Did We Get a Quantity Discount on Constitutional Amendments?

I realize some of these proposed amendments to our denomination's constitution are only changing words, but I was thinking today- 32 amendments at once? What happened, did we get a deal on constitutional amendments at Sam's? We like to compare our church government to the U.S. government, which has had its constitution amended a modest 27 times in 220 years. I'm not sure off hand how many times the United Methodist one has been amended, but General Conference has recommended that we do it 32 times this quadrennium alone. Even if the proposed amendments were only clarifying small things like who gets an executive washroom key at GBCS, that's a lot of changes at once! Even Sprint won't let me update my cell phone plan that easily.

FYI, I'm not tracking the vote closely because some conferences are reporting it and some are waiting until all conferences have voted. It's hard to cover this sort of thing with incomplete information. (You can see the votes from the Texas Conference here. HT: Amy Forbus)

Comments

[Joe Tognetti]

I'm not all that well informed about all the amendments, but in looking at the summary sheet that the Texas Conference provided (http://texas.brickriver.com/files/oFiles_Library_XZXLCZ/2009amendmentreport_MFU3SN6K.pdf), it doesn't look like General Conference had many other choices. 23 of the 32 amendments effect the worldwide church, and I think if you lump those all together, conferences really only have 10 amendments to consider, which is not that unusual for any large organization, or even for state governments.

The main complaint I've been hearing is that the General Conference really didn't have the time to debate and discuss these amendments thoroughly before passing them on the the annual conferences, which is probably a reason why Amendment 1 was so poorly written. By the way, did the General Conference APPROVE of all of these amendments, or did they merely send them to annual conference for consideration?

[Michael]

Detroit's results:
http://www.umc-detconf.org/blog/

[Daniel]

The lack of time for debate was really disgusting. I watched the proceedings of the last couple of days online. LOTS of bills were just shuffled through really fast - I couldn't always tell what was going on and I'm a well educated person whose first language is English. I really felt bad for the foreign members of the conference. We might say that we believe in thoughtful, reasoned debate that thoroughly explores issues before voting on them - but that sure is not what happens at General Conference. The structure and allocation of time prevented it completely. It was very sad.

The good news is that the internet and blogosphere have afforded (at least some of) us a chance to talk and think through these things more carefully before Annual conference voting.

[Jim]

Texas did not pass Amdt 1 by simple majority. The Red Wing conference in Kentucky voted it down. Detroit did not pass Amdt 1 by more than 2/3. What does that portend across the the country?

[Joe Tognetti]

Jim,

Based on how I read the votes from TX and Detroit, TX voted 1 down overwhelmingly, but Detroit passed it...by a narrower vote than most of the other amendments, but it still passed.

General comment: I wish the conferences had a consistent policy: everyone share the votes or no one does. It's just silly to release a few vote totals and have people speculate on that when we don't have all the information.

[Jim]

Here's how I read it. Please correct me if I'm embarrassing myself. I counted 732 total votes cast. 2/3 would be 488. Only 477 voted yes. It takes a 2/3 vote in 2/3 of the conferences to pass these amendments, no?

[Luke]

Jim,

Close, but not quite. A 2/3 vote of the aggregate number of members of the annual conferences is necessary for ratification. It need not pass 2/3 of the annual conferences. It needs to be passed by 2/3 of the members of ALL the annual conferences.

The reason why it is frustrating to me that annual conferences are reporting results is that their results don't matter except as part of the total.

Luke

[Joe Tognetti]

Jim and Luke,

Wow, I didn't realize it was that complicated! So really, how each conference votes is irrelevant...so I definitely agree with Luke, it's silly that we're only getting partial results from some conferences. At least if they all reported we could get a full picture of what's going on, and if none of them reported, well, at least that would be consistent.