Two Presbyterian staff members who met with Hezbollah are fired [Presbyterian Church (USA)]

Good for the Presbyterian Church

I wonder if this has anything to do with the Terrorist Conference that met at Duke in October. Hmmmmm?

Good job!

Good. This is my mother-in-law's denomination, I hated to see them supporting terrorists.

yeah glad they distanced themselves by severing this problem.

Someone has to have a screw loose to say the wall is "unhelpful".
The wall has been incredibly helpful at stopping terrorist attacks, doesn't that mean something? Isn't the cessation of terrorist attacks a prerequisite for peace?

This is an example of why I left the PCUSA.

They were always syncophantic mouthpieces for communists and dictators.

What surprises me is that they were fired.

Years ago a PCUSA minister took money from the Christian Peace Conference (a Soviet front in Prague that existed to influence churches to oppose American foreign policy AKA "Peacemaking").

The minister could have taken the money, but he didn't declare it and was arrested with the cash on his person.

I wonder if this crop of peacemakers get money from Saddam's Oil for Food? The Russian Orthodox Church gets money from Saddam's Oil for Food funds?

Leuckert and Sulyok were two of the staff leaders who were with 22 other Presbyterians on a "fact-finding" trip to the Mideast.

They wouldn't know a fact if it hit them over the head with a 2x4!

I wonder if this has anything to do with the Terrorist Conference that met at Duke in October. Hmmmmm?

I'm in NC and know only a little about the PSM conference. Could you connect the dots between these people or PCUSA, and the conference (unless you're just speculating)?

Thanks.

Leuckert was the second-highest paid employee in the Office of the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council with a pay and benefit package worth $155,310, according to the Minutes of the 2003 General Assembly. Detterick's pay and benefit package was listed at $207,146.

Those Presbyterians pay pretty good - particularly for what they get. Not to worry though, there's always the Episcopalians.

"Also, we praise your initiative for dialogue and mutual understanding," Stone added. "We cherish these statements that bring us closer to you.

What statements? "KILL THE JEWS!"?

In a post that was put on this board yesterday morning there was a LONG report about the meeting at Duke in October. Among those who were listed as present was one of those two from the Presbyterian Church. the PSUA has, apparently, joined the divestment (from Israel) movement.

Here's a link to the thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1278354/posts

Well, for once PCUSA makes the right decision, but it is still probably the most whacked-out mainline demonination. The Episcopals are giving a run for the money for the prize, but PCUSA does lots of crap like this. I'm surprised these guys got fired.

In a post that was put on this board yesterday morning there was a LONG report about the meeting at Duke in October.

Thanks. I found it in that thread.

These two radical lefties have been a thorn in the side of the church apparently for years:

http://www.ppl.org/ACSWP_Jan2000_2.html

Presbyterians Pro-Life
Posted January 30, 2000

What any Presbyterian would have seen in attending the recent meeting of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) Meeting, January 20-23, 2000
by Terry Schlossberg

I went to Louisville in January to get a glimpse of the final report on implementation of the abortion policy. The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) took no action on that report--putting it off to a conference call in February. But this was my first visit to observe ACSWP, and I learned things that every Presbyterian should know about the advocacy committees of our denomination.

What I learned from watching and listening:

ACSWP is a committee overwhelmed with staff
The committee members talked about their heavy workload but took few actions during this meeting, worked mostly by consensus, started their sessions late, took long breaks, and finished a day early
Advocacy committees, whose work is paid for with per capita money from church members' tithes and offerings, believe their charge includes advocating against General Assembly policies
The Stated Clerk is considering entering Supreme Court briefs on homosexual practice in the leadership of the Boy Scouts and the constitutionality of bans on partial birth abortion
The importance of the Open Meeting Policy to the well being of the church
Ministry Divisions and Ancillary Groups
Earlier this year I attended the meeting of the General Assembly Council (GAC) in Puerto Rico. At that meeting the GAC looked at and assigned the referrals of business from the General Assembly to its Ministry Divisions and entities. The three divisions are Congregational, National, and Worldwide, but there are a number of other entities involved. Advisory and advocacy committees are among the entities to which business is referred. They are related to the General Assembly Council in a way fraught with mystery, even confusion, and the lines of accountability are hazy, as the discussion at this meeting revealed. [The "supplement" section of the General Assembly Minutes list the ten advisory committees and two advocacy committees for those interested in knowing their make-up and titles.]

I was in Louisville to observe the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). They met jointly for a short period with the Advocacy Committee on Women's Concerns (ACWC). My report addresses only those two groups.

