{"id":971,"date":"2007-05-20T13:57:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-20T20:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=971"},"modified":"2007-05-20T13:57:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-20T20:57:00","slug":"church-of-scotland-ga-notes-on-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=971","title":{"rendered":"Church of Scotland GA: Notes on Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland convened yesterday with all the flair and formality the meeting brings.&nbsp; The meeting began with a ceremonial start including the election of the new moderator (a formality as this point since the tradition is to have a committee select a designate in the fall), and the letter from the Queen and the address by the Lord High Commissioner.&nbsp; After a brief adjournment the Assembly continued with business, much of it related to the administration of the Kirk.<\/p>\n<p>One of the major reports of the morning was a Joint Report of the Legal Questions Committee and Ministries Council dealing with workplace standards in the church and the &#8220;equivalence of protection offered by the Church to its ministers and others, in comparison with the rights of employees and others in civil law.&#8221;&nbsp; The full report is available from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.churchofscotland.org.uk\/generalassembly\/gareports.htm#legalqmin\" target=\"_blank\">reports page<\/a>.&nbsp; Here is a link to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.churchofscotland.org.uk\/generalassembly\/downloads\/gareports07legalqminjoint.doc\" target=\"_blank\">MS Word version<\/a>.&nbsp; One of the concerns of the report is Ministers in the church being bullied by &#8220;office-bearers&#8221; in a congregation, particularly session members.&nbsp; The measure adopted would provide that the civil law would apply to church workplace situations including bullying, harassment, and victimization.&nbsp; (As a note, the primary responsibility of the Legal Questions Committee is how the church&#8217;s rules and laws interface with the civil laws.&nbsp; This is were last year&#8217;s debate on blessing same-sex partnerships came out of.)&nbsp; The Assembly amended the adopted document by a vote of 214 to 138 to include in the &#8220;protected grounds&#8221; sexual orientation.&nbsp; The assembly debate did not follow the report numbering exactly but I believe that this would be a change to the report Appendix B, Section 1a.&nbsp; Beyond this, the report is extensive on expected behaviour and the procedures if a claim is filed.<\/p>\n<p>In the collection of administrative reports there were also reports on budgets and communications which led to discussion but were approved.&nbsp; One Presbyterian polity issue in the communication report was a discussion on why there was no designated &#8220;spokes person&#8221; and how no one person can speak for the church or a body of the church.<\/p>\n<p>One of the external controversies to come out of the GA so far is the choice of HRH Prince Andrew as Lord High Commissioner.&nbsp; For an Assembly which will be calling on the world to take action on global warming, including the number of airplane flights, people are saying it is hypocritical to have a representative of the Queen who is known for his jet-setting habits.&nbsp; In addition, Andrew will be traveling by helicopter the next three days to church projects around Scotland.&nbsp; Several news outlets have picked up this story but here is <a href=\"http:\/\/news.scotsman.com\/index.cfm?id=780182007\" target=\"_blank\">one from Scotsman.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Today is a quieter day with a business session this evening that will involve no council reports or votes.&nbsp; It will mainly be speeches including that of the outgoing moderator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland convened yesterday with all the flair and formality the meeting brings.&nbsp; The meeting began with a ceremonial start including the election of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-of-scotland","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Church of Scotland GA: Notes on Day 1 - The GA Junkie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=971\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church of Scotland GA: Notes on Day 1 - The GA Junkie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland convened yesterday with all the flair and formality the meeting brings.&nbsp; 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