A Word Of Hope From The Amendment 08-B Voting Trends

Leave a reply

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

First, for anyone looking
for my word of hope being in the fact that approval of 08-B is
trailing in the voting or that a significant number of presbyteries have switched
their votes from the negative to the affirmative in this round of
voting, you won’t find that here.

Instead, I have been
reflecting on some of the voting trends to see what it means for the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

While what I have
previously written about the amendment voting, especially the
analysis of the numbers, I view as data-driven and analytical, I do
realize that there is the potential for it being take as negative or
pessimistic because of the focus on membership decline and
theological controversy — the “doom and gloom” if you will. It is my motivation and intent that using my skills to drill down into
the numbers would help us better understand what is going on and
would lead to “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). So
in a more explicit spirit of that let me offer what I see as a word
of hope:

In tracking the votes and
looking for correlations with membership trends my working hypothesis
was that declines in membership would be reflected in the voting
trends. However, as I discussed in another recent post this is not
the case. Hypothesis busted! While I do see trends that I can break into categories of behavior, looking for this broadly across the
denomination’s presbyteries does not show it. I consider that good news for the
PC(USA).

I do not mean to minimize
the challenges that are before the denomination. Membership is
declining in almost every presbytery. Amendment 08-B is an issue
with strong feelings on both sides. Total membership decline numbers do suggest some association.  But the presbytery data indicate that we can not take these and
paint across the denomination with too broad a brush. To paraphrase the
Tolstoy quote above, “every presbytery has its challenges in its
own way.” No broad generalizations can be made about relationships
between 08-B, theological viewpoint, and membership decline. This
leads me to the broad generalization that every presbytery is unique,
has its own individual challenges and stories, and should be worked with
on its own terms. It is just like one of our basic principles of
Presbyterian polity, it all comes down to the presbyteries.

What this effectively
means could be expressed in a couple of well-used phrases:

All politics is local

or

Think globally, act
locally.

If every presbytery is
unique, don’t look to the General Assembly or the Headquarters for
your solution. They are there to help, but not come up with the silver bullet to solve every
problem if there are 173 different problems. Look for what you can
do where you are to work on the challenges in your presbytery.  These data suggest that we need to change the denomination by starting at the bottom because this issue does not register as being the unique problem across the church.

(Having said that, there are
some general categories of behavior but nothing that is seen across the board. I’ll go back to my geeky data analysis and
lay those out in the next couple of weeks.)

Membership Changes In American Churches — Part I

1 Reply

I would think that even the casual observer would notice that over the last couple of weeks there has been an explosion of articles in the news, and a corresponding explosion of discussion in the blogosphere, about the changes in membership patterns in American churches, particularly the mainline denominations.  While I think that there are a number of reasons for this, it appears that what catalyzed the reaction was the publication of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) by the researchers from Trinity College in Connecticut.  I have done a first read of the survey and will be studying it in detail and crunching some of their numbers over the next couple of weeks.  More details when I have had a chance to study it, but I want to make two comments related to the survey and the media response now:

1)  This survey (full report PDF) is the third in a series tracking the American religious landscape over time.  The first was in 1990, the second in 2001, and the present one in 2008.  Reading through the tables and main text, nowhere do they give error-bounds with their results.  In the Research Design section on page 2 they do say that their high number of samples (>50,000 in 2008 and 2001, and >110,000 in 1990) gives “a standard error of under 0.5 percent for the full population in 2008.”

The patterns in Table 1 showing changes in the broad categories of religious affiliation showed significant (and I mean that technically) changes in almost every category between the 1990 and 2001 survey.  (Other Religions only grows from 3.3% in 1990 to 3.9% in 2008 so that change is completely within the uncertainties.)  However, from 2001 to 2008 the changes in most categories are much smaller than in the earlier time period.  While “Other Christian” is a statistically significant decrease from 52.2 to 50.9% in seven years, no other category changes by more than 0.8% which the Research Design section leads us to believe is statistically indistinguishable. (Two numbers would need to be more than 1% different if each has an error bound of +/-0.5%)  Future publications with error bounds on each number, or more detailed error limits, may show that these changes are significant.

2)  In a CNN article on the study Mr. Mark Silk, of Trinity College and the author of Spiritual Politics, makes the following statement:

The rise in evangelical Christianity is contributing to the
rejection of religion altogether by some Americans, said Mark Silk of
Trinity College.

“In the 1990s, it really sunk in on the
American public generally that there was a long-lasting ‘religious
right’ connected to a political party, and that turned a lot of people
the other way,” he said of the link between the Republican Party and
groups such as the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family.

Now, this is an interesting statement and it may even be true.  The problem is that CNN does not provide Mr. Silk’s data or source so it is left as the expert assertion of Mr. Silk that this is the case.

(It is important to clarify that Mr. Silk is listed as being on the Research Team for the ARIS survey, but is not one of the Principal Investigators.)

Since there are three types of lies… For the sake of argument let me present some data and argue the opposite — Liberal Christianity is driving people away from the church, or at least certain denominations.

But first, I find it interesting that I can’t show that within a denomination based on presbyteries in the PC(USA).

The link between theological perspective and membership changes has been of great interest to me as I follow the voting patterns on Amendment 08-B in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)  At the present time, I have found no clear association.

Here are the data from voting to date for all 97 presbyteries that have voted and reported their numbers in 2001-2 and 2008-9.  This first graph is the change in presbytery membership as a ratio of the 2007 membership to the 2000 membership (the most recent membership numbers available from Research Services), versus the percentage of “Yes” votes on 08-B.  Using the “Yes” votes as a proxy for the degree of liberal political leanings of the presbytery, the theory is that if one theological perspective is more attractive to the general membership of the PC(USA) we should see higher membership declines for opposite leaning presbyteries.

See the correlation?  I don’t either.  In fact the correlation coefficient is -0.08, very close to zero for no correlation.  So there does not appear to be an association between the presbytery leanings on this theological issue and membership decline.

What if we were to ask if the change in membership favored one theological perspective.  Here is the data with the same membership change measure but with the change in the percentage of commissioners voting yes.  Based on one theory, if the conservatives are leaving, presbyteries with higher membership losses should see an increase in the number of yes votes.

