One of the remarkable moments at Synod 2023 occurred on Thursday afternoon, as Synod descended into disarray. During the debate on the majority report from Committee 8, Adrian de Lange said: “I have lost confidence in the ability of this body to deliberate and to seek the will of the Holy Spirit, and as a result, I can no longer be seated as a delegate.”
As is now well known, many others left under protest for the same reason.
This gets at the heart of what synod is. The CRC is not a democracy, nor are its assemblies representative bodies. Delegates to synod are just that. Delegates. Not representatives.
This makes synod a deliberative body whose task it is to “seek the will of the Holy Spirit,” as de Lange said. What this means is delegates participate with biases dialed down and humble discernment dialed up. Through worship, prayer, much discussion, and floor debate, the body attempts to collectively discern the will of the Holy Spirit.
Politics what we do together
There’s a saying that “politics is what we do together.”
But is it really? Other domains demand the same kind of can’t-opt-out supremacy. Phrases like “all of life is worship” and “everyone’s a salesperson” are technically true, but it’s unhelpful for me to respond to a cold call with “and also with you” or respond to a call to confession with “send me a quote and let’s circle back on this.” Not every domain can intrude into every other domain and demand equal supremacy <cough>Kuyper</cough>. This is why it’s not right or fair for the political to intrude in the places it does, like Synod.
And yet.
Anytime you start a group or join a group or try to run a thing with people other than you, you’re doing something political. Politics is non-optional. That, by definition, makes synod a political body rather than a deliberative body, whether we like it or not. There’s humility, discernment, and prayer. But there’s also strategy, persuasion, and collaboration.
The political is there whether we like it or not.
When Synod is deliberative
At one level, Synod is public and performative. Synods 2022 and 2023 feel different to watch from Synods 2012 and Synod 2013, partly because of the matters discussed, but also partly because delegates know they’re being watched.
But on another level, Synod remains intensely deliberative. Two examples:
The exchange between Rita Klein-Geltink was, in my view, the most powerful moment at Synod 2023. She was on the minority of Committee 7 (I believe), speaking to the reporter of the majority. They had worked together all week in private, but now their work—and the intense emotion that came with it—was spilling into the public. Aside from what you think about the substance of the exchange, it was a rare moment when those of us on the outside got to experience what I presume it felt like to be working together on an advisory committee. This back-and-forth seemed to lie at the boundary line between Synod’s deliberative nature and its political nature. That the rest of the church got to watch it unfold was powerful.
In another instance, Jason Ruis, who was chair of Committee 8, and Patrick Anthony, a member of the committee, were discussing on Jason’s podcast, the Messy Reformation, what it was like to transition from working as an advisory committee to seeing the debate unfold on the floor on Thursday morning and afternoon. The tone of the deliberation changed, dramatically, as we all saw. Here’s part 1 and part 2 of their conversation.
These, and other similar stories, point to the preservation of the kind of deliberative work that does and should happen at Synod.
How Synod is Political
If politics is what we do together, then Synod is, by definition, a political body, too.
We send delegates. Not representatives, but our delegates do represent us in the sense that Synod reflects the will of the denomination. Some classes even sent delegates based on stated positions on the HSR and a promise to vote accordingly.
We take votes. We assume a majority represents the will of the Holy Spirit. But it would be presumptuous to assume we get it right all the time. The Holy Spirit was wrong in either 1994 or 1995, but probably not both.
There are outside interest groups that have formed to influence the denominational conversation and the outcome at Synod. Many of the stated and unstated goals of the Abide Project, All One Body, the Hesed Project, and Better Together are oriented around a specific synodical outcome. In some cases, these groups function as quasi-lobbying groups. The influence of these groups has grown in recent years as the denominational network has flattened, supplanting the influence of the CRC Establishment centered in Grand Rapids.
There’s a great deal of commentary and punditry. I’m thinking of PVK’s channel, CRC-Voices, Moises Pacheco’s livestreams after Synod 2023, the Messy Reformation podcast, Reformed Podmatics, and many others. This Substack could be put in this category, too.
I’ve used terms like “left” and “right or “liberal” and “conservative” because, despite the obvious political overtones, those words are the best descriptions. While they might not be technically correct, in all cases we all know what they mean.
None of these alone makes Synod political, but all of them together, along with many others, reflect certain qualities about Synod that are something other than merely deliberative.
A game-theoretic approach to Synod
There are 196 delegates to Synod. The moment two of them join in political ways, the other 194 must, too. In this way, Synod is like Survivor. The participants on season 1 entered the game naïve and optimistic, which allowed Richard Hatch to take over the game and eventually win by conceiving the idea of an alliance. After season 1, all players were forced into playing this way, or they would lose. As the game has evolved over 46 seasons, the strategies around forming alliances, backup alliances, shields, and so on have grown incredibly complex. In playing the game a certain way, Hatch forced the game to evolve a certain way, and anyone who didn’t join won’t last.
Parts of synod work like this, too.
Synod is not spectacle
Paul VanderKlay made a great point in a recent video that the purpose of plenary sessions is for the church to understand itself. We watch everything unfold not as a form of entertainment. Synod is not spectacle. (The view counts are not high by YouTube standards.) Rather, watching the body try to discern what it is helps the rest of us locate ourselves within something bigger. As I watch the institution figure out who it is, I’m able to figure out who I am within this context.
Those of us on the outside are looking in to see how we work, what we think, how we argue, how we agree, how we disagree in order to discover who we really are together. It’s the way we as an institutional body make collective sense of ourselves. It’s also a way we resist congregationalism, isolation, and (expressive) individualism. These sessions are performative, but in a good way: they are literally the church performing its function for the rest of us to see.
Thanks for reading.
Kent