On a list of why one man enjoys the General Assembly of his denomination (the Presbyterian Church in America – PCA):
2. Robert’s Rules of Order—I know….I know…it is sick, but there is something beautiful about hearing it wielded like a sword cutting everything to precision.
On this list, Robert’s Rules of Order ranks right behind worshiping with 1500 other men and right before Christian unity.
Is it bad that I find this more amusing than concerning?
Sorry for the extended break. I had meant to take a little bit of a break through a particularly busy time, but it ended up being a little longer than I had anticipated.
One of my projects during this break, however, is to continue to work on a book idea that I have had for the past several months. My idea is to write a book about association membership based on the following principles:
I have enjoyed working on this, but, as you can probably imagine, this is a long process, and I could use some help. I would greatly appreciate any feedback I could get on my progress so far, either in a comment or by contacting me.
Thanks in advance, and enjoy!
Association Membership Step-by-Step: Intro and Chapter 1
Well, if you are the presiding officer, and someone nominates you for a particular office, you probably shouldn’t close nominations before anyone else has a chance to nominate another candidate. Kind of makes sense, right?
In January at the first meeting of the year, [Stacey Mounce] Arnold presided over the board’s election of officers as outlined in the board’s operating procedures since she had served as the board chair during the previous year.
Arnold opened the floor to nominations for the position of board chair, board member Gary Shurson nominated Arnold, and Arnold closed the floor to nominations and called for a vote.
That action by Arnold prompted a point of order objection from Hazelton, who challenged her that the vote was not being run correctly. Hazelton argued at the time that the proper procedure was for Arnold to accept any further nominations from the floor that existed for the position and then, once there were no more nominations, vote on them one at a time in the order they were received.
No, Arnold told Hazelton, that is not the way that elections are held for the executive committee. Over Hazelton’s continued objection, Arnold proceeded to call the question for the vote and received the position by a majority vote of the school board.
But a review of procedures prior to Arnold running the elections, and a review of Robert’s Rules of Order, indicate that Hazelton may have been correct.
…
Roberts Rules of Order are clear on the matter of elections for officers on regularly meeting boards. A board can gather nominations in a variety of ways, with some generating them through a special nomination committee and others simply opening the floor to them. But even after a recommendation or single nomination has been received, the chair must invite any additional nominations from the governing body. Robert’s Rules state, “Any member may now rise and, after addressing the chair, nominate anyone else for any office, or he may nominate one person for each office, thus proposing a new ticket. The chair announces the nominations as made, and when he thinks that no more names will be proposed, he asks, ‘Are there any more nominations?’”
Most of parliamentary procedure is about common sense and common courtesy. In an election, other candidates have a right to have their name put forward before the assembly puts the election to a vote.
This really isn’t that complicated.
I came across an article entitled “On Process: Finding Ways to Make Progress as a Community” by Neil de Koning that focused on what Christians should strive after in their meetings. It is so good that I will not make any comment, except to highlight the article’s main points. Instead, just go read it.
On Process:
1. Every good process respects the people involved….
2. Every good process demands that the participants commit to respect others in it and the community which engages it….
3. Every good process is designed according to the outcomes desires….
4. Every good process needs to include a way of listening to the voice of God….
Robert’s Rules are not designed to foster prayerful listening to God, discernment processes that include times of silence, or a discussion on the meaning of a particular passage of Scripture. For these things to take place, we need to break out of the pattern of debate and into another process.
On Discernment:
What is particularly helpful is the deliberate desire and focus on discerning the will of God and the desire to submit to it. It tries to remove the “I want” from the conversation. Because the constant question is “what does God desire?” this process demands a willingness to set aside our desire. The communal process means that the outcome is based more on developing unity in our call to serve Christ than debating difference.
…
Sometimes “God-language” can be manipulative. Some people can be skilled at using their authority and knowledge or guilt and shame to manipulate others into silence. Difference can then be understood as disobedience to God.
Again, go read it.
In an interesting article on how one university student government is restructuring itself, I read this section on the new procedure appointing the parliamentarian:
The Parliamentarian who is in charge of running meetings and ensuring the Assembly follows parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order, will no longer be appointed by the SGA President.
The Assembly will vote on the Parliamentarian the first meeting of fall semester. The hope is that the Parliamentarian will be more accountable to the Assembly.
What would it mean to hold a parliamentarian accountable? I can imagine some good things, such as making sure that the parliamentarian is indeed showing up to meetings prepared, ready to offer advice.
At the same time, however, it almost sounds as though a sports team were asking to appoint their own referees in order to hold them more “accountable” to themselves.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, though.
