Looking Toward a New Era

By Richard N. Ostling

The Presbyterians, at a turning point, elect their leader

When the nearly 700 delegates to the General Assembly of the 3.1 million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathered in Phoenix last week to elect a leader, many observers looked upon the outcome as foreordained. Well before the voting began, stolid, shrewd William P. Thompson, 65, a lawyer from Wichita, Kans., sometimes regarded as the pope of the Presbyterians, was the odds-on favorite for the post of Stated Clerk (chief administrator). But on the fourth round of voting, Dark Horse James E. Andrews, 55, a droll, self-deprecating minister reared in Whittenburg, Texas, emerged in an astonishing upset as the man who will try to redirect the declining fortunes of the Presbyterian Church over the next four years.

Like many mainline Protestant groups, the Presbyterians are rich ($1.2 bil lion in contributions last year) but have been suffering from a slippage in membership. Since 1968, the rolls have shrunk by 1 million, with a decrease of 35,000 last year. The 278-year-old U.S. church is troubled by hostility between Evangelicals and social activists in matters as diverse as theology, foreign missions and ecumenism. For 122 years, the Southern and Northern wings of the church were separate entities. Last year they reunited, and Andrews and Thompson have served as Co-Stated Clerks on an interim basis. Says Andrews: "We have operated as almost an identical person."

The Atlanta-based Andrews, who calls himself part of the "overweight, middleaged, white clergy who are shiny on top" is no rookie in office; he served for eleven years as head of the Southern branch of the Presbyterians. Before that, he had been an administrator and information officer with Princeton Theological Seminary and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Andrews does not possess, however, the formidable reputation of Thompson, perhaps the most powerful church official in U.S. Protestantism, who ran the Northern Presbyterian division for 17 years. At congressional hearings and meetings of the National Council of Churches, where he served as president, and the World Council of Churches, he has long been an articulate voice for the liberal position on such issues as abortion, nuclear disarmament and U.S. policy in Central America. Andrews is of similar mind but has been less outspoken.

Prior to last week's balloting, a special nominating committee had considered 59 possible candidates for Stated Clerk. After winnowing the group to 13 finalists, the panel came up with a surprising suggestion: it proposed the Rev. Patricia McClurg, an administrator with Andrews in Atlanta. The 45-year-old McClurg would have been the first woman to lead a major Christian church. But her candidacy was quickly squashed by the General Assembly's own nominating committee, which passed over McClurg without explanation and announced a slate of Thompson and Andrews. Perhaps, remarked McClurg, the committee felt that the men "looked exactly like what a Stated Clerk should look like." Two other men were nominated from the floor.

The final vote for Andrews conveyed a clear message, even though there was little ideological day light between the two leading candidates. A study committee on the Stated Clerk's function noted a widespread call from Presbyterians at the grass-roots level for greater account from its administrator, more and a rejection of any single person as the church's official voice on public issues. The lay Presbyterian constituency indi cated that it wanted to move slightly to ward that era years ago, when the Stated Clerk was primarily a record keeper and not a highly visible chief of staff, like Thompson and his illustrious predecessor Eugene Carson Blake (1951-66). One conservative layman in Phoenix summed up Andrews' victory as a backlash against Thompson, adding, "Thompson assumed the role not only of leader but of spokes man for the whole church."

Andrews mostly concurs with the concept of a looser leadership. Said he after his election: "I never expect to hear the Stated Clerk referred to as chief executive officer again." Although he may occasionally prove more outspoken politically than conservatives expect ("If the situation is critical, and the policy base is there, I don't see the Stated Clerk has a whole lot of choice"), he does want to about Presbyterian concord after the conflicts of recent years. "Life," Andrews, "is a process of mutual back-scratching."

-- By Richard N. Ostling.

Reported by Jack Lavelle/Phoenix

With reporting by Jack Lavelle