No, I don’t see it either and the correlation of 0.04 is even worse.  In fact, these two graphs are typical of what I have been finding for the PC(USA), that on a presbytery basis there is virtually no correlation between membership changes and voting patterns.  I’ll continue with this another time.

(Technical note:  I did not include Eastern Korean Presbytery in the data above because it has a remarkable growth of 2.68X from 2000 to 2007.  It is an extreme outlier and it would have leveraged the correlation.  However, as a single point it supports the theory that the fewer yes votes the more attractive the church:  It has always been a 100% vote for “fidelity and chastity” (“No” votes) and is in a class by itself in growth.  And looking at the statistics it appears to be fairly constant growth over those seven years.)

Let me turn to another set of data, the membership numbers reported by the National Council of Churches.  A quick glance at the list shows that four member denominations had increases in membership:  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Assemblies of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.).  The denominations that reported losses of more than 2% were the UCC (-6.01%), AME Zion Church (-3.01%), and the PC(USA) (-2.79%).  Looking at the list of churches, the general perception is that churches with more “liberal” leanings have greater membership losses than those identified as “conservative.”  Is this perception true?

To measure “liberal” versus “conservative” let’s turn first to the Public Religion Research‘s new report Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey.  The first problem here is that they look at Protestant churches so only seven of the NCC churches are in the study.  But it is current and it is specific to denomination.

To supplement this I turn to a study done for the Southern Baptist Convention by Ellison Research.  In this study, from 2006, there is a table of “Political Views of Clergy” but besides the SBC the other denominational categories are more general.  I will use the number for “Other Baptists” for the second largest Baptist denomination, the National Baptist Convention (NBC).  For the “Pentecostal” category I will use the largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God (AOG).

Finally, a 2003 article provides a final source: “The Political Attitudes and Activities of Mainline Protestant Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Study of Six Denominations,” by Smidt and others (the last of the others is Beau Weston) in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, v. 42, p. 515-552.  This survey is older but specific to denominations and adds the Reformed Church in America (RCA) to the list.  Getting the RCA membership change was not straight-forward since they are not on the NCC top 25 list, but a PC(USA) comparison reports a 12% decline in the decade ending in 2005 so I’ll use an annual change of -1.25%.

 Denomination Ann. member. change % Progressive
Clergy voices 		%Liberal
Ellison 		%Liberal
Political Attitudes 		 median %
 SBC  -0.24%    4%    4%
 UMC  -0.80%  28%  35%  38%  35%
 NBC  0%    5%    5%
 ELCA  -1.35%  27%  29%  61%  29%
 PC(USA)  -2.79%  34%  35%  46%  35%
 AOG  +0.96%    7%    7%
 Episcopal  -1.76%  43%      43%
 ABCUSA  -0.94  24%    23%  24%
 UCC  -6.01%  55%      55%
 DOC  0%  39%    61%  50% (avg)
 RCA  -1.2%      26%  26%

Just a technical note that since the Political Attitudes study was significantly higher in a couple of cases I chose to average when I had two values and use the median if there were three values.  Also, the clergy voices study had both a “Progressive” measure and a “Liberal” measure and I chose to use the Progressive because of the better agreement with the Ellison numbers.

Is there information in this noise?  There sure seems to be a correlation.  The R-squared is 0.44 which gives a correlation of -0.66. That is pretty good.  If you are worried about the high UCC number leveraging the correlation, the correlation is -0.52 without it, so it has an effect, but not an overwhelming one.  And yes, some non-linear relationship would fit the data better, but for a preliminary exploration the linear works well.  Clearly, a detailed analysis of this would want to use a greater quantity of data that is consistent in source and acquisition.  And the decline numbers are for just one year and a multi-year trend might show something completely different. But this preliminary exploration is interesting.

So there is a correlation between the political leanings of the clergy and the change in membership such that membership losses and liberal leanings increase together.  I do admit that I have not established a cause and effect here:  Does the more liberal clergy encourage the loss of membership, or is the loss of membership preferential to the conservatives leaving the liberal side behind in the Mainstream churches?  Or for that matter, are these two similarly correlated to another causal factor I am not considering.  But for some reason people seem to be leaving the more liberal churches preferentially.  The interesting thing is that if Mr. Silk is correct the rise of evangelicals did not uniformly drive members from the Mainstream churches but it was preferential to the more liberal churches.  (Note: We may be talking about two different time periods here as well, Mr. Silk in the 90’s and I in this decade.  The other major difference is that I am using reported membership numbers while he is looking at the larger population of those who self-identify with the denominations. And there are a host of other factors involved in the protocols of the surveys that might invalidate any comparison.)

Enough statistics and number crunching for today.  More to come.  But let me just say that even after my first read of this, and several of the documents that have come out recently, I don’t agree with every conclusion I read.  Your mileage may vary.

Programming note:  For the next week or so I will be intensely occupied with some meetings.  I have a couple of unrelated posts in the pipeline but more of this and other intensive analysis will be on hold for a week or more.  Sorry about that.  Thanks for understanding.

PC(USA) Amendment Voting Update

4 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time will tell.  Stay tuned…

Decisions From The PC(USA) GAPJC

1 Reply

The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) heard cases in San Diego, California, last Friday, February 27, and published the decisions yesterday.  Of the three cases, one is related to a higher-profile news item, but the decision does not settle the case, just overturns a specific ruling and the case is remanded back to the Synod PJC for trial.  However, as with most GAPJC decisions there is something in each of these decisions to interest us polity wonks.

I will start with the better known of the three cases so casual readers can get the main point and move on to other reading.

219-08: David Bierschwale, David Lenz, and Carol Shanholtzer v. Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area
Bierschwale et al. v Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area is a remedial case that derives from the complaint to the PJC of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies about the procedures the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area followed in restoring Mr. Paul Capetz to the exercise of his ordained office.  A lot more detail can be found on that last link and the links it contains, but here are the important facts for understanding the GAPJC decision:

Mr. Capetz was ordained a Minister of Word and Sacrament in 1991 but following the passage of G-6.0106b, the “fidelity and chastity” statement, asked, as a matter of conscience, to be released from the exercise of his ordained office in 2000.  The Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area granted that release.  Following the 217th General Assembly (2006) adopting the new Authoritative Interpretation about declaring a departure or scruple Mr. Capetz applied to the Presbytery for restoration to the exercise of his ordained office.  In a meeting with the Committee on Ministry he stated his departure:

“I affirm the Constitutional Questions asked of me at my ordination. However, I have to raise a principled objection or scruple. I cannot affirm G-6.0106b. Nor can I affirm the position of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on the question of the morality of homosexual relationships.”

