Presbyterians Pro-Life
Posted March 8, 2000

The General Assembly Council (GAC), the body charged to see that the will of the General Assembly is carried out, met in Louisville, KY, February 14-19. They dealt with a number of items of business in addition to their annual reports of responses to actions of the General Assembly which have been referred to them for implementation. The executive committee of the GAC received a report of the review of the Women's Ministries Program Area and will send a summary of the opinion surveys on to the General Assembly in Long Beach. Council bodies heard two speeches of support for the NCC bailout, one from a Methodist bishop and the other from Robert Edgar, the new head of the NCC. Reports indicated that in excess of 1,000 messages opposing the bailout from Presbyterians by phone, e-mail, letter and session resolution were dismissed by a vote of the GAC to approve the $500,000. The money will likely be disbursed prior to the General Assembly meeting and without requesting approval from the G.A.

Two other matters were before the GAC at this recent meeting. The General Assembly's open meeting policy was met with a proposed second policy designed to close meetings. And, the division of the GAC charged to carry out the General Assembly's directive to rewrite the sexuality curriculum so that it conforms to biblical and constitutional teaching revealed its resistance to the directive. My reports on these critical matters follow.

Joanne Hull, liaison from the GAC to the Advisory Committee, explained that the language is broad so that it's applicable to a variety of situations. She said the concern primarily is for providing space for youth to share. The Stated Clerk has used the example several times of the need to protect Bible studies and prayer meetings. During the week he used the example of the powerful spiritual impact of a small group experience on his own daughter at a denominationally-sponsored meeting. He said he was glad no press were there because of the effect a reporter could have on the dynamic of that kind of group.

Commissioners to the General Assembly of 2000 will receive the proposed policy to close meetings of the denomination and they will decide whether or not to adopt the policy. It is a very serious matter to deny access to the members of the church to the meetings of the church. Commissioners undoubtedly will want to weigh the pros and cons of the issue.

We in Presbyterians Pro-Life attend meetings of the denomination in an effort to provide information to church members. We do that to be informed ourselves and because we believe church members ought to know what their elected and appointed officials are doing in their name, both when they conduct business and when they teach. We believe church members exercise their own responsibilities of stewardship best when they have as much information as possible, and that they need information from more than a single perspective.

The Statement of Ethics and Standards of Professional Practice of the Associated Church Press state: "The religious press, its editors and reporters, will defend freedom of the press wherever it is endangered." As Gary Luhr, staff in the Department of Communications of the PC(USA), points out, reporters serve as surrogates for church members who cannot attend every meeting of the denomination.

Why is it not sufficient that reporters and observers have access only to the meetings where business is being conducted? As GAC members considered the proposed policy, one of the frequent questions they posed was the matter of definitions.

"Business" is not defined in the proposed policy. Some thought that "business" would be understood to be when a group is in parliamentary process. But many groups discuss business at length without using parliamentary process. Many groups conducting business in the church operate almost completely on a consensus basis. The three meetings I attended recently, which were related to implementation of the abortion policy, rarely used parliamentary process. "Business" is obviously subject to a variety of interpretations.

"Small group" is not defined. John Silbert, representing the advisory committee, explained that it is a relative term. In a group of forty, three might be a small group; in a group of 1,000, 100 might be a small group. When the NNPCW met, their total attendance was approximately forty people. They defined the entire group as a "small group." Nothing in the proposed policy would prevent that interpretation.

"Personal issues of faith and life" is not defined. John Silbert attempted to present scenarios to the GAC members to help them see when a meeting might be closed and when it could not legitimately close. He said plenaries are always presumed to be open. Workshops with a leaders are always presumed open. If a meeting breaks into small groups without a leader in order to share personal issues, they may decide to close their small group. If a leader or speaker is present, the meeting is presumed to be open. But, like "business," none of this is spelled out in the proposed policy. So we heard Mr. Silbert's interpretation, but we can expect that there will be others.

Let us say that definitions were applied to each of the terms; that "business" meant "decisions by any means that affect the life of the church," that "small group" meant "a group of fewer than ten and made up only of participants and not leadership"; and that "personal issues of faith and life" meant "issues of a personal nature to the individual raised only by members of the group and not directed by a leader." Still hazy, isn't it? Maybe someone can come up with better definitions.

But maybe there is no need to. Fair-minded Presbyterians would be hard put to name a single instance when small groups have been intruded upon by reporters or observers who then quoted participants by name without permission. It doesn't happen because our church reporters are not concerned with the private revelations of participants. Their concern is with the staff and elected officials of the church.

The Statement of Ethics and Standards of Professional Practice of the Associated Church Press says, "An individual's right to privacy should be compromised only in a clear case of the readers right to know." There are very clear protections built in to the ethical standards under which church reporters do their work.

