The General Assembly on June 26 turned down three presbytery overtures that would have ended the practice of using per capita apportionments to fund large grants to ecumenical bodies. By a vote of 526-148, the commissioners decided not to “[t]ransfer any funding of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s involvement in ecumenical agency relationships from the Per Capita budget of the Office of the General Assembly to the Mission budget of the General Assembly” (Item 03-08). Two similar measures were defeated by larger margins.
The effect of this action is that $1.1 million in unrestricted grants will continue to flow to various ecumenical organizations. These include the World Council of Churches (WCC, slated to receive $458,000 in the 2008 per capita budget), the National Council of Churches (NCC, $300,000), and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC, $233,000). These groups are controversial because of their focus on political advocacy for a left-leaning agenda that is not supported by many Presbyterians. Yet through per capita apportionments—which presbyteries are required and congregations are expected to pay—church members are compelled to contribute to the WCC, NCC, and WARC.
In presenting the recommendation to disapprove the three overtures, General Assembly Procedures Committee moderator George Kimm stressed the importance of the denomination’s commitment to Christian unity. “Is the Church something larger than the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?” Kimm asked. “The committee’s recommendation reflects our understanding that to be Presbyterian is to be engaged in ecumenical work.”
Elder Commissioner John Rosecrans from Donegal Presbytery in Pennsylvania agreed about the value of ecumenism. But he questioned whether the large unrestricted grants to the WCC, NCC, and WARC fit under per capita’s historic purpose of underwriting the costs of governing body meetings and other basic administrative expenses within the PCUSA. “The use of $1.1 million in ecumenical grants seems to me a mission issue,” Rosecrans opined.
Minister Commissioner Carl Bosteels from Indian Nations Presbytery in Oklahoma remarked, “There is a serious question about the expanding use of per capita” for mission work. But Ed Chan of the General Assembly Committee on Ecumenical Relations (GACER) assured the commissioners that all the ecumenical bodies had been reviewed and approved by previous General Assemblies.
Presbyteries Seek Relief of Conscience
Earlier in the week, the General Assembly Procedures Committee had rejected the three overtures by even larger margins, ranging from 37-4 to 36-9. Two of the overtures (Items 03-08, from Indian Nations, and 03-10 from Sierra Blanca Presbytery in New Mexico) sought a General Assembly instruction to move the ecumenical grants out of per capita and into the mission budget. The third (Item 03-11 from Santa Barbara) proposed to amend the Book of Order to achieve the same effect.
Santa Barbara’s rationale explained: “Since congregations are all but required to contribute their share of per capita budget, the plethora of items currently included in the per capita budget—some of which are highly controversial—causes much of the greatest resistance to giving by congregations. While a congregation might be completely willing to supply the basic governmental functions our Constitution requires, they would not be willing to be forced to fund causes and activities not in keeping with their conscience.”
Sierra Blanca observed, “Increasingly, these same ecumenical agencies [the WCC, NCC, and WARC] have changed their primary focus away from building Christian unity toward advocating for social policies that may or may not be consistent with the social witness policy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or her members.” Indian Nations contended, “Shifting the ecumenical agencies’ funding from the per capita budget will likely strengthen support of that budget by moving it closer to its original purpose and by providing relief of conscience to those not in support of the ecumenical agencies’ political agenda.”
“Are voluntary contributions that are made to an outside organization an operating expense?” asked Indian Nations overture advocate Jim Cahalan. He told how his presbytery made grants to the Oklahoma Council of Churches and to ecumenical campus ministries. “We contribute funds to all of these organizations,” Cahalan said, “but the money does not come from the administration and operations side of the budget.” On the national level, he observed, “According to the Book of Order, evangelism and worship are essential to our identity as a Reformed church, just as is ecumenical involvement, but the evangelism office and the theology and worship office are part of the mission budget.”
“The concept of per capita is old,” Cahalan noted, “but the practice of using per capita to make contributions to ecumenical agencies is relatively new. In checking old GA minutes, it appears that as recently as 1980, only expenses to send delegations to ecumenical meetings were paid from per capita, and amounted to $44,000. . . . By the year 1993 these contributions had exploded to $1.5 million. . . . This whole issue is a development of the last generation, and it can be corrected.”
Santa Barbara overture advocate Bruce Lethbridge warned: “It is the nature of a bureaucracy to grow to whatever level it is allowed to by its constituents. It should give us pause that as our church has been shrinking in membership for over 40 years now, the per capita has continued to grow. Less people are being asked to pay more for ‘a wider range of ecclesiastical expenses’ that they have not been asked to vote on.”
Denominational and Ecumenical Establishment Comes Out in Force
A phalanx of denominational agencies mustered against the overtures from Indian Nations, Sierra Blanca, and Santa Barbara. The General Assembly received disapproving comments from GACER, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA), the General Assembly Council (GAC), the Advisory Committee on the Constitution (ACC), the Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns (ACWC), and the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns (ACREC).
The ACC advised that “it has been Presbyterian practice for many years to fund its contributions to the work of ecumenical agencies of which it is a member through the per capita budget.” It noted “an historically recognized difference between defraying the core costs of the ecumenical bodies (paying for delegates and core operations) and the mission programs of those agencies,” implying that only the former were funded through per capita.
“Per capita funding of the WCC and NCC covers our core support and delegate participation in the governance life of the council,” GACER asserted. “This is in partial fulfillment of our responsibilities as members of the council.” GACER did not acknowledge that PCUSA per capita grants were undesignated money that flowed into the councils’ general revenue stream and could be used for any program expenses.
At open hearings on June 23, a parade of ecclesiastical notables lined up to defend the ecumenical grants. Former PCUSA moderator and NCC president Syngman Rhee declared: “To be Presbyterian is to be ecumenical. . . . That commitment is the center and foundation of what we are.” Rhee recalled how the NCC’s Church World Service (now autonomous from the council and not funded through per capita) had helped him when he was a refugee fleeing North Korea in 1950. “It is those times that our commitment to be ecumenical is imperative,” Rhee said.
Another former NCC president and Presbyterian minister, Michael Livingston, characterized the council thus: “It’s ecclesiastical work; it’s not mission work. It’s not what we we do; it’s who we are.” Livingston insisted that the NCC “is a profoundly religious organization” that “is not just justice and advocacy.”
The current NCC general secretary, Michael Kinnamon, affirmed: “A council of churches is not an agency that does things on behalf of the churches. It is the churches.” He objected to the overtures labeling the NCC as an “outside organization.” On the other hand, Kinnamon expressed gratitude that “[e]arlier generations of Presbyterians have chosen to fund ecumenism out of the source [per capita] that best expressed Christian unity as the vocation of all church members.”
The NCC general secretary admitted that the council “does not have dues” and many other denominations remain full members without making monetary contributions. He also conceded that “at times the NCC has emphasized political advocacy above relations with the churches”; however, Kinnamon added, “that’s not true today.” He reported that the council has a new strategic plan that stresses “building relations among the churches.”
Several presbytery executives testified against the overtures. Liza Hendricks of Western Reserve (in the Cleveland area) made a revealing statement: “While the congregations in my presbytery pay their per capita faithfully, it is unlikely that they would pay the same amount if it were under the mission budget.” In other words, the only way that the denomination could get $1.1 million for the ecumenical bodies is by making payment of that amount a moral obligation under per capita.
Pleas for Change Unheeded
The only person at the open hearings testifying in favor of the overtures was IRD Vice President for Research and Programs Alan Wisdom. “Let me simply say that a lot of what goes on at those ecumenical meetings is politics,” Wisdom said, “and I don’t agree with the politics. The councils are functionally pacifist in their geopolitics and quasi-socialist in their economics. They condemn the free trade that has allowed hundreds of millions of formerly poor people to enter the global middle class. They have repeatedly failed to speak up for Christians being persecuted under communist and Islamist regimes.”
The IRD vice president appealed to committee members: “Don’t keep forcing us, through per capita, to pay for political advocacy that we find deeply misguided.” The IRD’s Presbyterian Action committee laid out these arguments in more detail in two briefing papers (“Keeping Trust, Respecting Consciences” and “A Matter of Conscience“) that were distributed at the assembly.
A few commissioners appreciated the concerns expressed in the overtures. Minister Commissioner Jesse Mabanglo from Seattle Presbytery indicated, “I want to support our ecumenical endeavors, but not by large grants. I would use the per capita to fund PCUSA delegations.” Mabanglo said that he had read the NCC minutes and “there are some troubling issues.”
But Ecumenical Advisory Delegate Didier Crouzet from the Reformed Church of France maintained that grants to the WCC, NCC, and WARC were “like global per capita.” Crouzet declared, “We are altogether the same body. . . . We are not funding a program; we are funding an organization we are part of.”
Minister Commissioner Zoraida Ramos-Román from Noroeste Presbytery in Puerto Rico expressed her contentment with per capita as it stands now: “I teach my flock that their offerings, however small, are supporting the structure of the church. . . . We have to put our confidence in the wise administration and stewardship of our gifts.”
Another commissioner worried that shifting ecumenical grants “would take a million dollars out of the mission budget. With that we could fund a number of missionaries.” So he and most other commissioners voted to keep the ecumenical grants under per capita, where churches would feel an obligation to fund that which they might not otherwise choose to support.
No comments yet
Leave a Reply