Bad Committee Work on the Authoritative Interpretation

This week I am blogging from the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly

One of the most contentious issues before the General Assembly is over whether Presbyterian ministers can perform same-sex marriages.  The committee charged with answering the various overtures on this matter is faced with clear language in the church's constitution which says marriage is a union of 'a man and a woman'.

One of the proposals approved by the committee is to change the constitution to define marriage as between 'two persons'.  This makes sense as a way to solve the problem.

My quarrel is with the other approach, which is to issue an "Authoritative Interpretation" of what the constitution means.  Changing the constitution requires the joint action of the General Assembly and a majority of presbyteries. An Authoritative Interpretation, on the other hand, can be issued by the GA itself, and holds until undone by another GA.

The committee received overtures to issue an Authoritative Interpretation declaring that ministers can, indeed, perform same-sex marriages.

The Advisory Committee on the Constitution, which advises every committee on each overture that comes before it, gave this clear advice:

Section W-4.9001 and related citations (W-4.9002a, W-4.9004, W-4.9006) limit marriage to couples who are “a woman and a man.” Because these statements are clear and unambiguous, they can not be interpreted in a manner that is inconsistent with their plain and ordinary meaning.

In other words, you can't issue an Authoritative Interpretation that when the constitution limits marriage to 'a man and a woman', that does not mean that marriage is limited to a man and a woman.

In what I hope is my one and only speech in the plenary, I asked the committee how they answered this clear word from the ACC.  

The moderator of the committee answered that they didn't.

A member of the committee told me that someone in the committee debate said that the constitution was just describing traditional marriage, not defining marriage in, you know, a constitutional way.

Regardless of what you think about the substance of the issue of same-sex marriage, declaring that 'black is white' is just bad committee work.

PUP Passes – Let the Local Application Begin

The Report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church was debated by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) last night. After a serious, civil debate, the report passed, 57% to 43%.

The debate was all about conservative attempts to prevent the Authoritative Interpretation from taking effect. There were no liberal efforts to stop the two-year moratorium on amending the constitution. Indeed, an overture to delete the chastity and fidelity provision of the constitution was rejected later in the evening by 81% of the Assembly.

By my reading, the PUP report marks a return to the great centrist principle of the Adopting Act of 1729. This is the standard the church has returned to again and again after major conflicts. The Adopting Act requires all officers to subscribe to the church's standards, explaining any "scruples" they might have about particular parts of the constitution. If the ordaining body judges that those scruples do not touch essential matters, then the officer is ok. This judgment by the locals is subject to review by the higher bodies. But everyone is better off if, in the words of the PUP report, all parts of the church "outdo one another in honoring" the judgments of the other parts of the church. The Authoritative Interpretation says that the church does not have to change its constitution to adopt this standard of judgment, because it has been there in the constitution all along.

The PUP report says that it will promote "local application" of national standards. Opponents say that the AI will lead to "local option" or, in more heated moments, "local license," in which the locals will simply make up their own standards.

I believe that the PUP report is a centrist measure. Restoring the Adopting Act rule will take a little doing – we don’t have one confession any more, and we don't have the same track record about how scrupling applies to the rules of order as it does to the confession of faith. Nonetheless, I am hopeful that the effect of the PUP report will be to promote the peace of the church.

To do that, though, we need to have the locals apply the national standards justly. Nearly all presbyteries and sessions will be just and honorable. A few, though, have already demonstrated their determination to simply defy the constitution and the rest of the church. Most of this open defiance has been on the left, especially about gay ordination. A few conservative congregations, though, have long resisted ordaining women, in defiance of the very clear standards of the church. And one or two conservative presbyteries have come close to threatening defiance if the PUP report were adopted.

To make local application work, the national church will have to clearly discipline defiance on the right and the left. It will only take a few judicial cases, or a few public rebukes, and maybe a few firings. The church as a whole can only trust that the standards are really standards if they are enforced in egregious cases. They have the rules – all the church leaders need is the will.

Misstep on the Minority Report

The opponents of the PUP report have made a mistake, I think, in the minority report from the Ecclesiology Committee. In the committee, there was a long debate over deleting recommendation 5, the Authoritative Interpretation.

That failed, 23-37.

They then tried to have 5 and 6 (the moratorium on changing the existing constitution) sent to the presbyteries for comment before final action by the General Assembly.

That failed 26-38.

The conclusion I would draw from this vote, and the debate that preceded it, was that there was more support for getting systematic input from the presbyteries on the two core ideas of the Peace, Unity, and Purity report than there is for killing the Authoritative Interpretation outright.

Instead, the report's opponents went for the whole victory the first time. The minority report reads, in its entirety:

In place of Item 06-01, Recommendations 5, 6, and 7, we move the following recommendations:

1. That Item 06-01, Recommendation 5, be disapproved.

2. That Item 06-01, Recommendations 6 and 7 be approved.

The minority report was filed by 17 commissioners and youth advisory delegates.

I have no doubt that the minority report will fail in this morning's debate. The minority may then try to send 5 and 6 to the presbyteries for comment. If this is proposed after they tried to kill 5 altogether, I think the Assembly is less likely to consider the proposal on its merits, and more likely to see it merely a delaying tactic.

I believe PUP will pass this morning.

New Position Paper on Presbyterian Same-Sex Policy Takes a Centrist Line

Barry Ensign-George and Charles Wiley, officials of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have issued a new paper, "Our Challenging Way: Faithfulness, Sex, Ordination, and Marriage."

