At 759 pages and 155 resolutions, the Blue Book for the 77th General Convention addresses a broad range of topics, from blessing rites for same-sex couples to an embattled budget, from a kinder approach on clergy removal to additional Bible translations for lectionary readings.

This year’s Blue Book, like those of 2006 and 2009, is not blue. Instead, it is salmon (Pantone 169 M, to be precise)….Here is a sampling of the copious resolutions and reports from the church’s standing commissions and other bodies.

Read it all.

The minutes from that [April Executive Council] meeting say, “The Chair reminded Council that it had wanted a different budget process, which it had had. She said that was a success. She asked rhetorically, “Was it perfect?” No, she said, but it was a sign and symbol of change. She noted that complaint was part of the cost of leadership.”

In other words, suck it up and move on.

I left that meeting deeply troubled, not by the criticism the Council was getting ”“ I’ve been a writer for newspapers and television much too long to get my feelings hurt by criticism. What troubled me was that leaders I admire and trusted seemed to me to be acting in confusing ways ”“ saying things that were contradicted by their actions. Again and again they urged Council to see that ministry is carried out as “close to the ground” as possible and by those people who can do it best, which is usually lay people in congregations across the church. Yet what they keep doing is to try to operate from a top-down model.

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In 2007 I wrote an article for the Living Church magazine reporting on the controversies surrounding the passage of the Dennis Canon at the 1979 General Convention. In that article I reported that it could not be shown that the Dennis Canon had passed the convention, but the balance of probabilities made it more than likely that it did.

In the five years since I wrote that article I have done further research on this question, and in light of these researches I have revised my conclusions.

Read it all.

(Please note that we posted on the video mentioned in this article on the blog earlier which you may find there–KSH).

As the Episcopal Church prepares for its 77th triennial General Convention in Indianapolis next month, transgender Episcopalians and their allies are preparing to challenge the denomination’s commitment to the full inclusion of all God’s people””without consideration of “race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disabilities or age”””in discernment for lay or ordained ministry in the Church. The italicized language is a proposed addition to the current canons of the Episcopal Church, which were previously amended to include sexual orientation as a characteristic that could not be considered as an impediment to ministry. The new language was proposed at the 2009 General Convention, but failed to garner the support of the Legislative Committee charged with recommending resolutions to the full voting body of bishops, clergy, and lay delegates.

“I think there was a tremendous amount of confusion the first time around,” says Louise Emerson Brooks, a media consultant and communications director for the Episcopal LGBT advocacy group, Integrity USA, of the failure of the 2009 resolution. “There was a clear need for education among the bishops and the delegates in general on what it means to be transgender and why it matters that they are not prevented from serving the church in any ministry, lay or ordained.”

“I have to confess,” continues Brooks,

“that I was one of those people who used to say, ”˜Why do we have to put the T with the LGB?’ I thought it was a different issue. I thought it was confusing. I thought it was polarizing. I thought we should just separate the issues, take on one battle at a time.”

A seminar by the advocacy group Trans Episcopal changed Brooks’ understanding of the issues, and Brooks channeled her own learning experience into Voices of Witness: Out of the Box, a documentary that tells the story of trans women and men now serving in ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.

Read it all.

Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I write to you today regarding two important matters.

The first is the decision of the Supreme Court this morning to overturn much of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 law. I was asked by Episcopal News Service for a comment, which I now share with you:

As one working and praying for a more just immigration policy, I was guardedly pleased with the Supreme Court ruling. Although much work still needs to be done to insure that law-abiding immigrants in our country are treated in a just and humane manner, the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down much of SB 1070 as unconstitutional is a step in the right direction, though I wish that it had gone further. For example, the “show me your papers” provision of the law, which the Court left standing, still has enormous potential for racial profiling and other abuses. There is still much work that must be done to assure that all our immigration laws respect the dignity of every human being.

At this time, I am unaware if further demonstrations or press conferences are planned by church leaders, but I would expect that no one sees the struggle for human rights in Arizona to be over. No matter what your opinions are in this matter, I would ask that you keep in your prayers those of your fellow Arizona Episcopalians whose lives are affected on a daily basis by the struggle to find a just solution to this problem.

