wfn.org | Assembly Orders Another Review of Stated Clerk Election Rules

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22-August-1996 
 
 
96298           Assembly Orders Another Review of  
                   Stated Clerk Election Rules 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The 208th General Assembly (1996) has asked the Committee 
on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) to conduct yet another 
examination of the oft-reviewed rules governing the election of the 
Assembly's stated clerk. 
 
     The Assembly directed the review of the full text of Standing Rule G.1 
after determining that the rule's language is ambiguous as to the exact 
work of the Assembly's Candidate Review Committee. 
 
     This year's stated clerk election was the first that employed a new 
process combining a nine-member Stated Clerk Review and Nomination 
Committee, which conducted a yearlong search and brought the nomination of 
the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick to the Assembly, and the Candidate Review 
Committee (CRC) of the Assembly, which reviewed Kirkpatrick's nomination 
plus the four nominations that came from the floor of the Assembly.  The 
CRC included the original Review and Nomination Committee members plus 10 
Assembly commissioners. 
 
     What is in question is whether the CRC is supposed to recommend a 
nominee to the Assembly -- which a majority of this year's committee voted 
to do -- or whether its job is to simply compile data and prepare 
candidates' information for presentation to the Assembly without a 
recommendation. 
 
     "There is some ambiguity there," said COGA member Brian D. Ellison of 
Princeton, N.J., who chaired both the Review/Nomination and Candidate 
Review committees.  "Some decided it could be interpreted one way," he 
said.  "Some decided another." 
 
     The actual language in the standing rule currently states: 
 
     "The Candidate Review Committee shall assemble each candidate's 
material and review the candidate's qualifications for the position of 
stated clerk.  This shall include personal interviews of all nominees.  The 
committee shall publish material on the qualifications and views of all 
candidates for distribution to commissioners and advisory delegates." 
 
     "There's a certain ambiguity about what the scope of the committee's 
charter is once it kicks into action," said the Rev. Ted Wardlaw of 
Atlanta, the Assembly commissioner who served as CRC vice chair.  "It's not 
clear whether the committee was to review and validate the qualifications 
of the other candidates or go through the list and make a recommendation." 
 
     The problem harkens back to a philosophical debate that has plagued 
those who have tried to rework the election process since the reunion of 
the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the 
Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1983: how to conduct a search 
that thoroughly interviews and examines candidates for stated clerk and 
still hold an election that allows the Assembly a direct voice. 
 
     Another dilemma is how to draw upon the expertise of a search 
committee that has worked for an entire year to come up with a recommended 
candidate while building in continuity when the Assembly commissioners must 
review not only that candidate, but any other candidates that emerge from 
the Assembly floor. 
 
     Kirkpatrick, the new clerk, said balancing those two values in one 
process obviously creates some awkwardness.  He described it as "strange" 
to be required to campaign for the office even though he was already the 
search committee's nominee. 
 
     "I was selected [Kirkpatrick was the nominee of the Review/Nomination 
Committee], but then I was campaigning [when other nominees came from the 
floor], something I'd never done before," he said. 
 
     That awkwardness -- of being a search committee nominee who is then 
required to campaign against other candidates -- is precisely what kept 
some qualified contenders for the stated clerk's job out of the race, 
according to critics of the new process.  Those people argue that pastors 
seldom want to risk being a "lame duck" in a parish -- having to publicly 
campaign for a job that may be won by a yet unknown candidate from the 
floor. 
 
     The Rev. W. Clark Chamberlain of Houston, who came in second in this 
year's election, said the conflicting opinions about whether the process 
should be a search or an election are not easy to reconcile.  "There are 
strong principles at stake on both sides," he said, adding that proponents 
of either process use the last election to bolster their own positions. 
 
     "We need to decide on the nature of the office itself; then we'll know 
the kind of job-finding process needed to locate that person," he said. 
 
     But Ellison told the Presbyterian News Service that ambiguity about 
the CRC's task is hardly reason enough to once again tamper with the whole 
process.  "I'm very uncomfortable about changing the process every time," 
he said.  "To give this process a fair test, it probably needs to be done 
more than once."  Ellison said he believes that while the mandate of the 
CRC does need clarification, the combined committee structure worked well. 
 
     Wardlaw concurs with that assessment. 
      
     "My sense was we pretty quickly worked through ... [combining] the old 
and new committees," he said, stressing that almost everyone expected floor 
nominations, so the assigned work was not a great surprise.  "The process 
is not fatally flawed, though its got some kinks in it." 
 
     Ultimately, Wardlaw said, "it's a good process." 
 
     The Rev. Harriet Nelson, a longtime COGA member who has been part of 
redesigning the election process, said COGA was not trying to be vague when 
it rewrote the current standing rule. Rather, she said, COGA was trying "to 
be deliberately open ... to give the CRC of the Assembly the authority one 
way or the other ... to do what it wanted to do." 
 
 
     She insisted the current process is an improvement over previous 
election protocols.  Nelson cited the requirement that all candidates 
undergo some type of interview by the CRC rather than being elected 
straight from the floor of the Assembly with no screening whatsoever.  She 
also mentioned the combined Review/Nomination Committee and CRC, which 
allows for continuity among its members rather than forming a brand-new CRC 
at the Assembly with no formal connection to the Review/Nomination 
Committee. 
 
     "We've really made some important improvements," Nelson said, while 
acknowledging that "any process always can be improved further." 
 
     Kirkpatrick will serve a four-year term, so the next stated clerk 
election will be in the year 2000. 

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