wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] PJC says per capita not mandatory

[Deeanna Alford <dalford@CTR.PCUSA.ORG>]

 03288
July 17, 2003

PJC says per capita not mandatory

Withholding is 'a serious breach of trust and love,' court adds

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE - The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC), the
Presbyterian Church (USA)'s highest court, has ruled that presbyteries
cannot force congregations to pay the denomination's annual per-capita
assessments.

The July 12 decision reverses an earlier ruling in which the PJC of the
Synod of the Covenant upheld a "Per Capita Statement" approved by Scioto
Valley Presbytery in February 2002.

Two Scioto Valley complainants had challenged the presbytery's statement,
arguing that it essentially made per-capita payments "mandatory."

The GA's PJC reaffirmed the church's historic understanding that per
capita is voluntary, but said withholding payments "as a means of protest
or dissent" is "a serious breach of the trust and love with which our Lord
Jesus intends the covenant community to function."

The court said Presbyterians "are bound together ... through our union to
God Almighty in Jesus through the Holy Spirit," and have "a high moral
obligation based on the grace and call of God to participate fully in the
covenant community."

Scioto Valley Presbytery had declared that it had a responsibility "to
direct per-capita apportionments to the sessions of the churches within its
bounds," and that the sessions had a corresponding responsibility, "to
raise and timely transmit per-capita funds to the presbytery unless the
presbytery excuses a session from doing so."

The presbytery had submitted a similar statement to the 2001 General
Assembly as a proposed amendment to The Book of Order. The overture was
defeated.

In their complaint to the PJC, the Rev. John Minihan, pastor of First
Presbyterian Church in Newark, OH, and J. Randall Richards, an attorney and
elder of Liberty Presbyterian Church in Delaware, OH, argued that the
presbytery in fact was trying to compel sessions to pay the annual
assessments.The PJC agreed, citing a ruling from 1992 that "a church may
neither be compelled to pay nor punished for failure to pay any amounts
pursuant to (per-capita) plans."

The commissioners acknowledged that withholding of per capita has often
been used as a vehicle for protest, but said both parties in the case
regard per capita "as a high moral obligation and as one of the sinews that
binds the covenant community together."

In 2002, Richards' congregation in Delaware paid $10,000 in per capita,
less than a third of its apportionment. Minihan's church in Newark paid its
full per-capita apportionment.

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