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Contentious meeting of presbytery does not validate Williamson’s ministry

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — After a long, contentious, messy meeting — the kind where people roared down disapproval from the balcony when they didn’t like what they’d just heard — Western North Carolina Presbytery voted 150-106 Saturday night to declare that Parker Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor-in-chief of the Layman, does not have a ministry that is validated by the presbytery.


But the presbytery also gave Williamson something he definitely doesn’t want, something he called an “oily compromise,” and which some argued that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) does not permit: member-at-large status.

Williamson immediately challenged the presbytery’s actions, marching to the front of the sanctuary, commanding a microphone and presenting a petition to gather signatures for a stay of enforcement of the presbytery’s actions. “It grieves me to have to do this, but we have to do this,” Williamson said resolutely. “We’re going to be going to court” in the Presbyterian legal system.

As the moderator banged his gavel and tried to pull the meeting under control, repeatedly telling Williamson he was out of order, Williamson called people forward to sign a petition he’d put on the communion table, saying he needed the signatures of one-third of those who’d voted in order to request the stay. The moderator kept pounding, the people kept coming, Williamson greeting them one by one and shaking their hands.

In an interview Feb. 2, Taber said that Peggy Hedden, chair of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, had informed him that Williamson did not collect enough signatures Saturday — he needs one third of the voting members recorded as present when the vote was take about validating his ministry — in order to request the stay of enforcement from the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Mid-Atlantic Synod. But according to the rules, Williamson has 30 days from the Jan. 31 meeting to submit the signatures to ask for the stay. If Williamson did receive the stay of enforcement, he would retain his current status in the presbytery while any complaint he might file alleging irregularities in the presbytery’s actions was being litigated in the church courts.

What happened in Asheville — another clash between the Layman and the denominational structure — is the latest blowup in a conflict that goes back for years, and which was inflamed most recently by the Lay Committee’s issuing of a “Declaration of Conscience,” which states that the PC(USA)’s unrestricted mission budget is not worth supporting.

Williamson said that at least five General Assemblies have been asked to do something about the Layman, most recently in Cincinnati in 1995, after a special committee had been appointed to try to bring reconciliation between the privately funded newspaper and those in the church who see it as a corrosive force. Both sides claimed some degree of vindication from the 1995 Assembly — Williamson said the Assembly overwhelmingly refused to censure the Layman, but the Committee on Ministry contended that the Assembly said in its report: “It is time for the Lay Committee to end its destructive tactics and unending attacks upon women and men who are seeking to do God’s work through the offices of the PC(USA). The time has come to love, not hate. The time has come to build up this denomination, not tear it down.”

And Cynthia Williams, associate pastor of First church in Newton, N.C. and a member of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry, said the judgment the presbytery needed to make was essentially this: Does the Layman publish “hard words that we need to hear, or hostile words?”

So the recommendation from the Committee on Ministry was to declare that Williamson did not have a ministry the presbytery can validate or endorse — a move that the committee argued was necessary because of what Tom Philips, a pastor from Banner Elk, N.C. and a member of the committee, described as the Layman’s “ongoing tone of insult, innuendo and what often appears to be slanted reporting which discredits and demeans sisters and brothers in Christ.” Removing his validation would have put Williamson on “inactive status” — he could not vote or speak at presbytery meetings.

Instead, the presbytery voted to make him a “member-at-large.” Pete Peery, pastor of First church in Asheville, where the meeting was held, presented an amendment: deny validation of Williamson’s ministry at the Layman, but make him a member-at-large, which would allow the presbytery to take a stand against the Layman’s journalistic practices while still giving Williamson a voice in the presbytery where he has served for 32 years.

Williamson argued strongly against the amendment, saying “I do not want this.” and arguing that the presbytery should vote the validation of his ministry up-or-down rather than choosing what he called an “oily compromise, to drive a wedge between me and the ministry God has called me to lead.”

He said: “To suggest that a person can be separated from that person’s ministry is to suggest that you can unscramble an egg. My ministry is with the Presbyterian Lay Committee. It is what it is.”

But Peery told the presbytery that “I have really been in prayer about this,” and that “whether Parker wants it or not, he’s under the authority of the presbytery” — it was the presbytery’s decision to make. Peery contended that his approach would allow the presbytery to take a position on the Lay Committee’s ministry without stripping Williamson of the privileges of ordained office. He argued for keeping a diversity of voices in the presbytery, saying, “it is important to have the voices in the house rather than excluded.”

And Peery said he worried that in what the presbytery was considering doing — refusing to validate the ministry and moving Williamson to inactive status — “we get close to a disciplinary action about Parker in his ministry,” even though Williamson had had no disciplinary charges filed against him and no right to due process or a trial in the church courts. “It is best for the unity of the house to keep members with voice and vote,” Peery argued, especially when Williamson has been a “faithful member” of the presbytery, at the Layman and before that as a pastor, for 32 years.

