PCA Overture 28

[dsanch1120]

Was hoping to discuss the upcoming PCA GA Overture 28. I’m not looking to start an argument, and certainly don’t want to be argumentative, but I do have concerns with the Overture and would like to hear different perspectives if anyone is willing to offer theirs.
First, let me say that I understand the importance of the issue and the severity of MNA’s actions. A PCA organization allowing a post that could aid certain individuals in breaking the law is very serious. At the same time, I worry that this overture is not concerned with correcting towards Christlikeness, but rather (if I may) “cancelling” individuals over political differences.
It would be one thing to demand an apology and termination of jobs if the responsible parties at MNA did not repent, stood by their actions, and/or continued to do the same error. But they did apologize and repent in the same manner and sphere in which they originally sinned. Assuming those that made the original post still work for MNA, there has been repentance and indication that it won’t happen again. I look at this, personally, and it seems like the matter is settled and doesn’t need to be prolonged unless it happens again.
Now looking at Overture 28, it looks to me that MNA’s saying “sorry” wasn’t enough, they need to be forced to say that they’re “very sorry.” They sinned via their website and repented on the same medium, but they need to be forced to specifically apologize to members of president Trump’s administration (I suppose we should all write apology letters to the department of transportation when we speed and should have written Fauci a letter of repentance anytime we forgot to (or chose not to) wear a mask back in the pandemic). It’s not enough that MNA has indicated that this shouldn’t have happened and won’t happen again, we need make an example by stripping those responsible of their livelihood. Would it not make more sense to seek to correct and guide those involved in a better way? The cancel culture I grew up seeing in my progressive high school was that anyone who deviated from the established progressive values was to be destroyed in the public sphere, kicked out of the camp, and made a pariah, whether or not they apologized. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels surprisingly similar to what I read in this overture.
Why not instead make an overture to remind organizations under the PCA umbrella that they are to honor the government (so long as doing so is Biblical) even if they disagree with its actions?
My concern, to summarize things, is that this seems to be how the world deals with problems, not how we are supposed to.

 

[johnmo]

Each of the four commentaries published on the historical center website agrees with your assessment. Mr. Dunahoe even thinks we should prevent something like this from being published in the future.

Because all overtures are published online for two years at pcaga.org, and then in GA Minutes which are also accessible online indefinitely, men should be careful and temperate when composing them. For example, it's not appropriate for an overture to publicly accuse a person or a committee of "unlawful conduct" or of violating civil law. While it hasn’t previously seemed necessary to have an RAO provision authorizing the Stated Clerk to withhold publishing an overture if it contains intemperate or inappropriate material, it now seems it might be necessary. Remember, RAO 11-10 allows a single TE or RE commissioner to Presbytery to file an overture. One idea (for next year) is the italicized addition below:

RAO 11-4. An overture ordinarily is the request of a presbytery for action by the General Assembly upon a specific matter. If the Stated Clerk deems an overture contains intemperate language, he shall refer it back to the filer identifying the language. If the filer does not repair the language before the filing deadline, it will not be included in that year's list of overtures, unless the Administrative Committee instructs otherwise, and the annual Clerk’s Report shall report any such instance.

 

[dsanch1120]

Each of the four commentaries published on the historical center website agrees with your assessment. Mr. Dunahoe even thinks we should prevent something like this from being published in the future.

Thanks, I’ll take a look at these. I didnt know about the historical center, I’ll have to bookmark that

 

[Alan D. Strange]

I agree with David Coffin that the overture serves as a bill of attainder (a legislative declaration of guilt without due judicial process) and is thus out of order. Further, and I'm sure that David would agree with me on this as well, the church as church lacks the competency to determine that these provisions of the U.S. Code have been violated. That is the job of the federal courts through legal due process.

If the church is to prosecute a case, it must do so through the Bible and its constitution (the secondary and tertiary standards). It does not have the competency to determine that matters of the U.S. Code have been violated. If the courts have determined that through due process, that can be cited as part of any case that might be brought.

Bills of attainder became a popular device of the Parliament in the English Civil War of the 1640s. They were a politicized, and somewhat understandable, reaction to the monarch's misuse of the Star Chamber, another unjust mechanism that denied due process. Both are highly politicized uses of the law to go after one's enemies and are unworthy instruments to be used by the church. They are wrong for the kingdoms of this world to use. How much more so for the kingdom that is not of this world.

This is all without any prejudice to the underlying concerns that the overture addresses in MNA. That is a separate matter. If parties wish to address perceived problems with MNA, they should follow the proper BCO/RAO processes rather than employing such shocking and unfit tactics as these.

Peace,
Alan

 

[johnmo]

I agree with David Coffin that the overture serves as a bill of attainder (a legislative declaration of guilt without due judicial process) and is thus out of order.

