Commissioners’ resolutions on constitutional issues prohibited – but change may lie ahead
By Paul Jensen, The Layman Online, June 29, 2000
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Are Commissioners to General Assembly forbidden to initiate amendments to the Book of Order?
Confusion reigned on this question during the early stages of the 212th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
There are three routes through which business can come to a General Assembly: overtures from presbyteries, recommendations from boards and agencies, and resolutions filed by commissioners during the first days of the Assembly meeting. While commissioners’ resolutions have a well-established tradition in the denomination, it is far from settled whether the resolutions may propose constitutional amendments. Several resolutions calling for constitutional changes were proposed at Long Beach, along with about 30 other resolutions dealing with non-constitutional issues. Each resolution that dealt with a proposed amendment was ultimately rejected, but not before denominational officials scrambled to deal with seemingly irreconcilable differences in the rules.
One such resolution was authored by the newly-elected vice moderator, Rebecca McElroy, and commissioners Pamela Metherell and Kriss Bottino. Their proposal was in response to a decision by the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission to permit same-sex marriage services, if the participants used some other word than “marriage” in describing them. The decision was announced only a few weeks before the Assembly convened.
The resolution would have required church courts to accord “equal dignity” to both parts of our Constitution (the Book of Confessions and the Book of Order) in adjudicating cases and was intended to prevent the Permanent Judicial Commission from reaching decisions in cases that contradict the Book of Confessions.
All commissioners’ resolutions are first reviewed by the stated clerk to ensure that they do not duplicate matters either recently decided or currently under consideration by the General Assembly. During his review here in Long Beach, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick declared that no commissioner’s resolution can initiate an amendment to the Book of Order, and so informed the General Assembly Committee on Bills and Overtures.
After first telling the committee members that they were obliged to rule such resolutions out of order (“declined” in church parlance), he corrected himself and said they merely “should” be declined, although they need not be. The Bills and Overtures Committee Sunday evening unanimously declined all commissioners’ resolutions that proposed amendments to the Book of Order.
On Monday, the Bills and Overtures Committee agreed to debate whether McElroy’s resolution should be reconsidered. Recognizing that while the Book of Order required that “all proposals” seeking to modify the Book of Order be transmitted to the Stated Clerk not later than 120 days before the commencement of a General Assembly, the standing rules of the General Assembly also state that when a commissioners’ resolution proposes to amend the Book of Order that resolution “shall” – must – be referred for consideration to the Advisory Committee on the Constitution. The same provision is made for constitutional amendments that originate as original actions of a committee of General Assembly.
In urging the Bills and Overtures Committee to reconsider its action, Alex Metherell argued that there was no inherent contradiction between the language of the standing rules and the Book of Order, since the Book of Order could be read to refer to “overtures” to the exclusion of commissioners’ resolutions, thus giving full effect to the standing rules (themselves enacted by previous General Assemblies) dictating a procedure for consideration of commissioners’ resolutions and committee original actions that seek to amend the constitution.
By a vote of 8-13-2 the Bills and Overtures Committee then voted not to reconsider its previous vote, effectively killing the McElroy resolution. Members of the committee remained deeply divided over what they saw as an inherent contradiction in governing documents, with some still contending that constitutional amendments cannot arise by means of commissioners’ resolutions and original committee actions, while acknowledging the reality of this practice.
Metherell agreed with the committee members that the Book of Order must now be clarified, although committee members was so divided as to how this should be done that they voted to ask that others correct “the problem” without suggesting how. Metherell and others pointed out that the simplest way to clarify the situation could be for the Book of Order be amended to change the words “all proposals” to “overtures.”
The stated clerk remains convinced that commissioners’ resolutions should not be allowed to initiate a constitutional amendment, even in response to crises that arise shortly before a given General Assembly commences. But Kirkpatrick also recognizes that the Manual of the General Assembly provides otherwise, and that there has never been any official interpretation of the present “all proposals” language in the Book of Order. The confusion will likely be clarified during the 213th General Assembly next year in Louisville, although it remained an open question how commissioners’ resolutions submitted to that assembly would be handled.