GAC may revisit the terminations of staff fired over Hezbollah meeting
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, March 30, 2005
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Committee of the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) began their meeting Tuesday with a report on the termination of two staff members over a meeting between a Presbyterian Church (USA) delegation and a Mideast terrorist group.
“There has been a lot of energy,” said General Assembly Council Vice-Chair Paul J. Masquelier Jr. of San Jose, Calif., around staff issues following a meeting between a PCUSA group and southern Lebanese leaders of Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department identifies as a terrorist group. The 24-member group led by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) made a two-week trip to the Mideast in October 2004.
In the uproar that ensued after the meeting became public, two staff leaders on the trip – Kathy Lueckert, deputy executive director of the General Assembly Council, and Peter Sulyok, director of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy – were fired by John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council.
In his report to COGA, Masquelier said that, when the terminations were announced, “there was a hue and cry from some people on one extreme who felt nothing should have been done and others who felt they should have been shot before they were dismissed, and everything in between.”
As a member of the GAC’s personnel committee, Masquelier said he received a letter from ACSWP asking that the committee review how the decision to terminate the two staff members was made.
Masquelier made clear that the GAC’s personnel committee does not make personnel decisions for the PCUSA; those are made by the PCUSA’s human resources department. The GAC’s personnel committee does evaluations of top staff positions.
Meeting on Jan. 31, Masquelier said committee members felt that the PCUSA has clear personnel policies – and a very clear appeal process that neither employee chose to use. The committee did not want to use some “back door process” to overturn the terminations, he said, but they did want to make sure the terminations did not violate the rights stated in the personnel policy.
During the meeting, the committee met separately with members of ACSWP, Detterick, legal services and the head of the personnel department and then dismissed everyone but the committee members for discussion. The committee voted unanimously to sustain the terminations, affirming that Detterick’s actions were consistent with the PCUSA’s personnel policy.
“Now, the question is what happens in the next few days,” Masquelier said. The General Assembly Council is meeting through Saturday and he said he has heard that at least one GAC member is planning on making a motion for some type of action on the issue sometime during the week.
During the October meeting with Hezbollah, Arabic media quoted Ron Stone, a retired seminary professor and an ACSWP member, and Nile Harper, ACSWP chairman.
“As an elder of our church, I’d like to say that, according to my recent experience, relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders,” said Stone, a retired professor of Christian ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
“Also, we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding,” Stone added in comments that were broadcast on Al Manar, Hezbollah’s satellite television network. “We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you. We treasure the precious words of Hezbollah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people.”
Harper, a retired Presbyterian minister who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., criticized as “unhelpful” Israel’s defensive separation barrier and said products made by U.S. corporations “are being used destructively against the Palestinians. The occupation by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza must end because it is oppressive and destructive for the Palestinian people.”