Most of our church members know that the stated clerk is not just a guy with an eyeshade reviewing reports, though that part of the job was and is important. What makes the position so important is its leadership role, and that relates to the way the Clerk embodies and implements the Church’s public witness. So we must look first at a definition of public witness, and then look at what current and past stated clerks have been doing.
By definition, public witness is a larger category than social witness and includes at least four main categories:
1. Influencing public opinion by presenting persuasive, credible, ethically-grounded stances;
2. Appealing to the faith and values of individuals, particularly in their church life;
3. Effecting specific policies, involving informed constituencies;
4. Exemplifying viable alternative visions grounded in the Gospel that contrast with the models of secular society, business, and government.
The Office of the General Assembly, focused in the elective office of the stated clerk, represents the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) internally and externally through a range of official and personal roles. Thus it relates to all four of the categories above. By virtue of its “church-wide,” or General Assembly-based, election, the Clerk may be legitimately considered the highest elected continuing representative of the Church, carrying administrative duties well beyond those of Moderator, whose role is almost entirely symbolic.
In terms of substance, the Clerk’s first responsibility is for the interpretation of the Constitution and the guidance of the Assembly and other Church councils (“courts” or governing bodies.) This means that the authority of Presbyterian “law” and of the Assembly itself must be supported by competence and wisdom in the Clerk’s office.
As a church of councils and not bishops, competence and consensus building are more important for us than charisma or particular theological approach (within some limits). The authority of the Assembly is based in its representing the full membership of the church through the distinctive pattern of half-lay and half-minister councils (presbyteries), indicating the extra weight given to pastoral and theological understanding in the church. In practice, the church is a shared identity based in common worship, mission, and symbols. The General Assembly as a gathering is, in fact, a crucial symbol as well as experience. The credibility of the denomination, like that of our local congregations, is based in memory and relationships — effective leadership means keeping enough continuity within change.
The PC(USA) is neither a voluntary organization nor a regulatory one, though it can look like either from reductionistic standpoints. The model of the Presbyterian Church is pre-eminently an educational model, a model of spiritual formation fairly dependent on the intellect and print culture. (This reflects the meaning of Torah as instruction and the “third use of the law,” important in Reformed social ethics.) One of the goals of education has been to produce wise self-governing groups, groups traditionally guided by clerks. The Church’s mission interest in schools, curriculum, and publishing reflects our educational commitment. The Office of the General Assembly reflects the functioning “chain of clerks” throughout our system — a set of identifiable roles that have developed over time. If it seems overly regulatory in maintaining church-wide standards (mostly mutual accountability through reporting), it may be that other unifying functions, programs, and offices of the denomination have gotten weak or been neglected.
Here is an assessment of the Office of the General Assembly (OGA)’s overall “public witness” now, in terms of the four categories suggested:
1. Influencing public opinion. The core to the stated clerk’s credibility is not simply continuity, but distinguished predecessors who developed high expectations for the position and its relation to other parts of the church. (I have written in the OGA on-line magazine, Perspectives, on the work of Eugene Carson Blake and William P. Thompson, and have also known James Andrews’ work.) Blake and Thompson expanded the Clerk’s role within the Church through manuals and guides. They built up the importance of the General Assembly as an annual event by bringing forward the creativity of the agencies and “heroes” of the church. Above all, these recent clerks played a significant prophetic role in the civil rights, peace, and social justice struggles of the 1950-2000 period, speaking out on behalf of the Church. In this their work reinforced, and was dependent upon, the votes of the Assembly commissioners and the work of many volunteers and staff who prepared studies, policy statements and participated in programs of the church.
The de-centralization of the former UPC since the early 1970’s (when the former PCUS may have in some ways been centralizing), affected the relative strength of boards, agencies, and synods. The Assembly was and still is a place where the seminaries’ thinking, and the projects of the agencies, interact with the lives of congregations. The OGA has retained general public witness credibility and even believability in part because it has not been re-organized too often and retains clear channels to the churches. The shift to biennial Assemblies will both weaken the influence of the Clerk’s office and make it more needed in the “off-year.” At the same time, the 50 percent cutback of this symbolic and unifying event will weaken more the less visible parts of the denomination, and the internal “national” culture of the church will be weakened most of all. (This is not to argue that every-year Assemblies should have the same format; alternating educational or program Assemblies have also been recommended, and at church-related, “green” locations.)
2. Appealing to faith and values of individuals. Here the stated clerk makes his or her appeal partly by positive personal example, and partly by the office’s ability to tell the story of why it or “the Church” does what it does. While the clerk’s ability to affect membership growth, for example, is very limited, as the one who reports the numbers, the clerk identifies him or herself with the struggle for membership everywhere. The Office of the Clerk must speak to the key needs of the church, which is one reason why creating a joint office of vocation (minister selection) with the General Assembly Council has seemed a good idea.
3. Effecting specific policy objectives. Here the OGA has worked well with the church’s program units, particularly in Social Justice and Peacemaking, such as Corporate Social Witness (now taking new form), and the United Nations and Washington offices. This means judicious choices of what coalitions to join, which ecumenical ventures to invest in, how to bring together other agencies of the church (all, in theory, accountable to the General Assembly), and how to “bring into the Assembly” persons of church-wide concern across the church. These persons, in turn, help identify persons in their areas, and this connectivity of church undergirds formal statements of policy. Adding a public witness advisor helps all of this. (Due to my own brief tenure in Louisville, I cannot address what joint policy coordination there may be between the OGA and the GAC; obviously, these should be complementary in their leadership).
4. Exemplifying alternative visions. The Clerk is distinctive as the de facto “head of communion,” partly due to the insistence on theological as well as managerial rationale for what is done in relating to other churches. Ecumenical commitment can never, in fact, be based primarily on efficiencies of scale or maximizing public witness impact. The stated clerk’s effectiveness reflects his or her integrity or faithfulness to the fundamentally alternative vision of the one global Body of Christ, the church that reflects God’s sovereign transcendence of all nationalisms. Practically, the OGA appears to try to function in a fairly non-hierarchical way, which also reflects Gospel values. In terms of causes and courageous individuals to lift up, the General Assembly has great blessing power as a “round table” for recognition and commissioning. The OGA has had a great track record here in focusing on the functional and healthy parts of our family system, working well with everyone from local arrangements committees to overseas ecumenical colleagues to broaden the church’s horizons and remind it of its full calling.
[A fuller description of the four categories of analysis is provided in “Changes in Ecumenical Public Witness, 1967-90,” in Dieter T. Hessel, ed., The Church’s Public Role (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993).]
Christian T. Iosso is coordinator of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
