By this point, the case has been pared back to particulars, to details, about whether Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 214th General Assembly, was “bullying” when he tried to convince commissioners not to call the Assembly back; whether he should have been neutral or was free to speak his mind; whether commissioners, the ones with the power to ask the Assembly to reconvene, should be allowed to change their minds or were locked in once the signatures were handed over to Abu-Akel.
But hidden in those details are clues — not to the big divisions, because those tend to blow up regularly in the church, almost like Old Faithful — as to how people with strong views fight out their differences in the denomination and how sometimes people who weren’t intending to fight get swept along in the flow.
Bill Pawson, who’s pastor of Westminster church, Canton, Ohio, the session which filed the case, testified that his session took action after hearing of the situation through the news media, not through any first-hand knowledge, and after he became convinced that Abu-Akel wasn’t going to do what Pawson says the rules clearly require: when presented with enough signatures from commissioners asking for it, the moderator must call the Assembly back. Pawson’s lawyer, Paul Rolf Jensen, argued that “thousands of faithful evangelicals” are watching this case and “I can’t predict what will happen out of a special session. But I can predict what will happen if you say the Book of Order doesn’t have to be upheld, and that is a fierce prediction.”
Abu-Akel, a Palestinian-born Christian and immigrant to America, had just returned from a trip to the Sudan, his heart both wrenched and gladdened by the people he’d met there, his mind preoccupied by God’s work in the world, when, on Jan. 14, Alex Metherell walked up to him at a meeting in Louisville and handed him a leather folder full of postcards.
Metherell, a doctor and engineer from California and a commissioner to the 2002 Assembly, had been working intensely for months to collect enough signatures to bring the Assembly back into session — something that, in Presbyterian history, has never been done. But Metherell testified that he believes the Assembly must do something to address what he sees as growing and unapologetic defiance of the PC(USA)’s constitutional standards regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians — something that, if left unchallenged, he said, can “ultimately destroy the whole church.”
By Jan. 15, the day after Metherell appeared in Louisville, things were already getting murky. Who was acting properly, and who was twisting the rules, is something the judicial commission will have to determine. Abu-Akel testified that he’d already instructed the necessary people to begin making arrangements for a reconvened Assembly. If the signatures were there, he was willing to do it. But Metherell then sent an e-mail to Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, saying that a commissioner named Brian Janssen apparently had told him previously (although Metherell said he does not remember the conversation and was “very shocked” to hear from Janssen) that he didn’t want to be on the list. Metherell testified that he felt ethically obligated to report that — although he also contends that once someone signed the petition, that name could not be removed. Kirkpatrick also got messages that day in the names of several other commissioners, saying they wanted their names off the list too. So Abu-Akel testified he then felt obligated to verify the names that Metherell had submitted to see if those commissioners really did desire to reconvene the Assembly.
Jensen has criticized the moderator: for, among other things, writing a letter “imploring” commissioners in the name of Jesus Christ and for the good of the PC(USA) not to call the Assembly back; for saying he had to give commissioners 120-days notice, because a constitutional interpretation was required, instead of just 60; and for asking commissioners not just if they’d signed postcards, but also asking if they still wanted the Assembly to come back — essentially, Jensen has argued, asking for a “revote.” On Jan. 27, Abu-Akel announced that the verification was complete and Metherell didn’t have enough signatures to force the Assembly to come back. By then, Pawson’s session had already filed its case.
Jensen, the Ohio session’s lawyer, accused Abu-Akel during the trial of “gross misstatements of fact” — he offered a detailed list of why he thinks that’s true. Abu-Akel and Kirkpatrick abandoned neutrality and impartiality “to engage in a campaign in the name of Christ, claiming exclusivity in the knowledge of what is best for our church,” Jensen said. But under the rules — what he called the “plain meaning” of the PC(USA) Constitution — “there’s no ambiguity. There’s no room for argument, there’s no equivocation, action was required, and it did not occur.”
Testifying through a videotaped deposition, Abu-Akel repeatedly was asked by Jensen whether a moderator should be neutral — and he responded by drawing a parallel between neutrality and perfection, saying that “nobody is neutral, only God almighty” but that as moderator, he tried to do the best job he could, to be impartial, to be willing to listen to all commissioners and to make sure they understood the business before them.