Secondly, as most of you know, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will begin in one week in Indianapolis. The deputies will be facing tough decisions in a number of areas. At the top of this list are efforts to restructure the larger church in way that will refocus our energy and money on the mission of spreading the Gospel. For those of you interested in learning more about this, I commend to you the series of articles written by one of your own elected deputies, The Rev. Susan Snook, and posted on her blog site: goodandjoyfulthing.blogspot.com.

Other issues to be dealt with include changes in insurance and pension benefits for lay employees, liturgical resources for the blessing of same-sex unions, and our relationship with the wider Anglican Communion. This will be a difficult convention. We are painfully aware of the decline in both membership and giving, and the failure of our current structures to adequately address these problems. There is a need for radical change and the abandonment of old programs and practices that no longer work. This will take both courage and sacrifice. Therefore, I especially ask you to remember the work of the General Convention in your personal prayers and in the public prayers of your parish these next two Sundays. You may either write your own prayers to include in the Prayers of the People or adapt the one provided by The Book of Common Prayer, p. 818.

Please also remember your lay and clerical deputies: Judy Conley (Trinity Cathedral), Matt Hall (St. Matthew’s, Chandler), Barbara Harber (St. Luke’s, Prescott), Diana Moreland (St. John’s, Globe), Pat Thompson (St. George’s, Holbrook), The Rev. Megan Castellan (NAU Canterbury), The Rev. John Kitagawa (St. Philip’s in the Hills, Tucson), The Rev. Susan Snook (Church of the Nativity, Scottsdale), The Rev. Anne Johnson (St. John’s, Williams), The Rev. Jim Fitzsimmons (St. Andrew’s, Nogales), as well as our delegates to the Episcopal Church Women Triennial meeting: Marilyn Hedges, Winnie Follett, Connie Castillo, and Kerry Jo Hanstein. I will be honored and proud to be representing you as your bishop. Please pray for me, too!

Faithfully,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Kirk Smith is Bishop of Arizona

This post was set up to stay at the top for a little while but has now gone back to its place in the chronological line, so if you are still looking for it or the discussion about it you can find it there.

2. Of greatest concern is not that a blessing of same-gender unions contravenes specific verses of Scripture, though that is unacceptable ”“ of greatest concern is the theology which underlies this rite, set forth in the 82 page I Will Bless You document, which patently redefines the Christian faith, subverting the doctrines of creation and baptism, the nature of sin and salvation, and the grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

3. We have compassion for those who struggle with and act upon same-gender attraction, and we urge equal treatment for all men and women in the church. Our Lord calls us all, equally, to repent of sin that we might receive forgiveness and cleansing through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, restoration to the Body of Christ, and transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit.

4. We hereby repudiate, denounce and reject any action of the Episcopal Church which purports to bless what our Lord clearly does not bless….

Read it all.

In many ways, the event that kicked the entire controversy into overdrive was the dismissal of the charges against Bishop Righter in 1996. At that point, the issue was pretty much settled for anyone with eyes to see what was happening. Thus, the Global South revolt against the Episcopal Church openly began in 2000.

Is 1996 “recent”? Is 2000 “recent”?

Once again, it is easy for reporters to simply note that the conflict has been raging for a quarter of a century, or thereabouts, and that there was a major escalation in the dispute in 2003, with the consecration of the openly gay and non-celibate Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. Now that you think of it, is 2003 “recent”?

Read it all.

Worship at General Convention will demonstrate diverse liturgy and music from across the Episcopal Church.

“It’s a combination of everything that the Episcopal Church has at its disposal that’s been approved,” said the Rev. Charles Dupree, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Bloomington, Indiana, co-chair of the convention worship planning committee.

Eucharist will be celebrated each day, with different services using formats from Enriching Our Worship or from the Book of Common Prayer”˜s Rite 1 or Rite 2. Music will come from the 1982 Hymnal; Lift Every Voice and Sing II; Wonder, Love and Praise; Voices Found; El Himnario; and Flor Y Canto, a Spanish music resource.

