Metherell says litigation may be only recourse to challenge delay tactics
The Layman Online, January 24, 2003
Alexander F. Metherell, the leader of an effort by 57 commissioners to call the 214th General Assembly back into session, has again challenged the attempts by Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick to torpedo the special session.
Related documents
Text of Alexander F. Meterell’s letter
to Moderator Fahed Abu-Akel
Q&A issued by
Office of the Stated Clerk In a five-page letter hand-delivered to Abu-Akel in San Diego, Metherell, of Laguna Beach, Calif., re-emphasized that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) does not allow the denomination’s leaders to try to get commissioners who signed the petition to change their minds.
Metherell, a physician-engineer who was an elder commissioner to the 214th General Assembly, said the constitution specifically calls for the meeting to be held after 60 days’ notice from Jan. 14, when he gave the moderator the signed statements of 57 commissioners (seven more than required) calling for the historic meeting.
“I am taking the liberty of writing you one last time to outline my position, and in the hope of avoiding litigation in the secular courts,” Metherell said in the letter. “However, I am obliged to tell you that in the event you do not reconsider the course you are on, I am prepared to seek an injunction, under corporation law (as I will discuss more fully below) to compel you to follow your legal obligations.”
“[I]t is with a heavy heart that I have come to the decision that I must bring a lawsuit against you in the secular courts,” he added. “Mr. Moderator, taking my Christian brothers and sisters into a court is something that I do NOT want to do; the very thought of it grieves me, particularly in light of the counsel we are given in Scripture on that subject. Yet I have exhausted every remedy offered to me in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). I beseech you not to put me in the position that the only option left to me to defend the constitution is in the secular courts where a truly impartial judgment can be made. To afford you the opportunity to change your mind and avoid litigation, I will wait until next Monday [Jan. 27] before filing suit. I implore you to call the special session before then.”
The moderator and the stated clerk, citing what Metherell contends is an irrelevant section of the Book of Order, say the called meeting could not be held before 120 days from Jan. 14.
Metherell says the moderator and the stated clerk have placed commissioners who desire a called meeting in a “Catch 22 situation.” Their only recourse in challenging the moderator’s 120-day rule is an appeal to the General Assembly, but, by blocking or delaying, the meeting until just a few days before the regularly scheduled 215th General Assembly, the moderator has, according to Metherell, effectively silenced the commissioners, leaving them no appeal except in civil court.
Abu-Akel, Kirkpatrick and Gradye Parsons, Kirkpatrick’s associate stated clerk, have contended that Metherell himself suggested that one of the 57 commissioners’ signatures should be eliminated from the petition. But Metherell says that is untrue.
A question-and-answer document distributed by the stated clerk’s office, which sought to justify asking whether commissioners had changed their minds, said Metherell “informed the Stated Clerk, after the presentation of the petition, that one of the names appearing on the petition should not be included.”
“I must ask you and the Stated Clerk, and your staffs, to stop misquoting me as having written that one commissioner’s request should be withdrawn,” Metherell said in his letter to Abu-Akel. “As you know, that is NOT what I wrote. I merely informed the Stated Clerk, as I felt obliged to do, that one commissioner had himself so stated to me. My position is clear that he cannot withdraw his name, but that I was obliged to make his request known to you. For Gradye Parsons and Cliff Kirkpatrick to say that I asked for his name to be removed, is unconscionable!”