But Abu-Akel also said he sees himself as “a pastor for the commissioners and for our church,” and said he wrote to the commissioners, asking them not to spend the church’s time and money to call the Assembly back, because he wants the PC(USA) to focus on spiritual renewal, on unity and on mission, on doing God’s work in the world. “To me, the larger church is very important,” Abu-Akel said, adding that in the PC(USA) “we discuss issues, so I was sharing my point of view as a pastor.”
Judy L. Woods, a lawyer for Abu-Akel, said in her opening statement Monday that “it’s ironic that we’re here today disputing the technicalities of who signed a postcard when and the arcane procedures of calling a special Assembly” war is imminent in the Middle East. But the church resolves its differences with words, in an open and orderly process, not with bullets and missiles — an example to the world, Woods said.
She said later that Pawson’s church made “no good faith effort” to find out why Abu-Akel — who she called “a humble man of Christ” — was doing what he was doing, refusing to give the moderator more than just a few days to try to verify the signatures.
The PC(USA) has rules, and “we cannot allow a small vocal minority with smoke and mirrors or even leather-bound books to subvert them,” Woods said. No commissioners were coerced, she said; and while some did think it would be good if the General Assembly talked about constitutional defiance, they did not all have the desire, she said, to call the Assembly back “at any time, at any cost.”
It also became clear that not everyone agreed what signing one of Metherell’s postcards implied — whether that was, as he contends, casting a binding vote that could not be changed after he handed the postcards in to Abu-Akel.
o David Rodriguez, a pastor from California, testified that he signed the postcard because “I believe there is a constitutional crisis in our church” and “there’s a lot of pain and alienation in our church that needs to be addressed.” Rodriguez said he thought that with a special meeting, “those issues could be addressed and resolved,” and that he expected the special meeting to take place quickly. (In questioning another witness, judicial commission member Jane Fahey pointed out that Metherell’s postcards contained the language “urgent” and “please sign and return as soon as possible.”) But in the months following he began having second thoughts and “I regretted having signed the petition,” Rodriguez testified, saying he worried that some would use the special Assembly “as an excuse to further divide and alienate” the church. In response from a question from judicial commission member Patricia Norris, Rodriguez also said he never understood from the postcard that his signature was “binding and irrevocable.”
o Nancy Gillard, a pastor from Missouri, testified that when she got the postcard from Metherell last fall, she signed it immediately, thinking that she was saying, “Yes, we do have a problem” with constitutional defiance in the denomination, and “I want to be part of this conversation.” But Gillard said she never thought she was signing a petition or asking that the Assembly be called back into session — in fact, she disregarded a letter that Abu-Akel sent out in November regarding the situation because “I knew I had never signed a petition.” Gillard testified that when she got an e-mail from Metherell in January saying “congratulations,” they’d accumulated the signatures they needed to reconvene the Assembly, with her name on the list, “I responded immediately” by e-mail and “I began by saying I’m confused.” Gillard said she never got a response back from Metherell and “it was never my desire to have a special called meeting of the General Assembly.”
o Bill Duckworth, a pastor from Orlando, Fla., said he signed the petition assuming there’d be enough signatures within a few months at most to call the Assembly back, and “I had no idea it would be such a length of process” as it was. But as time went on, “I was beginning to see the amount of time and energy it would take from my ministry and others, and was beginning to doubt it was a worthwhile activity,” he testified, adding that by then he expected Metherell’s effort to simply die for lack of support, and that he did not favor calling the Assembly back “the day before the next General Assembly.” Duckworth also said that by signing the postcard, he thought he was just stating his position, not signing a petition, and he assumed as time went on that Metherell wouldn’t get enough signatures and the meeting would not be held.
Several of the commissioners who signed the postcards and then changed their minds also testified that they’d been contacted recently by Metherell and asked to switch their position back again. Metherell has consistently maintained — and said again on the witness stand — that once the petition was signed, no “revoting” could or should be allowed, and Jensen emphasized that Metherell wasn’t trying to get commissioners to “revote” — he was trying to make the original signatures stick.
