Monthly Archives: June 2012

Late Developments in the lead-up to General Convention 2012

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General Convention 2012 begins on Tuesday, so bishops, deputies, and everyone else who will be attending are making their final preparations for the trip. That means things are rather quiet on the web after a very intense couple of weeks.

Several commentators have offered their final thoughts. Nick Knisely, head of the deputation from the Diocese of Arizona (and recently elected Bishop of Rhode Island, offers his reflections here. He writes:

The issues confronting this Convention are different in my experience than the ones we’ve been facing. For the last two decades, the primary energy of General Convention has been focused on issues of marriage equality and inclusion. Those questions have been settled for a significant majority of the Episcopal Church, and I don’t think they will occupy much of our time next month, though there will be some important votes taken regarding them. What I think will occupy our time is our response to a broad recognition in mainline churches that our existing governance structures no longer serve the needs of the 21st century church. The Diocese of Arizona joined more than 30 other dioceses in calling for a special General Convention to deal with the issue. I know we will deal with the question somehow, but I couldn’t predict at the moment what we will end up doing. There are many different voices and ideas right now, but there’s no sense of consensus. Given that most of our work as Convention for the past decades has been centered on balancing the desire to speak prophetically and minimize the attendant conflict, arriving at consensus on matters of financial and structural reform is unfamiliar territory for most of the deputies. We know something needs to be done. But we’re not sure, as a body, what that ought to be yet.

Finally, there’s an ongoing broad change in the leadership of the Episcopal Church. The President of the House of Deputies has announced that she will not seek reelection, we don’t have a Vice President at the moment, and many among the rest of the leadership are beginning to retire and step-down. As the House of Deputies considers the election of its next president and vice president, it will be making decisions about leadership style, the nature of the relationship between itself and the House of Bishops, and how the next generation of leaders will be formed. If you’re planning on following the news out of General Convention, that group of decisions seems to me to be the most important ones to track.

Crusty Old Dean prognosticates here.

He also reports on one new development. Along with Susan B. Snook and Scott Gunn, COD will be hosting a meeting, called The Acts 8 Moment:

Together, the three of us would like to invite anyone who is interested to come together in Indianapolis at 9:30 p.m. on July 5 (location TBA – like us on Facebook or follow the Acts 8 Moment on Twitter for details).  We want to start the process by gathering, praying, reading the Bible, and talking together about the church we dream of seeing.  Let’s listen for where the Holy Spirit is calling us to go!  Let’s hear each other’s prayers and dreams!  Let’s enter into our own Acts 8 Moment.

If I were at GC, I would be there. I will be there in spirit, and via twitter.

To keep up with General Convention, the official website has everything you could want to know about the proceedings. Andy Jones has assembled some resources here. He will be blogging as will Bishop Miller.

Other blogs to follow are:

And of course I will be offering my own commentary from afar.

How to spend your Sunday mornings

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Tripp Hudgins muses on his own experience growing up not going to church. He points out that there are other ways to spend Sunday mornings.

If I pine for anything it is fishing and sleeping in. I pine for breakfast with my family and wonder if life-long Christians recognize that going to church on Sunday mornings is to sacrifice all the other possible nurturing and beautiful human interactions that avail themselves on Sunday morning. As radical as this might seem to many ecclesial pundits, going to church is to give up community. It is to sacrifice family and relationships. It is to lose time with your spouse.

Same-Sex Blessings and Marriage: Bishop Miller’s statement

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Last week, Bishop Miller sent clergy in the Diocese of Milwaukee a draft letter in which he laid out his thinking on the proposed liturgies for the Blessing of Same Gender Unions, and the evolving understanding of marriage. A week ago today, he met with diocesan clergy to talk about the letter, our perspectives on it, as well as about our pastoral and theological concerns leading up to General Convention and how we might respond to decisions made at General Convention.

It was a very powerful afternoon. Clergy spoke from their hearts, from a wide variety of theological perspectives, and asked hard questions of Bishop Miller and of each other.

Today, Bishop Miller has released a position paper in which he lays out his views and how he expects to vote on the pertinent resolutions. It’s an important document, available here on his blog.

