LOUISVILLE—”I became a Presbyterian because of its social witness,” proclaimed Gloria Albrecht, ethics professor and member of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), at its June 20-23 meeting in Louisville. “It’s hard for me to understand how one can be a Presbyterian and not have an active social conscience.”
Albrecht’s assessment is not unusual for ACSWP members, who evidenced great uneasiness with their committee’s relative obscurity and lack of influence, and with Presbyterians’ propensity to ignore or even oppose the committee’s work. Indeed, ACSWP seemed to want to arrogate further powers to itself.
At this meeting in particular, three themes kept appearing: First, ACSWP was wrestling with its role and authority. It kept itching to expand its profile, even while not entirely agreeing on what its role actually is. Second, it kept lamenting—Rodney Dangerfield-like—about how it “don’t get no respect.” And third, ACSWP evidenced a rather low opinion of Presbyterians in general, and a rather high estimate of how greatly they need the committee’s direction.
So What Is ACSWP’s Role?
When ACSWP invited Barry Creech, Coordinator of Information and Planning, to talk about “Getting the Message Out,” he tried to run members through a basic communications strategy session. “Where do you want to go?” he asked. “What are your goals?”
Simple enough, but the responses from ACSWP members were scattered between responding to tasks delegated to the committee and initiating projects out of their own enthusiasms:
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Gordon Edwards, ACSWP Chair: “Help members of the congregations think theologically about social issues.”
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Gloria Albrecht: “Provide a Presbyterian voice with social policymaking.”
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Bill Saint: “Trying to advise General Assembly on justice issues.”
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Esperanza Guajardo: “Help people understand what the PCUSA really stands for.”
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Gloria Albrecht again: “Respond to what General Assembly asks for.”
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Lewis Mudge: “There are two things going on. The first is ‘What is expected of us in the structure of the church?’ and the second is ‘What do we hope to do with that expectation?'” Then he elaborated: “Some things are coming out of our committee whether or not the structure assigns us to do those particular things.”
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Chris Iosso, ACSWP Coordinator: “We are a servant of the General Assembly; seeking to illuminate the social witness.”
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Jack Terry: “To inform our constituents accurately and clearly about the policies, the resolutions, and the study papers that are available through this group through the General Assembly.”
Committee member Ron Kernaghan attempted to bring the committee back to its purpose in our polity. “This is a more complex question than it would be with other groups, because we’re not an advocacy group,” he noted perceptively. “We are not to advocate, but to advise, and then the General Assembly decides on its policy.”
He put his finger on the controversy and stated it well: “I don’t see that we have the power or the authorization to define what our goals are. It seems to me that our existence is in response to what is put before us by the General Assembly.” Kernaghan was waxing profound until he succumbed to the bugaboo of any constituent organization: the desire to exercise independent power. “Occasionally,” he confided, “we will propose something to go before General Assembly.”
After listening to the variety of responses, Barry Creech added his own spot-on summation. “It would seem that your basic audience is [General Assembly] commissioners,” he ventured, “and your message is ‘This is our best advice to give on this policy.'”
Creech understood something that the ACSWP members were struggling with: the committee exists to advise General Assembly in regard to social witness issues. ACSWP’s charter is not to champion its own pet causes or to proactively instruct the denomination on whatever it thinks others need to espouse. “I encourage you to write down the goals,” Creech concluded, “because when faced with a decision, you need to look to your goals.” His message implied that in referring to the goals, many potential ACSWP activities would be eliminated.
But ACSWP veterans weren’t quite prepared to give up. “Advisory [as in Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy] has a formal meaning in regard to General Assembly,” Chris Iosso acknowledged, “but it also has an informal meaning.” Watch, now, as he deftly stretches the ACSWP charter: “The committee’s primary identity is to be in synch with the church’s primary identity, which is spiritual formation and nurture.” In other words, ACSWP is supposed to be about anything the church does.
Jack Terry was not so sure. Referring to the former ACSWP Coordinator, Peter Sulyok, Terry noted that “Peter always said, ‘We are not to advocate. We make the reports, but we don’t ‘sell’ them.'”
Iosso countered that perhaps Sulyok understood that the material was automatically widely distributed. “It falls down the cracks,” Terry responded ruefully.
Does the Role Include Persuading the Church?