But Jensen also argued in his opening statement that commissioners who’d asked the Assembly to reconvene were lobbied hard to switch their position, that Kirkpatrick, “had his staff start calling commissioners, to personally argue that they should vote no,” that ministers called the elders from their churches to pressure them and that presbytery officials tried to influence the ministers who’d signed. Jensen told the judicial commission that Kirkpatrick and Abu-Akel “misled the commissioners” and “put a heavy thumb on the scale.”
Yet, according to the commissioners’ testimony, Metherell was doing some lobbying of his own.
On March 10, he sent an e-mail to Duckworth, (Rodriguez testified that he received a similar one), stating that Pawson, the pastor from Ohio, “has come under attack from his presbytery” for bringing the case against Kirkpatrick and Abu-Akel, “all because he and his session are taking a lone stand in the denomination to uphold the Constitution.”
The e-mail states that “we don’t think Westminster will win this case” and that the session and Pawson “are being set up for failure. The press criticism of Louisville’s handling of the situation has placed them in the position of looking bad if the PJC had refused to hear the case,” so the PJC narrowed the issues that could be considered at trial and “we think they will decide the case in favor of the moderator and then be able to tell everyone that they gave Westminster a `fair’ hearing.”
But if enough commissioners switched back their positions, Metherell wrote, he’d have enough signatures to require Abu-Akel to call the Assembly back and “all of the parties will avoid getting major egg on their faces.”
The judicial commission also heard testimony involving Angela Davis, a commissioner from Cleveland, one of those whose name was on Metherell’s petition and whose name is now not being counted as a supporter of calling the Assembly back. Davis’ pastor — Andy Jacob from Immanuel church, a small congregation — testified that he, and not Davis, actually signed her name to a letter a letter faxed to denominational headquarters in January stating that she did not want her name on the list.
But Jacob also testified that he wrote the letter at Davis’ request, that she had told him last fall that she did not favor calling the Assembly back and when he told her that her name was on the list as having signed the petition, “she expressed to me that she did not know how that had happened.” Jacob testified that he “absolutely never” tried to influence Davis — he was just trying to help out a parishioner who was recovering from surgery, was unable to leave her apartment, and was “very vehement” that he help her send a letter to get her name taken off the list, although she also told him she might have made a mistake and inadvertently signed the postcard.
Jacob also testified that he was “in a hurry” the day he sent the letter, and forgot to indicate on the letter that he was signing Davis’ name for her. Jensen argued that “there’s an inherent reason to distrust the testimony” and that he had expected to have a chance to question Davis herself, who’d been called as a witness.
But Woods said that Davis refused to come to testify, indicating “that she was thoroughly disgusted with the process and she intends to leave the church.”
It was not clear, from the judicial commission’s questioning of the lawyers and the witnesses, how the panel is leaning — but its members did ask a barrage of tough questions, of both sides.
Patricia Norris, who referred to Metherell as Jensen’s “somewhat kind of pseudo-client” (Metherell and Jensen belong to the same church and confer closely together), told Jensen she’s troubled that he argued the Assembly must be called back when Metherell hit the “magic number” of commissioners needed (out of 554 commissioners, he needed 25 elders and 25 ministers, representing at least 15 presbyteries and 5 synods, and he turned in to Abu-Akel a list of 57 names). Metherell “had four or five months to go around the country,” collecting signatures, so why wasn’t it reasonable for Abu-Akel, when the confusion arose, to write the commissioners who’d signed asking “do you want to be part of the magic number?”
And Fahey questioned Woods about why, when the letter was sent out asking the commissioners if they did want to call the Assembly back, it was only sent to the 57 commissioners instead of all 554 — shouldn’t they all have been given a chance to consider the question, Fahey asked.
If the judicial commission were to order the Abu-Akel to call the Assembly back, the moderator would still have to give the commissioners at least 60 days’ notice — which means the denomination likely would enjoy back-to-back assemblies in Denver in May. The judicial commission’s decision is expected to be released Wednesday or Thursday.
