The trashing of parliamentary procedure

<>From Hills of the North blog:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Parliamentary procedure is at its core about democracy at its best: achieving in decent and orderly fashion the will of the majority while fully respecting and protecting the minority (or as one writer put it, "to give the minority a fighting chance.") There is a reason that every democratic voting organization uses a form of parliamentary procedure (in this country, usually Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised), whether it be church, or city council, or stockholders' meeting, or legislature. Those who object to parliamentary procedure, or who abuse it, are almost inevitably those who have no patience for democracy or dissent, or those who simply do not like the result that would be forthcoming when the ayes and nos aren't to their liking.

In our church we have two recent and regrettable examples of antipathy toward parliamentary procedure. The first, of course, is the Presiding Bishop, who has lawlessly decided to ignore the very basics of Robert's and the canons themselves in a whole range of actions where she can't be bothered to follow the rules, or where she worries she might not get the votes necessary to do what she wants. She has, in essence, with the apparent acquiescence of a majority of bishops, turned parliamentary procedure into a sham--something no more meaningful to them than, say, a Book of Common Prayer liturgy. This certainly reflects her anger at, disrespect for, and, some say, hatred of the minority orthodox, who after all have the temerity to do what minorities generally do--object and disagree and attempt to obstruct the majority. And in a sense her suspension of parliamentary procedure (for that is what she has done) is evidence of her own weakness, her inability to reason with those with whom she disagrees, and her intolerance of those who do not see the world exactly as she does. It is a rejection of democracy, since the rules came about by democratic vote, not by fiat. And it is with her, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe and every other tinhorn dictator who cannot accept the norms of democratic procedure, an unequivocal admission of defeat.

But the Presiding Bishop is not alone. Now comes the sharia-loving Archbishop of Canterbury himself, writing from that cradle of parliamentary democracy, Great Britain. He says that Lambeth will avoid parliamentary procedure. "We have listened carefully to those who have expressed their difficulties with Western and parliamentary styles of meeting," he writes, before announcing he is chucking parliamentary procedure for "indaba" meetings--groups that are preselected and designed to preclude any decisions from being made. In short, he is taking from Lambeth any semblance of democracy, because the result might be inconvenient. He wants consensus instead of the bother and unpleasantness of true democratic debate. But as Michael Crichton wrote, "the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled."

Note that the Archbishop doesn't say who are those who have expressed these difficulties. Almost certainly they are not the Majority World bishops, many of whom are from Commonwealth countries that cherish the parliamentary tradition they received from Britain. Rather, the objections undoubtedly come from the same crowd that so loathes parliamentary procedure across the Pond: the Americans and Canadians and their pals. (After all, who loathes things "Western" more than self-loathing Western elites?). The reason they would be pleased with this ditching of parliamentary procedure is because were a vote actually permitted and taken, the Americans would find themselves bounced out of the Communion on their keisters, the Communion's overwhelming opposition to the innovations of the American church reinforced, and a reaffirmation of the Gospel as it is given to us in Holy Scripture. We can't have that now, can we? Little wonder so many orthodox are refusing to play this game.

The left has always found democracy inconvenient (strangely, even when they win), and so by reflex warms to and seeks control by way of inherently non-democratic mechanisms (the courts, international organizations, NGOs, etc.) They are the ones who were apologists for Mussolini and Mao and Stalin, and who today fawn over Iranian mullahs and celebrate Castro and Chavez. That's because deep down they wish they could like their heroes achieve what they want to achieve without the bother of obstreperous "dissenters," as they define anyone who can't see things exactly as they do. After all, they have great and prophetic things to do, and their trains simply must run on time.

The trashing of parliamentary procedure in our church has served to frustrate both purposes of parliamentary law. The Presiding Bishop does it here so to dispatch with her troublesome orthodox minority. And the Archbishop of Canterbury does it in Lambeth so to preclude the majority achieving its ends. In both cases it reflects a profoundly undemocratic instinct that we should all lament, and an abandonment of law that will ultimately hasten the end of both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.