The report from the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (PUP) has been released (www.pcusa.org/peaceunitypurity/resources/fullfinalreport .pdf) and is currently available both on the web and in booklet form. This is a long document (45 pages), and the main points are not immediately apparent. Readers can easily be deterred. Perhaps they might find some benefit in a little guidance on how to read the Report.
1. Go for the bold.
The place to start when you are reading a General Assembly document is with the bold-print recommendations. These are what will actually effect action and cause change in the church. Everything else is background and not authoritative. In the PUP Report as currently printed, the recommendations are found at the back. So skip over the first 31 pages and go straight to Section V, Recommendations, if you want to see what the General Assembly will actually be acting on.
Even in Section V, you will have to separate the bold-type action items from the supporting rationale. If you make these distinctions, you will find that the 45 pages become much more manageable. They all boil down to a couple of pages of bold print that will set policy for the church.
2. Consider the verbs.
The second thing to do with any General Assembly document is to focus on the verbs. These tell you the kind of action that’s being proposed. Some verbs are weak: urge, encourage, suggest, recommend. These do not carry the weight of a directive. Other verbs are strong: direct, instruct, mandate, adopt. These verbs should get our attention. Something is to be done. Life could be changing in the church.
3. Now let’s sort out the verbs in the PUP recommendations.
- Recommendation #1: “Strongly encourage”; even with the word “strongly,” it’s a weak recommendation.
- Recommendation #2: “Urge”; another weak verb and, therefore, another optional recommendation.
- Recommendation #3: “Commend for study”; this is very weak. Many things “commended for study” go quickly into oblivion.
- Recommendation #4: “Direct the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) and urge…other governing bodies.” Now we finally see a strong verb: “direct.” That means we’re getting to the meat of the matter. This one could bring some change. COGA is only directed to “explore” alternatives to parliamentary procedure, so change will depend on COGA’s disposition as it explores. This recommendation may not bring any change to the lower governing bodies, as they are only “urged” to “explore.”
- Recommendation #5: “That the General Assembly adopt the following authoritative interpretation of Section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order”: Now here’s some really strong stuff, at last. We’re going to adopt something; it’s going to be authoritative, and it deals with our constitution. Every Presbyterian should sit up and take notice when he or she hears that kind of language. This authoritative interpretation could change our lives, at every level of the church.
- Recommendation #6: “Strongly encourages”: Now we’re back to the weak stuff. Even the General Assembly itself doesn’t have to pay attention when it “encourages” something. The 2006 Assembly would be perfectly free to adopt the PUP Report, with this “strong encouragement,” and then ignore its own encouragement.
The Assembly could adopt the PUP Report and also propose deleting G-6.0106b. There are large bodies of people, such as the Covenant Network, that will ask the Assembly to do just that. Since the PUP Report and the overtures dealing with G-6.0106b are likely to be sent to two separate committees, this outcome is quite possible.
Note also that recommendation #6 is made logically contingent upon Recommendation #5. So #6 does not really stand on its own. It’s just a subsidiary point.
- Recommendation #7: “Recommends” that the Assembly answer various past overtures and resolutions with the PUP Report. This is just parliamentary housekeeping.
Of the seven recommendations, only two have strong language that demands our attention: #5 especially, and #4 to a lesser extent. Even when we have only barely touched upon the substance of these recommendations, we can safely make a prediction: The debate about the PUP Report will center primarily on Recommendation #5, and secondarily on Recommendation #4. The language gives it away: #5 is the bottom line, the centerpiece, the heart of the Report.
Another clue to the importance of Recommendation #5 is its length. The bold print is twice as long as for any other recommendation. Moreover, the rationale for the recommendation comprises almost half of the entire recommendations section. The Task Force members obviously knew that this proposed authoritative interpretation was where the big debate would be, and they wanted to lay out all their arguments. They didn’t need that kind of space for their other recommendations.
4. A final note on ambiguities.
There are different readings of this Report. Presbyterians with a more “progressive” mindset will not read some passages—such as the crucial Recommendation #5—in the same way as those with a more “orthodox” mindset. I suspect that this ambiguity may be a deliberate strategy of the Task Force. At points where its members may have disagreed, they may have used ambiguous language to cover over those disagreements. Ambiguity, however, is no virtue when we are offering authoritative interpretations of the church’s constitution to set policy for its governing bodies and ordained officers.
This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 11, No. 5 (Nov/Dec 2005).
