Death Knell for Southern Presbyterians?

NEWS

The Presbyterian Church U. S. reached a turning point in its history at the 111th General Assembly last month when commissioners voted by the slender margin of ten votes to restructure its synods along new boundaries. The move was favored by some liberals as a means of smoothing the way for reunion with the more liberal United Presbyterian Church.

But the net result will be almost certain schism as well as possible union. Within moments of the historic vote—amounting to a showdown between factions in the controversy-ridden 958,000-member church—conservatives were grouping around the park-like assembly site in the Shenandoah Valley to plan strategy.

Several synods and a number of presbyteries undoubtedly will refuse to comply with the restructure, ordered by July, 1973.

Conservative forces had earlier made a surprising show of strength challenging the liberal leadership of the denomination and coming within a few votes of reversing well-established directions of ecumenism and reunion. Approval of the majority restructure report came after eighty minutes of volatile but civil debate. The 217 to 207 vote was the closest contest by the midpoint of the six-day conference.

“What you saw today was the death knell of the Presbyterian Church U. S. as a historic entity,” said the Reverend Andrew Jumper, spokesman for the moderate group within the denomination known as the Covenant Fellowship.

The restructure issue appeared to be pivotal in the union question. Changing synod boundaries to reduce the number of synods from fifteen to seven, liberals said, was only to make operation of the church more efficient and relevant. Several denied there was any connection between restructure and the union issue. But the question clearly was simmering beneath the surface during the protracted debate.

Conservatives privately voiced anxiety that the change is actually a thinly disguised gerrymandering plan to dilute the strength of conservative presbyteries and void their present power to virtually ensure defeat of the plan.

A three-fourths majority vote by presbyteries is needed to pass union; sixteen of the regional units have already gone on record opposing it. If a total of nineteen presbyteries vote against it, union will fail. Restructured synods can in turn redefine presbytery boundaries, thus shifting key balances of power.

Another close contest at the assembly, held at the bucolic Massanetta Springs conference grounds near Harrisonburg, Virginia, was the vote on whether to continue membership in the National Council of Churches. Although conservative spokesmen said there was no concerted effort to organize opposition, the commissioners split 213 to 189 on the issue; a shift of only thirteen votes would have tipped the scale and pulled the Southern Presbyterians out of the controversial NCC.

It was the closest vote on the matter in two decades, observers said. The related vote on staying in the World Council of Churches won 216 to 185. Both questions generated heavy debate. No major denominations have as yet withdrawn from the thirty-three-member NCC.

General approval for continuing union negotiations with the 3.1-million-member United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. won, 260 to 119. But a motion to add two members to the Committee of Twenty-four that is drafting the union plan won easily. The two new members, one from each denomination, are to be persons “who are not happy” with the present plan.

A motion to overturn last year’s resolution on abortion failed; the 1970 statement was reaffirmed by a nineteen-vote margin. A key sentence in the 1970 resolution said, “Willful termination of pregnancy by medical means on the considered decision of a pregnant woman may on occasion be morally justifiable.”

Opponents of the abortion statement found this too liberal; they also attacked a $50,000 abortion service set up by the Board of National Ministries. A motion to link the abortion issue—killing unborn human beings—with the morality of killing in Viet Nam failed. Proponents of combining the two said they couldn’t consider abortion in isolation from war-killing.

The professor known as his church’s “answer man” because of his column in the Presbyterian Survey became the new moderator of the church. Dr. Ben Lacy Rose, 56, pastoral leadership and homiletics professor at Union (Richmond) Seminary, won over Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the second ballot. Rose is generally regarded as aggressive with views similar to those of retiring moderator Dr. William A. Benfield of Charleston, West Virginia. But his style is decidedly less abrasive than that of Benfield, who is said to have caused more polarization in the church during the last year than any previous moderator had caused.

Rose came within three votes of election on the first ballot, running against Kennedy, the conservative candidate; the Reverend Harry A. Fifield of Atlanta, a nominee for the post in 1970; and Mrs. David L. Stitt, wife of the former Austin Seminary president. Mrs. Stitt was the first woman to be nominated for the top post, but she received only sixteen votes. Eighteen women commissioners were registered.

The reunion proposal will not be acted upon until the 1973 assembly. A delay of one year was precipitated by the United Presbyterian General Assembly (see June 18 issue, page 29) after black delegates from the Southeast asked “for more time for us to get to know each other,” according to a member of the Committee of Twenty-four.

Union discussions have been broadened to include more black churches, three of which are non-Reformed in tradition: African Methodist Episcopal, AME Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and Second Cumberland Presbyterian. Inclusion of these bodies was approved at the UPUSA Rochester Assembly in May.

In other action, a move to pull out of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) failed on a voice vote, although no one at the Massanetta Assembly would predict passage of the nine-way Protestant merger within the decade.

A spirited debate on withdrawal from the NCC was led off by Ed Craig, an Eazley, South Carolina, pastor. “The organization has lost the confidence of the man in the pew who pays the bills,” he asserted.

Opposition to continuing WCC membership centered on its controversial $200,000 grant last year to some violent groups fighting racism, the appointment of a Buddhist official to the WCC’s Geneva headquarters, and its $70,000 program to support draft-dodgers in Canada.

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