Dear Commissioner to the 214th General Assembly:

It is with a heavy heart that I address you on subject of urgent concern to our denomination: the complete breakdown of due process in the disciplinary system, and repeated refusal by one presbytery after another to employ the procedures mandated in the Book of Order for disciplinary cases. Before yesterday, I would never have presumed to write you, but upon reading a copy of the letter sent to you by the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly, I feel constrained to let you know that its authors are not well informed, and thus reach conclusions which are directly contrary to the facts--which as I say, are in the aggregate known only to me. You see, I am the person who has filed (to my knowledge all of) the disciplinary accusations against those who are publicly defying our constitution, and in particular their ordination vows to be governed by our church's polity (G-14.0405 (b) (5)). Since I filed the first of these accusations a year ago, other than to answer questions from the news media, this is the first time I have spoken out directly about the cases. At no time have I been contacted by any of those who signed the COGA letter to you. Since events in some of the cases I have filed have been rapidly occurring, and since the COGA is not in the loop in any disciplinary case, they would have utterly no way of knowing any of the facts concerning these matters. It is lamentable that they chose to write you with erroneous assumptions.

Without any knowledge of the facts, they nevertheless conclude in their letter that "The constitutional process is working. ... We are confident...the constitution will be upheld in content and process. When processes do not move as some would prefer, or decisions are made that do not match particular expectations, it does not mean that the system is faulty or broken". Because of their ignorance of the facts, their confidence is misplaced, and their conclusion begs the question of what the expectations are. Moreover, the opposite conclusion is equally valid in the abstract: when reasonable expectations are not met, then the system may be faulty or broken. Consider that many people still shake their heads at a secular judicial system that found O.J. Simpson free from criminal guilt but then civilly liable for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend. My point is simply that in order to reach an informed conclusion, one must know (a) what the expectations are, and (b) what the facts are. The COGA letter's authors had to guess, and inevitably, guessed wrong. Here are the facts, so you can judge for yourself.

After learning that each of the following people had publicly declared his or her intention to defy the constitution--or announced their actual acts of defiance--and were thus violating their ordination vow to be bound by the polity of our church, I personally filed accusations in the indicated presbyteries, against: Jon Walton (New York); Susan De George, Joseph Gilmore, Jean Holmes and Jack Miller (Hudson River); Don Stroud (Baltimore); Katie Morrison, Brian Tippen, Chandler Stokes, Mary Wright Gillespie, Carolyn Osborne, Yvette Flunder, and Barbara Rowe (Redwoods); Eric Scott Winnette (National Capitol); Tammy Lindahl (Twin Cities Area); Ann Petker (Pacific); Paul Peterson and Teresa Peterson (Yellowstone); Steve Van Kuiken and Hal Porter (Cincinnati) and Elder Steve Morrison (Pasadena, CA Presbyterian Church).

This expectation has not been met in one single case. Despite overwhelming evidence, no Investigating Committee has brought charges. Worse still, In the New York, Baltimore and one of the Redwoods cases, the investigating committees finished their work without, at any time, even contacting me as a part of their "investigation", notwithstanding the fact that I informed each stated clerk that I would travel to that presbytery to be interviewed. That isn't all. After the Baltimore Investigating Committee issued its decision, Mr. Stroud immediately issued a public statement where he expressed the unequivocal truth of my accusation against him, and reiterated his intention to continue to defy the constitution; the timing suggested his advance knowledge of the disposition. My request to recuse one of the committee members as biased due to his large contributions to Mr. Stroud wasn't even reported to the presbytery (whose Stated Clerk is also a large contributor to Mr. Stroud). In Yellowstone and National Capitol, I was interviewed, and in spite of overwhelming evidence against the accuseds, the investigating committees decided not to proceed. (I would be happy to provide anyone with the evidence in these cases.) Hudson River's Stated Clerk wrote me earlier this month, and said she would not even process my accusations because they contained what she claimed were factual errors, notwithstanding the requirement of the Book of Order that "upon receipt of a written statement of alleged offense, the ...stated clerk of presbytery, without taking further inquiry, shall then report to the governing body...and refer the statement immediately to an investigating committee." (D-10.0103) As you may know, there is no appeal from a final decision by a Presbytery not to file charges (D-10.0303) and only the accused has a right to challenge procedural errors (D-10.0204).

These are the undeniable facts, which the COGA could not have mentioned in their letter to you because they were unknown to the COGA. Now they are before you, and you can judge for yourself if the system has broken down.

Respectfully yours,