The key elements of his proposal are this:

  • I am wondering if they best way forward would be the proposal and adoption of a substitute to Resolution A049 calling for the amendment of the Book of Common Prayer and the Constitution and Canons to allow for marriage between two persons regardless of sex while at the same time requiring that both parties be baptized, and removing any role of the civil authority. Those who wished to be civilly married could do so if they considered a civil marriage to be most advantageous for them but the Church would have no part of it.  This proposal provided the additional advantage that those who could not be civilly married because state law forbade it or it would cause economic hardship could be married in the Church. As I stated earlier in this letter I propose this because, “it is my opinion that the blessing rite falls short of our call as Christians.”
  • I realize that this means the authorization of a blessing rite would be delayed and that those who have waited for this Church to do so will be told again to wait. However, the provision for generous pastoral response from Resolution C056 would still be in effect, a provision which has allowed for some bishops whose dioceses are in states that have approved same-sex marriage in the civil realm to permit clergy in their diocese to officiate at these marriages and others to allow blessings.

My earlier blog post was in part a response to Bishop Miller’s earlier draft and to the clergy conversation. I repost the pertinent parts:

A theological rationale for same sex marriage has to begin with the nature of God and with human nature. God created us in God’s image, to be in relationship, just as God in Godself is in relationship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Life-giving, holy relationships are based in mutuality, love, and commitment, and some people can only experience such relationships with people of the same gender. Our fallen human nature and our society make any committed relationship difficult, almost impossible, and any couple needs the support of a loving community and the grace of a loving God to thrive. The church should do all in its power to help such relationships flourish. To forbid the sacrament of marriage to a group of people who need it to thrive and flourish is an offense to God who created us in God’s image, and who created us to be in relationship with others.

The proposed liturgy for same-gender blessings is inadequate. I find it lacking precisely because it fails to locate the basis of human relationship in the imago dei. Instead, it speaks of covenant and blessing (I find it ironic that the same people who praise the liturgy and its theological rationale based in covenant are for the most part opposed to the Anglican Covenant). Frankly, I think the theological rationale for the liturgy is deeply flawed. The liturgy itself is adequate although confusing, but there is a question at its heart, namely why blessing? Why not marriage? On the other hand, the SCLM was specifically charged with developing proposed blessings for same sex unions, not a marriage rite

Given the cultural climate, with many of those who most vigorously oppose same-sex marriage having themselves made a mockery of the sacrament by their own lives (Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich come to mind). Would not a more sacramental, a holy witness be of a couple living out a life-long commitment? Would the church’s blessing of such relationships be a witness and symbol of what marriage might be in this world, instead of the dominant cultural models of short-lived relationships like the recent ones of whichever Kardashian it was, or Brittany Spears? In other words, is there a sense in which two living out a committed relationship for a lifetime, are a sacramental witness to the Christian virtues of love and fidelity, and a symbol of Christ’s love for the church to the whole world?

The question facing General Convention 2012 and the Episcopal Church is how to work with what’s facing us. On the one hand, we have this proposed liturgy for Same Sex Blessings. On the other, there is a continuing push to move toward marriage, and another resolution urging an examination of our theology of marriage. This is work that urgently needs doing. It may be that the outcome of that examination is a revision of our marriage rite, and perhaps our canons. I would like to see us freed from the obligation of serving as agents of the state. I would like to see marriage only as a sacramental rite, which might help us offer an alternative to the contemporary marriage business.

How not to restructure–lessons from the UVA disaster

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I’ve followed the story about the ouster and reinstatement of University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan quite closely. It’s a fascinating tale, full of intrigue, missteps, and people power. One interesting perspective from a faculty member (Siva Vaidhyanathan) is here

There are a number of ways to think about this–a battle over restructuring, the corporatization of the university, another episode in partisanship. I keep coming back to something else, our own debates over restructuring in the Episcopal Church. Of course, the situation is rather different (we’ve got no billionaires trying to call the shots), but there are similar tactics in play–secrecy, cabals, power plays (from all sides). Some of the rhetoric is the same, too. We’ve got to change because of the rapid change in our society, for example.

There’s probably also another parallel, the question of mission. Whom do we serve, why do we exist? Those questions are always at the forefront of debates in the church; they are also at the heart of the conflict in the academy right now.

Vaidhyanathan has this to say about the mission of higher education:

Universities are supposed to be special places where we let young people imagine a better world. They are supposed to be able to delay the pressures of the daily grind for a few years. They are supposed to be able to aspire to greatness and inspire each other. A tiny few will aspire to be poets. Many more will aspire to be engineers. Some will become both. Along the way they will bond with friends, meet lovers, experience hangovers, make mistakes, and read some mind-blowing books.

