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Late Developments in the lead-up to General Convention 2012
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:
- Crusty Old Dean
- Susan B. Snook
- Scott A. Gunn
- Center Aisle, from the Diocese of Virginia, has offered a great deal of commentary and news at past conventions and is already producing high-quality material this year.
- And the Episcopal Digital Network Mediahub is pretty cool
And of course I will be offering my own commentary from afar.
Same-Sex Blessings and Marriage: Bishop Miller’s statement
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.
Preparing candidates for ministry–the role of GOEs
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
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
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!
Same Sex Blessings, Same Sex Marriage
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.
More on the debate over communion without (before?) (instead of?) baptism
A great deal was made several days ago over a post at the Cafe by Andee Zetterbaum:
The question we need to be asking isn’t what SHOULD the theology of baptism and communion be, it’s what is the PERCEIVED theology by the outsider who is present at our worship. And the people who need to be involved in that discussion are:
The 8-year-old who comes to church with her best friend after a sleepoverThe grandchildren who are only here twice a year when they are visiting their grandparents
The 11-year-old who often comes with his grandmother and has been leaving love notes to Jesus on the altar since he was first old enough to write, but whose parents won’t allow him to be baptized until he turns 18
The teen who is clearly uncomfortable being here, but wants to be with her boyfriend
The anti-church spouse
The Muslim grandmother from another country who is here for her grandson’s baptism
The Jewish son-in-law who comes with the family on Christmas
The ‘spiritual but not religious’ 20-something who has moved back in with his parents after college, and only comes to church on Easter to keep the family peace
The homeless person who wanders in off the street
Those who come to share with and honor their loved ones at weddings and funerals
What do our communion practices say to them about the nature of the God we worship? What does God say to them, through the way we share communion?
So I wasn’t going to say anything more on the topic. I’ve made my position clear, and I think at this point there is more heat than light in the conversation. There are those who think open table is crucial to our mission, our proclamation of Jesus Christ, and our self-understanding as inclusive and welcoming communities. There are others who see the practice as an affront to scripture, to two thousand years of Christian practice, and an offense to the sacraments.
Then I read this by Jesse Zink, who visited an “official” Protestant church in China last year:
One Sunday I visited one of the major, sanctioned Protestant churches in Beijing. The congregation stood while the pastor prayed over the communion elements. Then, just before the distribution, the pastor made an announcement. “If you are not baptized, please sit down.” About a third of the congregation did so. They watched while the rest of us received communion that was passed through the pews. None who sat down seemed offended. No one stormed out in a huff. This was how things were. They were not baptized yet but looked forward to the day when they were.
So what’s the difference between this church in Beijing and your average Episcopal congregation, where I can never imagine something like this happening?
One difference—and there are many—is that folks are beating down the door of this church in Beijing. I had to wait in line twenty minutes to get into that service. The sanctuary could probably hold 1000 people and it was standing room only that morning. In the Episcopal Church, perhaps, we’re so desperate for folks to come in, we don’t want to do anything that will turn people away.
I know it won’t change any minds, but still.
Is a representative democracy the best way to structure a denomination?
Like Churchill said, it may be better than the alternatives. It’s certainly better than the authoritarian hierarchy we see elsewhere, but can we envision alternatives?
Jim Naughton takes to task those who see in the infinite vote-takings at General Convention a culture of “winners and losers.” He wonders whether we have become to fragile for democracy.
Mark Harris has asked the same thing.
Others disagree. Susan B. Snook advocates a deep period of prayer and discernment as we look toward restructuring, rather than the calling of a special convention.
Scott Gunn’s blogging blue has come to the resolutions on public policy that are before GC 2012. He is sharply critical of resolutions that ask governments to take action. In fact, this is one of my pet peeves. I’ve sat through enough diocesan conventions to dread the debate over this or that resolution that takes a stand on some issue facing the state or the nation. I doubt that whatever we say, as a diocese or as the Episcopal Church, has any impact on lawmakers or on public policy. The impact it does have is on making some of us feel good, when the resolution that is passed is in keeping with our political agenda. It also alienates those who may take a different perspective on the issue, and ultimately, it may alienate outsiders as well.
In the Episcopal Church, we have seen a hard-fought partisan battle over the full inclusion of LGBT persons. That battle is winding down with the approval of liturgies for blessings likely this summer. There were winners and losers and many of the losers left the church.
We live in a political culture of hyper-partisanship and I think we need to ask ourselves whether the deep partisan divide that affects our political culture may also have infected our church. Are there other ways of decision-making that might avoid up or down votes on hundreds of resolutions? Are there other models for gathering the larger community together to discern God’s will? We have a legislative process in the Church and in the nation. The legislative process is broken in Washington; perhaps it’s broken in General Convention as well–or perhaps it diminishes us as individuals and as the body of Christ, instead of allowing us to flourish.
This week in rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic
i.e., talking about restructuring the Episcopal Church
Scott Gunn, in his blogging blue series, has this to say about a resolution to create a task force focused on restructuring:
when this task force is convened, we need to make sure it doesn’t have any of the usual suspects. The same people will bring us the same ideas. That’s not what we need. And if at any point you voted in favor of the disaster of a budget that came out of various committees and Executive Council, you especially should not be on this group. Not that anyone will pay attention to the ranting of a simple blogger.
A thoughtful post from Unapologetic Theology on gnats, camels and General Convention. He puts his finger on what I’ve been thinking, too:
Rather, I’ve come to believe in the concept of “parallel growth change.”
“Parallel growth” is a strategy apparently adopted by some major corporations that face issues similar to the Episcopal Church: outdated structures, bloated budgets, overly centralized and irrelevant systems.
The theory is this: Those interested in change should resist the temptation to battle the system or try to change the dominant, inherited culture – battles that only end up causing turf wars because people tend protect “the way things are.”
Rather, leaders who are in favor of change are encouraged to all but ignore “the system” and concentrate almost all their efforts on encouraging healthy franchises – those local retailers that are doing well in spite of “corporate” policy or procedures.
The analogy isn’t perfect – we’re not a corporation – but how that looks in the Episcopal Church is that people who are in favor of change should all but ignore “the system” and concentrate their efforts on encouraging healthy congregations – those congregations that are growing and mission-minded in spite of diocesan or “national” structures.
Susan Brown Snook is thinking along the same lines:
Let’s put everything on the table at this Convention – the budget, the structures of the church, the shape of Convention itself. Let’s not spend our time wrangling over niceties in an endless series of resolutions that will make no difference to the church. Instead, let’s have a conversation about where Jesus is leading us. Let’s pray and read the Bible and discern where God is calling us to go. Let’s network and share and listen for the voices of the ones who aren’t often heard – the younger, less experienced people who have a better understanding of the future that lies ahead.
Preaching Grace on the Square 