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Interview of William P. Lytle by Lois Boyd and R.D. Brackenridge, side 2.
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- speakerI was saying that I had the sense of numbness, of inadequacy, of
- speakerthe responsibilities all of a sudden were there.
- speakerAnd the question just why did I allow myself to be
- speakerput in this situation? And, can I do it really? Am I up to it? T
- speakerhat lasted for
- speakerI would, somewhere within that first 24 hour period that
- speakerthat would be Wednesday, a good part of Wednesday, that
- speakeryou're feeling this. You may not be expressing it openly in your meetings with people,
- speakerbut it is down there. But when the Assembly began
- speakeron Saturday, when we got together again what you
- speakerexperience is immediately the support of the whole. There's a
- speakertremendous sense of uplift that hits you as the moderator. The
- speakerpeople expressing the fact they're praying for you. They're. They're thinking of you daily. And, they are with you, you know, and
- speakerall of this. That kind of affirmative word comes
- speakerthrough. And so that you really then
- speakerfind that sense of strength. And I. And, that's part of the reason why I think that
- speakeryou get the energy that carries you right through. At the end of
- speakerthe Assembly,
- speakerdo you immediately come back to your home? Or do you go to Philadelphia? No. I
- speakern this case we stayed over a day, and I guess that
- speakeragain Bill Thompson does this annually.
- speakerThis would be the stated clerk's doing. He invited us, Bertie
- speakerand myself, together with some of the staff,
- speakersome of the stated clerk personnel. The others. The Associate Stated Clerks,
- speakertheir families, their wives,
- speakerjust to share together in an evening, dinner,
- speakertalking, straight socializing. There was
- speakerthen about a half day spent there in some initial
- speakercalendar coordinating with the Stated Clerk's
- speakeroffice. And then, we headed home. And,
- speakerwere home just for a few days before the very next event came up.
- speakerSo you really are. You jump right into the schedules. Our
- speakersummer schedule was not totally full, but we were.
- speakerI was off to a meeting, a Major Mission Fund meeting in St. Louis about two days after I
- speakerhad arrived home.
- speakerWell we were interested in knowing how your schedule is
- speakercoordinated. How do you make the choices of where to go? And, are you supplied any
- speakerkind of secretarial help by the stated clerk's office?
- speakerHow does this work?
- speakerWell. Go to the secretarial help. The. This varies again
- speakerdepending upon the circumstances of the person who was elected. In
- speakermy instance they did provide a
- speakerthree-day secretarial help here at Madison Square. So, we hired
- speakeran additional person for three days a week at the church
- speakerhere to handle the moderatorial correspondence and
- speakerto help with the calendar and the like, and take the phone calls. Y
- speakerou do have the office in New York. There is an office for the moderator there.
- speakerI was only in it two or three days during the year, actually, but it is
- speakerthere. And then, of course, one of the secretaries in the Stated Clerk's office, Marian Liggins,
- speakerwho has, who is
- speakerBob Stevenson's [Stevenson, Robert F.] secretary and has worked
- speakerwith moderators primarily as her responsibility. She does other
- speakerthings too. But but that's been one of her primary responsibility issues. She has done this for years.
- speakerShe is really the key person as far as secretarial work goes. So the
- speakersecretary here in essence worked with Marian in that regard. But I answered mail in both
- speakerplaces. So they do provide that. As far as the scheduling is
- speakerconcerned. We agreed that any any
- speakerinvitations toward requests for the moderator's presence would go
- speakerthrough that office.
- speakerSo the Stated Clerk's office essentially gets all of the, the invitations. If
- speakerI have somebody come to me personally and say I hope that you can come to our church
- speakerthis year. I'd like to have you visit the campus here or there, I
- speakerwould say I get a letter off immediately to say the Stated Clerk's
- speakeroffice because that's where we'll be doing the coordinating. And so,
- speakerit does happen there. that and that does free you from having to
- speakerhave the problem with saying yes or no yourself to everything that comes up.
- speakerAre you aware of every single invitation?
- speakerNo.
- speakerI'm sure that there were a lot of invitations that I was not aware that
- speakereither were accepted or were not. Y
- speakerou depend a good deal here upon the Stated Clerk's office. They know where
- speakermoderators have been in the past.
- speakerThey know what parts of the church have not had visits in the
- speakerpast and those that have had more than their share. So that it's. They
- speakercan. They can sort of weed out some of the invitations
- speakerthat way.
