Task force wary of the press
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 6, 2002
For the second time since they were installed, members of the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity expressed wariness about the press reporting their work.
The question was raised about whether they could speak frankly during discussions on theological issues without the press observing or reporting what they say. Victoria G. “Vicki” Curtis of Ames, Iowa, said some members of the task force were reluctant to express their true feelings, fearing that they might be quoted.
Co-moderator Gary Demarest asked reporters for the Presbyterian News Service, The Presbyterian Outlook and The Layman what they thought.
The reporters agreed: The General Assembly’s open meetings policy requires that their business be conducted openly.
But exposure doesn’t faze her
One member of the panel who seemed unfazed by the press coverage is Barbara Everitt Bryant, a nationally prominent research scientist who served as director of the U.S. Bureau of Census from 1989-93.
In numerous appearances before Congress, Bryant said she has been quoted and misquoted so often that she learned to live in limelight.
Bryant, who resides in Ann Arbor, Mich., has added considerable expertise to the work of the task force – particularly in demographics and issues-profiling among Presbyterians. She conducted three three-hour sessions with focus groups during the 214th General Assembly and, with other members of the subcommittee on consultation and communications, produced a 27-page spiral-bound report.
Then known as Barbara “Bimby” Everitt, Bryant graduated from Cornell in 1947. “We women who were in Cornell during wartime were liberated 10 or 15 years earlier than much of our generation,” she told The Cornell Chronicle.
Bryant has some sympathy for writers. She did freelance writing while her children were small, and, after her youngest child started school, she earned a Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
Over the next 19 years, she worked her way up to senior vice president of Market Opinion Research in Detroit and directed major national survey projects for three presidential commissions: Gerald Ford’s Commission on Observance of International Women’s Year, Jimmy Carter’s Commission on World Hunger and Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Americans Outdoors.
Report on focus groups
Some of the subcommittee’s observations of the report on focus groups interviewed during the General Assembly:
- “What these long-time members/leaders of the church are asking the Task Force to do is to articulate clearly all that we can agree upon … There is consensus that we agree upon far more issues than we disagree upon … ‘The best thing the Task Force could do for us would be to tell us it is all right to disagree.'”
- “There were more in these groups who would liberalize the ordination vows than would retain the prohibition against ordination of gays and lesbians. … Some on both sides expressed the idea that, if there are rules, one must obey them even if in disagreement with them.”
- “There was far less discussion of the authority of Scripture than of the overall approach the Task Force should take and the issue of homosexuality.”
- “There is pride among these members in the democratic nature of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as a result of its polity, constitution and continuously being in dialogue. Most see these as strengths that distinguish the PCUSA from other denominations, even if it means dissension.”
- “Most of the GA attendees in the discussion groups knew of the existence of the Task Force but felt little is known of it in the congregations.”
Packets provide one-sided view
For the most part, the task force has given all appearances of being willing to listen to all sides when it comes to considering issues in the denomination.
But the packets given to members of the task force when they arrived in Chicago for their August meeting were not so generous to all sides. They included a number of reprints from The Presbyterian Outlook, including articles by task force member William Stacy Johnson.
Johnson, who did not attend the August meeting of the task force, wrote three commentaries critical of the Confessing Church Movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA), and all three were included in the packets, in addition to one news story by The Outlook.
The General Assembly passed along to the task force an overture asking the panel to take a look at the Confessing Church Movement. The task force has said little about the Confessing Churches other than Johnson’s harsh appraisal of the 1,276-congregation movement.
Also in the packet was a college sociologist’s analysis of a survey of Outlook readers. The assessment gave The Layman and the Presbyterian Lay Committee its highest negative rating. The assessment did note that the 12,000 Outlook readers “as a group, are somewhat more liberal than Presbyterian pastors as a whole.”
Task force has Web site, wants it findable
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has provided the task force some space on its Web site. But it takes some doing to find the site, and Joan Kelley Merritt, a member of the task force’s communications subcommittee, wants more user-friendly access.
She told the panel and Gradye Parsons, associate stated clerk, that her subcommittee would especially like to have a link on the home page of the denomination’s Web site. Parsons didn’t make a commitment, but he later told The Layman that getting a link on the front page is no easy matter. Even the stated clerk cannot demand that, he said, noting that the decision is made by the denomination’s communications director.
Merritt, a former high school science teacher and moderator of the Presbytery of Seattle, said the task force wants to expand its Web site to include more information about its work, biographical sketches of its members and agendas for its future meetings.
Evangelical unable to attend meetings
One of the strongest evangelical voices on the task force, retired Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va.) professor Elizabeth Achtemeier, has been unable to attend the last two meetings because of illness.
But Achtemeier has left her imprint. During the first meeting, she argued persuasively that the task force should begin its work with theology, “to sort out what the church should be through the Scriptures rather than with the issues so that we can break this awful deadlock. Let theology lead.”
By one measure – a Google Web search – Achtemeier is the best-known member of the panel. She was listed 620 times on the Google search. John Wilkinson, pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y., was second with 417 listings and Scott Anderson, executive director of the California Council of Churches, was third with 398.