Many bits of conversation indicated ACSWP’s desire to immerse itself in activities not necessarily assigned by General Assembly. The desired move is from advising General Assembly, when asked to do so, toward telling the church things that ACSWP earnestly feels it ought to hear. ACSWP appears to want to transition from being a servant of General Assembly to being an instructor of the church.
Ron Kernaghan delicately broached the subject at one point. A task force writing a policy paper may have residual budget funds “to do an assessment tool to help interpret the paper to the congregations,” Kernaghan ventured. “However, from my understanding, that was not tasked by General Assembly. Task forces would be happy to do that, however, to address the broader issues.”
In other words, Kernaghan was wondering if it is legitimate for ACSWP task forces to use General Assembly money to go out and lobby the church to adopt their papers. Such activity could be put in terms of “interpreting” the papers, but in effect it would be promoting the papers’ passage in General Assembly. Advising would become convincing.
In the past, “it has been designed [for ACSWP] to walk through the paper,” Sara Lisherness, Director of Peace and Justice, interjected. ACSWP’s responsibility wasn’t intended “to help people really wrestle with and engage the issues.” In other words, ACSWP was expected to help people understand what the paper was saying, but it wasn’t tasked with convincing people to buy into it.
But finally longtime GA staffer Vernon Broyles proffered his opinion. “I can’t imagine that it is not in the overall [ACSWP] mandate to find ways to get [a policy] interpreted and integrated into the life of the church,” he pronounced. “It shouldn’t be a problem to use the money not only to make the policy but to get it introduced into the life of the church.” By decree, apparently the job of ACSWP has grown from modestly advising General Assembly into using denominational resources to convince the church to accept whatever ACSWP proposes.
Many ACSWP members don’t appear content to occupy their special seats as advisors only. They want to be movers and shakers. They want to initiate, not just respond. Chair Gordon Edwards proposed that ACSWP “design something to go to General Assembly to address what it means to be the Body of Christ in community.” General Assembly hasn’t asked for such a piece and may not want it, but that fact may not keep ACSWP from producing the piece!
At another point in the meeting, Joe Small, Director of Theology, Worship, and Education, suggested that “it is possible to conceive that at least some of the work you do not be big policy papers to be adopted by GA, but rather be materials to be available through Congregational Ministries Publishing for the education of the church.”
Such advocacy work would be a major and arguably an inadvisable departure for ACSWP. However, Small proposed that ACSWP “perhaps not develop policy but develop curriculum.” Chris Iosso liked the idea and quickly suggested an ethics curriculum for high school students. And thus ACSWP began to rewrite its own job description.
Why Might ACSWP’s Opinion Lack Acceptance?
An annoying reality kept dogging ACSWP: the fact that not many people pay all that much attention to its work. “It could be said that there is a big disconnect between General Assembly policy and acceptance on a congregational level,” as Ron Kernaghan put it.
“We see this gap existing,” lamented Gloria Albrecht, speaking of the chasm between what ACSWP wants people to value and what people actually do value—or disvalue, as the case may be. “Maybe we need to take charge.”
Chris Iosso put it this way: “There is no question there is apathy [about ACSWP’s work] in presbyteries and synods.” He said he has learned that “we have to skip over synods and presbyteries; we have to go directly to the church members…. There are disconnects in almost every aspect of General Assembly’s work.”
Indeed there are! But until General Assembly and ACSWP in particular start hearing from and representing those they consider the vast unwashed masses in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), ACSWP’s speaking louder and more stridently is not going to bridge that gap.
How much grassroots influence does ACSWP have? Gordon Edwards reported that, according to a survey by the Stated Clerk, about 1,600 congregations have a social justice committee. And apparently Edwards is claiming all of them as ideological comrades. “We have a base in about a fifth of the congregations,” he estimated, “but we have to get into all the congregations.”
“Those 1,600 names are marvelous, but that’s not the problem we need to address,” cautioned Ron Kernaghan. “We have an ever-increasing critical problem. The problem is of such proportions that ACSWP can’t interpret itself to the whole church. It can interpret itself only to parts of the church.” The problem is that ACSWP’s opinion is not respected by a large portion of the church, whose concerns remain largely unrepresented, devalued, and ignored by ACSWP.