Does that sound wasteful? Does that sound inefficient? Nostalgic? Out-of-sync with the times? Damn right it does.

Perhaps the best lesson we might learn is how not to go about restructuring. The problem at UVA is that the Board of Visitors did not engage the entire university in the conversation about restructuring. Look what happened. Let’s avoid that one.

Preparing candidates for ministry–the role of GOEs

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One of the things that raised my eyebrows the highest when reading through early episodes of the budget fiasco, was the proposal to defund General Ordination Exams. These are the exams taken by candidates for ordination to test their competency in certain areas of theological and pastoral study. Such demonstration of competency is a canonical requirement.

I have been involved on various levels of this process. As a faculty member at an Episcopal Seminary, I sat in the faculty meeting where faculty were to vote on recommending students for candidacy, and heard them complain that bishops didn’t take their decision seriously.

I sat for GOEs myself in a year when one of the questions had an egregious typo that made answering it nonsensical. I served as “formation faculty” in a diocese where we received results and explored areas of strength and weakness with ordinands. And in that same capacity, we had to come up with some means of determining competency for candidates to the vocational diaconate.

It may be that as a church, we don’t think demonstrating competency is particularly important. In that case, we should change the canons. It may be that the process could be improved, that changes be made to reflect the realities of ministry in the twenty-first century (but I still think that a firm grounding in the traditional theological disciplines will be necessary in any changed environment: there will still be scripture, and the historical tradition, et al).

What I do know from my experience is that if a diocese takes seriously the requirement to demonstrate competency, it requires enormous amounts of energy, time, and creativity, especially when working with candidates who haven’t had a traditional theological education. Here’s what happened in my former diocese when we had several candidates for the vocational diaconate.

Those of us involved in the process sent a flurry of emails in which we talked about format, what we would require, what sorts of questions we might ask. After several weeks of work, we established the format, vetted the questions with the group, asked the candidates to submit papers. We read the papers, followed up with another flurry of emails to discuss how we thought the candidates did and how we might approach an oral conversation. Then the conversation itself. How long did all that take? I have no idea. Now that was in a relatively large diocese where there were multiple candidates. A single candidate would require almost as much time, energy, and creativity from those involved in establishing competency. How much of a small diocese’s resources would be devoted to assessing a single candidate?

I suppose someone might say, the situation I’ve disagreed shows the inadequacy of GOEs. Perhaps it does, but if the process is broken, let’s fix it. Let’s not eliminate it.

I’m one of those people, perhaps a member of a dying breed, who believes that a learned clergy is one of the things we have to offer the wider church. Yes, it requires, time, money, and other valuable resources, but in a culture where “dumbing-down” seems to be the norm, even the “dumbing down” of Christianity, it’s one more way we set ourselves apart and are counter cultural.

One of the issues in the budget debate is the question what is best done on a national level and what is best done on the diocesan or local level. It seems to me that GOEs provide an excellent test for exploring as a church how we might coordinate national and diocesan efforts. But to do that, we need a conversation that involves all of those perspectives, not simply an executive fiat from above, suddenly telling the dioceses to take over tasks for which they are not prepared and for which they may not have adequate resources. Such a conversation might develop templates, models, or roadmaps for dioceses to follow that would prevent everyone from having to design their own processes. (I wish the same thing were done with other elements of the ordination process–the whole design of the process, for example, or the development of diocesan training programs).

In the meantime, let’s not defund GOEs, let’s keep them going with an eye to revision, improvement, and perhaps complete transformation.

There’s an interesting article at the Cafe in which Raewynne J. Whiteley asks some very pertinent questions.

It all becomes clear now: Structure, dysfunction, and the Episcopal Church

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Katie Sherrod, a member of Executive Council, has published her version of the budget and restructuring debates in and around EC. With Susan Russell’s from last week, the two combine to offer an alternative narrative to that produced by the Presiding Bishop and the Chief Operating Officer, and to offer explanations for the deep distrust among all the players involved. It’s clear that it’s not just the process that’s broken. The institution, structures, and relationships are broken as well. Indeed, so broken is everything that I’m not sure there’s any point in trying to fix things.