On Monday, I wrote about Common Sense Philosophy, American Democracy, and Total Depravity, but I had to end before I got to the really good stuff–Total Depravity! As Americans, we live with a deep-seated belief that we just know certain things, and that no one should question our common sense knowledge. As Christians, however, we believe that the Fall touched every part of our human nature, including not only our bodies and our souls, but our minds. As Andrew so succinctly put the issue in his comment, “Is our knowledge distorted by sin or not?”
It seems to me that there are two extremes that we should avoid when we think about how we know things. The first extreme is to deny that anyone can know anything, a position that cannot avoid its own ironic self-confidence. The second extreme is to hold one’s own opinions beyond any scrutiny. Somehow, Christians need to find a way to hold their beliefs and opinions with confidence, while yet with a humility that takes into account our own limitations.
Democracy throws this balance all out of whack, though, by forcing everyone to come to his/her own opinions on every issue. Certainly, people would have had opinions in all societies throughout history, but democratic societies uniquely demand opinions from the people, even when there is no good reason to think that normal people could come to a quality, informed opinion. Even if everyone had all the relevant information regarding a particular issue (which no one ever does), it would be a mistake to think that sinful, selfish motives never influence the way we evaluate the data.
Yet it is nevertheless my civic duty to form my own opinions, and then to vote. When we stop and think about it, that just seems odd.
In an ideal world, all associations would employ both a professional parliamentarian and an attorney. As I have written about elsewhere, parliamentarians and attorneys take different approaches and work toward different goals. An attorney’s goal is compliance with statutory law; a parliamentarian’s goal are productive, efficient, and fair meetings and organizational structures.
This, of course, does not mean that attorneys do not care about efficiency or fairness, or that parliamentarians do not care about the law. Attorneys, however, are not hired to care about the quality of a meeting, and parliamentarians are forbidden by law to offer legal advice. So, in an ideal world, all associations would employ a professional parliamentarian and an attorney.
Along these lines, this story reports how a New Hampshire public committee had to redo a vote that was in violation of state law, even though perfectly in line with Robert’s Rules of Order:
The Timberlane Budget Committee took a new vote on the selection of its chairman after being accused of violating the state’s open meeting law when making its decision by secret ballot.The committee met Thursday night and decided once again — this time by open vote — that Michelle O’Neil will lead the group. Two weeks ago, the Timberlane Regional School Board took a similar action after the district was notified it may have violated the New Hampshire Right-to-Know Law because its vice chairman was chosen by secret ballot.
“It was a mistake and it was corrected,” O’Neil said.
She said the district erred by electing some of its officers by closed ballot in accordance with Robert’s Rules of Order — widely used guidelines on parliamentary procedure for conducting public meetings — instead of the state law. O’Neil added that once the committee learned it may have made a mistake, it decided to rectify the situation.
While this lesson is something that all associations should keep in mind, it is somewhat more pertinent for organizations that perform government functions. When in doubt, consult an attorney.
(But don’t forget about hiring a parliamentarian if you want to have a great meeting!)
This “Nerditorial” has a great explanation.
The bottom line is that a Committee of the Whole takes the entire assembly and turns it into one big committee. This means that everyone can speak as many times as they wish, but the final decision arrived at during the deliberation of the Committee of the Whole is merely a recommendation to the assembly (even though the Committee of the Whole and the assembly are the same group of people) when the Committee of the Whole “rises” (that is, dissolves as a Committee of the Whole and returns to being considered a normal assembly) to report.
Yes, it’s kind of convoluted, and the same group of people do have to vote twice concerning the same decision, but it can be helpful if a very large group of people wants to test the waters concerning a particular subject without risking a final, definitive vote.
The main difference between Committee of the Whole and a variant called Quasi Committee of the Whole is that, in Committee of the Whole, the “committee” actually elects a different presiding officer for the duration of the existence of the Committee of the Whole. In Quasi Committee of the Whole, the same presiding officer stays in the chair. The reason for electing a new presiding officer is that the new presiding officer becomes the “committee chairman” who reports and advocates for the committee’s decision when the Committee of the Whole rises and reports. In both situations, however, the “committee” does merely report to the assembly, so that another vote is required to reach a binding decision.
For most organizations in most situations, Informal Consideration is the way to go. Members are allowed to debate issues as many times as they wish, the same presiding officer stays in the chair, and the vote taken becomes the final decision. It is quick, effective, and straightforward.
Perhaps this chart will help:
| Method of Consideration | New Presiding Officer Elected? | Another Vote Required for a Binding Decision? |
|---|---|---|
| Committee of the Whole | Yes | Yes |
| Quasi Committee of the Whole | No | Yes |
| Informal Consideration | No | No |
Find more information in Robert’s Rules of Order (10th ed.), p. 512-525.
