and I’ll give you an answer to that question. Next time we move from the denominational level to the presbytery statistics and start including pretty pictures with charts and graphs.

Episcopal Polity Statement From The Anglican Communion Institute — The Rest Of The Story?

And You Think Presbyterian Polity Is Confusing…

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It has been a while since I commented on the Anglican Communion, but those who closely watch the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issues know that there is a very close and parallel situation in The Episcopal Church (TEC) at the moment. Close enough that we write amicus briefs on each others court cases and we have churches realigning in the same places that Episcopal dioceses are realigning, such as the San Joaquin valley of California.

There are two different, but related, tracks of controversy developing in the Anglican world at the moment. The first involves the Episcopal Church and an effort by conservatives to demonstrate that it is not a “hierarchical church.” This is of course important because one of the legal theories for a national church retaining control of the local church property, the “principle of government,” is the trust clause for a hierarchical church. If the church is not hierarchical the trust clause is harder to argue.

This news was broken earlier this week by the Rev. Mark Harris in his blog Preludium. He said:

In
the next few days a position paper signed by a number of bishops
connected to the “Communion Partners” bishops group will be published,
in all likelihood by the Anglican Communion Institute. It will
challenge the notion that dioceses of TEC are part of TEC
in any other way except by voluntary association, and that therefore
they are free to independently subscribe to the Anglican Covenant and
maintain pastoral visitation and oversight independent of any agreement
with TEC or its leadership. At least that is the conclusion to be reached from a thread of emails send to Preludium today (April 21).

And the Rev. Harris says later

The
second point of reference is the belief that Episcopal Church polity
legitimately arises out of the autonomy of dioceses who gather in
voluntary association at The Episcopal Church in General Convention. In
this view it is the diocese and not The Episcopal Church that is the
“basic unit” of The Episcopal Church. In this argument TEC is not a metropolitical entity, but rather a free association of dioceses.

Note here the parallel to the PC(USA) principle that the presbytery is the “central governmental unit.” (I wrote a bit about that earlier in the week.)

Well, there was a bit of an uproar on both sides about the information leakage. The Rev. Harris mentions it yesterday as does the Rev. Susan Russell. But the Anglican Communion Institute has released the statement signed by fifteen bishops. At the present time there does not appear to be an official statement from the national office, but there is a press release with unofficial critical quotes. I should also point out that Mr. Haley, the Anglican Curmudgeon, has a two part post (Part 1, Part 2) about why the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical.

But looking at this debate there is more than one implication if the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical. The property is one thing but realigning a diocese with the Worldwide Anglican Communion is another part of it. And related to that the Worldwide Anglican Communion is now writing a new Anglican Covenant that is conservative in its tone. I won’t go into all the nuances of this, but for the purposes of the preceding news, if a diocese is the core unit of the church than it would be free to associate by itself with the covenant without being associated through the national church.

This is important because based on the current draft of the Covenant the leadership of the Episcopal Church has indicated that it might not sign on. An article from Episcopal Life, the official Episcopal News Service, says

Should the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council] accept the draft during the Jamaica meeting, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said
that she would “strongly discourage” any effort to bring such a request
to the 76th General Convention in July 2009. The Episcopal Church’s
Executive Council agreed in
January, saying that such a decision would need the full three years
between meetings of General Convention to “prayerfully engage the
faithful of all the dioceses of the Episcopal Church as to their
discernment in respect to the covenant” and listen to other provinces
“as they discuss and wrestle with the generalities and particularities
of an Anglican covenant.”

Ruth Gledhill of The Times points out that the Church of England may not be able to legally sign the covenant either because it “might subvert the authority of the Queen as Supreme Governor.”

So, if you think you have now reached the complexity of this polity think again. Ms. Gledhill also reports on the likely implementation of this covenant:

The covenant, by virtue of a quasi disciplinary process, is likely
create a multi-layered communion, with the ‘conservative’ provinces in
the inner circle, with full voting rights at all the communion bodies,
and the pro-gay liberals on the outer circle and presumably some rights
removed, if they insist on consecrating more gay bishops or sanctioning
gay marriage and refuse to sign up to the covenant in all its biblical
orthodoxy.

And for a more elaborate exposition (and I gather he is being a bit tongue-in-cheek) there is Damian Thomas over at the Telegraph picking up where Ruth left off:

What I didn’t know is that the proposals are tied to an intricate scale
of “degrees of communion” – full, impaired, partial and broken – that
will ascribed to different provinces by a Lambeth Communion Review
Commission, which will itself be multi-layered, supervising Review
Sub-Committees based on the Indaba model that will ascribe State of
Communion Assessments to individual dioceses, non-territorial episcopal
oversight areas and parishes. It would, of course, be inappropriate for
the same Review Sub-Committees to cross the boundary between inner and
outer circles of the Anglican Communion, and so – in a radical proposal
drafted by Dr Rowan Williams himself – the Lambeth Communion Review
Commission will divide into inner and outer circle Areas of Special
Responsibility that will shadow each other’s assessments.

Got that? He keeps going so if you want the whole thing check it out. It sort of reminds me of my favorite Monty Python game show parody where the rules are so complicated there is not time for the contest itself. An earlier version is available on line.

