wfn.org | O-no outcome was an accretion of narrow losses

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Note #6458 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

23-March-2001
01102

O-no outcome was an accretion of narrow losses

In presbyteries, votes on sex issues are usually 50-50 (more or less)

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Although the recent 'no' vote on Amendment O was decisive, it
may not have accomplished much.

In 45 percent of the presbyteries that have voted so far, the winning side
prevailed by 25 votes or fewer. In 43 presbyteries (27 percent), the winning
margin was 10 or fewer votes. In four - Grand Canyon, Yukon, Eastminster and
Northumberland - a single ballot was the difference between victory and
defeat.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by the narrowness of the vote. After all,
the 212th General Assembly's decision to send the proposed amendment to the
presbyteries for approval or rejection came on a vote of 268 to 251 - a
margin of just 17 votes, in a body of 558 commissioners.

Proponents of Amendment O said its purpose was to outlaw Presbyterian
ministers' participation in ceremonies of blessing for homosexual couples.
Opponents of the measure said it was worded so broadly that it would
interfere with other pastoral duties of pastors and sessions. Ultimately the
presbyteries rejected the proposed amendment of the Book of Order; but the
voting was very tight in many presbyteries.

The split was consistent with research conducted by the Presbyterian Panel
indicating that 57 percent of PC(USA) members, 61 percent of elders and 50
percent of clergy men and women think Presbyterian pastors should not be
involved in same-sex union ceremonies.

Two questions arise: 

Does a decision made by a wafer-thin majority represent a mandate of any
kind?

Should a vote that's virtually 50-50 be sufficient to effect a significant
change in the constitution?

"Both sides want to be able to get this changed by 51 percent," one pundit
observed.

Fifty-one percent may be the only possible winning score on an overture
having to do with sexuality. The denomination has split right down the
middle on such issues in recent years; and besides, a simple majority is all
the PC(USA) constitution requires.

The 1997 vote on Amendment B wasn't quite as close as the vote on "O," but
it was close.

The battle over "B," which amended the constitution to forbid the ordination
of sexually active gays and lesbians (and sexually active unmarried people
of any description), was bitter.

That vote - 98 to 78 to approve the amendment - was decisive. But the vote
was closer than those numbers would suggest.

Those numbers didn't reflect the balloting in the presbyteries, where many
of the votes were very close. In 39 percent of the presbyteries, the
decision on "B," up or down, was made by 25 votes or fewer. In 15 percent of
presbyteries, the margin was 10 votes or fewer.

A look at these numbers makes it easy to see why, after a three-year ban on
debates of issues of sexuality (the "Call to Sabbatical"), the upcoming
General Assembly in Louisville will consider at least 22 overtures and 24
concurrences that favor modifying or deleting all or parts of what now is
the constitutional clause G-6.0106.b.

That's about 95 percent of overture-related business on the agenda so far.

April 25 is the deadline for overtures. Feb. 9 is the final date for
proposing constitutional changes.

Any overture the GA approves will once again go to the 173 presbyteries for
an up-or-down vote; that will be the fourth time in six years that
presbyteries have considered amendments of G-60106.b. In recent years, three
related judicial cases have involved interpretations of this embattled
clause; a fourth case is still pending.

Presbyterians on both sides of the debate complain that they're stuck in an
expensive and emotional legislative bind. Each side laments the pain of
division in the denomination, but both are gearing up for more combat in
June, when the General Assembly convenes. Liberals will try to change or
delete G-6.0106.b., and evangelicals and conservatives will try to stop
them. Each side will be working to get 51 percent of the votes, because
that's how the system works.

Both sides are experiencing a sense of resignation.

"This may say to us that we ought to quit trying to 'win,' and accept (that)
the church is not of one mind," said the Rev. Wayne Yost, the executive of
Kiskiminetas Presbytery.

Yost said that is why he helped to write a statement in which a majority of
the denomination's presbytery executives have called the church to a "third
way" through the divisiveness - a way that is neither legislative nor
judicial.

He admitted that he has no idea what such a "third way" might be, but said
he believes it will be found where the Holy Spirit leads.

Yet, he still holds, "In the Presbyterian Church, no issue is settled once
and for all. Anything may always be reconsidered or rescinded by the next
meeting of a governing body."

That's how it seems.

Jean Snyder, of Florence, KY, the convener of Voices of Sophia, a liberal
group that lobbies for the open ordination of gays and lesbians, also
laments the disunity in the church. But she too is revving up to ask the
213th GA to get rid of G.60106.b. She said she has no choice.

"It is very divisive to keep this going," she said, "but we need to bring
our gay brothers and sisters into full membership. It is hypocritical and
un-Christian to not do it."

The Rev. Joe Rightmeyer, of Louisville, the executive director of
Presbyterians for Renewal, an evangelical group that has opposed the
ordination of unchaste gays and lesbians, agreed with Snyder that
Presbyterians on both sides of the divide are suffering from
"battle-fatigue." He said his constituency is feeling "depressed," "weary"
and "subdued," and is tired of the relentless voting.

What next?

"That's the question everybody is asking," Rightmeyer said. "If there is any
kind of consensus going on, it is that none of this is going to be resolved
through our polity. If the Assembly makes a decision one year, it will be
challenged the following year. It's like a ping-pong ball."

In a debate made even harder by the parties' intractable faith commitments,
proposed remedies range from collective therapy to turning to a different
question - whether or not it ought to be harder to change the constitution.

"For one side, this is a justice issue; when I listen to their language, it
sounds like civil rights again," said the Rev. Jerry Andrews, of Glen Elyn,
IL, a spokesperson for the Presbyterian Coalition, an organization created
to oppose the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians.  "For me and
most of my side, it is a matter of truth:  You cannot twist what Scripture
says."

