Depends on with whom you’re talking. Some folks care more about what’s on sale at Target than stuff like that. But others — particularly those active in denominational politics — are paying close attention to who will be chosen as the top ecclesiastical officer of the 2.4-million-member denomination, and what they see is this:
• The race has drawn four candidates, incumbent Clifton Kirkpatrick, and three challengers; Bob Davis, a pastor and lawyer from Escondido, Calif.; Linn “Rus” Howard, a pastor from Venetia, Pa.; and Alex Metherell, a physician, engineer and elder from Laguna Beach, Calif.
• All three of the challengers are from the evangelical side of the church and are seen as more conservative than Kirkpatrick. They could split the vote, or they could give evangelicals collectively more time in the spotlight to present their concerns. “It doesn’t hurt to have that many candidates unless they’re so outrageous they embarrass the evangelical side,” said Jim Berkley, issues ministry director for Presbyterians for Renewal.
• Some evangelicals remain deeply distressed about Kirkpatrick’s performance — and particularly over what they view as his lukewarm enforcement of the PC(USA)’s constitutional standards regarding the ordination of gays and lesbians. They want no equivocation, and insist that Kirkpatrick should speak loudly and strongly to tell the church that the ordination of gays and lesbians who are not chaste will not be tolerated. Throughout his last term, Kirkpatrick has been a target over and over of the evangelicals’ wrath and criticism, and this election promises more of the same.
• Kirkpatrick — tall, genial, experienced in church life and committed to the PC(USA) — has many supporters and much goodwill in the church, and is considered by some to be the front-runner. The election won’t come until Friday, July 2, the seventh day of the Assembly. By that time commissioners will have had plenty of time to see Kirkpatrick in action as he provides parliamentary advice to the Assembly. Some say that puts him at a distinct advantage to win a third four-year term.
• But some of the others have name-recognition too — and a willingness to take a stand for principle’s sake, regardless of the fallout. Last year, Metherell nearly forced Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 2002 General Assembly, to call that Assembly back into session to talk about constitutional defiance. And Howard was one of five pastors who came to Louisville in October 2002 intending to nail “A Call to Confession and Repentance” to the front door of the denominational headquarters along the Ohio River — sort of a reworking of Martin Luther’s famous act of conscience at Wittenberg Cathedral. The nails wouldn’t work on the PC(USA)’s glass doors, so they had to use tape, but they still got attention for their argument that the PC(USA) is “irretrievably apostate under current management.”
Howard told a newspaper reporter from Pittsburgh earlier this year that he doesn’t expect to win, but the campaign will give him a platform for expressing his views, so even losing the election could gain some mileage for the evangelicals.
There’s also a wild-card element this year. Near the end of May, the Presbyterian Lay Committee announced it would hold a “debate” for the stated clerk candidates on June 9 in Kansas City. Because of scheduling conflicts, Kirkpatrick will not attend. The audience will not be General Assembly commissioners, the only ones who will vote in the actual election, but whoever shows up that night. Parker Williamson, the Lay Committee’s chief executive officer, said in an e-mail announcing the debate that a transcript of the event will be given to all General Assembly commissioners. How closely they will be listening, however, is another question. Some see the stated clerk’s election as essentially a referendum on the health of the PC(USA).
Others see a lot of politicking and a desire to rile up the church, but say it’s not fair to blame Kirkpatrick for all that’s wrong with the PC(USA). If the denomination loses another 40,000 members, for example, whose fault is that? If another person were elected stated clerk, would all those people stay?
There’s no doubt, however, that that the election for stated clerk will hit directly on a few of the denomination’s hot-button issues. Should the PC(USA) ordain gays and lesbians who are not celibate? What should happen to those who try to defy the denomination’s current standards, which limit ordination to those who practice fidelity if they’re married or chastity if they’re not?
Should congregations that are convinced the denomination is off-course be allowed to withhold per capita financial support? Kirkpatrick drew fire when he wrote in 2002 that pastors who encourage their congregations to leave the PC(USA) or to withhold per capita payments were violating their ordination vows — and the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission has ruled that congregations can’t be forced to pay per capita.
What’s fair and what’s out of bounds in these fights?
Some, including Berkley, have concerns about the stated clerk election process. Commissioners will be introduced to the candidates on the second day of the Assembly, when they’re nominated. The election, however, is five days later, giving Kirkpatrick ample time to show his parliamentary skills before the election. “To me it’s not a particularly good process,” Berkley said in an interview. “It’s really biased towards the incumbent.” Of the three challengers to Kirkpatrick, Davis — who’s also executive director of a renewal organization, Presbyterian Forum — has received the broadest support to date. He’s been endorsed by Voices of Orthodox Women and by the Presbyterian Coalition.
The Covenant Network of Presbyterians does not intend to make an endorsement, nor does Presbyterians for Renewal.
