GA overtures focus on Israel-Palestine, non geographic presbyteries and more
The Layman, February 10, 2012
The race to submit overtures to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s highest governing body has revved up over the past two weeks after several new proposals were added to the slate.
According to a PCUSA website, 10 overtures have been recently approved and submitted by presbyteries for the denomination’s 220th General Assembly, bringing the total to 30.
The overtures address issues including pastoral discretion, Israeli-Palestinian relations, collegiate status and flexible presbytery boundaries, among others.
Israel and Palestine
Three of the 10 most recently filed overtures involve proposals to punish Israel or businesses working with Israel. The issue has been hotly contested within the PCUSA for some time and has recently come to the forefront once again.
On Feb. 6 the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) urged PCUSA leaders to “address the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and at times anti-Semitic content that has been all too common in the church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network.” In response, the network deleted a contentious Facebook page but also accused pro-Israeli groups of launching a “slanderous smear campaign.”
Overture 21 from Muskingum Valley Presbytery seeks to equate Israeli governmental policy with that of Apartheid-era South Africa.
The overture claims: “Palestinian land and businesses have been expropriated, homes demolished, and property and farmland destroyed as a half-a-million Israeli settlers have moved into the West bank, including East Jerusalem.”
The 219th General Assembly passed parts of an anti-Israel Middle East study report but refused to compare Israel to South Africa, stating: “while we are deeply concerned with the policies implemented by Israel in relation to the Palestine territories and Palestinians under its jurisdiction, we believe that dialogue is hampered by words like ‘apartheid.’”
The Presbytery of San Francisco filed two anti-Israel overtures seeking economic sanctions. Overture 24 directs the GA to “condemn the production and sale of Israeli products that come from the Occupied Palestinian Territories; call for the boycott of AHAVA Dead Sea Laboratories Beauty Products; call for the boycott of all date products of Hadiklaim, the Israel Date Growers Cooperative and … direct the stated clerk to communicate this action to all other PCUSA councils and entities and invite and strongly encourage those groups and organizations to endorse this boycott.”
The proposed boycott would also seek to form similar boycotts among other religious groups.
Targeting an American company, Overture 25 would order the divestment of Caterpillar from the Presbyterian Foundation and the PCUSA Board of Pensions and to not “reinvest in this corporation unless the [PCUSA] Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee is fully satisfied that Caterpillar, Inc., no longer engages in the selling of equipment to Israel that is used to build illegal Israeli settlements, construct walls that illegally encroach upon Palestinian lands that cut Palestinians off from their own property and natural resources, destroy Palestinian life and property, and otherwise continue to support the occupation of Palestinian territories.”
Caterpillar has been a frequent target of PCUSA actions in the past. In 2011, the denomination’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment urged the PCUSA to divest from Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard to discourage the companies from doing business with Israel.
In response, Rabbi Noam Marans of the American Jewish Committee said: “Threatening divestment undermines those who are truly committed to Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Presbyterians for Middle East Peace condemned the 2011 report, claiming it represented “a small group of activists within the Presbyterian Church that has relentlessly sought to punish Israel.”
Other issues
San Francisco also weighed in on the issue of non-geographic boundaries with Overture 26, which would set up a presbytery vote on a constitutional amendment to permit flexible boundaries within or beyond the bounds of an existing presbytery.
The overture rewords a description of a presbytery to read: “The presbytery is the council serving as a corporate expression of the church within the communities engaged by the congregations and teaching elders which compose that presbytery.” It also strikes out the language “within a certain district,” stripping the definition of geographic wording.
The overture explains that such a change will expand “the use of alternate presbytery structures beyond the exclusive use of racial ethnic or immigrant congregations to foster innovation across the church” and will allow “synods flexibility to assist presbyteries to respond to rapidly changing regional dynamics that might allow for mission outreach and church planting restricted by the current method of defining boundaries of a presbytery.”
The overture would also strike out the requirement that presbytery structure changes be approved by the General Assembly in a move that proponents say will “streamline the launching of new initiatives, as current biennial assemblies may delay any initiatives for more than two years.”
Overture 22 asks the GA to implement Living into the Body of Christ: Towards Full Inclusion of People with Disabilities, a policy approved by the 217th General Assembly in 2006.
Submitted by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area, the overture calls on the PCUSA to “form a working group that includes human resources staff from each entity and representatives from Presbyterians for Disability Concerns (PDC) and the disability consultants in order to develop a plan for training all entity staff, commissioners to GAMC, and all commissioners to General Assembly in disability awareness and inclusion.”