My question for all those involved–PB, COO, PHoD, EC, staff, even GC itself: “How can you imagine any of us on the margins of these structures, looking on from afar, can have any trust in any of it, or even any sense that what you do might have a positive impact on what we’re trying to do in the local church?”

Where do we go from here? Can these bones live? I don’t think so. I think there’s only one answer and it’s a complete demolition and rebuild. We’ve got to rebuild from the bottom up, not remodel the existing edifice. Those who are currently involved in running things should be excluded from designing plans for the new structure. They are both too invested in the Church as it exists and too caught up in the conflicts and struggles of the past to imagine new structures and to imagine a new way of being church.

How do we go about all this? There are lots of proposals out there already and I’m not going to add to the mix. Instead, I’m going to urge my diocesan deputation to General Convention to engage in conversations about structure with others and to encourage the development of a process that takes place outside the existing structures of the Church (i.e., General Convention, Executive Council, 815). I’m going to urge them to listen to voices that don’t want to re-open old wounds or rehearse old antagonisms (even if “old” dates only to October 2011, January, March, May 2012). From those conversations may bubble up an alternative way to approach restructuring. It may even be that an already proposed resolution might point a way forward.

Scott Gunn has a great deal to say on these matters. I agree wholeheartedly:

In my view, we should start with a blank slate. “IF we were creating the Episcopal Church from scratch for our time, what would it look like?” Let’s pretend we have no headquarters, no committees, no legislative assembly. Nothing. What would we build? What does our mission compel us to build?

Our question cannot be, does this committee do a good job and are the people who have served on it faithful servants? No, the question must be, how can we do this work? Is there a way to do it without a committee? Do we need a staff office to make this work happen?

There should be no sacred cows. Everything, and I mean everything, should be up for grabs. Except. We are an episcopal church, so we need to continue to understand that the fundamental unit of the church is the diocese, not the congregation or a larger structure. Also, we need a model that supports ministry and leadership by lay people, bishops, priests, and deacons. Open, clear, governance is necessary.

I’m also going to propose a resolution at our diocesan convention that funds our asking to the National Church only at the level needed for canonical support (apparently 5%). That would free up a great deal of money for us to use in developing programs and networks both internally and across dioceses to do the mission and ministry work we need to do as a church. It may also be that from such efforts a new creation might spring forth.

I’ve found Bishop Kirk Smith’s reflections about restructuring which he places in the context of “creative abandonment,” quite enlightening.

This week in Budget and Dysfunction news

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So the Presiding Bishop released her own version of a budget for the 2012-2015 Triennium. The story (with link to the budget) is here. It’s received praise from Scott Gunn, Crusty Old Dean, and Susan B. Snook.

From the comments on their blog posts, and the comment threads on the Episcopal Cafe (read them here), it seems there remains deep levels of distrust toward the Presiding Bishop and the Chief Operating Officer. We’ve seen this distrust again and again in the last months, perhaps beginning with Bishop Sauls’ restructuring proposals last fall. As an outsider and observer, I’ve had a hard time understanding where it came from and what fuels it. There seem to be several sources: anticlericalism, knee-jerk resistance to episcopal authority, tension between the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, personal animosity between several of the major players, tension between staff at the Episcopal Church Center and General Convention. No doubt I’m missing some of the dynamics involved.

As an outsider, I must say that it seems all a bit petty, a waste of time and energy. Above all, it is a distraction from the very real problems that face the Church.

And then I read this from Susan Russell: http://inchatatime.blogspot.com/2012/06/elephant-in-living-room-coming-soon-to.html. She provides context, going back to General Convention 2006. I wanted to cry, scream, and bang my head against the wall. With everything confronting the church, let’s reopen old wounds, fight old battles, rehearse old resentments.

God help us all!

A New Chaplain for St. Francis House!

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The Rt. Rev. Steven Miller, Bishop of the Diocese of Milwaukee, and the Board of St. Francis House are pleased to announce that The Rev. Jonathan Melton has accepted the call to be Chaplain of St. Francis House Episcopal Student Center on the UW-Madison campus. In late July he and his wife and their two young children will be moving to Madison from Texas.

Jonathan has been rector of St. Christopher’s by the Sea, Portland, Texas, since October, 2009. He previously served as Assistant at St. Helena’s Episcopal Church, Boerne, also in the Diocese of West Texas. Jonathan is a graduate of Wheaton College, BA (2003) and of the Duke University Divinity School, M. Div. (2007). He was ordained to the priesthood on September 18, 2007. Jonathan’s interests include his family, hiking, reading, knitting, and blogging.