There's the bind: It isn't realistic to expect either side to relinquish its
deeply held convictions.

"It is an unreasonable expectation ... for half to give up justice, and the
other half to give up truth," said Andrews. "So what is the way forward?"

Andrews, unlike many of his younger Coalition allies, doesn't entertain the
notion that the way to solve the problem is to split the denomination. But
he does think that smaller, increasingly decentralized fellowships of
believers may be the wave of the future.

For the moment, Andrews is musing about a therapeutic, or confessional,
approach: Let the GA confess that the church is deeply divided and the
future isn't clear - the sort of acknowledgement pastors sometimes seek from
unhappily married couples.

"We've just never sat down and said, 'This is not working and we need to
recognize that,'" Andrews said. "Presbyteries can't do it. The Covenant
Network can't do it. The Coalition can't do it. Only the General Assembly
can say, 'This is not working and we need to attend to it.' And maybe we
need to stop some other things, as painful as that might be ...

"But there's the fear that once that is admitted, the possibilities for
solutions are frightening," Andrews said, alluding to the furor around a
controversial proposed amendment from Beaver-Butler Presbytery, which will
ask the GA to allow congregations that cannot comply with G-0106.b. to leave
the denomination, keeping their church property.

Robert Bullock, the editor of the independent news weekly, "The Presbyterian
Outlook," is one who would like to toughen up Presbyterian polity.

"The amendment process has gotten totally out of control," Bullock said.
"This is a constitution, not a manual of procedure."

In a March 19 editorial, Bullock advocated a change in the PC(USA)'s
decision-making process - requiring two-thirds approval of the presbyteries,
rather than a simple majority, to change the constitution, and also
requiring a two-thirds vote of the Assembly to put an amendment on
presbyteries' dockets.  He also would like to see the constitution
simplified.

Both the former northern and southern churches required simple majorities to
approve amendments to their constitutions.

An assortment of pundits are considering Bullock's idea of requiring a
"super-majority," including liberal Eugene TeSelle, of Nashville, TN, a
church historian at the Vanderbilt Divinity School, and evangelical Jack
Haberer, of Houston, TX, a minister who once was chair of the Presbyterian
Coalition.

Haberer's book about the convictions that divide Presbyterians, "GodViews,"
is due out next month.

"The problem is, we're trapped into writing laws for everything," said
Haberer, who contends that de facto congregationalism is happening across
the PC(USA) as a response to matters on which people cannot agree.

The effort to make a consensus by legislation, he said, has turned the
constitution into a manual of regulations.

"We need to re-think the whole idea of our constitution, trim it down,"
Haberer said, "and like the U.S. Constitution, make it only amendable by a
super-majority." Haberer said that's a switch in perspective for a former
backer of Amendment B.

TeSelle said that idea is worth considering, but it'll never work.

"If you require a two-thirds majority ... whoever is behind at the moment
won't want to do that," he said. "If 'B' is on the books, and it takes a
two-thirds vote to overturn it, a lot of people aren't going to vote for
that.

"But the Book of Order is getting too complicated.  When you have a narrow
majority, you just slosh from one extreme to the other. One side wins one
year, the other side, the next."

TeSelle said the solution is "somehow learning to live with our diversity
better. That's easy to say, but when we begin spelling it out, it scares
everybody."

Learning to live with diversity is easier said than done.

Byers, the executive director of the Covenant Network, the most visible
liberal lobby in the church, which opposed "O" and "B," insisted that, even
if "B" is removed from the constitution, ordaining gays won't be mandatory
for every congregation - as it was when legislation was passed requiring
Presbyterians to accept the ordained leadership of women. If Presbyterians
are so closely divided on the issue, she said, decision-making ought to be
left to sessions and presbyteries.

"When it is that close, it is going to stay that close ... and we need to
trust our essential polity," Byers said. "We've had 200 years of living
together when we (didn't) agree on everything. Ten votes one way or another
in a presbytery is clearly not reaching consensus. …

"So we have to find a way to agree to disagree, instead of one side forcing
an interpretation upon another side.

Byers said the rejection of "O" seems to reinforce the suggestion that
pastors and sessions ought to have more leeway in making decisions.

For conservatives, the symbolic power of G.0106.b. is too great to even talk
about compromising. One of the key conservative strategists, the Rev. Parker
Williamson, of Lenoir, N.C., executive director of The Presbyterian Layman,
said the liberals are promoting behavior that Scripture clearly calls sin -
and the conservatives have no choice but to stop them.

"Unfortunately," Williamson said, "we don't solve a theological crisis in
the church by polity moves. That's really not a solution."

Williamson said he blames the denomination's highest ecclesiastical court,
the Permanent Judicial Commission, for a faulty interpretation of the
constitution that prompted conservatives to introduce "O" last year.

The court ruled last year that it could not forbid same-sex blessings
because they are not explicitly forbidden in the constitution, which does
specify that Christian marriage is between a woman and a man.

Most clergy men and women who perform same-sex union ceremonies insist that
they do not consider them marriages.

But there is something of a marriage of the left and right in the PC(USA):
Each needs the other.

Williamson says the conservatives don't want to keep proposing
constitutional changes, but the liberals and church courts have forced them
to do so.

Byers said it was the conservatives who forced the Covenant Network to get
involved in the battle over "O."

"I don't know how we can extricate ourselves from the mindset, 'I want to
win, and I want to win big,'" said Yost. "I guess it will take the majority
of folks saying, 'This routine is foolish, and we want it to stop.'"

"If we're going to live together," said TeSelle, "we've got to move beyond
stealth attacks."

"So," he said, pausing, "how do we live together?"

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