 Q. Whitfield Ayres Lay Committee director recalls ‘radicalizing experience’ in PCUSA By John H. Adams The Presbyterian Layman Volume 34, Number 4 Posted May 30, 2001
He describes it as a “radicalizing experience” – and he helped make it so. Having been a moderator of the Trinity Presbytery in South Carolina, Ayres was serving as moderator of the denomination’s Peacemaking and International Committee during the height of the Nicaragua-Sandinista controversy. “The staff had written what I considered to be an amazingly biased and one-sided resolution condemning the United States for its opposition to the Sandinistas,” Ayres said. “I took it upon myself to write an alternative resolution.”
“There was a measure of shock from the General Assembly staff who weren’t so used to uppity behavior from their moderator,” Ayres said. “Of course, my resolution was defeated overwhelmingly.” Ayres tells the story to highlight what he believes still continues – a staff-dominated decision-making process that leads to General Assembly support for questionable positions. While his proposal was rejected, Ayres, then a political science professor at the University of South Carolina and a congressional fellow of the American Political Science Association, did not go unnoticed. John Boone, a director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, observed the articulate professor and invited him to become a member of Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom, now known as Presbyterian Action for Faith and Freedom. Later, the Presbyterian Lay Committee elected Ayres to become one its directors. Manipulation by the denomination’s staff still is a major factor in the decision-making process, Ayres says. “I realized in a very personal way how loaded the system is, how virtually all of the resolutions are written by the staff from a particular ideological perspective. I came to realize that the outcome of most of the General Assembly actions is predetermined before the assembly ever meets. “If you let me provide the initial draft, provide the resource people, randomly assign a commissioner with no expertise in the committee’s subject area, then I could project the outcome nearly 100 percent of the time.” Ayres was born and reared in Ames, Iowa, where his Episcopalian father was an engineering professor and his mother was an educator. He left Iowa to study at Davidson College in North Carolina, intending to become a lawyer. But that goal was waylaid by a passion for politics and government. After graduating from Davidson cum laude with a degree in political science, Ayres taught American history and civics to eighth-grade students in South Carolina for three years. Then, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning master’s and Ph.D. degrees in political science. During his graduate school days, his faith in Christ came alive through reading the works of C.S. Lewis and other Christian writers. Today, he is president of Ayres, McHenry & Associates, Inc., a national public opinion and public affairs research firm located in metropolitan Atlanta. Roll Call, a widely-read newspaper on Capitol Hill, called the firm “one of the best in the nation.” Campaigns and Elections Magazine described Ayres as one of the political world’s “movers and shakers.” Ayres began his political consultant business as a way to settle down and end years of commuter marriage. For the first 10 years of their marriage, Ayres and Rebecca Ison Ayres, a pediatric radiologist, were holding forth in towns far apart because of their professions. Ayres says he wanted to become a university administrator, but realized that required a peripatetic lifestyle. So, in 1991, he began the polling business. The firm’s political clients include U.S. senators Paul Coverdell of Georgia, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina; Bill Frist of Tenn.; Governors David Beasley and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina; Georgia congressmen Saxby Chambliss and Bob Barr, and the 1996 Lamar Alexander for President campaign. Corporate clients include Georgia-Pacific Corporation, AT&T, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, The Home Depot, the American Association of Health Plans, the Business Council of Alabama, the American Council of Life Insurance and the Sea Island Company. Ayres’ comments analyzing American politics have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Atlanta Constitution, ABC Nightly News, NBC News, the Today show, CNN’s Inside Politics, National Public Radio, C-SPAN and numerous regional newspapers. And what is a Christian’s responsibility in politics? “I’m engaged in an advocacy process which, of necessity, involves conflict,” Ayres said. “Put simply for a Christian, it means you try to fight fairly. It doesn’t mean that you refrain from conflict because that’s a part of the political process, just as it’s part of our legal process. But it does mean that you refrain from taking the cheap shot, that you refrain from distorting an opponents position, that you refrain from stabbing people in the back.” Ayres, an elder and member of Roswell Presbyterian Church, says he rarely is surprised by the results of one of his polls. But one was an exception. He polled hospital employees for a health-care corporation. “One of our charges was to find out which employees were most satisfied and happiest in their jobs,” he said. “I fully expected the employees of the obstetrics unit to be the happiest, because they’re dealing with well patients for the most part. But the folks who felt the happiest and most rewarded were those in the hospice program. Every single employee felt they were making a difference in the lives of their patients and that their work was valuable and important.” Ayres is not optimistic about the future of the Presbyterian Church (USA). “The views seem so sharp and the points of view so far apart that it is difficult to foresee a future where everyone stays under the same umbrella,” he said. Ayres is no longer a member of the Presbyterian Lay Committee's board of directors. |
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