Reporters sought to have attended the summer leadership conference of the NNPCW--a by-invitation-only conference--not because they wanted to intrude on the personal stories of faith by young women, but because this is a group, under the leadership of the Women's Ministry Program Area, found by a GAC review team and the General Assembly to be out of compliance with the theological and moral standards of our denomination. The General Assembly directed changes in the NNPCW two months before the leadership conference. Presbyterians cannot know what is being taught to young women unless they, or their reporter-surrogates, are present where teaching takes place. Reporters should have been present at the NNPCW leadership conference. Instead they were barred from most of the meeting. If the proposed policy is adopted, the NNPCW would have the General Assembly's approval to continue to hold their meetings in closed session and church members would hear reports only from supporters of the NNPCW agenda, as was the case with this summer's meeting.

The NNPCW wrote its own policy last summer. The Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association (PHEWA) writes its own policy. That is a group in the church, receiving mission money from the church, that has consistently defended the normalization of homosexual practice. Presbyterian Women has issued its own policy which intends to restrict access of reporters to scores of workshops at their Gathering next summer. One of the advertised workshops will be conducted by Sylvia Thorsen-Smith, champion of both the homosexual and the ReImagining agendas. Under the proposed policy, every workshop at the PW Gathering could be closed.

The proposed policy will take us back to the former open meeting policy and beyond. Not only will task forces and committees be eligible to close, but also an unlimited number of other meetings and teaching situations.

It appears that the Church has a great deal to lose by adopting a vague policy which allows "non-business" meetings to close. Conversely, the Church has much to gain from insisting that meetings of the Church, in the name of the Church, and with the tithes and offerings of church members be conducted in the open. Darkness is the enemy of the Church. We should resist it.

(Note: the highlighted section below is where the change occurred when the new policy was adopted.)

New director of the Congregational Ministry Division told a curriculum sub-group that the rewrite faced several obstacles. The Division has just secured a 5 million dollar bailout for its new church-school curriculum and is also the division responsible for the 2.1 million dollar deficit of the youth fiasco on New Year's eve, called The Dawn. In addition, two staff persons from the division have left recently and are not yet replaced. One committee member asked how they would explain finding money for the NCC bailout, which was not G.A. directed, while protesting they didn't have the money to do the rewrite. Campbell replied that it's more complicated than it seems.

However, Campbell continued by telling the group that even if funding and staff were available, they faced a more serious problem of lack of guidance from the General Assembly about exactly what is wanted in the rewrite. Does the Assembly expect us to be doctrinaire, he asked rhetorically, or does it want us to create a study document that allows youth to explore their faith and come to their own conclusions?

Finally, Campbell told the group that if funds and staff become available, the curriculum will find itself in line behind other projects also stalled. He did not name those projects. And he did not say whether they would be projects which are the result of G.A. action or projects initiated by the division itself. Some committee members and staff expressed exasperation that the General Assembly keeps interrupting their work. A staff member complained that repeatedly she has to tell her staff to stop everything because the General Assembly has just sent them a new directive.

One division committee self-initiated project is underway and seems to have no budgeting hindrances. A Sabbath Keeping Task Force formed by the Congregational Ministries Division Committee has been working for several months. The task force has produced materials and will be bringing recommendations for further work to the General Assembly. As worthy as it may be, the task force is not responding to action of the General Assembly and it continues unimpeded.

The sub-group on curriculum of Congregational Ministries met for more than an hour on the subject of the sexuality curriculum. Much of their discussion was related to the subject of what the General Assembly wanted from them in the rewrite. At one point, a member of the committee asked if the wording of the G.A. action was "revision." The staff person responded by saying she didn't think so but she didn't have the wording with her. She asked if anybody in the sub-group did. They didn't. The group decided to adjourn with that business left unfinished because they didn't have the wording. They agreed to take up the matter again at their June, 2000 meeting.

When the sub-group meeting ended, a staff person came to me and asked if I had the wording of the G.A. action. I said I did, in my hotel room, but I thought she could probably get it from the OGA office located right around the corner from their meeting room. A few minutes later I went to that room and found her opening the minutes to the action.

The Congregational Ministries Division is required by the action on the sexuality curriculum of the 1999 General Assembly to submit the revised curriculum to the General Assembly Council for review prior to any reprinting and to report to the 213th General Assembly in 2001.

The rewrite directive from the General Assembly to the GAC on the sexuality curriculum, and the financial and philosophical issues surrounding it, is a concrete example of the accountability problem that continues to plague our denomination.

On top of the bailouts, though, is the question of faithful submission to the will of our highest governing body. Staff and elected groups in Louisville are charged to carry out the will of that body. They appear to be sending a message of resentment of directives from the General Assembly, and they give an appearance of hiding behind financial woes that keep them from carrying out the actions of the G.A. while announcing excess funds to do what they decide to do.

This is a situation that calls for redress by the General Assembly. That is best accomplished by messages from churches through their presbyteries in the form of overtures. The deadline for overtures that do not require a change in the constitution is April 25, 2000.