In the meantime, with the waters of the denomination as choppy as they are, it’s dangerous to try to predict what will sink and what will float — the currents are hard to read.
Those who wanted the Assembly called back are now double-mad; some have threatened litigation in the secular courts.
Some who didn’t think the Assembly should be called back in the first place now are riled up. They say Abu-Akel and Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, should just have gone ahead and reconvened the Assembly, like it or not, once a petition with enough signatures requesting it was submitted. To them, the process of “verifying” signatures was political maneuvering, plain and simple.
And some say the moderator and stated clerk acted fairly and properly. With indications that at least one commissioner on the list did not want to be included, they had no choice but to ascertain that those whose signatures were submitted really did want the Assembly to reconvene. But the waters also were muddied when Abu-Akel sent a letter imploring the commissioners who’d signed the petition to reconsider “in the name of Christ and for the good of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”
It’s shaping up to be a doozy of a case.
Paul Rolf Jensen, the Virginia lawyer who filed the complaint on behalf of Westminster church, Canton, Ohio, has filed a brief accusing Kirkpatrick, Abu-Akel and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) of fabricating evidence. “This misconduct on their part creates the biggest crisis in the history of our denomination,” Jensen said in an e-mail sent to reporters.
The allegation of fabrication has to do with the attempts to verify the signatures of 57 commissioners who signed a petition asking that the Assembly come back into session. They want the Assembly to do something about defiance of the PC(USA)’s ordination standards, part of the denomination’s longstanding debate over whether to ordain gays and lesbians who are not celibate.
After Alex Metherell, an elder from California, presented Abu-Akel with the signatures, Metherell said that was that — under the rules, the moderator was required to call the Assembly back into session. But Kirkpatrick and Abu-Akel initiated a process of verifying the signatures, to determine if those commissioners indeed did want the Assembly to meet.
In the end, 13 commissioners — six ministers and seven elders — indicated they wanted their names removed, leaving only the names of 20 ministers and 24 elders on the petition. Under the rules, for the Assembly to reconvene, 25 in each category are required, so Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick said there weren’t enough signatures, and the Assembly would not be called back.
And Abu-Akel sent all 554 commissioners a letter explaining his decision not to reconvene the Assembly, saying he thought it would create “needless confusion,” that the purposes given for calling it were too vague, and “the time, energy and money (as much as $500,000) that we would spend on a special Assembly would be that much less that would be spent on mission in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Jensen’s accusations of fabricated documents involve two communications Kirkpatrick says he received, each giving the name of a commissioner listed on Metherell’s petition.
One is a letter faxed from Cleveland, bearing the name of Angela Davis, an elder, asking that her name be removed from the list and stating that “I do not know why or how my vote was recorded as being in favor of this initiative” and that “I am definitely NOT in favor of calling any such special meeting of the General Assembly.”
In pleadings filed in connection with the case, Jensen alleges that the letter “was not even written by Angela Davis, but by her minister!” Jensen’s brief states that the minister saw her name listed in news accounts as one of the commissioners who’d signed the petition, that the minister contacted Kirkpatrick’s office, and “they worked out a fabricated letter on Davis’ behalf that was never signed by Davis.”
Jensen also raises questions about a fax from Detroit, asking that the name of Beatrice Thomas, an elder from Detroit Presbytery, be withdrawn from the petition as well. Jensen alleges in his brief that both the fax regarding Thomas and the letter regarding Davis “are creations of the Office of the Moderator and Office of Stated Clerk, not by the purported authors!”
Gradye Parsons of the Office of the General Assembly declined to comment on Jensen’s allegations, since the remedial complaint involved is now pending before the Permanent Judicial Commission.
Mark Tammen, a lawyer representing the Committee of Counsel for Kirkpatrick and Abu-Akel, and Stephen Grace, representing the Office of the General Assembly and COGA, also have submitted a pleading in connection with the remedial complaint. A copy of this document was provided by Jensen. In it, both Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick raise questions of jurisdiction; neither is an “entity” of the General Assembly, the pleading argues, and only the General Assembly has jurisdiction over the functions they perform as moderator and stated clerk. In that, Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick also “deny that they have engaged in any conspiracy,” stating “they have faithfully carried out their respective responsibilities.” And they “deny that seeking to verify the standing, signatures and intent of the signers of the petition in any way constituted a ‘request for a new vote.’ “
There also is disagreement about an e-mail that Metherell sent to Kirkpatrick on Jan. 15, the day after he presented the petitions. In that, Metherell wrote that Brian Janssen, a minister whose name was among the 57 on the petition, told him that day that “some time ago he communicated to me that he had reconsidered his earlier decision to join the call for reconvening the 214th General Assembly. He has today asked that his name be removed from the petition.”
Metherell has said he was not asking in that e-mail for Janssen’s name to removed from the list; instead, he has argued that once people signed the petition, none of their names could be properly removed.
But Tammen’s brief argues that “Commissioner Metherell’s own e-mail called into question the accuracy of the cards (signed by commissioners) attached to the petition,” and that the cards were not themselves sufficient to determine that the commissioners listed in the petition wanted the Assembly called back.
In addition to Metherell’s e-mail, the brief states, Kirkpatrick received three other “unsolicited transmittal” from commissioners whose names were on the petition, saying “they did not concur with the request for a special meeting of the General Assembly.” Those communications, according to papers filed by Tammen, involved Angela Davis, Beatrice Thomas and David Rodriguez, a minister from San Jose Presbytery who sent Kirkpatrick an e-mail on Jan. 15, the day after Metherell presented his petition, asking that his name be withdrawn.
Tammen has made a motion to dismiss the remedial complaint.
