What REALLY Happened in St. Louis (Part 2)

In the last Perspective, there was a report on what actually passed the special called General Conference in St. Louis, including what the Judicial Council will probably rule as constitutional and therefore able to be implemented. This Perspective offers a behind the scenes look at how some of the proponents of the One Church Plan attempted to obstruct and prevent the Traditional Plan from being adopted. This includes ways they tried to prevent corrective revisions to the Traditional Plan so that the Judicial Council would declare it unconstitutional. You will find here a more detailed account of the General Conference legislative process.

In order to prevail in St. Louis, traditionalists and evangelicals had to fight against some very significant headwinds. From the very beginning, the deck was stacked against any plan for amicable separation or a traditionalist plan. Separation was taken off the table by the Council of Bishops at the 2016 General Conference, when they declined to accept a request to form a commission on separation. Instead, they formed a commission to formulate other alternative plans for the denomination to move forward.

The Traditional Plan was taken off the table in November 2017 when the Council of Bishops asked the Commission on a Way Forward to work on only the One Church Plan and the Connectional Conference Plan. The only reason there was a Traditional Plan at all is that a small group of bishops insisted that one be included at their May 2018 meeting. Since the decision to include a Traditional Plan came only two weeks before the Commission’s final meeting, the Commission was unable to develop the plan. It was left to a few individual members of the Commission and several bishops to flesh out the Traditional Plan.

At that same May 2018 meeting, the Council of Bishops endorsed the One Church Plan by a vote of nearly 60 percent. The Council argued before the Judicial Council that only the One Church Plan should be considered by the General Conference, with the Connectional Conference Plan and Traditional Plan included only for historical context. The Judicial Council rebuffed the bishops’ request, determining that all three plans should be considered by General Conference, along with any other petitions that were in harmony with the call for the special session.

Undeterred, the Council of Bishops asked the Judicial Council to rule on the constitutionality and legality of all three plans in advance of General Conference, some of them perhaps hoping that their preferred plan would gain the endorsement of the Judicial Council. In what appears in retrospect to be an ideological ruling, the Judicial Council ruled that the Constitution did not require uniform standards for clergy, thus validating the One Church Plan. It also ruled about a dozen provisions of the Traditional Plan unconstitutional, meaning that they would need significant amendments in order to become legal. Since the time for submitting legislation to General Conference had passed, those amendments would have to be proposed and passed on the floor of General Conference — a daunting task.

Proposed revisions to the Traditional Plan were written to make it constitutional. The revisions were sent to many delegates via email. However, the conference secretary refused to allow the revisions to be distributed to the delegates in written form. That meant that the delegates would not have a printed copy of the proposed revisions to examine ahead of time or to consult during the debate. The daunting task got harder.

In the days before General Conference, the Committee on Reference referred petitions that affected central conferences outside the U.S. to the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters (SCCCM). The referrals included the main petitions for the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan, but not some other petitions from the One Church Plan and Connectional Conference Plan that arguably also affected central conferences. This last minute referral took delegates by surprise. Normally, the SCCCM meets a day or two before General Conference to consider legislation that affects the central conferences. If the referral had been made weeks earlier, the SCCCM could have had adequate time to consider the referred petitions and possible revisions. As it was, the committee had only an hour after the day’s plenary session to discuss, amend, and vote on petitions — not nearly enough time. As a result, the petitions implementing accountability for annual conferences, providing the Traditional Plan’s exit path, and the Modified Traditional Plan’s enhancements were all voted down in committee, essentially killing them.

At the same time, the Council of Bishops asked the Judicial Council to rule on the remaining petition of the Modified Traditional Plan, which instituted a global process for administering complaints against bishops. The Judicial Council ruled that petition unconstitutional. The ruling stated that it is only the jurisdictional conference that can hold bishops accountable. Thus, by the end of the first day, the Modified Traditional Plan petitions were both dead.

In order to succeed, any plan to be passed at General Conference had to receive three votes in its favor. The first vote was a prioritization vote taken on the first day. In that vote, over 55 percent of the delegates gave the Traditional Plan a high priority. By contrast, the One Church Plan received only a 48 percent high priority vote. This set the stage for the Traditional Plan to be the first plan that the conference would work on.

The second vote any plan needed was to be approved by the legislative committee portion of the General Conference on the second day. In a moment of confusion, the conference passed a motion to end debate after only a few of the corrective amendments had been made, so that no further amendments could be made that day. However, the Traditional Plan received its second vote in favor, with over 56 percent voting yes.