Kirkpatrick was selected for re-election Jan. 28 by the General Assembly’s Stated Clerk Review and Nomination Committee, which was chosen by the Assembly in 2003 and which concluded that Kirkpatrick “has fulfilled the responsibilities of General Assembly Stated Clerk with competence, with much pastoral sensitivity, with appropriate firmness and tact, with a large measure of common sense and uncommon wisdom, with obvious Christian faith and conviction.”
Others aren’t nearly so positive about Kirkpatrick’s performance.
Metherell, for example, argues in his background materials that the PC(USA) has become “pseudo-Presbyterian,” that it’s divided into two warring and irreconcilable camps and that Kirkpatrick has “spent the time and treasure of our church pursuing anti-American and leftist secular political agendas,” and “has utterly failed to uphold the (denomination’s) Constitution in any meaningful way.”
Jerry Andrews, a pastor from suburban Chicago and co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition, said he finds Kirkpatrick to be “a good person,” accessible and willing to listen, and said “most of us would be very happy with Cliff if Cliff would do things differently.”
But “I’ve given up hope that the stated clerk’s office will play that role at this difficult time in the life of the church,” Andrews said in an interview. “It may take different leadership.”
Andrews said he’s not looking for Kirkpatrick to be the chief enforcer of the denomination’s Constitution, but he does want the stated clerk to be the “chief instructor” — to tell committees on ministry and others who need to hear that the PC(USA) Constitution already is clear that sexually-active gays and lesbians cannot be ordained, and that “open defiance and willful ignoring” of those standards will not be tolerated.
Instead of stating point-blank that the PC(USA)’s ordination standards are what they are and should be followed, and spelling out the consequences if they are not, Kirkpatrick’s more inclined to shade the message, to say that “while this standard is still here it should be followed,” Andrews said. For example, Kirkpatrick wrote in a January 2002 letter to presbytery and synod stated clerks that the fidelity and chastity standard is the law of the church and should be upheld “until such time” when an amendment is approved to change it.
Andrews characterized that approach as a “stall tactic” and “temporizing that we’ve never heard from the stated clerk’s office, ever … We find that very problematic and it’s all over their language.”
And Andrews is one of those who think the issue of constitutional defiance is serious and cannot be ignored. In permanent judicial commission rulings involving ordination standards, “we feel we’re about zero for 10 now,” he said. “We think the Constitution is clear as a bell,” but the church courts are finding otherwise. And even when the evangelicals feel they’ve won a case, “absolutely nothing comes from it,” Andrews said, citing the case of Christ church in Burlington, Vt., which was told it could not defy the Constitution but where evangelicals are convinced that no serious change-of-heart has taken place.
Andrews also contends that Kirkpatrick’s heart is not in constitutional enforcement, but in his ecumenical role nationally and around the world — perhaps an outgrowth of Kirkpatrick’s earlier work the former director of the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministry Division. “His audience,” Andrews said, “is outside the PC(USA).”
Davis, one of Kirkpatrick’s challengers, is traveling around to congregations talking about a new vision of what the Presbyterian church should be — saying “it’s not going to be as centralized” and that there should be a broader sense of ecumenism that would include parachurch groups and networks of Christians organized around shared commitments and ministry interests.
Berkley, of Presbyterians for Renewal, wants Presbyterian ecumenical involvement to go beyond the National Council of Churches or World Council of Churches — which he describes as “a very narrow strand” of Christianity — to include “a broader representation dealing with Catholics and Baptists and the National Association of Evangelicals.”
In an interview, during a week in which he’d had conversations with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York and with the Cumberland Presbyterians in Memphis, Kirkpatrick said he agreed with the need for a broader ecumenical approach. He sees real progress being made to achieve that, although he contends that continued involvement with groups such as the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the National Council of Churches is “extremely critical” too. As examples of that progress, he cited Presbyterian involvement with the developing group, Christian Churches in the U.S.A., which includes Pentecostals, evangelicals and Catholics, and a new national interreligious dialogue about peace in the Middle East, which involves Catholics, Muslims, mainline Protestants, Jews and evangelicals.
Asked to grade his performance as stated clerk, Kirkpatrick laughed gently and declined to do so, but said, “I hope I’ve done this with some faithfulness and done it fairly well.” He said he thought “long and hard” about whether to seek a third term, taking a sabbatical last summer, for the first time in more than 20 years, to ask, “What do you do when you grow up? What is God calling me to? … What is the next step in my ministry?”
The continuing criticism of him has been difficult, Kirkpatrick said, adding “if you’re a person who doesn’t like conflict, this is a strange job to be in.” But he also said he’s never been in “more of a place of love and affirmation,” which he particularly felt during the visits he and John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, made over the past few years to 115 presbyteries and synods, and where Kirkpatrick truly sensed “God is alive and people were struggling with important things,” with how to be faithful to the gospel and build up the church and care for the poor.
Kirkpatrick said he continues to feel called to be part of that work.
Asked what the impact of having three other candidates in the race will be, Kirkpatrick said the first time he was nominated, eight years ago, there were five candidates. “I think the process will work,” he said. “It just might take a little longer.” 