At the Presbytery meeting in January 2008 the body took action on three motions.  The first, referred to in the decision as the Departure Motion, was to affirm that his declared departure was not related to an essential of the faith.  The second, the Restoration Motion, was to restore him to the exercise of his office.  And the Third, the Validation Motion, was to validate his ministry teaching at a seminary.

Following the passage of these three motions a complaint was filed with the SPJC alleging the Presbytery acted irregularly in passing these three motions and requesting that they be nullified.  The officers of the SPJC issued a Preliminary Order dismissing the case on the grounds that the relief requested was effectively the removal of Mr. Capetz’s ordination which must be done as a disciplinary case, not a remedial case.  The complainants filed an appeal and amended their complaint asking “the SPJC admonish the Presbytery and order it to refrain from conducting further irregular ordinations, installations, restorations or validations.”

The SPJC decision was issued in August 2008.  It dismissed the case on the grounds that no claim was stated on which relief could be granted.  The case was appealed to the GAPJC.  In the appeal there were twelve specifications of errors.

In their decision the GAPJC sustained only two of the specifications of error:

Specification of Error No. 4: The SPJC erred by not conducting a trial to determine whether there are facts that show: (a) Capetz stated a departure from G-6.0106b and (b) if so, whether that departure was a failure to adhere to the requirements of G-6.0108; and if the facts show that (a) and (b) occurred, whether the Presbytery’s action was irregular.

This Specification of Error is sustained.

Specification of Error No. 5: The SPJC erred by not conducting a trial to determine whether there are facts that would show the Presbytery waived the “fidelity and chastity” requirement of G-6.0106b in considering Capetz as a candidate or applicant for membership in the Presbytery; and if so, whether that action by the Presbytery was irregular.

This Specification of Error is sustained. This case is not remanded for a determination in the abstract as to whether any presbytery may decide that the “fidelity and chastity” requirement of G-6.0106b can be waived for any candidate or applicant for membership in a presbytery.  Rather, the SPJC shall decide only on the basis of the facts of what the Presbytery did with respect to Capetz, and whether that particular action was irregular.

Before I go any further with the analysis of the decision let me remind you of a critical fact — Mr. Capetz never gave up his ordination.  Almost all of the case law, precedents, and AI’s on this subject deal with candidates for ordination and therefore are mostly irrelevant to this case.

The critical section on the GAPJC reasoning says:

Bierschwale, et al. did not allege that there was any procedural irregularity in the manner in which the Presbytery took action on any of the three motions,including the Departure Motion. Any alleged irregularity in the process by which motions such as the Departure Motion are adopted is reviewable by the SPJC under the holding of Bush. In this case, Bierschwale, et al. complained that the Presbytery acted irregularly in adopting the Departure Motion because Capetz’s statements to the Presbytery were a serious departure from essentials of Reformed faith and polity and not a proper exercise of freedom of conscience under G-6.0108b.

This Commission finds that Bierschwale, et al. have stated a claim upon which relief may be granted, and the SPJC should determine whether Capetz’s statements and the Presbytery’s adoption of the Departure Motion are in violation of G-6.0108. The SPJC should address whether Capetz’s statements were a proper exercise of freedom of conscience under G-6.0108, and whether the Presbytery properly approved them in the Departure Motion. The standards for determining whether departures from essentials of Reformed faith and polity are permitted include whether a departure deviates from the standards in the Book of Confessions and the Form of Government, infringes the rights and views of others, or obstructs the constitutional governance of the church. (G-6.0108 a, b.) The trial of this case should include a presentation of evidence to determine whether these three requirements of G-6.0108 have been met.

So the Departure Motion is reviewable and a claim has been stated on which relief my be granted, and in a unanimous decision the GAPJC sends the case back to the SPJC for a hearing on the facts.  And yes, there is a reference in there to the previous decision 218-10 – Bush v. Pittsburgh.

The Decision section makes interesting reading, even though this particular decision will have limited importance.  (An appeal from the new SPJC hearing could set the landscape for deciding departures.)  As I quoted above, the part on the Departure Motion is the pivotal part and the other ten errors not being sustained mostly hinge on the fact that Mr. Capetz was already ordained or that they were related to the Restoration Motion.  It was po
inted out that if Mr. Capetz’s restoration were to be challenged based on his lifestyle that must be done as a disciplinary case, not a remedial case.  Further, the decision says that the “undisputed record” of the case does not contain a basis for disciplinary process against Mr. Capetz, but that a disciplinary case could be filed based on other information regardless of the outcome of this case.

For the polity wonks, a couple more items of interest: 
1)  The additional requested relief in the amended complaint, the request to tell the Presbytery to not do this any more, was not sustained.  As was made clear in Bush, there can be no blanket prohibition or standards but each case must be dealt with on its own merits.

2)  There is an interesting and important footnote.  I will let it speak for itself:

The question of whether the type of examination contemplated by G-11.0402 is required for restoration has not been raised in this case, is not before this Commission, and need not be addressed by the SPJC on remand. [Note: You probably know already but G-11.0402 is the section on examining ministers for membership in the presbytery.]

3)  This decision specifically points out that if anyone is looking to this case to see if the 2008 AI overruled Bush you can forget that.  Neither the AI nor Bush are related to the restoration to ordained office.

4) I am a little surprised that throughout this decision I did not find a reference to the 1992 decision 205-05 Sallade, et al. v. Genesee Valley Presbytery.  This older decision is one of the very few that specifically deal with call standards for previously ordained individuals.  As that decision says: “this commission holds that a self-affirmed practicing homosexual may not be invited to serve in a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) position that presumes ordination.”