ACSWP, A committee overwhelmed with staff
ACSWP is a committee of twelve elected members. Nine of them attended this meeting. Peter Sulyok is the staff associate director of ACSWP. Other members of his staff present through the meeting were Belinda Curry, Marilyn LaFontain, and Bonnie Hoff. They were joined by the following additional staff members: Vernon Broyles, social justice; Elenora Ivory, Washington Office; Walter Owensby, Washington Office; Robert Smylie, United Nations Office; Mark Tammen, OGA; Clifton Kirkpatrick, OGA; Kathy Leuckert, GAC; Gary Torrens, Middle Governing Bodies; Wil Brown, Worldwide Ministries Division; Charles Wiley, Congregational Ministries Division: a total of fourteen staff persons. Consequently, the number of staff equaled or exceeded the number of elected committee members for most of the meeting. Staff sat at the table with elected persons and entered freely into the discussion. They clearly cross the line from resource persons to become unelected committee members. They do not vote, but few actual votes occurred in this meeting.

At times staff dominated the discussion. On one occasion Robert Smylie, from the U.N. office, presented a multi-page resolution on the Arms Race which he had written and which the committee had not seen prior to this meeting. The major participants in the discussion of the resolution were Smylie and the staff from the Washington Office. Following that discussion, the committee voted to send the resolution on to the G.A. as their own.

I counted three other official actions during the two day and one evening meeting of ACSWP: one to adopt the minutes of the last meeting; one to receive a report; and one other action to send a resolution to the G.A. The meeting appeared to close with most of its business unfinished, and many items on the agenda undiscussed. Consensus decision making appears to be the rule. Observers are left wondering what is actually accomplished by the committee.

Accountability?
ACSWP and ACWC are lodged structurally in the General Assembly Council but report directly to the General Assembly. The distinction between where they are lodged in the structure and to whom they report raises questions about where the accountability for these entities and their staff lies. The questions have not been answered. This became part of the discussion of the distinction between "advisory" and "advocacy" that dominated much of the meeting.

Peter Sulyok, head staff person for the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, referred to Kathy Lueckert, deputy executive director of the General Assembly Council, as his "supervisor." Peter explained that while his office is in the same area as the Social Justice Program Area, which Vernon Broyles now directs, the two are not formally related. Furthermore, ACSWP is not funded within the Social Justice program budget; their funding comes from the per capita budget.

Grady Anderson, moderator of ACSWP, continually expressed his concern about the potential conflict between advocacy and advisory roles. Since the groups have been encouraged to work more closely together in the future, Anderson asked where advisory ends and advocacy begins. ACSWP wears both hats, he said: "You have to know when you are doing what." Committee member Dora Lodwick responded that the distinction is clarified in practice. It seems more difficult than it is, she said.

Unzu Lee is staff for Women's Advocacy in the Women's Ministry Program Area (WMPA), but also serves as staff for the separate Advocacy Committee on Women's Concerns (ACWC). Joanne Sizoo, moderator for ACWC, said she spends a great deal of her time educating Presbyterians about her committee. Some people think we are part of WMPA, she said. They are not. Barbara Dua, who is the director for WMPA, does not attend their meetings. ACWC is not lodged structurally in the Women's Ministry Program Area. Rather it is lodged in the Office of the Executive Director and their budget also comes from per capita funds. ACWC does not do program--they do not put on conferences, she said. They are not "advisory," said Sizoo; they are "advocacy," and the difference is key, she added.

Barbara Dua does not direct ACWC, but Unzu Lee serves as staff both for Women's Concerns in WMPA and ACWC. Sizoo explained that Unzu Lee wears two hats and she admitted that can be confusing. Sizoo said that when Unzu wears her WMPA hat she must advocate only for General Assembly policy, but when she wears her ACWC hat she must, at times, advocate against General Assembly policy. Sizoo said the General Assembly has given them this mandate.* Sizoo said of ACWC, "Our job is to advocate for things that are not happening and for things that should change. This is really key." An ACSWP member reinforced the advocacy role: "These groups [ACWC and the Advocacy Committee on Racial/Ethnic Concerns] were formed to lift up voices not generally heard. Consequently, they may not support policy in their advocacy."

Ann Beran Jones, vice moderator of PW, is a member of ACWC and serves as liaison between the two groups. Her membership on this advocacy committee raises questions about PW's position on and role in advocating against General Assembly policies.

The official role of advocacy committees at General Assembly
Under the current Mission Design each of these committees has the opportunity to send their written recommendations on business to the General Assembly. They can support their own agenda in this way, and they can oppose what they do not like. Their recommendations are included as "correspondence" in the reports to the Assembly and go to each commissioner attached to the pertinent business. That means that when these entities don't like an overture from a lower governing body, their opposition takes on "official" proportions and is transmitted to commissioners in the official reports long before the presbytery's overture advocate is allowed to speak.

