Presbyterian Committee Rides Many Hobbyhorses

Our readers may be interested in series of reports from former Presbyterian Action director Jim Berkley on the recent meeting of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). Writing for the Presbyterian Layman, Berkley described how ACSWP members cheerfully saddled up a number of political hobbyhorses favored in left-leaning circles. The ACSWP meeting was held January 22-24 in Berkeley, Calif.

Berkley’s latest dispatch tells how one committee member raised a concern about ACSWP “advice and counsel” memoranda lobbying the General Assembly. These influential memos, which often sway General Assembly actions, are presented as coming from the entire committee even though they are often written and approved at the last minute by just a couple committee members with strong personal interests in the topic. “I don’t want anything designated as coming out from ACSWP that I haven’t seen,” committee member John Knapp told his colleagues. But other ACSWP members were reluctant to limit their capacity for quick response by guaranteeing a say to all committee members. The issue was left unresolved.

Knapp was also the voice of reason and restraint on another occasion, according to an earlier report by Berkley. Committee staff coordinator Chris Iosso was still smarting from the 2008 General Assembly’s refusal to adopt a lengthy paper he had written on “Costly Lessons of the Iraq War.” (The assembly chose instead to adopt a much briefer overture from Baltimore, which also criticized the U.S. presence in Iraq.) Iosso admitted that “the assembly did not adopt these recommendations [his paper],” but insisted that “we want the recommendations studied.” Knapp stated sensibly, “I think we are precluded from proceeding with something the assembly considered and chose not to adopt.” Iosso backed down for the moment, but would not yield entirely to the will of the assembly. “I would like the committee to revisit a year from now the lessons the paper raised up,” he said.

Another Berkley article explained how ACSWP “gave indications of being an affinity group that has somehow found a way to pursue its agenda with denominational funding.” A team being formed to study HIV/AIDS would contain only one evangelical, while being dominated by “persons from ‘all the networks’ that typically produce the liberal-slanted work that characterizes ACSWP’s output.” ACSWP member Lewis Mudge carried his colleagues along in his enthusiasm for the committee to produce its vision of a “post-meltdown global economic order.” Mudge wanted to rely heavily on the leftist “liberation theology” of a generation ago, which was widely discredited after the failures of Marxist movements and governments in the 1980s.

Likewise, ACSWP co-chair Gloria Albrecht was keen to “build up community to safeguard people’s lives, but without resort to military forces.” Albrecht opined that “there is no way to use military force in any kind of ethical way.” She acknowledged that the PCUSA is “traditionally a just-war denomination”; however, she was still eager to have ACSWP make the case for pacifism.

Berkley’s first report from Berkeley told how the PCUSA committee was cheered by the election of Barack Obama, believing that its left-leaning ideas would gain “resonance” in the new Democratic administration. ACSWP was also encouraged by the passage of most of its voluminous political statements at last year’s General Assembly, taking that success as a signal to produce more of the same. So ACSWP is preparing more pronouncements on issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to immigration, education, gun violence, employee compensation, racial justice, economic decline, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza.