How to
Read the PUP Report
Picking Up the Rhetorical Clues to What’s Important
by Alan Wisdom
The report
from the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church
(PUP) has been released and is currently available both on
the web and in booklet form. This is a long document (45 pages), and the
main points are not immediately apparent. Readers can easily be deterred.
Perhaps they might find some benefit in a little guidance on how to read the
report.
1.
Go for the bold.
The place to start when you are reading a General Assembly document is with
the bold-print recommendations. These are what will actually effect action
and cause change in the church. Everything else is background and not authoritative.
In the PUP report as currently printed, the recommendations are found at the
back. So skip over the first 31 pages and go straight to Section V, Recommendations,
if you want to see what the General Assembly will actually be acting on.
Even in
Section V, you will have to separate the bold-type action items from the supporting
rationale. If you make these distinctions, you will find that the 45 pages
become much more manageable. They all boil down to a couple of pages of bold
print that will set policy for the church.
2.
Consider the verbs.
The second thing to do with any General Assembly document is to focus on the
verbs. These tell you the kind of action that’s being proposed. Some
verbs are weak: urge, encourage, suggest, recommend. These do not carry the
weight of a directive. Other verbs are strong: direct, instruct, mandate,
approve. These verbs should get our attention. Something is to be done. Life
could be changing in the church.
3.
Now let’s sort out the verbs in the PUP recommendations.
-
Recommendation
#1: “Strongly encourage”; even with the word “strongly,”
it’s a weak recommendation.
-
Recommendation
#2: “Urge”; another weak verb and, therefore, another optional
recommendation.
-
Recommendation
#3: “Commend for study”; this is very weak. Many things “commended
for study” go quickly into oblivion.
-
Recommendation
#4: “Direct the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly and
urge…other governing bodies.” Now we finally see a strong verb:
“direct.” That means we’re getting to the meat of the
matter. This one could bring some change. COGA is only directed to “explore”
alternatives to parliamentary procedure, so change will depend on COGA’s
disposition as it explores. This recommendation may not bring any change
to the lower governing bodies, as they are only “urged” to “explore.”
-
Recommendation
#5: “That the General Assembly approve the following authoritative
interpretation of Section G-6.0108 of the Book of Order”: Now here’s
some really strong stuff, at last. We’re going to approve
something; it’s going to be authoritative, and it deals with
our constitution. Every Presbyterian should sit up and take notice
when he or she hears that kind of language. This authoritative interpretation
could change our lives, at every level of the church.
-
Recommendation
#6: “Strongly encourages”: Now we’re back to the weak
stuff. Even the General Assembly itself doesn’t have to pay attention
when it “encourages” something. The 2006 Assembly would be perfectly
free to adopt the PUP report, with this “strong encouragement,”
and then ignore its own encouragement.
The Assembly could adopt the PUP report and also propose deleting G-6.0106b.
There are large bodies of people, such as the Covenant Network, that will
ask the Assembly to do just that. Since the PUP report and the overtures
dealing with G-6.0106b are likely to be sent to two separate committees,
this outcome is quite possible.
Note also that recommendation #6 is made logically contingent upon Recommendation
#5. So #6 does not really stand on its own. It’s just a subsidiary
point.
-
Recommendation
#7: “Recommends” that the Assembly answer various past overtures
and resolutions with the PUP report. This is just parliamentary housekeeping.
Of the seven
recommendations, only two have strong language that demands our attention:
#5 especially, and #4 to a lesser extent. Even when we have only barely touched
upon the substance of these recommendations, we can safely make a prediction:
The debate about the PUP report will center primarily on Recommendation #5,
and secondarily on Recommendation #4. The language gives it away: #5 is the
bottom line, the centerpiece, the heart of the report.
Another
clue to the importance of Recommendation #5 is its length. The bold print
is twice as long as for any other recommendation. Moreover, the rationale
for the recommendation comprises almost half of the entire recommendations
section. The task force members obviously knew that this proposed authoritative
interpretation was where the big debate would be, and they wanted to lay out
all their arguments. They didn’t need that kind of space for their other
recommendations.
4.
A final note on ambiguities.
There are different readings of this report. Presbyterians with a more “progressive”
mindset will not read some passages—such as the crucial Recommendation
#5—in the same way as those with a more “orthodox” mindset.
I suspect that this ambiguity may be a deliberate strategy of the task force.
At points where its members may have disagreed, they may have used ambiguous
language to cover over those disagreements. Ambiguity, however, is no virtue
when we are offering authoritative interpretations of the church’s constitution
to set policy for its governing bodies and ordained officers.
Alan
Wisdom is Interim President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in
Washington, D.C. He is an elder at Georgetown Presbyterian Church in D.C.
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