Certainly that is true with regard to the Arians.

At least with regard to ordained officebearers, it is also true with regard to those who dissent on Arminianism and on church government.

But again, I’m speaking solely for myself, not for anyone else.

Lets use your 3 examples

* The Nicene Council, with regard to Arius.

There were debates back and forth for about 2 generations. By the end of the voting the Arians were not satisfied with the outcome. The medieval Germanic kingdoms: Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Visigoths, Lombards were Arian for centuries. The post-Empire military stayed Arian much longer. Europe would not be Trinitarian uniformly and officially until the 8th century.

I have a hard time calling that an example of success.

* The Synod of Dordt, with regard to Arminianism.

Again the Arminians didn’t feel they got a fair hearing and walked away from the vote angry. Today, 2013 the overwhelming majority of Protestants are Arminian: General Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist… Dordt has for them no moral authority and it didn’t resolve the issue. Instead it created a semi-schism on issues of justification that exist through today. I don’t have the data but my guess would be if you were to map the ratio of Reformed to Arminians every decade from say 1600 to 2010 in about 38 of those 40 intervals or maybe even all 40 the ratio has gone down.

I have a hard time calling that a success.

* The Westminster Assembly, with regard to church government.

A set of agreements that lasted 17 years and were revoked by Charles II with the Restoration in 1660. Yes they absolutely got adopted in Scotland and have had influence on the PCA and OPC. But… again

I have a hard time calling that a success.

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Those are 3 good examples of precisely the problem of majoritarianism. Compromise is about keeping the losers onboard.

With respect, I would suggest you read this person’s website and see if you believe it is within the spectrum of beliefs tolerated for Green Baggins posters. Your views may not be mine.

Here are three examples of voting, in levels of increasingly more serious consequences if the minority had been allowed to continue to advocate its case despite losing the vote:

* The Westminster Assembly, with regard to church government.
* The Synod of Dordt, with regard to Arminianism.
* The Nicene Council, with regard to Arius.

I think virtually all of us in the Reformed faith (apart from a few extreme Reformed Episcopal and extreme Covenanter people) would agree that church government is not of the essence of the church, but a church can’t function if it isn’t in agreement on how it is to be governed.

Likewise, we can disagree on whether Arminianism is error or heresy, but the difference between the two views is serious enough that a Reformed church can and must drive out Arminians, and a Nazarene church can and must drive out Calvinists. Both view cannot be correct; one or the other must be contrary to Scripture.

As for Arianism, that **DOES** deal with the foundations of the gospel. No toleration can be given for error on that point.

I trust those examples make clear that consensus is neither necessary nor desirable in all ecclesiastical cases.

But note a few things: your “opaqueness” observation is a little dust in the jury’s eyes, no? Robert’s never permits a mere majority to stop debate. You have overlapping veto patterns in a congregation when electing office-bearers. Every organization adapts Robert’s to suit its purposes.

Again, I think that Robert’s can be adapted for the church’s needs, but I do think that it needs adapting and we’ve done so in a number of ways at every level of governance in the OPC. I do get your point in the last paragraph, however.

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@Alan

It’s not the rules themselves that engender that, however, but sinful hearts, which no mere rules, or procedure of any sort, can overcome.

I’d disagree. Obviously in the end of 51% are absolutely committed to getting their way and don’t care about the other 49% then any system that allows for majority rule is going allow that. They can block vote, force rules changes… But it is almost never the case that the 51% are that committed to something that has strong disapproval.

Instead you usually have a range of views say 6 plausible solutions. Roberts Rules of Order is focused on finding 1 of those solutions that can get to majority as quickly as possible. There are alternative systems which aim to get alternatives listed and then look for a “winner” which is a 2nd or 3rd choice of almost everyone out of the 6. Like I said above, “an option that say 80% think is pretty good and the other 20% think is far less than ideal”.

You can build systems that encourage compromise. Switch from majority voting to approval voting. In Approval voting all the possible solutions with even minimal support go forward for a vote and everyone gets to vote yeah or nay on all the possible solutions they like and the one with highest level of approval wins. This tends to encourage solutions that most people can live with.

There are variants like Schulze voting which take the advantages of approval much further, and have other voting theory benefits. One of those that isn’t a theoretical benefit but a practical one is that that the specific scoring in borderline cases will usually be too complex for humans to understand (i.e. the scoring needs to be done by a computer). So these votes don’t tend to cause hard feelings of the, “I can’t believe you voted against me and let ______” type happen. The connection between the final result and individual votes while having lots of good theoretical advantages is opaque to anyone not very good at math (which is most of the population).