These committees are committed to a single perspective on issues where the denomination clearly has a broad diversity of convictions. But only their perspective is allowed to be advocated officially and with denominational money. The unfair advantage granted these groups does not stop with written advice and counsel. The current Mission Design allows these committees to send their members as resource "experts" to the committees of General Assembly dealing with the business before these committees. Per capita money pays their way to the assembly as advocates for their agenda and often as advocates against overtures coming from the presbyteries. In the recent joint meeting between ACWC and ACSWP Joanne Sizoo said that ACSWP may go into a committee and explain a church policy and be followed by an ACWC resource person who will "come in and say the policy is bad."

How the advocacy committee one-sided agendas are perpetuated
I have not said anything about how these committees are formed. Each is an "elected" body. A member of the General Assembly Nominating Committee (GANC) sits on each committee as liaison and takes recommendations from the committees for new members. The GANC has no similar face-to-face relationship with congregations and presbyteries to hear recommendations for nominations to these committees. Therefore, the potential is very high for perpetuating a one-sided view of social witness policy and the concerns of women. The advocacy of these committees is evidence of a complete lack of effort to bring a diversity of perspectives to the issues. I sat in a meeting once where the election of a women to a certain position was being discussed. One woman remarked that they could not have "just any woman. We need our kind of woman," she said. As long as diversity only means male/female, clergy/lay, geography and age, these committees are free to perpetuate a point of view that is unrepresentative of church members who occupy the pews of our churches and who pay the per capita that allows these committees to exist. And that is to say nothing about faithfully reflecting the teaching of Scripture, or even the actions of General Assemblies.

Committees under fire
ACWC and ACSWP are both advocacies committees by whatever their official name. Because ACSWP can generate policies at will, the committee has sent policy recommendations to General Assemblies which have created considerable controversy. ACSWP was the creator of "Building Community Among Strangers." The study document that preceded the policy included advocacy for universalism, acceptance of non-Christian beliefs, and normalization of homosexual practice.

Before "Building Community," ACSWP stimulated heated controversy with a policy paper on Sustainable Development. The committee will be bringing resolutions to the General Assembly of 2000 on Gambling, Disabilities, Human Rights, Police Brutality, and The Arms Race. Their long list of "Works in Progress" include "Changing Families," "End of Life Issues," and "Genetic Research and Development." We can expect policy proposals from them in the next few years on these and a multitude of other areas. The problem is not as much the subject matter as it is the single point of view approach on the one hand and the tendency to challenge the standards of the church on the other.

Other business:

Stated Clerk seeks advice and counsel from ACSWP
Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick attended a session of the ACSWP meeting. One of his staff, Mark Tammen, came ahead and set the stage for the advice Kirkpatrick would seek from the committee. Tammen told them the Clerk's office has been advised by the Advisory Committee on Litigation, a committee made up of six lawyers he said, to enter or join briefs on cases the Supreme Court has agreed to hear, one on homosexual practice in the leadership of the Boy Scouts and the other dealing with the constitutionality of state legislation banning the killing of babies in the delivery process by a procedure known as "partial birth abortion." The Clerk sought advice only on the latter because, he said, the lawyers have advised him that G.A. abortion policy approaches the subject of late term abortion differently from the case referred to the Supreme Court. The Clerk did not go into detail about the differences. But he asked whether ACSWP would want to raise the issue with the General Assembly and "ask for more clarity on post-viability abortions."+ [NOTE: In a March 9, 2000 phone conversation with Terry Schlossberg, Mark Tammen reported that the Advisory Committee on Litigation and the Stated Clerk's office have no plans to pursue a brief in the Boy Scout case. He stated that General Assembly policy does not appear to be clear and specific enough to warrant their taking that action.]

Two members of ACSWP expressed reluctance to bring the matter to the General Assembly. They felt it would be more appropriate if such a question came via overture from the grass roots. They added concern for their already overloaded agenda and concern for the divisiveness of the issue. Peter Sulyok countered that their committee is charged to raise issues where policy is needed. "If we wait for the grass roots, we may not be taking our prophetic role seriously," he said. Moderator Anderson cut off the discussion and announced that a decision about this issue would be on the agenda for the following day, but by the adjournment of their meeting the subject had not come up again.

Implementation of the abortion policy: No action
Co-moderators of the task group on implementation of the General Assembly's abortion policy brought a draft of their report to ACSWP. Jerry Van Marter covered the meeting for Presbyterian News Service and protested to Peter Sulyok privately that observers and press were not allowed to see the draft. The report will be presented to the task group, who have not seen the report either, in a conference call late in January. Their final version will come back to ACSWP in a conference call on February 14 for a final sign off by the committee. There was little discussion of the report at this meeting.

The importance of the General Assembly Open Meeting Policy
It is the General Assembly's Open Meeting Policy that grants any Presbyterian opportunity to observe the denomination at work. Timely and appropriate reform and renewal efforts are dependent on knowledge of what is happening in the entities of the church. It is critically important for church members to know the extent to which not only the local congregation but also the church at its highest governing level is carrying out its calling in Jesus Christ. We each bear some responsibility for the integrity of the body and the witness of the church at every level.