Read it all.

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That Title III, Canon 1, Sec. 2 of the Canons of the Episcopal Church be hereby amended to read as follows: No person shall be denied access to the discernment process for any ministry, lay or ordained, in this Church because of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disabilities or age, except as otherwise provided by these Canons. No right to licensing, ordination, or election is hereby established.

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This is an important video because it represents the prevailing theology among the TEC elite. It is something you need to be aware of as illustrated by the fact that it is planning on being screened at General Convention 2012, and that it contains two members of the House of Bishops in its content. You, however, need to make your own decisions about whether to view it since the theology advocated will cause major dissonance–KSH.

Watch it all.

Read it all.

My Canadian colleague did some digging and found the following, instructive excerpt from the collected works of Ms. [Barbara] Marx Hubbard:

“Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis.”

Irrespective of the insight that this remarkable passage gives us into the cast of mind at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Marx Hubbard’s blundering through Scripture and Christology does suggest one path to which the Episcopal critter prayers can lead. When the biblical metaphors used by the Lord (“people of your pasture” and “sheep of your hand”) are taken to imply that there is no substantial difference between human beings and the animal kingdom, then the temptation to transhumanism–the deliberate manipulation of the human condition through biotechnology–intensifies. As we can “improve” beef cattle, chickens and turkeys by manipulating breeding, we can make “better” human beings: transhumanized human beings, cyberhuman hybrids who are immortal. Prometheus, call your office. Aldous Huxley, how did you see this coming 80 years ago, when you were finishing “Brave New World”?

Read it all.

Bookmark it and then follow the links and read it all.

Check it out (start from the bottom and read the entries from there to the top one).

Listen to it all if you care to, and note there are links to a number of the handouts used.

Read it all.

Read it all.

We believe the past General Convention structure has slavishly copied in ecclesial ink the politics and legislative processes of American culture. Episcopalians are fond of saying that the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution also created the church’s Constitution and Canons. It is an exaggeration but a telling one: General Convention looks and acts too much like Congress and not enough like a council of the Church.

Joseph D. Small, longtime director of theology, worship and education ministries for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), wrote in the March issue of First Things about what he called his church’s “democratic captivity” ”” its reliance on secular democratic procedure rather than proper theological discernment to order its common life. This, he argues, has been a key factor in aggravating his church’s divisions. To such observations, we can only concur.

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Martha Gardner, partner from the Episcopal Church, spoke about her church’s General Convention in Indianapolis in July. She noted that like COGS, General Convention is working to renew church structures. Ms. Gardner said that the convention will consider 58 resolutions relating to structural change. General Convention will also discuss several resolutions relating to the proposed Anglican Covenant.

The Rev. David Pritchard, partner for the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, shared his reflections, emphasizing that PWRDF sees itself as “the mission arm of the Anglican Church of Canada.” He described how PWRDF has been successful in working with the Canadian International Development Agency. He commended the work of PWRDF partners and staff and ended by praising the work COGS has done at this meeting.

Read it all.

Watch it all.

Note carefully the contention that The Episcopal Church’s General Convention is expected to approve these first same-sex union blessings in July, and that St. David’s hopes to perform the first such blessing in late December or just after the first of the year 2013–KSH.

You can find the audio here, it may be listened to directly or downloaded as an MP3 file.

As Christendom was waning, the Episcopal Church ratified a new identity in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. This new identity brought us to practice baptismal ministry and made the Eucharist the central part of our Sunday worship. Now, after living this theology for over 30 years, we are faced with the growing practice of Open Table in the Episcopal Church. The two are not unrelated. Perhaps we did not anticipate that we would arrive at the place where we are considering the reversal of the traditional order of Sacraments. Yet, as more and more congregations practice Open Table, we are called to confront the incongruity between practice and traditional theological thinking.

Read it all carefully (Word document). [Please note if you have any trouble go there, then go down to resolution C040 and you will see the document link on the far right (you can get it as a pdf if you prefer)].

The young woman who called St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Hood River, Oregon, was upset and asked if the church offered communion.