I saw that and while I agree it's a really bad overture, I'm not sure I agree that it's a bill of attainder. It wouldn't be imposing a penalty (ecclesiastical or civil), it would be directing it's subordinate body to do what it thinks is the right thing to do. It must be within the competence of the assembly to follow the law and take action to control its committees in a way to follow the law. The assembly is not competent to make a judgment that would impose a civil penalty, but every day church officers and their employees make decisions about legal duties. That includes judging that an employee has broken the law and what they should do to remedy it. I don't think what the overture directs is the right thing to do, but Coffin is putting it in the wrong category.

As for asking the committee to fire people, I do not believe the employees of our committees have any due process rights to employment. If these employees are members of the assembly, they may have a right to clear their names if the overture had named them. But it doesn't, it just directs the committee to fire those who took a certain action. Surely the GA can direct its committees to fire people who do things it doesn't like.

I also don't know how you would rule a bill of attainder out of order. The U.S. Constitution protects us from Congress, not the GA. The preliminary principle that Coffin quotes is about judicial ecclesiastical discipline, and that's not what's going on here. The MNA couldn't impose ecclesiastical censures even if the GA told them to, but they need to be able to hire and fire people without holding trials. This is similar to Coffin's error on the stated clerk, making a prudential employment decision into a judicial one.

 

[Edward]

If I recall correctly, it's been referred to the MNA Committee to review. So I don't really expect it to come out of committee looking like it did when it went in. (Checked, I recalled correctly). So you all may be getting all stirred up over something that's likely to get watered down, if not killed off. The final product, if it exists, is likely to be something that is not offensive to the MNA.

 

[johnmo]

So you all may be getting all stirred up over something that's likely to get watered down, if not killed off.

Well I think it's at least possible that the way it is killed off is a recommendation for the moderator to rule it out of order, and I think it's an interesting question of whether that's correct procedurally. I saw in a past assembly where the OC recommended the moderator rule an overture out of order and he did. Can the assembly challenge him on that ruling? If the challenge was upheld, what would happen then?

 

[dsanch1120]

If I recall correctly, it's been referred to the MNA Committee to review. So I don't really expect it to come out of committee looking like it did when it went in. (Checked, I recalled correctly). So you all may be getting all stirred up over something that's likely to get watered down, if not killed off. The final product, if it exists, is likely to be something that is not offensive to the MNA.

That makes sense. Before becoming Presbyterian I was non-denominational. All of this is very new to me, so I assumed that it would be going before GA as is.
[automerge]1750451916[/automerge]

I'm not sure I agree that it's a bill of attainder.

What is a “bill of attainder” in a PCA context?

 

[johnmo]

What is a “bill of attainder” in a PCA context?

It has no special meaning in a PCA context. In general, it is a legislative action that imposes a judicial penalty without a trial. David Coffin is arguing that GA telling MNA they have to fire people is analogous to a bill of attainder.

 

[Alan D. Strange]

A bill of attainder does two main things: the first is to declare some party or parties guilty as a legislative act, and then to impose some sort of censure/penalty as a result of the guilt.

That is what this overture does. It declares that members of the MNA are guilty of violating the U.S. Code. It then declares that the MNA must "repent," which is an ecclesiastical judicial act. But it does not do this through the process established in the Book of Discipline, but rather through the general procedures established in the Form of Government.

The ordinary acts of church courts are those that it performs under the authority of the Form of Government, such as the acts of GA in granting or denying overtures. When discipline is in view, ordinary procedure will not do, but the process established by the Book of Discipline must be employed. For an ecclesiastical court to declare someone guilty and then tell them to repent without following the due process of the BD in establishing guilt and due censure is analogous to a bill of attainder in the civil sphere. Bills of attainder, or their analogies, are wrong wherever they occur because they declare guilt by fiat rather than judicial due process.

That the BCO does not mention bills of attainder is irrelevant. The principle that due judicial process is not handled by the mechanisms of the Form of Government but by the judicial process set forth in the Book of Discipline is everywhere present in the BCO. This GA has no power whatsoever to declare persons guilty without due judicial process, by a fiat act of the Assembly; that is the very essence of a bill of attainder. Guilt for sin and censure thereof is a function of the BD, not the FG.

Further, it is not the case that any church court can establish that specific civil laws (as in citing the U.S. Code) have been violated. The U.S. Code as such is not the law of the church, though much that it prohibits might be a violation of the law of the church. My point is that while we certainly charge persons with violating one or more of the Ten Commandments, fleshing it out with the Confession and Catechisms (especially), we do not charge people with violating the civil law. The civil courts do that, and if those civil courts determine them to have violated the law of the state, then we may cite that determination as part of our whole case. But we charge parties with violating God's law and bring in civil/criminal considerations only as those courts make such determinations. To my knowledge, the U.S. has brought no such charges against members of the MNA, and the church lacks the competency to charge and try them on that basis, much less to declare by fiat that they are guilty of such.

