wfn.org | Stated Clerk Election Dynamics

[PCUSA_NEWS@ecunet.org]

Date: 13-Jun-96 
 
96234    Rules Change, but Stated Clerk Election Dynamics 
                       Remain Unpredictable 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Longtime watchers of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) stated 
clerk elections almost unanimously agree that what it takes for a candidate 
to win is an impressive performance on stage during the Assembly's 
question-and-answer session. 
 
     But it's a lot harder to get agreement on whether the stage 
performance is the best criterion on which to elect the denomination's 
stated clerk -- a job that now pays $87,324 plus benefits annually for a 
four-year term and requires both ecclesiastical and ecumenical savvy. 
 
     "You need a decision based on merit rather than impressions," says the 
Rev. Flynn Long of Big Spring, Texas, a former associate stated clerk for 
the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). He believes this 
church needs to make up its mind which it wants --  a popularly elected 
stated clerk or a stated clerk who is confirmed by the Assembly after a 
lengthy search process, much like the way pastors are hired. 
 
     "The position merits extensive interviews and research ... [not] 30 
minutes of questions and answers," said Long, who takes consolation in 
knowing that the 1996 procedure incorporates six days for interviewing when 
a nominee for stated clerk comes from the floor. 
 
     It's an old debate, really.  The procedure for electing a stated clerk 
has been tweaked and tampered with time and time again, both before and 
since  reunion, in an effort to balance a popular -- or political -- race 
with a search process. 
 
      And the policy adopted by the 1995 General Assembly grapples with 
those familiar tensions: sending to the floor one nominee backed by a 
yearlong search process and then opening up the floor for nominations from 
commissioners. 
 
     Cutting floor nominations out of the stated clerk's election would rip 
apart a long-standing and highly politicized Presbyterian tradition of 
electing stated clerks much the same way it elects moderators.  Cutting 
floor nominations also flies in the face of "Robert's Rules of Order," the 
standard parliamentary procedure manual used by the Assembly that admits 
floor nominations after any nominating committee reports. 
 
     Aware of this long-standing ambivalence, even among its own members, 
the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA)'s first proposal 
for a new process nonetheless tried to write floor nominations out of the 
selection policy in order to "depoliticize" the system, according to 
retiring clerk the Rev. James E. Andrews.  But it abandoned that notion 
after open hearings on early drafts of the policy at the 1991 Assembly 
discouraged doing so.  
 
     "So it [this policy] retains elements of both a popular selection and 
a search," Andrews said. "They wanted to leave openness there ... without 
foreclosing the possibility for the Assembly to make a different choice." 
 
     What the new process does is give commissioners more time than before 
to think about their choices.  A nominee can no longer run from the floor 
and be elected almost immediately.  Now a six-day review by a reassembled 
search committee -- another new twist -- plus 10 Assembly commissioners 
occurs between nomination and election. This Candidate Review Committee 
provides continuity between the existing search committee and Assembly 
commissioners, something prior procedures also omitted.  
 
     It also requires potential nominees coming to Albuquerque to be 
prepared to secure letters of recommendation and be willing to provide any 
additional written material the Candidate Review Committee might request. 
 
     This more studied approach makes more sense than questions and answers 
followed by an almost immediate election, according to the Rev. William 
Forbes of Westfield, N.J., who has been a platform manager at the Assembly 
for years and has watched numerous campaigns.  "It doesn't take a lot of 
organization [for a nomination] to come off the floor. 
 
     "You need a Xerox machine and a few advocates to create the appearance 
of a real movement. That's not terribly sophisticated," he said.  "With a 
full week for work and political activity ... more things can happen." 
 
     Nonetheless, Forbes still backs bringing in a single nominee, after a 
lengthy search, for an up or down vote, with provisions for hiring an 
interim clerk if necessary.  "The clerk is essentially the top elected 
official in the church.  The clerk has significant administrative 
responsibility, has to have a knowledge of theology and polity. ... That 
training is crucial to proper functioning of that office," Forbes said. 
 
     "[But] our process for electing a clerk is modeled on how we elect a 
moderator.  The process is the same.  But the tasks," Forbes said, "are 
radically different." 
 
     Former COGA member the Rev. Jay Dee Conrad of Los Alamos, N.M., who 
participated in many of COGA's conversations about policy revisions, says 
he sees no other option than opening the floor for nominees, if for no 
other reason than "it raises trust in the church." 
 
     "Why do we think of politics as negative?  I think the Holy Spirit can 
work through politics. In Reformed theology, politics is a way God works to 
bring about good government," Conrad said, stressing that part of the 
peculiar tension here is about creating trust -- commissioners taking 
seriously the work of a search committee and a search committee recognizing 
that the Spirit can "work in different ways." 
 
     Elections and search committees, he says, can both be political and 
both can be guided by the Spirit. 
 
     But prohibiting floor nominees is complicated in this scenario, Conrad 
thinks, by the sense most commissioners bring to any Assembly that this is 
a once-in-a-lifetime vote.  "They want to make the decision. .... It's once 
in a lifetime and they want to do it," he said.  "They're not going to 
rubber-stamp something a committee's done without giving it thorough 
consideration, a true affirmation." 
 
     What still remains ambiguous in this election protocol, however, is 
what kind of a report the Candidate Review Committee is supposed to produce 
once it has interviewed candidates nominated from the floor and the 
original search committee's nominee.  The policy says it "shall report its 
actions in relation to the nominees for the position" and it "shall publish 
material on the qualifications and views of all candidates for distribution 
to commissioners and advisory delegates." 
 
     "There is," as current search committee chair Brian Ellison told the 
Presbyterian News Service, "no precision on that. ... That committee can go 
in a lot of directions." 
 
     But all nominees will have a chance to address the Assembly and to 
answer questions posed by commissioners, and all nominees' names will 
appear on the ballot. 
 
     Despite all the different opinions about how a stated clerk should be 
hired, most Assembly watchers agree with Long, who says, "[The outcome] is 
very difficult to predict. 
 
     "Any candidate can make or break the thing at the time time of 
election." 

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