“I really need some support right now and I feel like it starts there,” she told the Rev. Anna Carmichael, the parish’s rector.

The wrinkle was that while the woman had attended various churches she had “never formally been baptized and yet somehow this needing to be in community and needing to be supported, in her mind, had something to do with communion as well,” Carmichael recalled.

Read it all.

Bookmark it and peruse as you care to.

To all involved in the mission and ministry of the church today, it is clear that this system is failing us, failing the mission of the church. The reasons why are many. It is too expensive. There are too many people involved and invested in the power that comes from deep and cumbersome organization that has become increasingly bureaucratic. Even among much larger denominations that gather in convention-style deliberation, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church is the largest gathering by far and the most costly. General Convention can no longer claim to be the church in council in its ancient and ecclesial form when it looks and acts more like the national conventions of political parties. And for all of this expense, time, and seemingly necessary inclusion, we accomplish very little in the way of sustainable mission strategies and program.

As a bishop of the church I believe it is time to declare that William White is Dead. We minister in a very different environment from that of William White, in which the pace of change calls for a nimble church able to easily adapt….

Read it all.

Early reports indicate that the proposed changes to the liturgy that The Episcopal Church will consider at its General Convention this summer will include a “Litany for the Planet” that contains this prayer:

On eukaryotes and prokaryotes, archaea and viruses; on microbes of endless variety, the complex and the simple, Creator have mercy.

Those reports also include:

A recommendation that we authorize “The Message” Bible for liturgical use in the church.

And the sage advice that the Eucharist ought to be offered knowingly and in principle to anyone and everyone as an act of hospitality.

Read it all.

On same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues, Jefferts Schori said she has been “stunned at how quickly public opinion has changed in the U.S.” though she cautioned that she doesn’t expect controversy over gay clergy in the Episcopal Church to fade. As more states legalize same-sex marriage, she said, conflicts in the church could become more frequent.

“We muddle through [controversial issues] in a very public way,” she said of the church that has just under two million members in the United States.

“I would guess that at [General] Convention, we would adopt a trial rite for blessing same-sex unions,” she said, referring to the annual meeting of the church’s governing body, which meets every three years. It will next meet in July in Indianapolis. Jefferts Schori said that no priest is required to bless any marriage, but that formal same-sex blessings could become optional.

Read it all.

Now that the Anglican Covenant is dead in the water, those who seek to revise what it means to be the Church have no need to worry about the process set out in the fourth section of that document (assuming that they would have needed to worry if the Covenant was adopted anyway). Regardless, the drive for CWOB is a manifestation of commitment to an “autonomous ecclesiology” rather than “communion ecclesiology.”

Read it all and yes, follow all the links.

The agenda for the afternoon was a report from five bishops who have been involved in the development of a rite for the blessing of same-sex relationships, with accompanying supporting materials. There was actually a read-through of the liturgy, with two bishops taking the lines of those committing themselves to one another. After a few “clarifying questions” in plenary (some of which did not actually meet that description), we had a period of discussion at our tables, and then were sent to breakout rooms where larger groups (about three tables worth) engaged in Indaba-style dialogue.

No one should be surprised that I am among those opposed to the entire project, on principle. I will vote against it, whatever form the rite takes in the end. For that reason, I’m not in a position to offer feedback on its details, fine-tuning language, etc. So I have the luxury of observing, as it were, from a distance. And what I see is a developing struggle between hard-core ideological liberals for whom anything but “full marriage equality” will still be a denial of justice, and institutional liberals who would like there to be some authorized rite for same-sex blessings but are not really interested in it looking anything like marriage. The rite that is being proposed is, in my estimation, marriage by another name, despite the protestations of its authors that it’s simply a “blessing” liturgy. It’s doesn’t use the word “marriage,” but it borrows heavily from the vocabulary and structure of the marriage liturgy. And can anyone question what the headline will be in the secular media the day after we pass the authorizing resolution?

The silver lining in all this is that the proposal is for this rite to be new resource entitled Liturgical Resources One–that is, not appended to any currently extant liturgical book, thus placing it under the authority of the Bishop Diocesan as to whether it may be used.

Read it all.