Some people immediately raised questions about whether what Peery was proposing would meet constitutional requirements. The Book of Order states that a member-at-large is one previously admitted as an active member “who now, without intentional abandonment of the exercise of ministry, is no longer engaged in a ministry that complies with all the criteria” the Book of Order gives for valid ministries.

“A minister may be designated a member-at-large because he or she is limited in his or her ability to engage in a ministry fulfilling all of the criteria for a validated ministry because of family responsibilities or other individual circumstances which the presbytery recognizes as important,” the Constitution states. It also says “the status of each member-at-large may be granted by the presbytery upon the minister’s application and shall be reviewed annually.”

In approving Perry’s amendment, by a vote of 135 to 117, Western North Carolina presbytery also approved language waiving the requirement that Williamson apply for member-at-large status — something he does not want and presumably would not voluntarily seek. During the debate, some of Williamson’s supporters said he’d essentially been sent to Neverland, made a man without a country.

One retired minister said it’s not legal for the presbytery to waive a Book of Order requirement. In response to a question, Bill Taber, the presbytery’s stated clerk and executive presbyter, said the Book of Order uses language of “may” rather than “shall” when discussing members-at-large and said, “this is not out of accord with the Book of Order.”

But Bill Campbell, pastor of First church in Hendersonville, N.C., said the presbytery can’t take Williamson and “slot him into a ministry to which he is not interested in serving.”

Williamson contended the presbytery’s actions involved “many irregularities,” both at the Jan. 31 meeting and in the months leading up to it — for one thing, the specifics of the Committee on Ministry’s criticism of him, revealed in a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation at the presbytery meeting, weren’t divulged to him in advance of the meeting, and Williamson said materials the Lay Committee provided never were given to the Committee on Ministry.

It went on like that all afternoon. It was a doozy of a meeting.

The moderator, John Stanley, who’s an elder at First church in Gastonia, N.C. and a commissioned lay pastor at Robinson Memorial, was just elected moderator that morning. In addition to about 260 voting ministers and elders, roughly 200 spectators attended the meeting, filling the balcony and spilling over into a nearby chapel where they watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television.

Williamson’s supporters turned out in loyal force — many from his home in nearby Lenoir, N.C., but some from as far away as Ohio and Illinois. At one point, a woman in the crowd urged the spectators in the balcony to “Stand up! We can stand up for Parker!’ as commissioners stood on the main floor below to vote. Stanley informed the balcony crowd that they weren’t eligible to vote and “we’re not paying a lot of attention.”

The woman shot back: “Yes, but we are paying a LOT of attention to you.” Some spoke of their respect for Williamson, for his refusal to back down, and the strong stands he’s taken for what he sees as right. “I’ve been ministered unto by the Presbyterian Lay Committee in a profound way as long as I can remember,” one elder said.

Others complained that when people don’t agree with the Layman on issues, their faith gets questioned. The Declaration of Conscience speaks of “proponents of a false gospel” and the Layman called one General Assembly “apostate,” said a retired minister, who said he might not side with the Layman but he does honestly recite the Nicene Creed every communion Sunday with conviction. One elder and Sunday school teacher who spoke against validating Williamson’s ministry started off by saying: “I love Jesus too.”

And in a moment of pure wildness, Paul Rolf Jensen, the lawyer from California who’s filed a heap of cases in the church courts, interrupted the proceedings and started shouting from the balcony. The discussion on the floor had turned briefly to W. Robert “Rob” Martin III , a pastor who formerly lived in North Carolina, and who Jensen accused of heresy when Martin accepted a new call to a church in Palo Alto, Calif.

A previous speaker said that Martin had denied the bodily resurrection on the floor of Western North Carolina Presbytery. Then Martin’s father, W. Robert Martin Jr., approached a microphone and said that wasn’t correct — that the examination of Martin took place in San Jose Presbytery, not in North Carolina, and that one person involved with accusing him later apologized. (An investigating committee in Western North Carolina presbytery decided not to file heresy charges against the younger Martin.)

With that, Jensen exploded.

“I accused him, and I am not apologizing,” Jensen hurled down. He called the gathering a “brood of vipers” and said, “This meeting is an apostasy. You are out of order, Mr. Moderator, and I believe it. And good riddance to you” — this last, striding from the room.

All through the day there was scuffling over every bit of the proceedings, starting with whether the ballot should be secret or not, and whether the proceedings could be photographed or videotaped. Williamson had asked to bring a court reporter and videographer with him, to have his own record of the proceedings.

Williamson’s supporters advocated for a public show of hands in the voting regarding Williamson, with one man saying, “We have no business hiding in secrecy” and Bob Mills, who has written for the Layman, saying, “My final reason for opposing a secret ballot is that the votes will be counted in secret.”

A man from Illinois (he was allowed to speak because the presbytery agreed to allow ministers and elders from other presbyteries voice at the meeting as corresponding members) said, to applause, that the only time secrecy was mentioned in the Bible was when Judas conspired to crucify Jesus.