- speakerThey also. I depend upon that office to
- speakerknow what they would see to be something more significant than other
- speakerin the light of acceptance of what would have been a more
- speakerappropriate and more needful for the moderator's presence. At
- speakerthe same time, you have your own input. You say, as I did,
- speakerI would like very much to visit
- speakera number of the mission fields of the church. I'm was talking national mission so as I
- speakerindicated to my desire to get into Arizona
- speakerand New Mexico and into some of the fields that I had served before that I, I looked
- speakerforward to the opportunity of revisiting that work. I wanted to
- speakersee some of the work in the Southeast with the black communities of the
- speakersoutheast. I was interested in and touching base
- speakerwith as many seminaries as I could
- speakerand with colleges. Those
- speakerwere some of the. Those were some of my personal requests.
- speakerI also asked that in, wherever I went, that, if
- speakerit were possible, to visit some of the
- speakerjails or prisons in the area that I would appreciate that. And
- speakerany of the retirement homes. So these were some of my
- speakerpersonal requests that then would go out for an invitation that was
- speakeraccepted by the host or hostess in this case would be told that the
- speakermoderator would appreciate the chance of doing this. Is this some
- speakerkind of agreement as to how many days a week that you're
- speakerto be involved? Or how much you are to be here?
- speakerHow much is how much commitment is there?
- speakerThat is a pretty much of a personal decision too.
- speakerNobody tells you either ahead of time or afterwards that, "Well. You
- speakermust if you're going to be a candidate, you've got to be willing to give up this
- speakermuch, or you've got to you've got to appropriate that much time.
- speakerI assume that people are accepting the fact that they're
- speakergoing to be giving up a big block of their time if they become the moderator. But
- speakerI'm sure this is different in each instance. John [Conner, John T.] was in a position
- speakerto take a sabbatical. And so John and Kathy
- speakerwere hardly home.
- speakerWell one day a month. And, they were gone all year.
- speakerI indicated at the outset that I was prepared to
- speakergive something like two thirds of the time that I felt the necessity of being in
- speakerthe pulpit at least once a month. And that I wanted to be able to meet with our
- speakersession at its monthly meeting. Those were really the
- speakerparameters that I put upon the schedule. As it turned out,
- speakerI guess I was probably on the road three-fourths of the time,
- speakerbut they did that in almost every instance and
- speakerI had the Sunday at home, one Sunday a month and I was able to meet with the session.
- speakerSo my requests were honored. And, we did spend a
- speakerlot of time on the road in the church. And you asked earlier about
- speakermy wife's involvement in the event. And, Birdie was able to go with me,
- speakerI would guess, 90 percent of the time. With her, with
- speakerher costs being taken care of by
- speakergifts from friends, from presbyteries,
- speakerfrom the home church here. This presbytery was responsible for
- speakergifts that amounted to over $3000 alone, which assisted in her travel. And,
- speakeryour travel then is covered through the Stated Clerk's office?
- speakerThat's right. Do you have any feeling that some of these
- speakerthings you do are quote "musts"? Others are optional? Are you given that, that
- speakertype of thing? Yes. Is the moderator really watching here or.
- speakerYes I think that there are a number of things which, you might say,
- speakerare in the calendar. And, it's one of those events.
- speakerThere aren't very many of those, very frankly. There aren't? There aren't very many instances that people say
- speakerwell you just got to be there. One of
- speakerthose would be the opening of the Congress every year
- speakerwhen they have now the moderator's communion service and
- speakerthis includes moderators of all reformed church traditions that come to
- speakerWashington for a Sunday prior to the
- speakeropening of Congress. And, there is a communion service to which the Congress women and women
- speakerand other government heads are invited to participate. That
- speakerit's sort of to make sure that the moderators
- speakerthere. I really. Offhand I can't think of anything else that I would say this
- speakeryear that, you know, it would have been impossible to
- speakermiss. I could have missed that,
- speakerbut you wouldn't want to, To your knowledge are these
- speakervisits other than such considerations as when did the moderator last visit that area? Are
- speakerwe balancing city and country, and so forth? Are these visits
- speakerin any way related to the issues at the General Assembly
- speakeror such, such matters? In other words, is it focused on
- speakerwhat are the particular problems or issues?
