Will new president get his say on Clinton’s ‘bulletin board?’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 22, 2001
For the past two years, the web site of the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has provided a friendly bulletin board for President William Jefferson Clinton.
Under its “legislative alerts,” the office posted verbatim copies of proclamations and political statements by the president and vice president – even one by Tipper Gore – but none by the Republican leadership in the House or the Senate.
Meanwhile, 24 of the 38 Presbyterians in the U.S. House and six of the seven Presbyterian senators are Republicans. None of them made the bulletin board.
The web site also included two postings about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
One was a statement on Sept. 15, 1998, signed by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, then-General Assembly Moderator Douglas Oldenberg and John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council. Because of Clinton’s “moral infidelity” and “lying,” the president had violated the “sacred trust” of his office, they said. But they did not support impeachment.
The other was a statement by Clinton at a prayer breakfast.
Forgiveness from the Washington Office came quickly. A few days later, Clinton was back on the digital bulletin board with his “Proclamation on Religious Freedom Day.”
Eleanor Giddings-Ivory, director of the Washington office, told The Presbyterian Layman that most of the Clinton proclamations dealt with nonpolitical issues, such as his comments about the commemoration of special days (Thanksgiving, etc.). However, as of Jan. 16, 2001,15 of the 17 Clinton postings dealt with a variety of political issues, ranging from gun control to forgiving the debt of foreign countries.
She said President-elect George W. Bush will be accorded the same privilege as Clinton, but added a caveat – as long as his message lines up with the official policy of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Bush is a Republican and 55 percent of the members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are Republicans, so there’s a fair chance that Bush will get, say, at least half of his proclamations posted on the Washington Office site. Right?
Not exactly. According to a 1999 study by Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom, the Washington Office queues up almost 100 percent on the Democratic side of a debate. The Institute tracked 37 highly partisan issues in which “the vast majority of Democrats are arrayed against the vast majority of Republicans.” On each of those issues, the position advocated by the Washington Office was the same as the Democrats.
The Washington Office is constitutionally mandated to reflect General Assembly guidance on public policy. But a 1999 study by Presbyterian Action showed that of the 53 advocacy messages the office directed toward Congress over a 14-month period, only 34 made any reference to such guidance. And in just 21 cases did the Assembly’s action actually mandate a standard.
In some cases, the Washington Office clearly has gone beyond the policies of the General Assembly. One of its legislative alerts was a statement by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a pro-abortion group. The news release vilified pro-life advocates.
That did not reconcile with the General Assembly’s 1992 policy, which states in part: “The strong Christian presumption is that since all life is precious to God, we are to preserve and protect it. … [A]fter human life has begun, it is to be cherished and protected as a precious gift of God.”
Last September, members of the General Assembly Council ranked the Washington Office as one of the lowest priorities for denominational funding. That issue is expected to be on the agenda of the council when it meets Feb. 19-24 in Louisville.
The in-house assessment at Presbyterian headquarters in Louisville wasn’t much better. Presbyterian Research Services said in its analysis of a 1999 survey that the Washington Office wasn’t even on the radar screen of most Presbyterians.
The survey asked members, elders and pastors to evaluate the effectiveness of the Washington Office. Only 17 percent of the pastors, 5 percent of the elders and 2 percent of the members said it was effective.