Commentary: A Shutout and Other News from ACSWP

LOUISVILLE—A benefit of observing a meeting in Louisville is the opportunity to gather bits and pieces of Presbyterian news from the many staff members who drop in. When the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy met there June 20-23, the stream of staff members to the table was practically unending. Only seven ACSWP members were in attendance, but roughly a score of staff members joined their meeting for various periods of time. Each sat down as a welcomed participant, allowed to speak as freely and as often as the ACSWP members themselves.

By contrast, observers were relegated to a side table and could speak only to introduce themselves when prompted. Indeed, ACSWP once more closed its meeting to observers entirely for a period of time on June 23, citing “personnel” reasons. Since ACSWP actually performs no true personnel functions—such as hiring, disciplining, reviewing, or compensating employees—one wonders how the committee gets away with regularly closing its meetings under that pretext.

Chair Gordon Edwards simply announced that the next part of the meeting would be closed. Such a bald announcement is, itself, a violation of the Open Meeting Policy, which requires the chair to clearly state the purpose for closing the meeting, followed by the group’s open consideration and vote on the matter. When I had to ask the reason for closing the meeting, ACSWP Coordinator Chris Iosso first gave as an excuse “budget and personnel.”

“You can’t close a meeting for budgeting purposes,” I was forced to inform him, “only for personnel reasons.” Even after serial violations of the Open Meeting Policy, apparently both the ACSWP chair and coordinator had neither bothered to read nor strained to uphold the General Assembly policy.

I explained that closing the meeting would be legitimate if the committee were determining staff salaries, “but you guys don’t determine salaries.” Then their story changed. The closure was for “personnel” matters, I was told. When back in open session following the closed meeting, Edwards made no mention of items decided in the closed session, which announcement is, again, required. I had to ask Edwards privately upon adjournment, and I received in return only a gruff, “There were no decisions made.” Such abuse of the Open Meeting Policy is common and flagrant for ACSWP, and it is allowed if not abetted by the office of the Stated Clerk.

The Washington Office Logs In
Elenora Giddings Ivory, Director of the Presbyterian Washington Office, attended the ACSWP meeting as a liaison, and she reported on items on her plate. “We try to do things within a theological context,” she explained about her office. “When I hire [associates], I try to get people coming from a theological context, rather than people who know Capitol Hill.” Ivory elaborated that she feels it is better to try to orient knowledgeable Christians to politics than it is to give political wonks an education in Christian belief. One would only wish that the “theological context” from which Ivory draws were more orthodox and mainstream Presbyterian!

It sounds as if a number of ecumenical partner denominations are feeling the budget crunch that has thinned the Presbyterian payroll. Our Presbyterian Washington Office does not operate solo. Much of what it does is far more oriented to and coordinated with activists from other denominations than it is with the actual beliefs and concerns of Presbyterians in the pew. But the number of ecumenical collaborators appears to be diminishing.

“We have 50 percent less staff in all the offices to work on issues,” Ivory lamented. “The United Church of Christ office does not have a director now and has been without one for a couple of months. The ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) director left.” And the working groups for various issues have been weakened. “As you cut our funding,” she explained, “we have cut funding on some of the groups,” meaning they cannot cover all the political issues they would like to cover.

So how big of a constituency does the Washington Office have? How many people really get excited by the work? “We have about two thousand on the list—hard-core activists,” Ivory explained. “A few are there to watch what we’re doing and may not necessarily approve of the General Assembly policy,” she said.

It was interesting how Ivory equated Presbyterian opposition to anything her office says with “not necessarily approving of the General Assembly policy.” Far from her mind was any sense that her office might be stretching or cherry-picking policy, and that’s what some of us vigorously protest.

What are the die-hard Washington Office fans like? It turns out that four ecumenical partners joined the Washington Office in commissioning a survey of their distribution lists, and they got over seven thousand replies from their dedicated followers. They discovered that “readers tend to be a little older than the general population, and they tend to know the issues pretty well.”

About 99 percent on the list come from the Washington Office’s viewpoint, Ivory estimated. “But we are continuing to be challenged by a few people who don’t seem to like the General Assembly speaking out on issues.” Again, Ivory apparently could not fathom that Presbyterians could be upset not with the simple fact of speaking out, but with the Washington Office’s unique take on many issues, a viewpoint that badly misrepresents the bulk of more than two million Presbyterians.

“I want to reiterate my great appreciation for the Washington Office!” exclaimed ACSWP member Gloria Albrecht as Ivory concluded. Albrecht, however, would not be universally joined in that sentiment.

Virtual Publication for Human Rights
For many years, ACSWP used to coordinate an annual human rights report that was received by General Assembly, printed, and distributed to the churches. Area by geographic area, the report pointed to places where abuses were taking place. A few years back, the reports were no longer printed, but they remained in electronic distribution.