- speakerFirst of all, the visits are all at invitation. They're not initiated by the stated
- speakerclerk's office. So I would say that what
- speakergenerates at a General Assembly or the person who is elected,
- speakerdetermines to some extent where the invitations will come from
- speakerand whether they're large or small and the like.
- speakerBut again it's hard for me, not knowing how to balance out others, to
- speakersay for sure. But I do believe that the
- speakerissue that we dealt with seventy-eight Assembly on the ordination of
- speakerthe practicing homosexual persons was probably responsible
- speakerfor the moderator, during my tenure, being
- speakerinvited to attend congregations that have not had
- speakermoderators for a good many years.
- speakerI'm thinking of some of the more conservative congregations,
- speakerlarger congregations, that where a moderator has not
- speakerbeen in appearance for a good many years. And where I was
- speakertold, You know, this is the first time that we've had an invitation from
- speakerthis church. And that, that happened
- speakera lot of times this last year. So that, in a sense, I suppose that is
- speakersaying that what happened to General Assembly did
- speakerdetermine something of the invitation, in that one instance at least. My
- speakermy small church background I'm
- speakersure had had some impact upon invitations that came
- speakerfrom a good many of the small congregations as well,
- speakerfor which I was very grateful.
- speakerOther than that, I don't know what pattern is. I think there are a lot of places that simply get in their
- speakerinvitation right away every year, you know, in the hope that they'll get it. And then, you
- speakerdo have those churches where the celebration is coming. They're having their
- speaker150th. They're having their seventy-fifth. We were at one with a
- speaker250th anniversary in the New York state at a small
- speakerchurch. And I went to on a Wednesday night Newburgh New York where George Washington rode
- speakerby on horseback and the church was operating then. And, Washington was supposed to have come
- speakerin for a funeral service. It was a General Assembly occasion.
- speakerWe had a delightful evening with that of that group.
- speakerAnd so you do have some celebrations of this
- speakerkind where your presence is appreciated simply
- speakerbecause it is a special event in the life of the church.
- speakerDid you find yourself to be the spokesperson for the
- speakerchurch during the year? For example, Doug
- speakerand I were talking about some of the events of the year. And, of course, I don't know how to
- speakerpronounce it. Zimbahway? Zimbabwe. The Rhodesia question of course
- speakerwas very much on people's mind. Were you the one that they would come, the press might
- speakercontact? Or would they go through the Stated Clerk on that?
- speakerI can't
- speakerrecall the press calling, calling me
- speakeryou know, at a distance, to ask about that. But
- speakerin almost any instance when I was in a community and they were going to have a
- speakerpress conference, that would be a question that was asked of me
- speakerby the reporters because they
- speakerare wanting to know what the word is.
- speakerThey would at this time not be looking so much for a statement from a
- speakerspokesperson on that. If they were doing that,
- speakerI would, I would anticipate they would probably go to the Stated Clerk's office, more than they would go to the
- speakermoderator if they're looking for something that the
- speakerPresbyterian Church has taken a particular stand on an issue. I think the
- speakernatural thing for them to do would be to go to the stated clerk to get the
- speakerofficial position of the church in this regard.
- speakerBut the Zimbabwe issue was the issue that more than anything else did
- speakerconsume a lot of time for me, the letters and with news
- speakerreporters both in our
- speakerinhouse communication and was in the public
- speakerpress.
- speakerDid you find it difficult being someone that every
- speakertime you said something you realized it's going to be put into print?
- speakerYes. That's a weight that I was happy to have
- speakerremoved, as one of those.
- speakerAs one of the burdens that rolls off you on that moment of when you
- speakerpass over the symbols of office to the next moderator.
- speakerThat is a heavy responsibility.
- speakerAlthough I did not have to assume that
- speakerall that often, it still is there. This is what I was going to ask
- speakersomething similar. I was going to ask,if it is relevant now. In such
- speakersituations where there was some advance notice.
- speakernot that even after the Assembly itself, where you knew you were going to have to make an appearance before the press, were you briefed in any
- speakerway?.