In another attempt to head off the Traditional Plan, supporters of the OCP proposed asking the Judicial Council for yet another ruling on the provisions of the plan. Although little had changed in the plan, some OCP delegates were hoping to further discredit it by having it ruled unconstitutional again. That proposal easily received the required 20 percent of the vote to call for a Judicial Council decision. However, rather than announce during the public session that they would be acting on the request for a decision, the Judicial Council did not respond until after the session was adjourned. Advocates had less than two hours to prepare legal briefs for the Judicial Council to consider. And the decision itself was rendered after less than an hour of deliberations. Such a hasty process did not engender trust in the outcome of the decision, which was to reaffirm the unconstitutionality of eight of the sixteen Traditional Plan petitions and both of the exit path petitions.

Delaying tactics

This brought us to the third day and the third crucial vote on the plans. Delegates again attempted to make amendments to the Traditional Plan to correct the issues identified by the Judicial Council. Opponents of the Traditional Plan went into full stall mode, trying to run out the clock to prevent any amendments from being made. Presiding bishops appeared to cooperate with this strategy by failing to call on evangelicals who were trying to get the floor to make an amendment. Instead, it appeared that preference was given to people wanting to make speeches ahead of those wanting to make amendments.

The parliamentary process was used (and abused) to try to thwart the Traditional Plan. Some OCP supporters asked irrelevant questions and put forward multiple points of order. Most egregiously, some OCP supporters gained the floor claiming to make a speech in favor of the Traditional Plan, but then spoke against it. Such manipulative lying has no place in the church, but it demonstrates the desperation felt by some OCP supporters. In addition, some used the parliamentary trick of employing a point of order to “correct a misrepresentation.” But instead of correcting a factual error, they proceeded to launch into a speech against the Traditional Plan. The presiding bishops unfortunately allowed these kind of underhanded tactics without challenging them.

Equally disheartening were the troubling statements made by OCP supporters that betrayed their antipathy toward traditionalists. One prominent moderate leader accused traditionalists of bringing a virus into the church, the virus of conflict, which would make the church sick. (As if the conflict had not already been provoked by those intentionally disobeying the church’s standards.) Another speaker decried “the spirit of hatred, judgment, and discrimination which creates division instead of unity.” Another delegate alleged that the Traditional Plan was born out of “a story of control or power or dominance.” A prominent moderate leader accused traditionalists of being Pharisees and elevating the Book of Discipline above the Bible, calling the Traditional Plan “hateful” and promising to “amend until the monster trucks roll in at 6:30.” (This alluded to the conference’s need to adjourn by 6:30 in order to make way for a monster truck rally scheduled to start the next day.)

In the middle of the debate, an unsubstantiated allegation surfaced that delegates were being bribed for their votes. While this allegation was referred to the ethics committee, it was never substantiated. The political strategy appeared to be to float the baseless allegation with the knowledge that it could never be addressed or refuted during the time left in the session. The ethics committee released a two paragraph statement after the General Conference stating that its investigation found no substance to the allegations.

Amidst all this turmoil and delay, only a few of the needed amendments could be made to correct the Traditional Plan. More time was taken debating points of order, suspension of the rules, and other parliamentary matters than working on the content of the plan. As the deadline for adjournment approached, the presiding bishop called for a vote on the Traditional Plan, which passed for the third time. For the remaining hour of the plenary session, people in the gallery continued to shout, sing, and try to (unsuccessfully) disrupt the proceedings.

It truly was a miracle that any plan passed General Conference, much less that it was the Traditional Plan. It was a miracle that as much of the Traditional Plan passed as did, and that parts of the plan can actually be implemented.

In a final act of desperation, the OCP supporters again passed a motion to ask the Judicial Council to review the Traditional Plan that was passed for its constitutionality. Again trying to sow doubt about the outcome of the conference, some are claiming that the Judicial Council could throw out the entire plan. As noted in last week’s Perspective, at least eight parts of the Traditional Plan were already found to be constitutional, and they will be implemented.

This level of conflict, the hateful language toward those holding a traditional position, and the determination to prevent the General Conference from accomplishing what the majority wanted to accomplish, tell us that our church is hopelessly divided and unable to continue living together. Why, then, are some progressives and moderates continuing to insist on forcing some type of unity — only on their terms? The 2020 General Conference is unlikely to change the direction of the church or reverse the accountability put in place by the Traditional Plan. Can the church’s leaders not work toward a different way to resolve our conflict that honors and respects the deep differences of conscience and theology?

 

 

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