They defend the middle line that the denomination has taken on both gay ordination and same-sex marriage.  The church recognizes both pro and con positions, and leaves it up to the conscience of local authorities to determine whether they - ministers, elders, sessions, presbyteries - will participate in authorizing same-sex actions by the church.

I have written often that this middle way is in keeping with the Presbyterian middle polity.  Indeed, I have discussed this with the authors in the past.

I would only add to their paper that our polity allows presbyteries to differ from one another without threatening the unity of the denomination, not just a conscience clause allowing individual officers of the church to differ.

In particular, I commend their gentle criticism of the my-way-or-the-highway ruling on women's ordination in the 1970s 'Kenyon case'.

(I still do think that the Authoritative Interpretation of the church constitution that the General Assembly adopted this summer, in which the words "between a man and a woman" were interpreted to mean "not only between a man and a woman" is incoherent and foolish, but that is water over the dam.)

More Candor on PUP, Please

The Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) released an FAQ on what it means now that the church has adopted the Peace, Unity, and Purity task force's report. On most questions, and in the other FAQs that they released after the General Assembly, the OGA has been candid and straightforward. On the controversial question of ordaining unrepentant homosexuals, however, my friends at the OGA tried to soften their answer with slipperiness. I think this will backfire.

Here is the Q and A:

Will gays and lesbians now be ordained?

Presbyteries and sessions have been reminded of their historical responsibility to examine candidates for ordination and decide, on a case-by-case basis, about a person’s qualifications for ministry. The constitutional standard in the Book of Order (G-6.0106b) requiring “fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman” or “chastity in singleness” remains in place.

Each governing body will be required to decide if a departure from a standard of faith or practice represents a violation of an “essential” of the faith. Governing bodies have been encouraged to strive to honor one another’s ordination decisions. Still, these decisions continue to be subject to review by higher governing bodies.

Sigh.

What the OGA says here is absolutely true. It is important. But it is clearly an inadequate answer to the question they themselves posed.

So as a public service, let me insert a couple of new paragraphs to this answer, keeping the rest of the answer the OGA gave after that.

Will gays and lesbians now be ordained?

YES. Gays and lesbians – men and women with a homosexual orientation – have always been ordained in the Presbyterian Church. That will not change under the new Authoritative Interpretation. Some ministers do engage in sexual practices, both heterosexual and homosexual, which the confessions call sin and which the Book of Order forbids as unchaste. That has always been true in the Presbyterian Church, and will likely continue. These sins are cause for repentance and seeking God's grace.

Some would-be officers of the church have declared a scruple about the constitutional requirement that all officers live in “fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman” or “chastity in singleness.” This scruple has been declared by people of all sexual orientations. It is the duty and responsibility of the ordaining and examining body to decide whether such a scruple touches an essential tenet of Reformed faith and practice. If the ordaining and examining body's decision were challenged, it would be the duty and responsibility of the higher governing bodies to review that decision to see if the lower body acted correctly. That review includes both the substance and the procedure of the lower body's decision. Whether a scruple is acceptable or not has nothing do to with the sexual orientation or practice of the would-be officer.

I would be inclined to add a further sentence, though this might seem to the OGA to be overstepping its bounds:

The words of the Book of Order in G 6.0106b are clear. It is difficult to see how an ordaining and examining body, or any higher body reviewing the decision of a lower one, could decide that rejecting G 6.0106b was a legitimate scruple.

You Heard it Here: PUP Will Pass

At 5:10 p.m. yesterday, Birmingham time, the Ecclesiology Committee of the Presbyterian General Assembly took its first vote on the most disputed section of the Peace, Unity, and Purity report, and the report survived.

The most contested recommendation of the PUP report is #5, the Authoritative Interpretation of the Constitution. The AI proposes to revive the church's custom, dating from the Adopting Act of 1729, of trusting the local governing bodies to make sure that church officers stay within the essential tenets and practices of the Reformed faith. The higher governing bodies can still review the decisions of the lower ones. Unless the locals screw up royally or utterly defy the constitution, the higher bodies will defer to the locals. The locals, after all, know the candidate best, and have to live with him or her.

Conservatives have opposed 5 from the outset. They think it would mean that national standards will not be binding, but will only be suggestions. They disagree with the Task Force that the AI would allow judicial review on the substance, as well as the process, of decisions made by lower governing bodies. Several overtures to the Assembly called for deleting 5, and the overture advocates spoke to the committee in support of this position.

When the committee got to the consideration of recommendation 5 on Saturday afternoon, a member proposed deleting the AI altogether. And the competition was on. The committee spoke, civilly, for hours. Nearly every member of the group spoke, some of them several times. Finally, the vote came.

The motion to delete 5 failed, 23 –37.

The committee continued to debate into the night. A substitute motion, which would have gutted 5, was also proposed, and the long process of considering it, instead of the main motion to pass the rest of the Task Force report, dragged on into the night. Votes on various amendments showed the same split, with roughly a third opposed to the core of the report, and the other two thirds ready to pass it.

At 10:25 p.m. approval of the whole PUP report, with only a few changes, was in sight. However, the last busses back to the hotels were about to leave, and they were exhausted. They recessed, to resume this afternoon.

I believe the writing is on the wall. The Ecclesiology Committee will pass the PUP report by a vote of about 2 – 1. It appears that the conservatives will file a minority report. Both reports will go to the whole Assembly tomorrow. Nothing is certain, of course, but if the whole Assembly is like the committee, I think they will also pass the Peace, Unity, and Purity Task Force report by at least a 2 – 1 margin.