Two PCUSA bodies ambush overture on paying per-capita
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 24, 2002
Constitutional advisers in the Presbyterian Church (USA) are trying to shoot down an overture that affirms an historic Presbyterian principle: that local church sessions have absolute control over how they spend the tithes and offerings in their congregations and that their per-capita payments are voluntary.
Both the Advisory Committee on the Constitution and the Committee of the Office of the General Assembly have called for defeat or radical revision of Overture 02-15 from the Presbytery of San Joaquin in California.
The overture would add a single sentence to the Book of Order, section G-9.0404d: If presbyteries are unable to collect the full synod and General Assembly per capita funds from the sessions of their churches, the presbyteries may choose to forward only the amount of per capita that they have received from their member churches.
That addition would nullify a 1999 interpretation by the General Assembly that required presbyteries “to pay out of their own funds any amount of per capita not paid by a session … as long as funds are available within the presbytery.”
The 1999 interpretation – which did not become a part of the PCUSA Constitution – resulted in presbyteries pressuring sessions to pay their per capita and a barrage statements by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, who contended that church officers were violating their oaths of office by saying that per capita payments are voluntary, as declared by the PCUSA Constitution and its highest court.
The Advisory Committee on the Constitution would expand G-9.0404d to state that sessions shall be responsible for their own per capita apportionment and for timely transmission of the per capita apportionment to the presbytery. Thus, what has historically been voluntary would become mandatory.
The committee’s advice on Overture 02-15 said, “The practice of withholding the payment of per capita as a strategy of protest of the actions of the larger church has frequently undermined the precious connections within presbyteries, synods and with the General Assembly.”
The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly – Kirkpatrick’s domain – said, in contradiction to past constitutional reflections, that per capita funding is not voluntary, but part of the “obligatory funding of the church’s government.”
The committee wants to change G-9.0404d by including: “Therefore, presbyteries possess the authority to hold sessions responsible for the ‘timely transmission’ of per-capita funds.”
In 1999, the director of Constitutional Services, which is part of Kirkpatrick’s office, issued a polity reflection that said, “There has never been a requirement that the dollar amount [per capita] should be passed down to the sessions or to individual members.”
While that polity reflection sought to encourage local congregations to pay their per capita, it stopped short of calling those payments mandatory. It did say that it was the duty of officers and governing bodies “to propose, announce, the causes and apportionments that have been adopted by the process of church order.”
In a key case in 1992 – Session of Central Presbyterian Church vs. Presbytery of Long Island – the highest court in the denomination ruled that per-capita payments by local sessions are voluntary and that sessions cannot be punished for not paying them.
That decision by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission came after Central Presbyterian withheld its per capita from the presbytery because the presbytery sponsored an address by a witch.
The court enjoined the Presbytery of Long Island from punishing Central Presbyterian Church – clearly establishing the session’s right to determine how tithes and offerings are spent. But Kirkpatrick and his advisory bodies have contended that “voluntary” giving applies to church members and not church bodies.