So is this an Anglican version of the PUP report? Is this modeled on Dante’s circles of Hell? What will the Anglican Communion look like in a few years? The PC(USA) and the Episcopal situations are so close and somewhat linked so it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

Amendment 08-B One Vote From Failing With More Presbyteries Switching Votes Yesterday

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It ain’t over until it’s over… But it is now very close with the unofficial vote at 68 yes and 86 no. That is one “no” vote away from being defeated.

The headline from yesterday is that of the four presbyteries voting, three switched votes from their previous position.

The part of that which is the real headline is that the first presbytery switched from “yes” to “no,” and the really surprising news is that it was San Francisco Presbytery that switched.

So, thanks to PresbyWeb, here is what happened yesterday…

National Capital voted “Yes” with numbers very consistent across the years: 222-102 yesterday, 220-116 on 01-A, 212-71 on 97-A, and 105-226 on 96-B. (For all of these remember that pro-equality is a yes except on 96-B when it is a no vote.)

Salem and Wabash Valley switched from no to yes.
Salem: 156-149 on 08-B, 160-187 on 01-A, 141-156 on 97-A, and 153-143 on 96-B. (Interesting to note the spike in turnout for 01-A. They other votes are strikingly similar in numbers, with the reversal on 08-B.)

Wabash Valley: 84-67 on 08-B, 83-102 on 01-A, 76-125 on 97-A, 116-100 on 96-B. (Wabash Valley has had a number of churches depart the denomination and the change in no votes from 01-A to 08-B may reflect that. It is notable that the switch occurred not because the yes votes increased, they are statistically identical. This may be one of the few cases that a significant decrease in no votes can be clearly tied to churches realigning.)

San Francisco: 167-177 on 08-B, 216-186 on 01-A, 207-167 on 97-A, 179-214 on 96-B. (The previous votes show a significant consistency, as does the no vote with the past vote numbers. In this case it appears that the yes voters were not there because it shows a decrease of 40+ votes from the typical level.)

Anyway, to have San Francisco vote no took many people by surprise. There is a lot of reaction on Facebook, which I won’t link to. The vote results must have been announced late because the news media has not picked it up yet. (The results had not been posted when this left-coaster went to bed at a later than normal hour.)

East coast blogs are starting to pick it up and you can count on John Shuck for a lively response:

This is an embarrassment. The presbytery of San Francisco

Home of the PCUSA moderator…

Home of out candidate, Lisa Larges…

Home of the Covenant Network…

Home of Jack Rogers…

And well it’s freaking San Francisco…

voted No on amendment B last night 167-177. San Francisco has the honor of being the only presbytery
to switch from equality to inequality in this year’s voting. Last time
the vote was 216-186. That means 40 commissioners decided they had
better things to do than to show up for the meeting.

Looks to me like they took it for granted while the opposition organized.

[Editorial note: We down here in SoCal claim Jack Rogers now. ]

As news and blogs respond to the vote I’ll add updates to this post.

Update:
The Layman has posted an article that Amendment 08-B has now failed with 86 negative votes. They say at the end of the article that 171 presbyteries are voting, which would require 86 on one side or the other. Not sure where they got that from because the official PC(USA) vote tally page sets 87 as passage.

In addition, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, the Layman seems to extract a bit of “turn-about” in the article, citing San Francisco as the home presbytery of GA Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow. This could be interpreted as a “back at you” for John Edward Harris‘ observation that the first presbytery to switch, Western North Carolina, is the home of the Layman’s long-time editor. Or maybe I’m just too into conspiracy theories and reading articles for hidden meanings. I very well could be wrong and it is all innocent reporting.

Update: I must confess my surprise that now almost 24 hours out there is not more reaction in the news or on the blogs. The PC(USA) Presbyterian News Service did release an article about the vote in general that included yesterday’s votes in the tally but no reporting on any of the presbytery meetings themselves.

Probably the most interesting comment so far has been by Clay Allard on his blog The Right Side of the Trinity. (For those not familiar with the geography of Dallas, TX, the title is a clever turn of phrase on the Trinity River that flows through the city.) The best thing about Clay’s comments is that he takes a bigger view – “The amendment has failed, now what?” He writes:

Now That the Voting Is Over

What an interesting sense of humor God has. As Amendment 08-B moves to
defeat, I was sure that the Puerto-Rican presbyteries would deliver the
coup-de-grace. But instead– it’s SAN FRANCISCO?! I think that it’s
time to examine all the ideas and attitudes that have been slain by
this vote.

and he closes with

Let’s spend some time outside of our own echo chambers, not acting like
this is a football game and we are just “fans” of our side. Instead of
figuring out a strategy of beating “them,” why don’t we find out who
“they” are, and what they want? Why don’t we act like we are not
competing for some prize, but that we are trying to be faithful to
Christ? The voting is over– let the learning begin.

Also, More Light Presbyterians has an article up about the San Francisco vote and the significance of the presbytery meeting being held at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church.

Elsewhere, Wrestling With Wrelevance and Life Along The Homeschooling Journey comment on the San Francisco vote and the almost-defeat of 08-B. The Reformed Pastor has reaction to both the San Francisco vote as well as the Layman article.

Controvery Headed To The Church Of Scotland General Assembly Increases