The measure would also “affirm that persons with disabilities are distinct cultures within the rich multicultural makeup of the PCUSA.”
Overture 23 by the Presbytery of Long Island seeks to undertake a parenting initiative called the “Institute for Effective Parental Leadership” that would “teach effective parenting skills for parents with children six years old and younger.”
The overture would authorize four presbyteries — the Presbytery of San Francisco, the Presbytery of Heartland, the Presbytery of New York City and the Presbytery of Chicago – as pilot programs and also directs the PCUSA to assign resources to fund the program, reporting back on its progress at the 221st General Assembly in 2014.
The Presbytery of Newark filed Overture 27 to recognize Bloomfield College of Bloomfield, N.J. as a racial-ethnic institution to be added to a list of schools and colleges to receive support
from the PCUSA Christmas Joy Offering.
According to the overture text, 50 percent of the college’s students are African-American and African Caribbean; 19 percent Hispanic; and 3 percent Asian.
The Presbytery of Genesee Valley filed Overture 28 and 29 both seeking authoritative interpretations.
Overture 28 asks the GA to issue the following AI:
“Teaching elders and commissioned ruling elders authorized to conduct services of marriage, may, at their sole discretion, following the discussion required in W-4.9002a, officiate at a service of Christian marriage for two persons who meet the legal requirements of the state and whom the elder determines demonstrate sufficient commitment, responsibility, maturity, and Christian understanding. Sessions may permit the use of church property for such services. Teaching elders and commissioned ruling elders may decline to conduct such services, and sessions may decline to permit the use of church property for such purposes.”
The overture goes on to state: “The enactment of laws that make it possible for same-sex couples to enter into a civil contract raises the question then whether the key to the performance of marriage ceremonies, authorized by sessions, to be held in a church and conducted by ministers or commissioned lay pastors, is the civil contract or the gender of the parties. The traditional distinctions held by the PCUSA are no longer as clear.”
The presbytery claims that pastors and sessions need the GA’s “assurance of their freedom and discretion to provide the pastoral care that their members require. This freedom is based on the same principle as W-4.9002b, which provides that pastors are free, as their judgment dictates, not to officiate at marriages their members and others are contracting.”
“The authoritative interpretation will prevent deep grief to church members who might otherwise be denied the pastoral care of the church, and it will protect pastors and sessions from judicial challenge for exercising their pastoral responsibilities,” the text adds.
Overture 29 also seeks an AI as follows:
“Because members of an examining council are to assess the fitness of officers-elect on a case-by-case basis, in light of each person’s faith, life, and witness, and because such assessments are to be made in collective discernment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, an elder-elect may not be required to commit during examination to how he or she might assess the fitness of other officers-elect in the future.”
The rationale for the AI states: “Following recent amendment of the church’s ordination standards, some have expressed concern that they may be disqualified from service given their opposition to ordained service by persons who are in same-sex relationships. This authoritative interpretation is meant to defuse apparent tensions over the potential misuse of abstract questions about this in examination.”
Overture 30 by the Presbytery of National Capital asks the GA to remove language within pastoral administrative-leave policies (proposed deletion in bold):
“When a written statement of an alleged offense of sexual abuse toward any person under the age of eighteen, or who it is alleged lacked the mental capacity to consent, has been received against a teaching elder, the stated clerk receiving the allegation shall immediately communicate the allegation to the permanent judicial commission. [The rest of the paragraph remains unchanged.]”
The presbytery claims that “if this change is not made, even with evidence of sexual abuse by a teaching elder of someone with the alleged mental capacity to consent and who is over eighteen, the presbytery has little recourse other than to threaten removal from office based upon the judgment that ‘the church’s mission under the Word imperatively demands it’ (G-2.0904).”
“This threat is sometimes employed to persuade an accused teaching elder to voluntarily accept administrative leave,” the text adds.
The overture would add the following words (addition italicized): “The presbytery may inquire into reported difficulties in a congregation and may dissolve the pastoral relationship if, after consultation with the minister, the session, and the congregation, it finds the church’s mission under the Word imperatively demands it. The presbytery may amend the pastoral relationship if, after consultation with the minister and the session, it finds the church’s mission under the Word imperatively demands it.”
“The proposed changes preserve the existing rights of the accused and extend protection to the congregation, the putative victim(s) and potential victims by expanding the range of consideration to all persons, not just those who are under eighteen or who, it is alleged, lacked the mental capacity to consent,” the presbytery stated.