Actually, a lot of church denominations (or their publishing houses) have blogs–and you can expect to see a whole lot more coming to a server near you. There are certainly pros and cons.

I’m in agreement with Mr. Chellis–let’s move on to another topic now.

I approach these things from within a deeply protestant tradition which is a constant balancing between institutional authority and the priesthood of all believers. This is the nub of so many theological issues in the late modern protestant church, from sola scriptura to simpler power struggles over who gets to say what. There are some really good and strong critiques of these reformational impulses from the traditionalists, critiques I and others on this blog have voiced (which gets to my initial relish of the irony involved).

But given the strange historical development of the protestant tradition, those institutional strengths must be embedded, and rarely (if ever) made explicit, or the whole house of cards comes down. It is a microcosm of the crisis of modern authority which is lost if exercised, and especially if exercised routinely and without great care and caution.

The traditionalists in our anti-tradition tradition must be ever mindful of this. This is my primary concern.

No one on this blog broke any confidentiality ruling. That was done by whoever posted the contents of the new Psalter to the internet. Mr. Brown simply linked to what others had put on the internet. Once on the internet it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Still, it was easy enough to remove the link.

Lets be frank. Crown and Covenant is worried about copyright concerns. Others are working on new Psalters and our committee was jealous to exclude them from participation. Now that the product is finished we need to preserve what we hope will be a cash crop. I get it. And I am comfortable with it. That is why I agree to the rule- no more commenting on the Psalter.

Now, whether the new Psalter will be of such a quality that anyone would want to pirate it remains a question that history must judge. Ok, ok, that was an editorial comment on the Psalter revision. My last in this venue.

Just so Mr. Stegall gets an answer, though, the Synod’s moderator announced, with Synod in session, that the document was confidential. The committee announced it, and it’s on page 1 of the document itself. That doesn’t impugn anyone who missed those notices or didn’t get the document on the first transmission, but they are facts.

The identity of the Admin is no secret and is explained in other posts.

If the 30-day review is pro forma and the committee really isn’t concerned about the review of Synod, then we won’t see any substantive changes forthcoming. But I suppose if the committee has wise and godly membership that really want to serve Christ’s church and the Synod, then more might be done. I guess we will see, won’t we?

It’s ironic that criticisms of a denomination and a committee are made on a blog site that is owned and operated by that denomination and yet STILL that denomination falls victim to charges of stifling discussion and other gross generalizations. I suggest you go try that sort of discussion on sites of other denominations (or institutions, or law firms) and see if those posts stay up, as they have here.

I found this description of what happened on Drew’s Synod blog:

“Following a brief report of the Trustees of Synod in the afternoon, a lengthy report by the Psalter Revision Committee was taken up. The committee reported that it had completed its work of revision on May 10 of this year. The proposed revised psalter would have over 400 selections (similar to The Book of Psalms for Singing) and would be titled The Book of Psalms for Worship. Synod was given a detailed report of the revised psalter’s history and content. Past Synods had given the committee the commission to ‘prepare and publish’ the psalter, but many delegates were uncomfortable with moving forward with the new book until further review could be done by experts outside the committee. Past Synods had debated the principles to be used for the psalter revision and the types of wording changes; but many of the finished revisions have not been seen by the Synod. In a motion that gave shape to the debate, Pastor Bill Chellis (Rochester, NY RPC) moved that work be continued another year so that Synod could review and approve the work as a whole. At the end of the night, that motion failed, though it was close enough to require a standing vote. Prof. Dean Smith proposed that Synod encourage the committee to present all the revised texts to Synod members for a 30-day review–a task the committee chairman welcomed–and that motion passed easily.”

Was there any mention at all that the document had to be kept confidential? (If so, that raises a whole nother set of questions) Drew and now “Admin” say so, but obviously neither Chellis nor Brown believed it did. From what I can see, the committee is still charged with Session’s prior directive to “prepare and publish” and therefore the 30 day review is pro forma only, especially considering the failure of Chellis’s motion requiring approval of whole Synod. So it looks to me like the revisions are final and not subject to Synod’s approval or disapproval at this point.

Given this, the whole ham-handed attempt to censor discussion appears to be yet another clumsy attempt to stifle dissent–regardless of what quarter from which it arises. And it’s looking more and more like something even worse than priesthood of the clerics—priesthood of the bureaucrats!

I talked to the chairman of the E&P Board today. He called to ask that the Psalm Revision material be taken down for two reasons:

1. The material is copyrighted and E&P is worried that Psalm Singing copyright infringers will pirate our Psalms.

2. The second is an issue of propriety. I disagree with there is improper to have a discussion of the big issues as they relate to the revision. I further disagree that there is any Synod discussion left to have. The committee is empowered to do what they want when they want to do so.

I would fight on point 2 but point 1 is a reasonable request. The Psalter is a done deal. We fought. We lost. Now our dissent will be erased from history. So let it be written, so let it be done.

We will fight it out again in another 25 years.