Possible reasons for not referencing Sallade are numerous.  Maybe the most obvious is that the current case dealt with validation of ministry while the previous case was about a “position that presumes ordination.”  So there are questions of call process and nature of the ministry that separate these.  It could have been an issue that the AI or G-6.0106b were not in affect then since those deal with ordination, but Sallade depends on the Definitive Guidance of 1978 which was in full force and effect when Mr. Capetz was examined, having not been removed until the 218th GA in June 2008.

So, this is just another step on the journey for this case.  The complainants will have their day to present the facts on certain of their points.  The case is remanded back to the SPJC for trail on the issues in specifications 4 and 5 only.  We will see where it goes from there.

219-06: Hyung K. Yun, Yoon Soo Kim, Young Yoon Kim, Kwan Young Lee, Seung G. Ahn, In Bae Chun, Richard Yun, and Kee Ho Lim v. The Session of the Korean United Presbyterian Church of New Jersey.
This is a remedial case based on a complaint filed by members of the church regarding two congregational meetings in October, 2005.  There were allegations made about irregularities in electing officers related to the nominating committee process and questions about the membership roles and who could vote at the meetings.

The Presbytery of Newark PJC issued a May, 2006, decision “reciting all parties’ acknowledgment that irregularities and delinquencies had occurred and stating that all parties had agreed to six specific remedies. The PPJC found that the church officer nominating committee had been properly formed. Those persons elected at the congregational meeting were later ordained and installed and have completed their terms of office or have resigned.”

Despite the decision saying “all parties had agreed” the PPJC decision was appealed to the PJC of the Synod of the Northeast which dismissed the case on the grounds that there was no basis for an appeal.  That decision was appealed to the GAPJC which previously ruled that there were grounds for appeal and the case was remanded back to the SPJC.  In April 2008 the SPJC ruled that the PPJC had erred in accepting the case because the complaint was made against the nominating committee and congregation which are not governing bodies.  That decision was appealed back to the GAPJC.

In this decision, the GAPJC found:
1)  The PPJC acted correctly in not invalidating the election and besides, that specification of error is now moot since the officers elected are no longer serving.
2) The PPJC did properly consider all appropriate evidence in the case.  Furthermore, to complain that the decision was “unfair and unjust” goes against the fact that all parties agreed to the remedies.
3)  The SPJC did err in its decision that the PPJC should not have accepted the case to the extent that in addition to claims against individuals and the congregation there were claims against the Session that should have been heard.

Bottom line:  The previously agreed to remedies are to be enforced.

For the polity wonks the most interesting part is a concurring opinion signed by three members of the GAPJC.  This opinion serves to point out a potential problem in PC(USA) polity related to deacons.  They note that in 1997 Book of Order section G-6.0403, regarding the organization of deacons, was amended to add the “b” paragraph permitting deacons to be actively serving on a “commissioned” basis without the organization of a Board of Deacons.  The previously existing section G-14.0223 about the composition of the nominating committee was never adjusted for this possible circumstance.  Should we watch for this “housekeeping” Book of Order amendment coming soon?

219-07: The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through the Presbytery of Wyoming v. Gordon R. J. King.
This is a 10 to 5 decision related to a disciplinary case filed against Mr. King.  If you want the detailed history you can read the GAPJC decision, but in October, 2006, the PPJC filed its Final Decision.  Mr. King appealed this decision to the SPJC and when they did not sustain any of his specifications of error he appealed again to the GAPJC.

This case is interesting because it revolves around the Presbytery’s Standard on Sexual and Ethical Conduct and whether the facts in the case match the standard.  The GAPJC decision says

The application of a local standard for conduct (i.e., the Standard) does not relieve an appellate body of the obligation to determine whether that or any other legal standard has been properly applied. That determination is a question of law, not a question of fact.

It then goes on to overturn Mr. King’s conviction on the basis that the added “required” consideration of “proof of misuse of authority and/or power” was not present.  As I read this, the implication of the “required” is that it is part of “any other legal standard.”

This would be the implication of the Dissent which says,

The undisputed facts match specific examples of the offense…contained in the charge on which King was found guilty listed in item number five of the Presbytery’s Standard

The Dissent goes on to say:

The SPJC decision includes a concern that this standard might be ambiguous. However, our task in this disciplinary action is not to critique the Standard as written by the Presbytery. Our task is to determine whether there is any basis for the PPJC to conclude that the facts
in the case constitute a violation of the Standard. We cannot substitute our legal conclusion for that of the PPJC unless we can find that there is no basis for the decision, based on a clear error in matching the facts to the offense charged.

The PPJC decision is overturned apparently based upon “other legal standard[s]” even though the presbytery’s standard was apparently met.

Brief Update on PC(USA) Amendment 08-B Voting — A Tale Of Two Weekends

3 Replies

One was the best of weekends, the other the worst of weekends — And which was which depended on which side of the Amendment 08-B debate you are on…

Well, bad literary parody aside (although I considered continuing like this and letting you count the clichés) I would not have had another update this soon, except that the voting patterns this weekend were so strikingly different from last weekend.

Last weekend many of us were marveling at the number of presbyteries that switched their votes – nine out of the sixteen presbyteries that had previously voted no.  This strong trend in switched votes led the Presbyterian Outlook and The Layman to seriously consider the passage of 08-B. 

Now the voting ending this weekend:  With results in from the last few days of voting there were two yes votes and 12 no votes, and neither of the yes votes were switches.  In fact a couple of presbyteries that were believed to be prime targets to switch votes went back to a stronger “no” vote.  For example, Indian Nations was tied at 52 last time and voted 38-43 this time.  (That could just be about the same vote ratio within the statistical variation.)

(And on another note, I was intrigued by the difference between there being some significant mainstream media coverage of the voting the last couple of weekends and none this week that I could find.)

With the drought in presbytery swings this week, the proportions in the current voting trend would mean another 11 presbyteries switch for a final vote of 72 to 101.  At the moment, the amendment is sitting at 36-57.  For Amendment 08-B to pass would require 51 more votes.  There are still 25 presbyteries left to vote that voted yes the last time on 01-A.  If they all vote yes again that means that 26 of the remaining 55 presbyteries that voted no last time would have to switch votes.  That is by no means out of the question, but it means that all the remaining voting needs to have presbyteries switch at the same rate we saw in the week ending February 21 and not like this week.