Then for the 2006 General Assembly, ACSWP decided to abandon the former concept—leaving Christians to suffer in places such as Southern Sudan and Korea without official General Assembly acknowledgment anymore—and focus on the present political claims of abuses by the apparent Great Satan of abusers, the United States. What was once a broad-based tool for international prayer and action became a narrowly focused political jab at the United States. That was the report the 217th General Assembly received and promptly forgot in 2006.

At this ACSWP meeting, the Human Rights Report again was a topic of discussion. What should it be for 2008?

ACSWP was not sure. “There’s no budget,” ACSWP member Bill Saint announced. “If it is going to be done at all, it must be done on volunteer time.” Previously, in the report’s original form, area coordinators from Worldwide Ministries Division would write up the sections about their parts of the world. However, they no longer have the time or inclination to do so.

“The Washington Office used to do the U.S.A. portion,” Elenora Giddings Ivory reminded the ACSWP members. “But that became very controversial,” she remembered. Why was it controversial, from Ivory’s viewpoint? “Because people didn’t want to admit that the U.S.A. had any human-rights problems.” Apparently, it was beyond Ivory’s comprehension that people of conscience might have objected when the Washington Office injected partisanship into the report by framing policies it opposed as human rights violations.

But then Ivory pretty much dismissed the utility of the papers for her office. “We don’t use the Human Rights Update,” she declared, “because it is not General Assembly policy.”

So what will ACSWP do? Ivory reminded the committee that the General Assembly had instructed it to focus on Columbia in the 2008 report. She also noted that under the old system, the material was often out of date. It would be written in November, printed in January, and used in June.

Thus a solution was proposed: Numerous updates on various regions could be posted on the Presbyterian World Missions web site. That way “they can be updated anytime,” Ivory noted. “It would help with the time-frame issue.”

So the recommendation was made that the report would not be produced as a distinct annual or biennial publication. Instead the area coordinators would post relevant information on their own sites when they had the time or inclination. ACSWP would take on the function of letting people know about the sites and steering them in the right direction. It remains to be seen what kind of attention to human rights this new approach will generate.

New Orleans for the Long Run
Jean Marie Peacock, 2004 General Assembly Vice Moderator and presently a presbytery staff member in New Orleans, visited ACSWP to talk about the state of New Orleans recovery. ACSWP will be meeting there next, October 24-28. It also has sprung the idea of yet another paper for the 2008 General Assembly about what we have learned (about how dreadful our country is) from the experience of New Orleans.

Peacock provided a wealth of information:

• Churches severely damaged by flood water are still being rebuilt.
• The population of New Orleans is now about half what it was prior to Katrina, and some churches have less than half of their members remaining.
• Jobs are leaving the city as companies leave the area.
• There has been an exodus of clergy from New Orleans. There were only seven Presbyterian pastors in greater New Orleans prior to Katrina.
• The healthcare system is broken. Even if a patient has resources and insurance, it is difficult to be seen by a physician.
• The schools and public transportation in particular still have not recovered.
• The Hispanic/Latino population has nearly doubled since Katrina. Many workers are flocking to the construction jobs, and then their families join them.
• One affected Presbyterian church has dissolved. Its property was sold to Baptists, who rebuilt the structure and have a functioning congregation where the Presbyterians could not make a go of it.

When Bill Saint asked  Peacock what she would consider the main problem remaining, the former vice moderator replied, “Moving into long-term recovery.” After the initial shock and immediate aftermath, somehow restoring normalcy and full recovery is difficult.

For instance, “about twelve different commercial areas are getting money with the hope that people will settle around them,” Peacock noted. “But there hasn’t been talk about schools and hospitals and infrastructure….  What constitutes a healthy city? We need to be thinking of the development of resources to help churches take a major role in the redevelopment of a community…. A weakness in the aftermath of Katrina is that the church has not had a place at the table as decisions are made…. We need to be a voice on the local, state, and federal level to give a voice to abandonment.”

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) is still on the scene, and will be until about 2011, using about $12 million remaining from the more than $20 million donated by caring Presbyterians, according to Susan Ryan, coordinator for the program. She realizes that there has been some controversy about PDA sitting on a vast stockpile of cash while victims expected help right now! “Church dollars should be spent last,” she reasoned, “when there are problems remaining and others have packed up and left…. If we were to spend all our money, then the poor would not be served.”

Ryan reported that PDA had hoped its nest egg would extend New Orleans relief to 2013, but it looks as if it will run out in 2011. The income figure projects $1 million more from One Great Hour of Sharing—$200,000 a year for five years. Ryan proudly reported that over 29,000 volunteers have given over a million hours of labor worth over $16 million. “And we give gifts, not loans,” she emphasized.