At the 204th PCUSA General Assembly, Chamberlain unexpectedly defeated (the) incumbent Stated Clerk, the denomination’s highest elected office. But within 24 hours of his election…Chamberlain announced his resignation.

Winfred Clark Chamberlain III, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who held some of the highest offices in the denomination, has been removed from ordained office by the Presbytery of New Covenant. Chamberlain appealed the presbytery’s disciplinary action to his former employer, the Synod of the Sun, but his appeal was dismissed on Jan. 15, 2010.

New Covenant revoked Chamberlain’s ordination on Nov. 18, 2009, after several years in which he was embroiled in legal troubles, placed on probation and incarcerated. In 2007, the same year he was appointed parliamentarian for the Presbytery of New Covenant, he was found guilty of unlawful, serious injury to a child with criminal negligence. His punishment was five years of probation, which included sex offender counseling and the requirement he have no contact with children. He was later jailed for violating that probation.

The 62-year-old Houston attorney was ordained in 1972, according to PCUSA records, and he was declared “honorably retired” in 2002. Prior to retirement, he pastored two churches in Louisiana and served various roles in the PCUSA bureaucracy, including the position of Stated Clerk for the Synod of the Sun, one of the denomination’s largest middle governing bodies, and membership on the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC), the denomination’s highest court.