Peace,
Alan

 

[Alan D. Strange]

Perhaps I should further note that I, of course, don't disagree with the right of any church court that has authority over employees to discharge them. Had the overture put it in terms of employees out of line needing to be fired, that would have been one thing.

What is in view in the overture involves far more than that. It does involve determining civil guilt and calling for ecclesiastical repentance, which are distinctly judicial matters, not matters to be handled by fiat procedures.

Peace,
Alan

 

[EvanF]

Perhaps this is a little beyond the narrow question of the overture, but I feel like the sinfulness even of the original issue is debatable, although MNA does seem to have acknowledged it as sinful.

When it comes to complying with laws of men, the church must test the laws against our lawful responsibilities to God and our neighbors, including sojourners. In this case, the idea that Congress has a plenary power to regulate immigration and categorically exclude migrants without individual due process, although not delegated to it in the Constitution or pursuant to any delegated power, has been upheld by judicial review since the Chinese Exclusion Act and Chae Chan Ping v US. But are all laws that withstand judicial review presumed by the church to be binding upon Christians as part of our submission to the government?

In my estimation, federal immigration laws are not only contraventions of the 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution but are moreover sinful abuses of sojourners equivalent to the cursed sins of Edom and Moab against the sojourning Israelites in Numbers. These laws, although not yet abolished, are in the same category as other now abolished prejudicial and discriminatory laws from the same era. Should the church have condemned Christians who disregarded those other now abolished laws such as those regarding slavery, segregation, and miscegenation as violations of God's law? Is it right to condemn those who likewise disregard the present immigration laws as violations of God's law?

This issue reminds of an application I once read of Jesus' "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's" lesson. This application was made by someone whom I would not normally recommend and who most probably would reject the way I took his application. But he said that in as much as the coin bore the image of Caesar and Jesus bid the Jews to render it unto Caesar in taxation, that what is God's is that which bears his image, namely man, and that it is improper to render unto Caesar that which is God's by sacrificing the dignity and rights of the image bearer to unjust impositions of earthly governments. While I tend to think that Christians are called to submit even to unjust impositions on our own dignity and rights, I think this application is a convincing argument for the propriety of standing against unjust laws as they impact our neighbors.

 

[johnmo]

It then declares that the MNA must "repent," which is an ecclesiastical judicial act.

I don't believe every demand for repentance is formal discipline. One does not need to initiate process to direct a subordinate to publicly repent for an act that has tarnished the reputation of the organization. The teeth behind such a demand is that if they don't comply, they could be fired, not excommunicated. This is all setting aside the fact that we're talking about a committee, which it would be impossible to discipline; are you going to suspend it from the sacrament?

I know Coffin doesn't agree with this overture for other reasons, but I wonder if it should also be considered a bill of attainder against past GAs and "fathers" on this logic?

On the civil law issue, suppose it has become public that a deacon has been stealing money from the offering plate. If the pastor tells him that that's illegal, and that he should return the money to lessen the civil penalty, is he acting outside his competence? If someone suggests that the church could raise money by opening a distillery on its property, is the session allowed to consider the fact that it would be illegal? No one thinks the church can render judgment on civil matters that could put someone in prison, but it's pretty important for the church to be able to make judgements of what is or is not illegal and act accordingly. It might not be smart in certain circumstances to publicly say that your employees have violated the law, but it isn't outside the church's purview.

 

[Alan D. Strange]

John,

I don't believe that you're carefully attending to the actual wording of the overture. That is my concern, not all possible scenarios of someone acting amiss.

When the highest court of the church acts in the way that the overture in its details seeks, this would be judicial, carried out legislatively: a finding of violating the U.S. Code and censure based thereon. The overture does not express general dissatisfaction with MNA and call for the discharge of employees. It does far more than this, and you seem not to want to respond to that. I don't disagree that employees may be discharged. I am not attributing entailments to you, but you are to me. I am seeking to deal with the overture.

I also don't take issue with your last paragraph, but you're not making the fine points that I think must be made, as in this overture. Nothing that I say herein is at variance with the way that the church has properly made these distinctions, especially a church concerned about the doctrine of the spirituality of the church.

Peace,
Alan

 

[Edward]

Perhaps I should further note that I, of course, don't disagree with the right of any church court that has authority over employees to discharge them.

I was getting ready to challenge you until I got to this statement. I do think that the GA has the ultimate authority as to how the denomination's money, contributed by the members, is spent, as the session has the authority over how the congregation's money is spent.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Well I think it's at least possible that the way it is killed off is a recommendation for the moderator to rule it out of order, and I think it's an interesting question of whether that's correct procedurally. I saw in a past assembly where the OC recommended the moderator rule an overture out of order and he did. Can the assembly challenge him on that ruling? If the challenge was upheld, what would happen then?

Any commissioner can challenge the chair. It's part of Robert's Rules of Order. It requires a majority vote to reverse the ruling and allow the motion to be debated.