- speakerIn other words, so that you were. That there was some information about things that was specific to your
- speakerspeaking, not just as Bill Lytle, but you were speaking as? Yeah. Our
- speakerown Office of Information
- speakerdoes, of course, make itself available to the
- speakermoderator immediately. Frank Heinz is one
- speakerwho has particularly carried that role
- speakerfor a number of years with moderators so that, at the Assembly,
- speakerupon my election, when I would be
- speakerfacing very soon afterwards the battery of
- speakerthe newspapers and so on who would be ready to go. I did sit down
- speakerwith him ahead of time. And, Frank shared with me what to expect
- speakerin the various areas. He made no attempt to try to tell me how to answer. But he did let me
- speakerknow the kind of climate that I'd find myself in. And if I had a
- speakerquestion from so and so, that I might be particularly mindful that it would be
- speakercoming out of this particular field or something else. But then
- speakerothers through the year. Vic Jamison and Bob Thompson both from
- speakertime to time were also real help when it
- speakercame to dealing with news releases, actually
- speakergetting into communications but also just some briefings on what to
- speakersay.
- speakerDo you ever take the initiative in saying, "Well, there is this disaster, and I feel I
- speakermust speak to it."? Or. This incident, and I must communicate"?
- speakerWell the Zimbabwe would be the one instance that I think of, in that regard, but
- speakerit was providential in this case that our mission
- speakertrip was to Africa. Every year, the
- speakermoderator goes to one of the overseas fields. And,
- speakerit was decided in June that we would be going to Africa.
- speakerThat was two months before the Zimbabwe question hit the press. So
- speakerthat, we didn't go there because of that, but it was providential that we were there. And, we were
- speakerin the part of Africa where this was a very real part of the
- speakerlife of the countries involved. When I came back from
- speakerAfrica with the kind of data that
- speakerwe had been privileged to both receive and to experience,
- speakerI felt it was important that I share this somehow with the
- speakerchurch as quickly as possible.
- speakerAnd, in as wide a way as possible.
- speakerSo I did at that point to initiate with our information. So,
- speakerthat I feel and felt that I had, that I had some information that I wanted to
- speakerget out to the church. How was that? How was that done? That was done, through through
- speakera letter that did go out to all of
- speakerthe executives of the synods and presbyteries
- speakerwith the thought of their then sharing this on the
- speakerlocal scene immediately with the pastors. It could have had a
- speakerbroader. In retrospect I think I would have preferred even
- speakergoing on a general mailing, costly as that might be, to every pastor. But,
- speakerit was decided then that we would go the other way.
- speakerCan you imagine? I get asked a hypothetical situation in which a
- speakermoderator's own personal positions are quite different from that of
- speakerthe denomination.
- speakerBut that's, knowing what you know about the the ongoing processes, would you
- speakerthink it would be easy or difficult for a moderator
- speakerto be able to communicate? That would be. It would be
- speakerdifficult. And, I'm sure that that could very
- speakerwell happen.
- speakerIt could very well have been that a moderator, in this instance, would have
- speakerfelt very strongly that the grant
- speakerin question of the World Council [World Council of Churches] to the to the Patriotic Front
- speakerwas itself a grievous error. And, have had some real
- speakerconscience about this. In that case
- speakerI would have seen no problem with the practice of moderator saying something to that
- speakerextent and being honest about his or her position since
- speakerthe General Assembly had not, at this point, taken an
- speakerofficial stance on that, on that.
- speakerIt is true,
- speakerin the past, the Assembly has indicated its support of the
- speakergrant to combat racism [Special Fund to Combat Racism], that program within the World Council. And we've been a
- speakerparty to that. But that still would have nothing to do with an individual instance. And, there were
- speakermany leaders in the church who would have taken a position like that. There is
- speakerno monolithic viewpoint within the church on that one
- speakerfrom the top down.
- speakerMy own feeling though, from what I gathered and what I heard, was simply to the extent that
- speakerwhen people were concerned about whether or not we ought to be getting out of the World Council and
- speakerbecause of this, and so on. It was on this
- speakerissue that I felt very strongly that when we
- speakerwere involved in the kinds of issues that we're involved in in the world, that you're going to be making
- speakermistakes along the way. And, you're going to be open
- speakerto being misunderstood or misused. But not to do
- speakeranything, which is the other alternative, is a far greater sin.