I’m not sure I, or anyone else, is ready to announce the defeat of Amendment 08-B yet.  But with these two weeks showing that the switching of votes was not necessarily a trend I do consider passage of 08-B fairly unlikely at this point.  Its supporters have a major up-hill climb ahead of them.  But we are only a bit more than half-way through and who knows how the Holy Spirit will move through the presbyteries as they discern the will of God.  After all, it ain’t over ’till it’s over and that’s why we play the game.  My prayers that God will help the remaining presbyteries discern His will.

Update:  Responding to the discernment process in Newton Presbytery, Viola Larson wrote about “Spiritual Manipulation When Voting On 08-b.”  After this weekend’s voting Bruce Hahne has a post on “Weekly 08-B Wrapup: The Anti-equality Deck Stacking Begins” highlighting how he views the process in Indian Nations Presbytery “Stifling the Spirit” because adequate debate was not allowed.

PC(USA) Amendment 08-B Voting At The Half-Way Mark

Leave a reply

Well today the voting on Amendment 08-B to the Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) reached the half-way mark with 86 of the 173 presbyteries now having their votes reported.

1)  The unofficial vote tally is 36 yes, 50 no.  The official tally as reported by the stated clerks is 29 to 40.

1a)  The official vote tally lists the voting on Amendment 08-A, about membership vows, as 43 to 29.  The almost mirror image of the 08-B results makes this hard to ignore, but I’ll dig into that another time.

2)  At this time 15 presbyteries have switched their votes from “no” on 01-A to “yes” on 08-B.  If this proportion holds up the final vote will be 75 to 98.  BUT, if you remember my last update the proportions at that time would have given a vote of 63 to 110.  In the last ten days there have been a higher proportion of presbyteries switching to a yes vote after voting no last time.  I still have 13 presbyteries on my “likely” list, but after seeing some previously “solid” conservative presbyteries, like Charlotte and Sheppards and Lapsley, switch votes I now view my list as a minimum.  The Layman has crunched some numbers and they see the possibility of a 50 presbytery swing while I only have a swing of 29 based upon current proportions.

3)  What has been most interesting for me has been to try to peel back some of the layers here and see what the voting patterns can tell us about what is happening in the PC(USA).  As I have mentioned before, looking at the changes in vote numbers in comparison to the changes in presbytery membership has not yielded much information for me.  At another time, when I have more data, I’ll put together my charts and statistics on that and show you what I have not found.

But I have found it interesting to look at how the votes have changed.  There are other observers that are netting it out and looking at percentage yes and no and see how that changes from one time to the next.  But I think that only tells part of the story and in some cases ignores what really seemed to happen.  While each presbytery is different, and there are numerous circumstances that can cause some of these patterns, I see four major categories of voting patterns:

1) No change: While I see this in the smallest number of presbyteries that fall into these four categories, there are several that exhibit no change from last time.  Yesterday’s vote by Missouri Union Presbytery is a great example.  On 08-B they were 31-48, on 01-A they were 34-46.  There were 79 votes cast this time and 80 cast last time and the yes and no numbers are close enough that  statistically I would not say the votes really differ.

2) True swing:  There are some presbyteries where it seems clear the commissioners saw things differently this year and votes changed from no to yes.  Again from yesterday, Peace River is a great example:  On 08-B it was 63 to 82, on 01-A it was 37-105.  Total votes were 145 this time and 142 last time — again close enough to be considered statistically the same.  But clearly there was a shift to yes changing from 26% to 43% approval.  Not enough to approve of the amendment, but a clear trend in that direction.  An example where this happened and it did change the outcome was New Hope Presbytery with 316 voting this year and 312 voting last time but the yes vote went from 49% to 56%.

3) Uniform decline:  This is the case where yes and no votes decline proportionally.  An extreme example of this behavior is Plains and Peaks.  For 01-A the vote was 60-91, for 08-B it was 41-60.  In the first the yes vote was 41%, in the second 40%.  The total number of votes was only 67% of last time.  Looking at the past voting patterns for this presbytery the numbers and percentages have varied a bit over the four votes so while this shows the uniform decline behavior from the last vote, it would be wrong to conclude anything about PC(USA) membership from it.  Another more consistent example is Cayuga-Syracuse:  Going back to the original 96-B vote, and including the following 97-A vote, the pattern was: 26-78, 70-26, 54-21, and 33-12.  Again, fairly constant decreases in both the progressive and conservative numbers (remember the first is the vote to adopt fidelity and chastity so the progressive is the 78 no vote) allowing for some small fluxuations.  And over those four votes the progressive vote was in a narrow range between 72 and 76%.

4) Conservative drop:  Finally, there are several presbyteries that show a decline in the number of “no” votes only.  An example of this vote change is Greater Atlanta.  On 01-A the vote was 235-283 while on 08-B it was 243-233.  Yes, there was a slight up-tick in the number of “yes” votes, but what apparently lead to the approval of the amendment by this presbytery was a decrease of 50 no votes, and there was not a corresponding increase in yes votes.  At least in this case you can’t completely attribute it to declining membership since the number of churches declined by one and the number of members declined by a bit less than 7%.  This was not so much a 6% shift in votes as an 8% loss of “no” voters.

Now, what I have laid out here are four general categories of voting patterns that I observe.  While many presbyteries can be grouped into these categories it is more difficult for others.  In particular, many presbyteries show a combination of the uniform decline and the conservative drop.  And in those declining numbers it is very difficult to say what may be true swing.  And yes, there are a few cases of “liberal drop” and “conservative swing,” but not in nearly the numbers seen in these four groups.

Is this useful?  I think that it is because it provides indicators of what is happening in the denomination.  Admittedly I’m still puzzling over exactly what it means.  And the PC(USA) has its own department of Research Services to slice and dice the denomination statistically, so I’m not alone in looking for ways to take the pulse of the church.

Anyway, that is the complexity I am seeing in the voting trends.  But why should there be easy explanations?  The PC(USA) is a complex collection of unique congregations gathered into culturally different presbyteries.  Clearly no one answer will completely describe what is going on in the denomination.

