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GA 2010: Bolbach elected moderator on fourth ballot; Whitsitt is vice moderator

MINNEAPOLIS – After four rounds of voting and some worry about technical difficulties with the electronic voting keypads, the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected as its moderator Cynthia Bolbach, a lawyer and the only elder in a six-person field.

            Bolbach – tall, plain-spoken, with a crisp sense of humor – brings to the office decades of experience in church life, from the congregational to the national levels of the denomination.[caption id="attachment_21910" align="alignright" width="426"]Cynthia Bolbach, newly elected moderator, addresses the General Assembly in Minneapolis. Photo by Erin Dunigan.[/caption]

            She has served as a deacon and clerk of session for her congregation, First Church in Arlington, Va., as well as moderator of National Capital Presbytery, chair of the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry and its interim general presbyter. She also serves as co-moderator of the Form of Government Task Force, that is bringing to this assembly a proposal – four years in the making – to streamline and make more flexible the denomination’s Form of Government.

            After the fourth ballot, the candidate with the second-highest number of votes was Julia Leeth, a pastor from California, who earlier in the evening said she guessed she might be among the most conservative of the candidates.

 In that final ballot, Bolbach received 325 votes (51 percent) and Leeth 148 votes (23 percent). But Bolbach led from the start, winning 149 votes (30 percent) in the first ballot – with things splitting neatly from there, with four of the other five candidates drawing from 71 to 76 votes apiece that time around.

            Before her election, Bolbach used a Biblical analogy – drawn from the New Testament story of the friends who raised up a paralyzed friend, cut a hole in the roof of a building where Jesus was inside, and dropped their friend down into the room with Jesus.

            The PC(USA) is paralyzed by uncertainty and fear about how to proclaim the gospel in the 21st century, Bolbach said. “You and I are the friends who can help our  paralyzed denomination see Jesus,” and be healed, she told the commissioners.

            Giving her position on same-sex unions, in response to a question from a young adult advisory delegate, Bolbach said she would pose another question in response. “Who poses the greatest threat to the institution of marriage?” she asked. Is it the television talk-show host Larry King, married eight times? Or the gay couple, together for 62 years and recently married?

            Bolbach said she isn’t sure the PC(USA) is ready to support same-sex unions. But she said Presbyterian pastors are “caught in a quandary” in states that have legalized same-sex marriage, and need some guidance from the denomination.

            Bolbach was selected from among six candidates – with the others being Leeth, of Santa Barbara Presbytery; James A. Belle, a pastor from Philadelphia Presbytery; Jin S. Kim, a pastor from the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area; Maggie Palmer Lauterer, a pastor from Western North Carolina Presbytery; and Eric Nielsen, a pastor from Wisconsin, in Northern Waters Presbytery.

Going into the evening, many were expecting a long night – the sheer number of candidates meant it took some time for the commissioners to get a sense of each of them, their personalities and positions.

“I believe that the Spirit means for you to have heard six voices tonight,” Lauterer said early on – six geographically and theologically diverse voices, as she put it, “all answering the call of the church.”

            The overall tone of the evening was mutually respectful – and commissioners got a clear sense of that when Christy Fisher, a theological advisory delegate from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, asked the candidates “what is at stake in the church if you are not elected moderator?”

            Among their answers:

– Belle: “I definitely don’t think I am the panacea for anything. Jesus Christ is.”

– Bolbach: “What is at stake if I am not elected moderator? Total chaos,” she said, deadpan, as the room erupted in laughter.  “I of course am kidding.”

– Nielsen: “I never thought I’d be standing here, honestly.” Last spring, when several people asked him to consider standing for the office, “that came totally out of right field.” But when so many ask, “as good Reformed Presbyterians you give that prayerful consideration, so here I am,” without an agenda, Nielsen said. “I know the church is going to be in good hands, whoever is selected.”

 

For a brief shiver of time earlier this year, it seemed like the moderator’s election might be a choice among two or three, but then candidates started popping up coast-to-coast. In the end, there were five pastors, one elder; three men, three women; some diversity in age and ethnicity; and some last-minute scurrying among candidates trying to figure out what Twitter is all about.

Bolbach was the first candidate to stand for election, announcing last fall. Her vice moderator is Landon Whitsitt, a 33-year-old pastor of First Church in Liberty, Mo., near Kansas City, who also has been involved with Presbymergent and produces the God Complex Radio podcast with Bruce Reyes-Chow, moderator of the 218th General Assembly, and Carol Howard Merritt, a pastor and writer from Washington, D.C.

 

            After being installed, Bolbach told the assembly she was humbled and honored to be elected. “I also hope that my middle name doesn’t become Florida” – a reference to the repeated difficulties with the voting keypads, which seemed at times not to be registering votes from some commissioners.

            Through a series of test votes, however, using a noncontroversial question about whether commissioners had eaten dinner earlier that night, Reyes-Chow and representatives of the Office of the General Assembly tried to resolve those technical difficulties.

            “It creates a sense of unease if commissioners don’t feel the vote is being recorded fully,” Bolbach said during a news conference following her election. In the end, however, she said the difficulties were worked through and people seemed satisfied.

            When the assembly ends, Bolbach plans to go back to her employer – BNA Inc., an employee-owned company which publishing journals on legal and regulatory matters such as banking law and health care – to discuss whether she will move to a part-time schedule or retire. Bolbach, 62, has worked for the firm for 38 years.

            While she is proud that she will serve the church as moderator as a ruling elder, Bolbach said it would be difficult for an elder who has a job but doesn’t work for the church to take the time that a pastor, a teaching elder, might be able give to the position, “which I see as a problem.”

            Bolbach also said she will ask Whitsitt to preside later this week when the assembly considers any action on the proposed Form of Government revisions.

            Following her election, Bolbach was joined on stage by her nephews; supporters from her presbytery and elsewhere; and a life-sized, cardboard cutout of the theologian John Calvin, which had earlier stood in the booth where she had distributed out information on her candidacy. “Lots of people,” Bolbach said, “wanted to get their photo taken with John.”

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