When reunion was an accomplished fact, and the dust and rhetoric surrounding it had settled down somewhat, a group emerged to question the way things were working out. They called themselves the “Genevans.”
In the beginning, at St. Simons Island, Ga., in 1990, they didn’t even have a name. Four presbytery executives, two of whom drifted away from the group later, invited participants in a conference on human sexuality to stay for an informative question-and-answer session after the conference. From then on, the Genevans’ purpose was to ask and answer questions about issues and actions in the new denomination.
They were opposed to top-down decision making that seemed to characterize the northern stream of the denomination. “Everybody has a right to know what is being proposed and all Presbyterians should be represented in the process,” the Genevans said.
One of the founders of the Genevans, David Snellgrove, said, “Presbyterians tend to make good decisions if they have good information.”
As the Genevans set about their task of getting accurate information and communicating it to presbyters and General Assembly commissioners, they were hoping to bring about a grass roots voice that was understood and practiced in the former southern part of the denomination. It is not that they believed commissioners voted the will of those back home. They sought the will of Jesus Christ. But they thought it wise to know the will of people in the pew.
The Genevans tried to free themselves from being branded a southern group; the group had some key members from outside the south and held meetings in Chicago and California as well as Atlanta and Dallas. But at the same time they were largely southern.
Snellgrove says that the Genevans were never an official organization. “We never had officers; and the group and its meetings were open to anyone who wanted to join or to find out what we were doing,” he added.
According to Snellgrove, Presbyterians were feeling locked out of the decision-making process and the Genevans tried to help them, to open up the process. He thinks that as the Genevans became successful in empowering Presbyterians, people in power were threatened and reacted accordingly.
Presbyterians today may not know the Genevans ever existed. There was a time when they were thought to be a thousand strong, although they were never more than 35 or 40 active participants. For a few years they made a real difference in what happened at meetings of the General Assembly as they helped commissioners find a way to do what they wanted to do.
Recently, Snellgrove, honorably retired parish minister, and presbytery and synod executive, said from his home in Batesville, Miss., “I wish some like-minded people would take up the Genevans banner again.”
Bob Taylor, who at the time of reunion was executive presbyter, stated clerk and treasurer of the old Piedmont Presbytery (Foothills Presbytery after the reunion) was a key organizer of the Genevans. He saw their role as helping those who did not have a voice at the Assembly gain a voice. He said by e-mail, “We were clear at the start … that what we wanted to do was basically be non-political. We wanted to help commissioners know how to get their concerns heard by the Assembly. We had discovered that commissioners who wanted to go along with ‘staff’ concerns could always find staff to help them out. We were concerned for those who wanted to go against the party line, and thus found no help from staff. We always said we would help out anyone who came regardless of where they stood on a position and whether we agreed with them or not.”
He also saw their role as helping the great center of the church have a voice in discussions that were often dominated by those at the political extremes. “Speaking only for myself, the ordination of gays was not the real issue to me. My concern was to keep the Church from splitting. I think Snellgrove and Mort [McMillan] also felt the same way. I saw the Genevans as reaching that great middle ground of moderates who had lost their voice in the Church.”
They saw as one of their main goals helping General Assembly Commissioners understand the issues before the Assembly. “One of things we wanted to do, and did, was to write accounts of the issues before Assembly, trying to give both sides of the issue and our view of what would happen if one side or the other passed.”
Barry VanDeventer, retired executive presbyter and stated clerk of Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery, was another player in the Genevans. “The top-down structure prevailed,” he said. “They had more people.”
When asked for his critique of the reunion, he said, “It’s turned out about the way I thought it would. It was not well thought out. We came together because a lot of people thought we ought to be together. The Book of Order was an amalgam of the two previous books. But all kinds of issues were left to be addressed later. And almost all of them proved less than fruitful.” He cited the pensions issue, saying that the two systems were blended sooner than had been said. “Most Presbyterian Church US (PCUS) ministers do not realize that their pensions are smaller than they would have been,” he said. Those with annuities in the PCUS were not asked for permission to change them to a pension system. “This characterized the high handedness with which it would be done,” he said.
He also said that seminaries were moved further away from the local church and the presbyteries, weakening their connectedness and support. He said, “The role of middle governing bodies across the board has diminished, and their credibility and effectiveness has diminished. Synods were made larger and diminished in effectiveness. Not all of this is because of reunion, but that is just what has happened.”
But the reunion was not all negative for VanDeventer. One of the more positive things, he said, was that in the old denominations, “decisions of the Assembly Permanent Judicial Commissions (PJC) were always preliminary decisions and had to be confirmed by the General Assembly, and it became a political football. To allow the PJC, which better understands the constitution, to make those decisions alone was a step forward. …
“The people who are of a totally political mindset are unhappy with that. That troubles me. We need to be thinking, ‘What is really the right thing? What should we be about?’ The Church has become very political. It was always political in that people coalesced, but now that has become permanent. You have parties. They are unbending. They become angry with each other.”
In conclusion, he said, “I voted against it, but I am here to stay. I never once thought about leaving. But sometimes it breaks my heart.”
Jane Hines of Nashville, Tenn., recently retired as director of communications for Synod of Living Waters. Bill Lancaster is associate for new church development, Foothills Presbytery, Simpsonville, S.C.