So again, why might the voice of ACSWP be largely ignored out in the church? Comments by the Director of the Washington Office, Elenora Giddings Ivory, unintentionally suggest an explanation: ACSWP’s voice isn’t always exactly persuasive. “I hear, ‘Why is the church working on war? What is the policy?'” Ivory told the committee.
To Ivory it’s a stupid question with an oh-so-simple answer. “So I cut and paste ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ and send it, and I don’t hear back.” Ivory showed no comprehension of her own shallow hermeneutic.
“People write, ‘Why are we working on immigration?” Ivory continued. “I cut and paste ‘Welcome the stranger.'” Apparently, Elenora Giddings Ivory hasn’t the slightest understanding that fellow Christians could share her concerns about peace and welcoming strangers without assenting to the liberal political clichés she must consider the only possible way to respond as a Christian. Such shallow, parochial thinking hardly engenders great confidence!
What Does ACSWP Think of the Rest of Us?
In general, ACSWP considers the rest of the church badly in need of its instruction. “We work hard on an issue that we think is hot and on fire, but can we light a fire under the people out there?” That was Jack Terry’s wistful question. In other words, how can we get them to be as worked up as we are about our particular analyses and solutions?
In a number of other segments of the conversation, various opinions arose about the church as a whole. Some examples follow.
“There’s a difference between framing any one particular issue and framing the relationship between gospel and justice, the bigger question,” Ron Kernaghan noted. “I don’t find broadly in the church an understanding of the connection between economics and justice,” he added. “How we educate our congregations is critical…. People need to know the connection between the mission of the church and social witness policy.”
“Members of the church have the right to know why their church is doing what they’re doing in respect to their name,” Bill Saint asserted.
The problem is that “national policies don’t get to the local church,” according to Gloria Albrecht, apparently adhering to a top-down model of church government, where the local church is on standby, waiting for instructions from the home office. A case could be made for the inverse reality—that the local church concerns don’t get expressed in the national policies, either!
Albrecht’s main concern seemed to be that “what churches around the world are saying to First World churches is not getting down to congregations.” Apparently the local church, while waiting for headquarters directives, should stand by at its short-wave radio for international orders, as well.
“If we contend that the PCUSA is a community of significant discourse, we kid ourselves,” warned Joe Small. He lamented the shallow level of consideration of most matters in our governing bodies, and suggested that “one countercultural way to respond is to try to inject something that is deeper.” He was speaking of curriculum with theological weight.
“We are no longer in the church a cohesive community of shared belief,” Small observed. And then his next observation was superbly incisive: “We’ve spent decades celebrating diversity, so it should come as no surprise that there is no cohesion in regard to theology.”
Ending Conversations
At one point in the conversation about communications, Bill Saint said, almost in exasperation: “We don’t have a communication strategy. Instead, we have an ad hoc distribution strategy.”
“I’m not hearing you come from the same place as to what the goal of the committee is,” replied Barry Creech, to the whole committee.
“I’m hearing that we have different interpretations of the breadth or narrowness of our communications,” asserted Saint. And then he hit the nail on the head: “If we’re supposed to be advising General Assembly, then they need to accept what we have produced. We shouldn’t get involved in promulgating our particular views of the world before they are validated by the [General Assembly].”
At another point, again Bill Saint narrowed in on a key issue. “I hear some people talk about the importance of the ‘prophetic voice of the church,'” he began. If that is the role of ACSWP, he reasoned, then the committee’s work “is supply-driven, because people must ‘need’ it whether they want it or not!”
Saint’s laser-like accuracy produced a nervous titter in the room, but he was on a roll. “We could have our goal be: Because we want to publish this report!”
Barry Creech interjected that maybe they should “make the goal larger: Because we want to change lives.”
Having listened to ACSWP for many hours, I have detected a large measure of cock-sure “Because we want to!” mixed into the committee’s motivation, along with a healthy dollop of altruistically wanting to change lives.
ACSWP appears certain that its brand of religious socio-political theory is something every church and every thinking Christian should want to adopt. Because of this mindset, it can hardly constrain itself to dutifully perform only the tasks General Assembly assigns. Instead, ACSWP yearns to arrogate responsibilities not delegated to it, to the end that every congregation, yea the entire nation, turn into its ideological twin, which, it might argue, would only be appropriate.
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