Additional Overture On Women In The Church For PCA GA Posted

7 Replies

I see today that Overture 10 for the 37th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America has been posted to the Overtures web page.  This overture is essentially identical to Overture 5 but I want to take a moment to not just review the overture, but consider a couple of the alternatives for what is intended here.

News
At their Presbytery meeting on February 21 the Susquehanna Valley Presbytery approved and forwarded on an overture to General Assembly to “Appoint Study Committee on Role of Women in the Church.”  This is now posted on the web site as Overture 10.  If the title sounds familiar, it is.  This is effectively a concurring overture to Overture 5 from James River Presbytery.  In fact it is identical in content to Overture 5, with one minor exception.

To set the stage for my analysis comments below, let me review the overtures in detail.  As I said, unless noted otherwise the wording is identical in both overtures.

The Whereas section sets forth the current situation in the PCA:

Whereas, The Book of Church Order follows Scripture in forbidding the ordination of women to positions of authority over men; and

That would be Book of Church Order (BCO) section 7-2

Whereas, the PCA has faithfully held to this standard; and
Whereas, the PCA has struggled with the question of how women in the local church are to exercise their God-given gifts within the framework of the BCO, and

This discussion has been going on for a while including four overtures to the last GA about women serving as deaconesses, including the 2008 Overture 9, Overture 15, and Overture 17, all three about creating a study committee on the subject.  The 36th General Assembly chose to keep the standards as they were and not create the study committee.  However, the discussion continues including articles in byFaith magazine with an  article making the case for commissioning deaconesses by Tim Keller and an article arguing against by Ligon Duncan.

Whereas, many PCA churches are uncertain about how to use appropriately God’s gifts among the many capable women within the membership of those churches; and
Whereas, in many PCA churches those gifts are under-utilized;

So, the problem seems to be that in light of the prohibition on deaconesses, or some form of service for women that resembles an ordained office for men (such as commissioning), these Presbyteries are asking for clarification about what ministries women can be involved in and in what ways.  Also, given that information how can they be encouraged in their ministries.

The overtures then go on to ask for a Study Committee to do four things:

(1) What sorts of roles may women fill in the life of the church?
(2) What are some models of local church practices that have developed as ways of employing the gifts of women in the lives of their congregations that might be exemplary and encouraging to other local churches?
(3) What elements of organization and accountability to ordained leadership can be commended to PCA churches that are consistent with the BCO?

And item number 4 is the only point that I can find a difference between the two overtures.  Overture 5 is sort of the standard wording of the request and almost expects changes to the BCO:

(4) What modifications, if any to the BCO might be desirable for achieving the best utilization of the gifts of PCA women in light of the teaching of Scripture?

Overture 10 does not explicitly ask for recommended changes but asks if there is a problem:

(4) Does our BCO unnecessarily hinder achieving the best utilization of the gifts of PCA women in light of the teaching of Scripture?

Other than the names of the presbyteries and the formalities of transmittal this is the only difference in content of these two overtures that I can find in a side-by-side reading.

Finally, there is the section to limit costs to $10,000 and pay for it with private contributions.

Analysis
Central Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region are not typically regarded as the hot beds of agitation for deaconesses; that distinction usually goes to Philadelphia Presbytery of other metropolitan areas, like New York.  However, last year’s GA did deal with a related issue from Northern California as part of the records review.  (Interesting to note that they are also the most uniformly progressive areas in the PC(USA) ordination standards debates.)

But in researching this issue I came across an interesting historical note on the web site of The City’s Gate Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg, PA.  They have an article on Deaconesses at The City’s Gate Presbyterian Church which says:

As a denomination, The Presbyterian Church in America does not
recognize the ordination of women to either of the two offices of the
Church: elder and deacon. Yet, within the separate branches of reformed
practices that have converged to form the PCA, there is a tradition of
recognizing women who serve the church in specific, public ways as deaconesses. This
tradition was—and still is—most notable among the churches in the PCA
which were formerly part of the Reformed Presbyterian Church,
Evangelical Synod (RPCES), several of whom are part of the Susquehanna
Valley Presbytery, where The City’s Gate enjoys its membership and
employs it for the extension of God’s Kingdom.

The wisdom of this historical recognition of women in ministry is
evident to growing numbers of churches within the PCA apart from the
RPCES tradition.  Increasingly, PCA churches are officially and
formally affirming the importance, the contributions, and the value of
their women in significant, spiritual leadership roles within their
congregations.  This recognition and honoring of the call of God on the
lives of godly women by the church is most frequently done through the
creation, organization, and implementation of the commissioned position
of Deaconess.

and concludes with

It is the desire of The City’s Gate Presbyterian Church to afford to
all its members the fullest expression of their gifts and calling to
private and public ministries within the church.  It is the vision of
this church to carve out for its individuals in public ministry the
widest swathe allowable for them for the use and exercise of their
gifts and calling within the confines of the denomination’s
Constitution.  As part of its pledge of loyalty and loving service to
the Lord Jesus in the greater PCA body, The City’s Gate will actively
seek to reform the church where those present confines are in conflict
with the clearest teaching of Scripture, through heart-felt adoption of
the Motto of the PCA as its own: “Reformed, and Always Reforming.”

I have not yet determined if this overture may have originated from the session of this church, but some tension between the two merged branches regarding this would be understandable.  In fact, as PC(USA) churches realign with the EPC this is a current point of discussion within the EPC.

Having said that, how should we view these overtures?

The most straight-forward is to consider them at face value — They seem to be saying “As a GA you are not authorizing ordained or commissioned deaconesses, as is the historical tradition for some of us, so what are the acceptable roles for women in ministry?”  That seems to be a simple and generally reasonable request.  The GA can of course answer like they did last year that “The BCO is clear as it stands now; work within that framework.”

If you want to read more into it, especially if you like conspiracy theories, these overtures could be seen as a way to get the committee created with a more innocent request and then once the foot is in the door, or the camel’s nose under the tent, standards might get changed.  It may be a little progress, nibbling at the edges of the current standards, or it could be a significant change in ordination standards.  That is parallel to the current PC(USA) vote on Book of Order Amendment 08-B:  The previous vote was to remove the “fidelity and chastity” section, this year it is just to modify it.  But many conservatives see the proposed change as having about the same effect of eliminating the standards.

