Foothills Presbytery in South Carolina has submitted a series of overtures that would redefine the work of the General Assembly. Their aim seems to be to reduce the amount of controversial positions and amendments sent into the life of the church, many of which Foothills Presbytery regards as divisive and conducive to discord.
I applaud them for offering their thought and prayer to the church. At the same time, I believe these overtures suffer from a number of critical weaknesses that ought to give pause to commissioners to the 222nd General Assembly this summer.
The overtures can be found in their entirety here on the presbytery website.
The manual for the 22nd General Assembly (2016) can be found here on the PC(USA) website.
Overture 1
Overture #1 would amend G-3.0503 to require that each GA will be organized around one of the six “Great Ends of the Church” (F-1.0304). Every third GA (or every sixth year) will be reserved for consideration of amendments to the constitution. In order to be considered in this sixth year, overtures would have to have the “endorsement” (the constitutional term is “concurrence”, see G-3.0302d) of one-third of the presbyteries — or 57 presbyteries. Overtures that have received the concurrence of two-thirds (115) of the presbyteries may be considered at the next GA after receiving the 115 concurrences.
I see four major problems with this proposal:
- The Book of Order’s organizing rubric for the work of all councils of the church, including the Assembly, is not F-1.0304 but F-1.0303, the Reformation Notes (see G-3.0101, G-3.0201, 3.0301, G-3.0401, and G-3.0501). To require that the assembly organize its work according to a different rubric introduces conflicts within its constitutional mandate. The Reformation Notes — proclamation, sacraments, covenant community — have not only deep historical value but broad currency in the Reformed tradition. By contrast, the six Great Ends have currency within the PC(USA) only over the last century and truly only over the last 35 years.
- Restricting the business of the assembly to a predetermined focus on one of the Great Ends places an unwarranted limitation on the freedom and ability of the assembly to exercise the broad range of responsibilities identified in G-3.0501c.
- Reserving consideration of constitutional amendments to every third assembly would mean that amendments to the constitution would be considered only once in six years unless there was a virtual prior guarantee of passage on the basis of having accumulated “endorsements” from 116 presbyteries. Such delay runs the risk of squelching the voice of the Spirit as it speaks to and through the voice of the people of God in the moments when the Spirit’s concern is most pointed.
- Most significantly, changing the threshold of presbytery concurrence may open the door to widespread politicking among presbyteries prior to the assembly in an effort to secure sufficient concurrences to bring a matter to the floor. The creation of such a high threshold of concurrence amounts to presbytery plebiscite on an amendment before it is first considered by the assembly itself.
Overture 2
Overture #2 would amend the assembly’s manual, Standing Rule F.5, to require that any new social witness policy have the concurrence of one-third of the presbyteries before consideration by the assembly. The effect of this overture would likely be to limit severely the General Assembly’s ability and freedom to make statements on behalf of the church in matters of social witness policy. In so doing, it flies in the face of the core responsibilities of the assembly to provide “encouragement, guidance, and resources to presbyteries in the areas of mission, prophetic witness” and to discern and present “matters of truth and vision that may inspire, challenge, and educate both church and world” (G-3.0501a).
Overture 3
Overture #3 seeks “to temporarily set aside” the guideline on Forming Social Policy in the GA manual and “temporarily” retask the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) to “generate discussion” about social policy matters arising within the church. This “temporary” replacement of the policy is vague and open to wide-ranging interpretation. If the overture is truly intended as a moratorium on the function of the ACSWP, the assembly should add a sunset provision (meaning it would cease to have effect after a specific date). If this is a sleight-of-hand way to permanently incapacitate the ACSWP, the assembly should abandon the pretense of temporality and simply rewrite the section “Forming Social Policy.”
From a constitutional perspective, the requirement that one-third of the presbyteries concur with a proposed social witness policy statement before it is considered alters the historic relationship between the assembly and presbyteries, placing the presbyteries in a position of preventing an item of business from ever reaching the assembly.
Overture 4
Overture #4 would amend Standing Rule B.2 by adding “persons operating as chief executive officer of a presbytery” to the list of advisory delegates (voice and vote in committees, voice only on the plenary floor) at the GA. There is much to commend this proposal; there is no doubt that those who serve in presbytery leadership are among the church’s wisest servants. Still, the assembly would be wise to weigh how much voice and — in the case of committee meetings — vote it wishes to grant to employed conciliar staff.
Overture 5
Overture #5 would amend G-6.04, the process for amending the Book of Order in two ways: 1) by raising the threshold for approval of amendments from a majority to a two-thirds majority of presbyteries (87 to 115), and 2) requiring that a subsequent assembly “approve and enact” an amendment that has received presbytery approval. Raising the presbytery approval threshold means that there would be little practical distinction between amendments to The Book of Confessions and the Book of Order. Historically, the approval threshold for the Book of Order has been lower because the church has recognized that the governance documents of the church need to be more flexible and responsive to changing ecclesiastical circumstances than do its theological standards. Requiring approval and enactment of an amendment by a subsequent assembly creates yet another opportunity for political machinations that might serve to undercut the voice of the church as heard through the presbyteries.
Worthy of note is the small paragraph at the end of the overture that creates a new and unique process by which this proposed amendment would be adopted. This is flatly unconstitutional. The constitution may only be amended by the process stated within the constitution itself; the General Assembly may not substitute its own process for the constitutional requirements.
Overture 6
Overture #6 would amend G-3.0105 by creating the option for a presbytery to “abstain” when voting on a constitutional amendment proposed by the assembly. This change is unnecessary; a presbytery already has the right to abstain simply by taking no action on a particular amendment. The effect is the same as formal abstention.
Overture 7
Overture #7 would amend the Manual of the Assembly by adding a new section L.2 that affirms the right of presbyteries and synods to offer proposed amendments to the Manual of the Assembly. As the existence of this overture itself attests, the right to offer amendments to the manual already exists; indeed, it has been exercised in almost every assembly over the past 20 years. The change is both unnecessary and superfluous.
Overture 8
Overture #8 would amend the Book of Order by adding a new G-3.0502 affirming the authority of the assembly review its own manual and the right of presbyteries and synods to submit overtures to amend that manual. As with Overture #7, this proposal is unnecessary and superfluous. The assembly’s manual is the creation of the assembly; it has by definition the right to amend or replace it. And presbyteries have for many years overtured the assembly to make various changes to the manual, without benefit of constitutional guarantee.
These last three overtures demonstrate a disturbing tendency to write into the constitution specific matters that are either already covered in principle elsewhere or are of a process nature. The removal of such items was a major purpose of the revision of the Form of Government in 2010/2011. That revision provided us with a constitution that states the principles and standards of the church’s governance, but leaves the particular decisions about structures, policies and practices to the bodies that supervise them. The continued creation of overtures such as these will result in clogging the constitutional arteries with the sediment of unnecessary legislation, working against the very direction of the revisions.
PAUL HOOKER is a teaching elder member of New Covenant Presbytery and associate dean for ministerial formation and advanced studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
