Presbyterian Lay Committee to sponsor debate among candidates for stated clerk of the PCUSA
The Layman Online, May 27, 2004
The Presbyterian Lay Committee, calling the election of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s stated clerk “one of the most important decisions to be made by the 216th General Assembly,” will sponsor a debate among candidates for the office.
The debate will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, June 9, at the 2,100-member Colonial Presbyterian Church in Kansas City. It is open to the public.
As the denomination continues to be plagued by questions of Christology, the authority of Scripture, ordination standards, marriage, a constitutional crisis that threatens denominational stability and other issues, commissioners will decide whether to re-elect a stated clerk under fire or elect someone who proposes to take the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a new direction.
The election of the stated clerk, the highest ecclesiastical and constitutional officer in the denomination, will occur on the next to last day of the meeting of the 216th General Assembly in Richmond, Va., on June 26-July 3.
Clifton Kirkpatrick, who has been in the center of the storms that have bedeviled the denomination, is seeking his third term as stated clerk. He is facing competition from the Rev. Robert “Bob” Davis, the Rev. L. Rus Howard and Dr. Alex Metherell, the only elder in the race.
On Sunday, June 27, the Stated Clerk Review/Nominating Committee will recommend that Kirkpatrick be re-elected, while Davis, Howard and Metherell will be nominated from the floor. Each of the challengers will be allotted five minutes for a nominating speech and five minutes for personal remarks, which will be followed by an hour-long question-and-answer session that will be divided equally among all four candidates.
Commissioners then will have six days to consider the candidates. Their packets will include photographs of the candidates, biographical information, and questions and answers that were posed to the four candidates by the review/nominating committee. Current rules make no provision for sustained, public examination of the candidates by a committee of the General Assembly. Thus, the total public exposure of each candidate to voting commissioners (except for the current stated clerk, who will be seated on the stage throughout the week) will be less than an hour and a half.
Recognizing the need for a more thorough examination of the candidates’ views, the Presbyterian Lay Committee issued an invitation May 18 to all of the candidates to participate in the Kansas City debate.
Davis, Howard and Metherell accepted immediately, while Kirkpatrick declined the invitation due to a previous commitment. When offered the opportunity to suggest an alternative date, Kirkpatrick said he did not favor holding public debates. “I believe it is best that we all follow the procedure for presenting the candidates detailed in the Standing Rules of the General Assembly,” he said.
Mrs. Peggy Hedden, chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, expressed her regret that the Rev. Kirkpatrick would not participate in the debate.
“Nevertheless,” she said, “we will proceed with the event. In service to the General Assembly, we wish to provide a forum in which the views of those standing for this high office may be fully examined and widely disseminated, not only among commissioners, but across the denomination as well. We believe that one of the most important decisions to be made by the 216th General Assembly will be its election of a person to this office.”
The format of the debate will be straightforward. Hedden will provide introductions and a brief biographical description of the candidates. Each candidate, in turn, then will have five minutes to make an opening statement.
The moderator, the Rev. Parker T. Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor in chief of its publications, will ask preliminary questions of each candidate who, in turn, will be given adequate time to respond. Members of the media will have an opportunity to ask follow-up questions, then the debate will be opened up for questions to the candidates from the floor.
In addition to news stories, the Presbyterian Lay Committee will provide certified verbatim transcripts of the debate to all commissioners to the 216th General Assembly upon their arrival in Richmond.