But Bob Ratchford, a pastor from Black Mountain Presbyterian, N.C., and a member of the Committee on Coordinating Council, said the committee favored a secret ballot out of concern for fairness, “so that members of the governing body would not be intimidated on this day and would be able to vote their conscience.” And one retired minister pointed out that “all pastors are elected by secret ballot.”

The presbytery voted 171-89 to have a secret ballot.

The presbytery’s coordinating council also recommended that no photography or videotaping of the proceedings be allowed, except for still photographs taken by representatives of the presbytery, although the presbytery would make an audiotape of the proceedings, using the equipment of First Presbyterian, Asheville.

Brad Long of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International, who was intending to videotape the proceedings, said, “I believe the proceedings here are of great interest to the whole church, indeed to the worldwide church. I believe they need to be videotaped . . . so we can show the world we have nothing to hide.”

Some argued that having a videotape would provide a more accurate record of the proceedings and would avoid censorship (among other journalists at the meeting, a television crew from Charlotte was present). But others contended that the tape could be edited so things were taken out of context, and Peery contended that the limitation was necessary to avoid fear of intimidation and “given the distrust among us that is regretful.”

After one man said dramatically, “I cry foul!” Taber — aware that journalists filled the first row of the balcony — responded that whatever happened at the meeting “will be reported I am quite confident by a number of people.” And he added, “Nobody besides our presbytery needs to be concerned about what we do. This is our presbytery” — a remark that drew a disapproving chorus of “Ooooohhhs.”

The meeting continued on like that — bumpy, loud, anything but a love-fest. The Committee on Ministry took direct aim at the Layman’s way of doing journalism, with the chair, James Aydelotte, saying the committee brought its recommendation with sorrow and regret.

“We welcome strong prophetic voices inspired by God,” Aydelotte said, but he described the Layman’s work is divisive, more destructive than constructive, promoting hostility and suspicion. And Philips said the issue was not liberal vs. conservative, or about freedom of speech, or about whether Williamson is a good man. The issue, he said, is what the presbytery should do “when fellow Christians are constantly belittled, undermined, stereotyped and continually demeaned” by the Layman.

Cynthia Williams offered a list of examples — from the Layman calling former General Assembly moderator Syngman Rhee a Communist to references to apostasy and “counterfeit faith” to calling Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, “His Holiness.”

The Committee also took issue with the Declaration of Conscience, saying that the presbytery is deeply involved with the PC(USA)’s mission work — so to try to undermine the unrestricted mission budget is, Aydelotte said, “inconsistent with this presbytery’s involvement with the larger church of Jesus Christ.” Williams listed projects the presbytery supports — among them, border ministry, a partnership in Guatemala and missionaries she listed by name — that she contended the Lay Committee does not consider “worthy of support.”

And Philips said, “Perhaps it would be more honest if the Rev. Williamson didn’t seek validation if we are so hopelessly lost.”

Both Williamson and Bob Howard, the Lay Committee’s immediate past chairman, seemed personally affronted by the idea that the Layman was trying to cut support for the PC(USA)’s mission efforts. “Much of what was said today is absolutely not true,” Williamson said. In criticizing the Committee on Ministry, Howard and Williamson sounded eerily like what critics have said about the Layman for years — that things had been mischaracterized and twisted and taken out of context.

“The unrestricted mission budget of the church does not go to missions, it does not go to world missions,” Howard said. And: “I take very personally a charge that we don’t support missions in the world on behalf of the Presbyterian church. It’s absolutely false, you cannot document it, and it was a false and fraudulent charge.”

Others said it wasn’t fair to criticize the tone and character of the Layman’s work without giving Williamson a specific list of criticisms in advance, and giving him a chance to respond. Has anyone from the Committee on Ministry offered to have coffee with Williamson, asked to talk about “your tone, your character, your words?” or even filed detailed charges against him, asked Richard White of Montreat.

And George Saylor from First church in Lenoir said he feels betrayed by the actions against Williamson, whom he considers a role model, and said: “You have eroded the unity by your decidedly un-Christian stance against Parker.”

Another speaker, a man from Grace Covenant in Asheville, argued that the presbytery did need to take a stand, because he’s found that distortions of fact and lampooning of church leaders are “evident on every page of the Layman, virtually” and on its website. What’s at stake, he said, “is the kind of church we want to be, and the kind of church we want to become.”

Bill Serjak, a minister with First Presbyterian, Sylva, N.C., said if the presbytery felt compelled to take on Williamson it should have pursued a judicial case with full due process protections. Serjak said the Layman is “essentially a loyal opposition” in the denomination and “what we’re trying to do here is settle a judicial matter in an administrative way.”

Williamson, in his closing remarks, described the proceedings as “a kangaroo court.”

But Philips, from the Committee on Ministry, said Williamson was offered the opportunity to appear before the committee, and said if the question of his own ministry being validated was on the table, “I believe I’d go to one of those meetings.”

And so it went.

For background see this earlier story.

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