- speakerAnd I just kept making that point that we need to trust those who make decisions, that
- speakerthey're human. And they can they can make the wrong decisions. In this case, I don't think they did. But
- speakerthey could. We need to still support it. It was a. It was a message that
- speakerI think it was was heard. I do think that,
- speakeras I say, I was at presbytery meetings. And, I was in 75 I guess, out of 152 presbyteries
- speakerover the year, and that was a question which was fielded about as often
- speakeras any question. And, I found that there was a
- speakerlistening ear in presbyteries. We didn't have this year that kind of a
- speakerwall that people were throwing their questions out and then not listening to what you were
- speakersaying in response. There was there was some openness in this. And, you could
- speakertalk with each other about it. And, you could end up disagreeing, but appreciating
- speakerthe position that others. Well, this leads us sort of into,
- speakerI think, maybe a question that we could spend the rest of this week
- speakeron. But Doug and I were talking yesterday about the
- speakerold General Assembly minutes. They may still do it. But, I've been reading
- speakerthrough the 19th century minutes, where there was a narrative on the state of religion. Each. Each
- speakerminutes is accompanied by it. It's a very useful summary, if you are trying to
- speakerpin down an event. How would you? How would you compose
- speakersuch a narrative of the state of religion, based upon your visiting the church in the past year?
- speakerWhat are even, if that's a little bit ambiguous, what did you?
- speakerWhat did you learn about the church, as moderator,
- speakergoing into seventy-five presbyteries? How do you feel about the church?
- speakerWell my feeling was positive about the church. I had good vibrations across the
- speakerchurch as a whole. I found a lot of
- speakervitality and positive feelings towards the denomination.
- speakerI really feel that you, just from a Presbyterian
- speakerpoint of view, that there is a drawing together within the church
- speakerthat I found to be encouraging. After some
- speakeryears in which a reorganization system we have really not
- speakerbeen as closely in touch with each other and the parts of the church as we had in the past,
- speakerI found that a growing interest, in that and a growing concern.
- speakerSo that was positive.
- speakerI would say that there is a
- speakergrowing conservatism in the sense of wanting not to
- speakerbe as ready to jump into the arena of
- speakerthe social affairs as there has been in the past. T
- speakerhat is somewhat
- speakerdiscouraging to see. It has both
- speakersides. I find one of the real questions that it faces a
- speakerdenomination like our own to be the question of how you continue to have a corporate
- speakerwitness in a day when issues are so complex,
- speakerthat it's not easy to come up with the simple answers: yes no
- speakerblack white on any question. And,
- speakeryou have a constituency, which is much more sophisticated,
- speakerwhich is a good thing. But the sophistication brings with it
- speakeralso a desire to be a part of the decision making process. And, that
- speakercreates some real problems. With everybody wanting to be in the act and
- speakerfrustrated when the church is saying something that they are not in agreement with. So
- speakercan the church take these official stands that
- speakerthey have? For the church not to be able to do that I think would be very very
- speakerdisastrous. But how to do it and still keep the
- speakerintegrity of the whole and speak to the diversity of the
- speakerchurch on that. I say that's one of the issues
- speakeraround which we're really having to do some real wrestling and
- speakerquestioning today.
- speakerOver all, my sense of the
- speakernature of religion is a deepening, a
- speakerdeepening interest in in our faith, a
- speakerdeepening role of spiritual life in the church.
- speakerAnd I found that in small and large churches alike
- speakerthat this was present. T
- speakerhat, you know, that rather than a general
- speakerstatement. There are concerns. And,
- speakerif I were going to be picking those out that characterize the church today. One
- speakerof those, which which was central in my own year,
- speakerwas the role of women in the ministry. That
- speakercame early on out of a personal desire to know more
- speakerabout the concerns that I've been hearing and
- speakerhearing about at Ghost Ranch conference on Church Change Clergy Women in June.
- speakerI made it a point of putting that on the schedule. That was my initiative.
- speakerIt really was my initiative, over some hesitancy on the part of those who were doing the scheduling, wondering
- speakerif it really was going to be worthwhile for me to take the time to spend out there. No question in
- speakerretrospect that it was. Because, out of that,
- speakercame the question, "Well. How can the moderator during the year help
- speakerto make visible the concern that women are, in an increasing number,
- speakersensing a call to ministry in the church. And, the doors of opportunity
- speakerare very slow to respond to that?" And,
- speakersomebody at that conference said, "Why don't you consider a woman intern at Madison
- speakerSquare?"
- speakerWhich, I said, "Fine, but who would pay that bill?" Whereupon
- speakerI learned that there is money in the Major Mission Fund
