PCUSA’s bucket-toters are weary of holey leaks
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 29, 2003
MONTREAT, N.C. – In April, the General Assembly Council got a letter from the pastor and session of a Staunton, Va., congregation asking how the denomination could justify boycotting Taco Bell because it buys hand-picked tomatoes.
“More sessions than ours are fed up with paying for things we do not support … We are the ones out here carrying the water for the PCUSA. Please stop shooting more holes in our bucket!”
Daniel S. Williams, pastor, and the session of Second Presbyterian Church Staunton, Va. The council responded by 1) affirming the boycott, including the $35,000 it’s costing to do so, 2) sending a letter back to the Virginia church’s leaders and 3) offering to dispatch some council members to Staunton to “dialogue with” its church leaders.
During its meeting in Montreat in September, council members were given copies of a follow-up letter from the Rev. Daniel S. Williams and the session (unanimous) of Second Presbyterian Church in Staunton.
“We are grateful that the Council took time out of its busy schedule to consider our concerns,” the second letter, dated June 5, said. “We only wish we were able to express the same sentiment about the response we have received.”
Miffed at boycott
Williams and his elders said they were still miffed by the denomination’s boycott and displeased with the General Assembly Council’s response to their first letter. In essence, the Staunton protest against the PCUSA’s boycott was an indictment of church policies beyond the scope of what they believe should constitute the necessary work of the church.
They called on the council “to think about the correlation between causes like this boycott and the high membership and income losses that we continue to suffer as a denomination.”
They added, “More sessions than ours are fed up with paying for things we do not support, especially when they are discovered to be essentially hidden within special offerings that we have otherwise taken joy in for many years. That $35,000 was committed to this effort at a time when reductions were being made in missionary personnel is indefensible. We are the ones out here carrying the water for the PCUSA. Please stop shooting more holes in our bucket!”
Questions weren’t answered
They said the council didn’t really answer their questions, but merely parroted the bureaucratic justification for the boycott as presented by a staff member at the April meeting.
“At some point, entities of the General Assembly (like the Council) are going to have to cease responding to questions of substance (like ours) by giving answers that merely describe the process that was undertaken to reach the decisions in question,” the Staunton officers said in their response to the council’s response. “This lack of responsiveness further erodes the trust that governing bodies like our Session have in the GA, and does not bode well for the not too distant future when meetings of the General Assembly will occur only every other year, unless this plan (hopefully) gets changed by the 216th Assembly.”
Church shuns ‘dialogue’
Furthermore, Williams and his elders shunned the council’s invitation for “dialogue with representatives of the GAC.”
“While we appreciate that offer, we are reluctant to move to that phase when so many of our original questions and concerns went unaddressed,” they said. “We have been down that road before with an agency of the General Assembly (the Board of Pensions), and our experience has been that these ‘dialogues’ actually turn out to be monologues. The response we have received from the GAC gives us little confidence that agreeing to a ‘dialogue’ would produce any different results.”
With a second letter in mind, the council’s executive committee reviewed yet another PCUSA proposed response to the Staunton church leaders. This was written by Gary Cook, coordinator of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, and Noelle Damico, coordinator for the Taco Bell Boycott.
Cook spoke to the council at its April meeting, giving his own justification for the Taco Bell boycott. This time, he and Damico gave the council a 1,400-word report that conveyed a rationale that differed little from what he said in April.
Committee has few comments
The council’s executive committee had few comments.
Emily Wigger of Alton, Ill., was upset that the General Assembly Council was taking the heat for the Taco Bell boycott. “This is a General Assembly decision. The way this reads, ‘It’s your [the council’s] fault.'” In the past, the council has either failed or refused to comply with some General Assembly actions, including a mandated revision of its controversial resources on sexuality.
Helen Morrison of Gross Ile, Mich., was resigned to accept the inevitable – that not all Presbyterians agree with some of the denomination’s actions. “People are going to do with their money what they want to do,” she said.
John Detterick, the council’s executive director, said the GAC’s first response did address the questions raised by the Staunton congregation’s leaders, “but we will explain it again.”
Vernon Carroll of Frenchtown, Mont., chairman of the General Assembly Council, suggested that the council send a second letter reflecting the latest staff response.
The executive committee agreed that the response should be “more pastoral.”
The original Staunton letter accused Presbyterian leaders of double standards.
“Whenever sessions withhold per capita and/or other benevolent contributions from the G.A., an action that is functionally the same as a boycott, the consistent message from the assembly is that a more appropriate means of expressing dissent and addressing concerns should be expressed, rather than withholding money,” the letter said.