In a card vote, members of Assembly voted 353 to 187 not to receive the Notice of Motion.
Speaking after today’s debate, the Clerk of the General Assembly and General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland said, “The General Assembly was asked today to receive a Notice of Motion from the Presbytery of South Belfast, one of our denomination’s 19 regional bodies, to reconsider a decision that the General Assembly took last year.
“The decision taken, after a number of years of debate, was to no longer invite the Scottish Moderator to the General Assembly and to make permanent previous decisions not to send our own Moderator to the General Assembly in Edinburgh. If the Notice of Motion had been received this afternoon, this would have led to a full debate next year and a decision taken then. This will not now happen.
The Clerk continued, “Democracy is one of the strengths and hallmarks of our Presbyterianism and system of church government - debating together, in General Assembly, in an open and transparent way. I am sure that there will be some in our Church who will be disappointed that this Assembly decided not to reopen the debate next year.”