There is an interesting discussion of the issue and overtures at PuritanBoard with both views, “we need clarity” versus “this is an end-run on deaconesses,” being expressed and debated.  No resolution there but we will have to watch and see what the Assembly ends up thinking.
 

Filling In The Blanks On EPC And PCA GA Overtures

2 Replies

In my previous posts about upcoming General Assembly business, specifically overtures to the Assembly, I mentioned hints of information but no specifics on two items.  Well, there is now specific information, or at least more information, on these two items.

For the 29th General Assembly of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church there has been some advance discussion of Affinity Presbyteries to provide a framework for churches that ordain women to be able to join.  As I mentioned in the last post on the subject, the New Wineskins Transitional Presbytery was discussing the idea but it has chosen not to request such an affinity presbytery.  There were also indications that the Presbytery of Mid-America was going to overture for a parallel affinity presbytery structure.  That overture has finally been confirmed in the EP News of Feb. 19:

The Presbytery of Mid-America met at Central Presbyterian Church
in St. Louis, Missouri on January 30-31. By an approximate vote of two
to one, the presbytery approved a proposal to draft an overture for
General Assembly consideration calling for the creation of two affinity
presbyteries within the geographic bounds of Mid-America. One affinity
presbytery “would ordain only men to the office of teaching elder and
one would be free to ordain men and women to the office of teaching
elder.” These presbyteries would exist for five years, after which an
evaluation would take place.

The full document is available and contains some more interesting detail.  There is one note that says that the two presbyteries would commit to maintaining the viability of each other.  The second note talks about another meeting before the presbytery meeting where 20 complimentarian pastors indicated they all favored the concept and agreed to work with their sessions to ensure viability and to “maintain relationships.”  There is also a section that talks about the ordination of women being a non-essential and that the presbytery had a process to study and discuss the issue.  Being unable to agree they are now requesting this “friendly division.”

The same news article also mentioned the action of the Presbytery of the East that I talked about last time.  The presbytery agreed to begin permitting the ordination and service of women as pastors.  The article also mentions that the Presbytery of Florida voted to have the Moderator appoint a special committee “to study the ordination and reception of women as Teaching Elders” in that presbytery.

The other piece to be filled in was the missing text of an overture to the 37th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America.  While not available a the time of my previous post on this, the text of Overture 1 has now been posted and it is a fairly simple piece of clarification.  It deals with Book of Church Order section 37-7 which addresses the removal of censure on an individual after they have relocated to another area.  Specifically the overture requests the change from a person removing to a “part of the country” to “location.”  The rational is that “part of the country” is ambiguous while “location” removes the ambiguity.

Loss Of Identity In The PC(USA)?

3 Replies

Yesterday Pittsburgh Presbytery hosted a Presbyterian Convocation on Our Freedom of Religion At Risk: A Presbyterian Crisis. I tried to structure my day so that I could hear as much of the webcast as possible.  It was interesting at times but I’m not sure if it lived up to the title and a lot of the material I had heard before.  I might make some more comments specifically on the Convocation in a future post.

But two of the speakers made comments that, combined with some other things I have read or heard recently, got me thinking about the loss of identity for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Has the PC(USA) drifted so that it is no longer, well… Presbyterian?

The first speaker at the Convocation, after the welcome and introduction, was Dr. Joseph Small, Director of the PC(USA) Office of Theology, Worship and Education Ministries.  The announced title of his remarks was The Westminster Assembly, but he spent a significant part of his remarks talking about the basis of Presbyterian connectionalism being rooted in the biblical concept of koinonia, translated as communion or fellowship. He made the point that this koinonia between entities in the PC(USA) has severely deteriorated and said something like “it is almost entirely gone between presbyteries.”  This struck a chord with me since back in October I had asked “Is The PCUSA Too Big?” with this issue in mind.  It seemed to me that one of Dr. Small’s points was that our Presbyterian connectionalism has broken down to the point where we are almost congregational because of the loss of scripturally and Spirit-filled communion between groups in the denomination.  He reminded us that the church is not a human endeavor but a community called together by God.

Two speakers later was Dr. Beau Weston on The Adopting Act of 1729, which he talked about in detail.  The Adopting Act was necessary as a tool to settle differences between those presbyteries advocating subscription to the Westminster Standards and those desiring a less-enforced orthodoxy.  He then jumped to the last 50 years and pointed out that with the Confession of 1967 the Presbyterian Church moved from adopting the Westminster Standards to agreeing to be guided by the new Book of Confessions.  As he said yesterday, and has said elsewhere, including his book Leading from the Center, this was a turning point in the mainline Presbyterian church and the beginning of the loss of institutional identity.  He makes the point as well in his recent document “Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.”

Central to the assault on authority in the Sixties was the overthrow of the confession of the church.  When two northern Presbyterian bodies merged to produce the UPCUSA, a new confession was called for.  The new confession, The Confession of 1967, was indeed produced.  Instead of adopting the new confession as the constitutional standard of the church, though, the denomination took the revolutionary step of adopting a whole library of confessional documents.  The Book of Confessions included the Westminster Standards, the Confession of ’67, and a slew of others.  It was as if the country amended the U.S. Constitution, but, instead of incorporating new text into the venerable old document, adopted the entire constitutions of a dozen other countries, too.

In theory, the one constitutional confession was supplemented by many others.  In practice, officers of the church were no longer expected to be bound by any confessional statement at all.  Dropping the confession out of the binding part of the church’s constitution undermined authority in two ways.  First, leaders no longer had any authoritative faith to develop or lead from; second, the body of the church no longer had a clear public standard to hold its putative leaders to.  Instead of an establishment that kept one another humble by trying to live within the confession, the church was afflicted with a host of self-appointed prophets who expected the church to follow them, pay for their pet projects, and the like.

The consequence, he said yesterday, was that we stopped arguing over the confessions and started arguing over the Book of Order.