Noll devotes a chapter to “Theistic Common Sense,” a belief that came to the forefront of American theology in the 18th century. The basic idea was that humans are capable of knowing the world directly, through their immediate senses. Older philosophers had argued that ideas that stand between our minds and the data that come through our physical senses.
The upshot of such philosophy is a much lower margin of error. If I can know the world directly, then no mere ideas can come between me and my understanding of the world to confuse me. Moreover, philosophers who argue on the basis of Common Sense philosophy don’t have to spend as much time proving their theories because they “hold these truths to be self-evident.” (Sound familiar? This stuff is very deep in our national psyche.)
From a Christian perspective, Common Sense philosophy has major problems. Christians have always argued that human beings are fallen, and thus that we have a distorted perspective on the world. While some Christians are more generous in their estimation of human reason than others, I think that Augustine (along with many who followed him closely on such points, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin) was the closest when he absolutely denied our ability to think rightly about anything whatsoever–God, ourselves, the world, etc.–apart from God’s grace enabling us to think rightly.
We simply do not have common sense about the world because our sinful nature always distorts whatever we think we know toward sinful purposes. Only the grace of God can renew our minds.
Noll’s argument, then, is that it was highly ironic that American theologians gobbled up Common Sense philosophy as they did. At first, many did so to justify rebellion from England, and then to elevate republican political principles above all reproach. The line in the Declaration of Independence that holds “these truths to be self-evident” does both with one stroke of (the Deist) Thomas Jefferson’s pen.
Later, Common Sense philosophy’s self-justifying logic made its way into theology in general. To illustrate the extreme irony, Noll quotes John Trumbull who, writing in the 18th century, recognized the problem:
As he described the “New System of Logic [Common Sense philosophy],” it contained a fatal contradiction. On the one hand was traditional Christian ethics: “First, That the common sense and reason of mankind is so weak and fallacious a guide, that its dictates ought never to be regarded.” But on the other hand was the new moral philosophy: “Secondly…nothing is so great that it can surpass, or so perplexing that it can entangle, the understanding of a true metaphysician. Trumbull understood the logic of the age and so was able to poke fun at the reasoning processes that were just beginning to exert their sway: “I can take these points to be so nearly self-evident that although I can say very little in proof of them, the reader ought for this very reason the more firmly to believe them. For such is the nature of every self-evident proposition that no arguments can be brought to prove it.” (America’s God, p. 112)
American Christians need to recognize the legacy of Common Sense philosophy arises whenever we too strongly believe in our own abilities to think, reason, and hold “self-evident” opinions. This issue, however, is worthy of another post which will come out later this week.
Happy Friday! I came across this interesting article, which argues that Senate leaders need to begin work on phasing out the filibuster:
So it seems the Senate paralyzed itself. Well, the Senate can unparalyze itself, too. Not right away, but after a time. And they should, if we’re not to become a failed state, unable to make decisions because the minority (of whichever party – what we’re seeing now is the most egregious example of obstruction by filibuster, but far from the only one).
I also enjoyed the author’s story about how she became a parliamentarian. But, the important part of the article comes with the author’s links to other articles and resources about the filibuster. The author did a great job researching these links, so I am more or less passing them directly along from her.
Ezra Klein has an interesting take on the history of the filibuster:
But the filibuster was not, in fact, an invention of the Founding Fathers. It was an accident. The Senate, attempting to clean its rule book in the early 19th century, deleted the section that dealt with moving from “the previous question” to the next order of business. It took decades until someone realized that the absence of that rule meant there was no way to end debate on the previous question. Thus was the filibuster born.
I don’t know enough about the history of congressional parliamentary procedure to know whether this is correct, but Garry Gamber’s A Brief History of the Procedural Filibuster seems a little more plausible:
Vice President Aaron Burr, in his farewell speech to the Senate in March of 1805, recommended that the rule regarding the “previous question” [the motion to end debate] be discarded since it had been used only once during the previous 4 years. When the rules were rewritten in 1806, the section about the “previous question” was omitted.
And, for what it’s worth, here are the actual Senate Rules on closing debate.
My take on this is that, as I argued yesterday, procedural rule changes cannot fix the real problem, which is that we are all selfish. No matter what they rules are, they will be manipulated. The filibuster is the symptom, not the disease. Rather than bringing about knee-jerk procedural changes just to kick-start Congressional activity, we would be better to assess the situation more carefully and make procedural modifications accordingly.