"No on B" Votes Increasingly Doom Passage

As of this writing, 9 of 173 presbyteries have voted on Amendment 08-B. All have voted no, most overwhelmingly. Each successive “no” vote makes the prospect of gaining approval of the moral revisionist amendment—and thus approving nonmarital sexual practice for ordained Presbyterians—all the more unlikely.

“Well DUH!” you might say. “Every no vote isn’t a yes vote, and they need yes votes to win. And besides, all nine presbyteries have voted just as they have in the past. The vote is rather obvious, with no surprises so far. It doesn’t prove anything.”

I’m no rocket surgeon, as a “Dilbert” In-Duh-Vidual was once quoted as saying, but I think there is something very important going on even in these according-to-form early votes. It is this: The folks who want us to toss out our ordination standard and approve the constitutional amendment desperately NEED some surprises to happen, and so when the obvious happens, the forces for change lose big.

Let’s do the math: The last time we voted on the matter, 127 presbyteries voted to retain the standards we have always upheld. Only 46 presbyteries voted to remove the standards. That means that this year, in order to get the 87 presbyteries needed to approve a constitutional amendment, the revisionists need 41 of the 127 opposing presbyteries to change their mind and vote the other way. In other words, nearly a third of these presbyteries need to flip-flop on the issue—and that’s if the moral revisionists manage to hold on to every one of their previous 46 presbyteries who voted with them.

So, the moral revisionists needed 41 of 127 opposing presbyteries to change their minds. That was a 32 percent change rate. But now 9 presbyteries have already voted, and not one of them has changed. That means that only 118 opposing presbyteries remain that might possibly flop over to the moral revisionist side.

Since the revisionists still need 41 presbyteries to switch, they now need 41 out of 118 opposing presbyteries, or a 35 percent change rate. As you can see, the needed change rate just keeps getting steeper every time a presbytery votes according to form against the amendment. Should a presbytery that formerly voted with the moral revisionists now vote against them (as in voting no on Amendment 08-B), the needed change rate would really jump higher.

Or think of it this way: Those who favor ordaining persons sexually active outside the marriage of a man and a woman need to nearly double the number of presbyteries willing to vote with them, from 46 to 87. Every presbytery that doesn’t do so is one more nail in the Amendment 08-B coffin.

It could get to the point before long that nearly every remaining opposing presbytery would need to switch its vote for the moral revisionists to get their amendment approved. That is not likely to happen.

However, having watched my team’s criminally lax “prevent defense” allow a college football rival to win a game today that my team ought to have won, I understand the need for caution. The wholesale revision of Christian sexual morality can and will happen if good people do nothing. Revisionists are working diligently to try to get Amendment 08-B approved. Thus, those of us who want to retain biblical morality simply must show up to work against, speak against, and vote against Amendment 08-B in each of our presbyteries.

We ought to take hope that the odds are stacked in our favor on this vote. We ought not to let that lure us into fatal complacency.