You can have rules that make stopping debate with mere majorities difficult. You can have overlapping veto patterns so solutions that command mere majorities are hard to form… etc.. Honestly the way the US government is structured is designed to make 50%+1 rule impossible. Yes, there is a lot you can do systematically to encourage people towards consensus.

RRO doesn’t do those things because consensus isn’t the goal. It assumes people are very committed to the body, and the body has lots of complex issues they need to resolve fast. Use RRO for something like a student council, no one is moving to a different college over how much money the film club gets.

So, your disagreement is far deeper and more fundamental than Robert’s. It was misguided on my part to assume some agreement between us (as I have no idea who either you or CD-Host are; I’ve not read other comments from you). Comments that you make to CD-Host suggest to me that I also don’t know where CD-Host is coming from at all, so I withdraw my comments assuming our level of agreement and now realize that you are on a different page altogether from the institutional church in its various manifestations.

Just a little clarification if i may, Alan. I wasn’t at all suggesting that Roberts’ Rules are subject to abuse. That is true but wasn’t nearly my concern. Nor was i asking for uniformity but rather unity – the precise kind mandated by Jesus Christ in 1 Cor. 1:10. No one should be forced to be in uniformity to any human – just to our beloved Lord Jesus!

And you are so, so correct to note the distinctions in the ontological Trinity. Yet when it comes to the Trinity and decision making, they do in fact practice uniformity! All that they do, they do according to the will of the Father. They’ve yet to vote on anything ;).

Nor have they ever taught their people to ever vote on anything. So beneath RRO is the acceptance of practices that themselves are found wanting in the Word and Will of God for His church.

CD – man i wish you possessed saving faith! I almost ant to say, “thou art not far from the kingdom” but what do i know about God’s choices?

You wrote, “in something like a voluntary cooperative organization like a church you do often care how passionately the lowers dislike the outcome.” So, so, so right! In fact, according to the apostle Paul, I am to prefer others more important than myself (Phil. 2:3-4). If I don’t I sin. Yet we go against that every time we vote in church – it’s an exercise in which i affirm I want my will done in preference over others. Hence in our church, we vote as often as Jesus and the apostles taught us to.

I agree that the rules can be used in a way that is higly politicized and allow a bare majority to dominate. It’s not the rules themselves that engender that, however, but sinful hearts, which no mere rules, or procedure of any sort, can overcome.

Here, Simple Elder and CD, is what I appreciate about what you’re saying, if I understand it correctly (and I address in my article in OS cited above in this thread): Robert’s used in a highly political and partisan way, not in a way in which we esteem others better than ourselves and seek unity, is divisive in the church. I agree. I’ve seen it used that way before and it’s lamentable.

Think of this–our local Session which has six active members–tends not to go forward on any important issues without unity, not satisfying ourselves with bare majority rule. Now, you may say “that’s contrary to Robert’s.” No, it’s not. Robert’s urges particular bodies to develop their own standing rules or by-laws that trump Robert’s. It is wise for the church to be sensitive, particularly in its local expressions, to work for greater unity than Robert’s may require.

So, I don’t know that we’re as far apart as may seem, but Robert’s, thoughtfully and judiciously used, can be a help, in the larger meeting especially.

Group A has 60% of the votes for X
Group B has 40% of the votes against X
Group A makes an official statement why X is a good
Group B makes an official statement why X is bad
X passes

That’s perfect legislating. All the objectives are met. It isn’t a discussion. In a discussion you want to encourage people to be open minded and persuadable. A good legislative system wants people to become locked into a position so that their votes don’t swing back and forth inconsistently.

Ted’s criticism is quite right. RRO is designed around democracy not consensus. Unity and understanding are not the goal. RRO does a great job of allowing groups to reach decisions when the goal is to move forward when only 55, 65, 75, or 85% agree with the plan but if you aren’t sure you want to ram things forward but rather reach consensus RRO doesn’t work well.

Take for example a key component of RRO, majority voting. Majority voting works really well to get a leader or policy that can command majority support. As long as you don’t care how passionately the losers dislike the outcome it is a good system. But in something like a voluntary cooperative organization like a church you do often care how passionately the lowers dislike the outcome. So often you want to use a voting system that looks for things like “highest approval” which is not necessarily an option that a majority thinks is best and others hate but rather an option that say 80% think is pretty good and the other 20% think is far less than ideal.

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I don’t know what Ted had in mind. But I do think it is important to understand a well organized meeting whose outcome leaves 1/3rd the church so angry they start diminishing their involvement and commitment is not a success.