The church is the body of Christ and it has an institutional presence in the world. It is an institution ordained by God but it is also human and subject to every human frailty. That is why the exercise of good government is essential to maintaining faithfulness in the institution.

The Church has always been in need of reform. Our denomination today is especially wracked with divisions and troubles. It needs both the restoration of faithfulness to God and the restoration of good government. Openness of process is essential to bringing the necessary reforms. Every Presbyterian should have access to every aspect of the General Assembly's work wherever it takes place. Before the Open Meeting Policy was adopted much of the work in our denomination was done in the dark, and Presbyterians who willingly contributed to the mission of the church could not see how their contributions were being used at the General Assembly level. An Open Meeting Policy has only been in place since 1989. In 1997 the General Assembly strengthened its Open Meeting Policy.

Today the Open Meeting Policy is under attack. Groups which have demonstrated an intent to advocate against the standards of the church and whose work is supported by the contribution of church members are groups that have sought to close their meetings from the press and from the members of the church:

The Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association (PHEWA) has repeatedly issued statements supporting the normalization of homosexual practice and the ordination of those in homosexual relationships. The group also supports the ReImagining movement. They have also sought to restrict the openness of their meetings by writing their own policies.
The National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW) advocated for the normalization of homosexual practice in their resource material and recommended materials that contain goddess worship until the 1999 General Assembly ordered a rewrite of their resources. They now seek to exclude observers from their meetings.
Presbyterian Women (PW), who hosted Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PLGC) at its last Triennium and who sponsored workshops advocating against the church's standards on sexuality, has issued a policy restricting access to its meetings at the next Triennium in July of 2000.
It may be only a matter of time before groups like The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) and The Advocacy Committee on Women's Concerns (ACWC) will seek to close all or part of their meetings.
In fact a proposal will come to the next General Assembly from another Advisory Committee that will close meetings to Presbyterians who seek to observe the work of the church. The proposal, if adopted, will permit "small groups" to close their meetings if they are not conducting "business." Neither "small group" nor "business" is defined, and the groups themselves will be allowed to decide whether or not to close.

The General Assembly is the highest governing body of our church. Its business is not to provide opportunity for small group intimacy. That role belongs to the local congregations. Particularly in these times, when so much trust has been forfeited by the work in governing bodies, Presbyterians ought to be assured that the meetings of this otherwise mysterious body, the General Assembly and its entities, are fully open to the church members whose contributions support them.

Summary

There are a number of concerns that emerge from this report.

Staff are far too dominant in meetings of elected bodies, in number and in influence. Staff should attend the meetings of elected bodies in small numbers and in a resource capacity. They should not overwhelm committees, do the work of the committees, sit at the table with the committees, or speak without the expressed desire of a committee member for information or opinion on a matter of business at hand.
Parliamentary procedure is all but absent in these meetings. Without it, the outcomes are a matter of interpretation. Consensus decision making should be eliminated from the committee process.
This meeting was a reminder of the importance of the Open Meeting Policy in keeping the church open to its members and in the necessary effort to improve trust in our denomination.
Presbyterians should let the Stated Clerk's office have their opinions of his desire to enter briefs to the Supreme Court on recent cases involving homosexuality and partial birth abortion.
And most importantly:

Presbyterians should be concerned about the freedom of groups with direct access to the General Assembly to advocate their own agendas on the one hand, and to advocate against the standards of the church on the other hand. These are groups that need to be reigned in. No entity of the church should think it is free to advocate in either of these ways if it is supported by the contributions of church members and ostensibly represents the mission of the Presbyterian Church (USA). There are numerous special organizations in the denomination who advocate for their own agendas and against the standards of the church. They raise their own funds for that advocacy. They do not expect the support of mission funds or per capita.

*The actual mandate comes from the Minutes of the General Assembly, 1994, Part I, page 262:

The Advocacy Committee for Women's Concerns shall assist the Presbyterian church (USA) to give full expression to the rich diversity of its membership as specified in the Book of Order, G-4.0403. The committee shall monitor and evaluate policies, procedures, programs, and resources regarding the way in which they impact the status and position of women in the church and the world; and shall advocate for full inclusiveness and equity in all areas of the life and work of the church in society.

Joanne Sizoo remarked to me privately that the interpretation of the mission of ACWC is constantly evolving.

+In 1997 the General Assembly offered "a word of counsel to the church and our culture that the procedure known as intact dilation and extraction (commonly called partial birth abortion') of a baby who could live outside the womb is of grave moral concern that should be considered only if the mother's physical life is endangered by the pregnancy."

Firing squad?

This is no different than John Kerry meeting with the North Vietnamese Communists while we were at war with them.