Briefly: High numbers, low vote
The Layman Online, December 4, 2001
The Confessing Church Movement now includes 10 percent of the congregations and 15 percent of the members in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Those members give 19.7 percent of the contributions and, on any given Sunday, account for 20.1 percent of the churchgoers.
So why is their voice so rare in the leadership of the denomination?
One reason: The 15 percent who ante up 19.7 percent of the money and fill 20.1 percent of the denomination’s pews have only 5 percent of the vote on the General Assembly Council.
That’s four of the 78 council members.
AN EMPHATIC ‘NO’ – Presbyterians are saying “no” even more emphatically to the latest proposal to ditch the denomination’s prohibition against ordaining self-affirming, practicing homosexuals and adulterers.
Through Dec. 3, in written ballots on Amendment 01-A cast during presbytery meetings, 66.6 percent of the ministers and elders had voted to uphold the “fidelity/chastity” standard in the Book of Order.
The tally was 29 presbyteries against Amendment 01-A and five in favor of it. Four presbyteries did not use written ballots; they overwhelmingly rejected the proposed amendment by voice votes.
Even the presbyteries that opposed the standard in 1997 have shown stronger support for it this time. The most dramatic shift occurred in Western Kentucky and West Virginia, two of four presbyteries that once opposed the ordination standard but that now favor it.
The Western Kentucky commissioners voted recently (76.5 percent) to sustain the ordination standard. In 1997, only 40.8 percent of Western Kentucky’s commissioners favored the standard.
In West Virginia, 55.3 percent of the commissioners favored Amendment 01-A, while 46.7 voted in favor of the ordination standard in 1997.
The 34 presbyteries voting as of Dec. 3 represent 19.5 percent of the 174 presbyteries that are participating in the national referendum – the third on the matter. The voting will continue through March.
‘CHILLING EFFECT’ – During a break in the deliberations of the General Assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission in Atlanta Nov. 30, The Layman asked Moderator Mary Lou Koenig if members of the commission would mind having their photos taken during recesses.
She said she would ask them. She returned a few minutes later to say they would mind.
“That would have a chilling effect,” she said.
One bystander told The Layman that she was surprised the photos might have a chilling effect. “The members of the commission look fine to me.”
ON SECOND THOUGHT – An earlier news story on The Layman Online identified Jack Haberer, former moderator of the Presbyterian Coaliton, as pastor of a Confessing Church.
Indeed, Haberer is pastor of Clear Lake Presbyterian Church in Houston where the session has adopted a resolution, which is posted on the church’s Web site, that says:
- Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of the world as expressed in our Book of Order and Confessions.
- The Bible is God’s authoritative and infallible word of truth as expressed in our Book of Order and Confessions.
- God has created us for fidelity in marriage between a man and woman or chastity in singleness as expressed in our Book of Order and Confessions.
That’s pretty much what the Confessing Church resolutions say. Not quite, according to the clerk of session, one J. Feather, who e-mailed The Layman Online a declaration that “We’d like to make it clear that CLPC has not joined the Confessing Church Movement.”
With its Confessing Church-like confessions, the Clear Lake session adds a disclaimer: “After much discussion and a special session meeting we decided not to identify ourselves as members of this ‘movement’ because of its possible divisive impact on the denomination.”
FOOTNOTE – The Clear Lake session is not the only governing body to express ambivalence about the difference between a resolution and a movement.
According to unofficial reports to The Layman Online, maybe 10 to 12 sessions across the nation have adopted Confessing Church-like resolutions, but declared themselves not to be in the “movement.”
Meanwhile, 1,125 sessions – and hundreds of individual Presbyterians – have endorsed the three tenets and declared that they are joined together in a movement to renew – and unite – the denomination around its foundational beliefs.
That means that those sessions that say what they believe but don’t join hands with others that say the same thing are running roughly 1 percent of the confessors.