While Dr. Weston talked about this published theory of his, he mentioned a related item that I don’t recognize from his circulating work.  He mentioned that he had done a survey of some members of the PC(USA) and asked which, if any, of the documents in the Book of Confessions should be there.  Keeping in mind that the standard for adding a document to the Book is endorsement by 2/3 of the presbyteries, only the ancient creeds, Apostles and Nicene, even broke a simple majority.  The Westminster Standards and Declaration of Barmen were next and the rest were further back.

Two thoughts crossed my mind.  First, that this is a terrible indication of our theological identity and history.  Second, if the confessions mean so little why is the PC(USA) embarking on the expense of time and money to consider the revision of one catechism and the inclusion of another confession.

I would also point out that the idea of the loss of identity with the diminution and abandonment of the Westminster Standards is not unique to Dr. Weston;  this is a primary thesis of D. G. Hart and J. R. Muether in their book Seeking A Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism.

That is all I have to say about yesterday’s Convocation at this time, but two other items also crossed my path recently.

The first comes from Michael McCarty over at his blog Around the Scuttlebutt.  I am sure some of you are following his series serving as a case study in church leadership titled “The Adventures of Graying Presbyterian Church.”  Yesterday’s installment was called “To recall from whence we came.”  He compares the church with the U.S. Marine Corps and how every marine learns the history and traditions of the corps.  He then says of the church:

In the same way, when elders have a basic understanding of the history
of the Church in general and the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition in
particular, they are better able to perform the really important duties
of their office.

The real irony here is that the expansion of the Book of Confessions was to allow for greater understanding and recognition of our tradition.  I guess the problem is that we agree to be guided by it, and then set it on the shelf.

Finally, the other day a friend made the profound comment that churches that have a strong sense of identity with the PC(USA) are ones with older, well established facilities.  Likewise, churches interested in leaving the PC(USA) with their property are more likely churches that have newer facilities.  The idea is that the newer buildings are viewed as “we built this church, we should be able to keep it” as opposed to older facilities where the attitude is “our predecessors built this church and we are the beneficiaries of their faithfulness.”  Again, do we have a long-term denominational identity or a short-term local identity?

This got me thinking and so I did a quick, semi-scientific study over lunch today.  I took the last, that is the most recent, 20 churches on the Layman’s list of departing churches and tried to figure out the age of their facilities.  For the sake of this survey I divided the “new” from the “established” at 50 years old.  Many of the churches had their church histories on their web site making it easy to find out the age of the buildings.  For a few I had to depend on the pictures on their web site.  In a few other cases I could get a good idea from the Google satellite (actually aerial) image or the street view.  And in two cases I could not be certain enough to make a call.

Of those 20 churches, 12 had new sanctuaries or worship spaces built or acquired in the last 50 years.  One more was 52 years old.  There were five that, as far as I could tell, worshiped in buildings substantially unchanged in outline in the last 52 years.  At least in this quick survey the concept holds.

I do need to acknowledge the caveats here.  The first is that I am painting with a very broad brush using easily attained data.  The second, is that I have not even touched the negative evidence, the congregations with new buildings that are not even considering leaving.  Or to put it another way, I don’t have a control group.  And finally, I realize that it is probably easier and safer to say that churches with older buildings have more denominational identity and loyalty than to say that churches with newer buildings have less identity and loyalty.  Anyway, it was a thought provoking comment that appears to have some evidence supporting it.

And in closing…  Speaking of denominational loyalty, you probably saw the news this week that protestants these days have more loyalty to their toothpaste than their denomination.  Yes, from USA Today, it turns out that 16% of protestants have single brand denominational loyalty, but 22% have one brand of toothpaste.  The good news is that 67% of protestants have some denominational preference.  Comment in the blogosphere is rampant but I’ll point to the Rev. Mark D. Roberts who is turning his comments into a series on this.  And for the record — while I may be a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, my family has attended the church God calls us to.  And one time, when God called us to another denomination’s New Church Development, I think some of the denominational hierarchy were glad to see this Presbyterian move on after questioning the episcopacy too many times.  But that is a story for another time…

Recordings For Children With A Twist

I suspect that some of you have used musical settings for scripture memory for either yourself or your children.  Well, thanks to a discussion begun by sjonee at PuritanBoard I have been made aware of songs for learning about the Westminster Confession.

The PuritanBoard discussion begins with a pointer to Songs For Saplings and their Questions With Answers series.  From listening to the samples and reading the lyrics these all appear to be songs in the context of catechism-like questions with Westminster-like answers.  While there are close echos of the Westminster Confession, and Larger and Shorter Catechisms here, it does not appear to be a literal musical setting of them.  But it takes a question, like “Who is God?” (note that Westminster asks “What is God?”) and answers with something like the Westminster Confession, in this case:

God is the only living and true God. He’s
the all-glorious, almighty, all-knowing
Sovereign Creator and Lord of the whole universe.
God
is perfect and holy, infinite, eternal and unchanging.

The Westminster Confession section says:

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty; most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withalh most just and terrible in his judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

Probably a reasonable summation of the section for children ages 3-5.  There are three CD’s on the market so far, each for a slightly older age range.

But the PuritanBoard discussion brought out a couple of other similar recordings.  One is the Baptist Catechism Set To Music.  There is also a four volume set of the Westminster Shorter Catechism Songs.  And you can find some on YouTube as well:  Here is YouTube – Singing – Shorter Catechism Q1.

And now for something completely different…

A while back I ran across a CD of lulliby music for children drawn from the classical tradition.  Preformed by Eric and Susan Davis it includes some well known and contemporary music and is all instrumental.  But what caught my attention was the title:

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

It seems innocent enough, and there is nothing really wrong with it, but I had to wonder what the target audiance would think if they were aware of the source of the line.  As I am sure many of you are aware it comes from an 18th century children’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
Should I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

As I said, I have no problem with the prayer and I know many new parents who would probably be fine with it.  But I suspect that some a modern parents would not be as comfortable because it is a prayer or because of the content.  It is not like our modern society to worry about dying in our sleep, to say nothing of the fact that many modern parents are not religious enough to even consider praying for the Lord’s protection.

Or maybe this is just my unusual mind overinterpreting modern culture.  Maybe no one would really care.