From Jonathan’s blog, Chasing Yoder: “I am very excited for the opportunity to work on a daily basis with university students at a uniquely formative time in their lives; I believe college ministry holds tremendous potential for the development of young, missional leaders committed to following the cross-shaped way of Jesus. My move to St Francis House comes in response to nudges of the Spirit toward campus ministry that Rebekah and I have been sensing in various ways for going on six years now. It’s an exciting, unknown step for us.”

The St. Francis House Board and staff are excited about working with Jonathan.  Weekly St. Francis House services will resume at Grace Church at 5 pm on Sunday, August 26. The meet-the-new-chaplain semester kickoff will be on Sunday, September 9. We can hardly wait!

 
I would like to say that I am looking forward to working closely with Jonathan in the coming year. Grace is hosting St. Francis House during the development of the property on University Ave. We already have been enriched by the presence of the students and are excited to welcome a new chaplain!

Same Sex Blessings, Same Sex Marriage

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Scott Gunn has blogged his perspectives on the materials produced by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Mission.

I’ve been thinking about them as well, more intensely in the last day or two, and I would like to offer my own thoughts.

A theological rationale for same sex marriage has to begin with the nature of God and with human nature. God created us in God’s image, to be in relationship, just as God in Godself is in relationship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Life-giving, holy relationships are based in mutuality, love, and commitment, and some people can only experience such relationships with people of the same gender. Our fallen human nature and our society make any committed relationship difficult, almost impossible, and any couple needs the support of a loving community and the grace of a loving God to thrive. The church should do all in its power to help such relationships flourish. To forbid the sacrament of marriage to a group of people who need it to thrive and flourish is an offense to God who created us in God’s image, and who created us to be in relationship with others.

The proposed liturgy for same-gender blessings is inadequate. I find it lacking precisely because it fails to locate the basis of human relationship in the imago dei. Instead, it speaks of covenant and blessing (I find it ironic that the same people who praise the liturgy and its theological rationale based in covenant are for the most part opposed to the Anglican Covenant). Frankly, I think the theological rationale for the liturgy is deeply flawed. The liturgy itself is adequate although confusing, but there is a question at its heart, namely why blessing? Why not marriage? On the other hand, the SCLM was specifically charged with developing proposed blessings for same sex unions, not a marriage rite

Given the cultural climate, with many of those who most vigorously oppose same-sex marriage having themselves made a mockery of the sacrament by their own lives (Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich come to mind). Would not a more sacramental, a holy witness be of a couple living out a life-long commitment? Would the church’s blessing of such relationships be a witness and symbol of what marriage might be in this world, instead of the dominant cultural models of short-lived relationships like the recent ones of whichever Kardashian it was, or Brittany Spears? In other words, is there a sense in which two living out a committed relationship for a lifetime, are a sacramental witness to the Christian virtues of love and fidelity, and a symbol of Christ’s love for the church to the whole world?

The question facing General Convention 2012 and the Episcopal Church is how to work with what’s facing us. On the one hand, we have this proposed liturgy for Same Sex Blessings. On the other, there is a continuing push to move toward marriage, and another resolution urging an examination of our theology of marriage. This is work that urgently needs doing. It may be that the outcome of that examination is a revision of our marriage rite, and perhaps our canons. I would like to see us freed from the obligation of serving as agents of the state. I would like to see marriage only as a sacramental rite, which might help us offer an alternative to the contemporary marriage business.

I’m sure there will be lively debates on all these matters at General Convention. In the meantime, Huffington Post is running some essays on gay marriage, written by LGBT religious leaders. Here’s one from Patrick S. Cheng (who teaches Theology at Episcopal Divinity School.) And from Malcom Boyd, commenting on the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer’s marriage rite:

One of the prayers says: “Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy.” I feel this is our own prayer at the heart of our marriage.

Another prayer in The Book of Common Prayer goes: “Give us grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek each other’s forgiveness and yours.” Wow. This is a central prayer for any committed day-by-day life together.

What about a really central question — the deep meaning of a shared life in the context of a world with other people? “Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.”

I am deeply grateful for Mark’s and my gay marriage and our blessed years together. Our gay marriage binds us to the world around us. Our gay marriage gives us healing and blessing that we can share with others.