The U.S. Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops on Saturday approved a proposal that, if it survives a final vote, would give transgender men and women the right to become ministers in the church.
The House of Bishops voted at the church’s General Convention to include “gender identity and expression” in its “non-discrimination canons,” meaning sexual orientation, including that of people who have undergone sex-change operations, cannot be used to exclude candidates to ministry.
The hearing on same gender unions will likely be the largest hearing of this convention. However, I would say that the subject has not been much on the forefront at this convention. More attention has been focused on structure and the wider church’s budget.
We also expect committee action on the Anglican Covenant. Many observers expect the recommendation from that committee to be acceptance of the Preamble and first three sections while demurring on the fourth section (which deals with discipline). Some of the air was released from this balloon by the English church’s refusal to embrace the proposed covenant.
(ENS)–My headline, not theirs–KSH.
Bishop Andrew Waldo of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina opposed D019, seeking clarification of “gender expression ”¦ to get a sense of how the people in my diocese who have a poor understanding of what transgender means.
“I believe we need to have more discussion in the church, in our congregations, in order to be able to speak in a way that is theologically sound, that gives a deeper understanding of what it means to be a transgender person,” he said.
Nearly 40 people testified July 7 on General Convention Resolution A049 to Authorize Liturgical Resources for Blessing Same-Gender Relationships.
Those testifying alternated between proponents and opponents of the resolution, but supporters outnumbered opponents, at least six of whom came from the Diocese of Central Florida.
We had long debate, with several attempts to amend, of a resolution that seeks to increase the pressure on dioceses (like Springfield) that pay less than the full asking from the national church. Eventually, with a push from the Presiding Bishop, it got re-referred to committee for further work.
We passed, on second reading, a constitutional amendment that will remove the House of Deputies from the consent process for bishops elected within 120 of General Convention, and send everything to the Standing Committees. This is now in the hands of the Deputies.
Interesting facts from the Commission on Structure hearing this morning. 84 out of 111 dioceses have operating budgets of less than $2,000,000. That amount has to fund all of the diocesan staff positions, serve for debt reduction and maintenance on all diocesan property and accommodate all diocesan functions and expenses. That means that 3/4 of the bishops deal with diocesan budgets smaller than several of the larger Episcopal churches in Dallas.
Compare that to the $8.7 million it will cost this year to maintain and service debt reduction on the national headquarters at 815 Second Avenue in New York City. In the first meaningful vote of this Convention, the House of Deputies yesterday voted to sell 815. When this vote was announced at the press briefing, there was an audible gasp in the room. This Convention is not “business as usual.” The outstanding loan on 815 is $37 million and I would guess that the penthouse apartment with terraces and views of the United Nations building will sell for $18 million alone. Anyone need prime office space in New York City? Call me! I can make a good deal for you.
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Convention call for and encourage further study and reflection on the proposed Anglican Covenant (the fourth draft) during the next Triennium.
Read it all. Did you see who proposed it?
Today, the committee chairs were invited to lunch together to visit a bit about how the flow of legislation is going. It is going pretty well, except… It seems that some bishops have prevailed in omitting the funding for a number of basic functions — things like what happened to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, having their program funding cut to zero by the House of Bishops. It seems like immature and passive aggressive behavior to me. Part of what that means that we have to send three members of our committee, who will miss our major hearing tonight, to testify before the Program, Budget and Finance Committee so that we will be able include the funding for the SCLM in the budget. There is something very strange afoot. It’s okay with me to talk about wanting to restructure the church and to set up some deliberative ways to discuss that, but it’s almost childish to de-fund major Commissions without notice. That seems dysfunctional at best; like sabotage at worst.
We need some crazy Christians. Sane, sanitized Christianity is killing us. That may have worked once upon a time, but it won’t carry the Gospel anymore. We need some crazy Christians like Mary Magdalene and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the Gospel. Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil and death. Crazy enough to believe, as Dr. King often said, that though “the moral arc of the universe is long, it bends toward justice.” We need some Christians crazy enough to believe that children don’t have to go to bed hungry; that the world doesn’t have to be the way it often seems to be; that there is a way to lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside; that as the slaves used to sing, “There’s plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom,” because every human being has been created in the image of God, and we are all equally children of God and meant to be treated as such.
Sometimes we go kicking and screaming into new ways of being church. The Episcopal Church is noted for, when in doubt, forming a committee. I think God has won some progress with us this time. Even thought it is early in Convention it would appear that the gathered deputies want to move the church forward and are wiling to take risks and make some decisions. One example of this was the vote yesterday in the House of Deputies to sell the Church Center in New York.
6 July 2012
The Most Reverend Katharine Jefforts Schori
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church
815 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Dear Presiding Bishop:
We write to address allegations that have been made against us””both those made by Bishops Ohl and Buchanan in their letter of yesterday and unknown others made in Title IV disciplinary complaints that we have not seen. Bishops Ohl and Buchanan have asked that the record be set straight. That is our intention in this letter.
No charge is more serious to us than the one that we have acted against our own Church””in other words, that we have been disloyal. We assure each of you that we have acted out of a profound loyalty to this Church we love. We knew our decision to file an amicus brief in Texas and affidavits in Illinois authenticating our earlier statement on Church polity would be controversial. We took these actions, however, precisely because we thought it our duty to do so in order to uphold the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church as we all have pledged to do. We hope that if you agree with us about nothing else, you will recognize that upholding the constitutional polity of the Church as we understand it is not disloyalty. Because our views have been mischaracterized, we welcome this opportunity to clarify what we believe and what we have said in our legal submissions. Our primary concern is that the polity that has defined this Church for two centuries is being transformed due to momentary legal
objectives in the secular courts. We do not question these objectives. We only believe that the constitutional polity of the Church””the discipline we pledge to uphold””should not be sacrificed in pursuit of these goals.
We can summarize what we were taught years ago and still believe about our governance as
follows:
”¢ The Episcopal Church is a hierarchical church and the hierarchical authority for matters within a diocese is the Ecclesiastical Authority of the diocese, which according to our Constitution is the diocesan bishop. Ours is not a Metropolitical church, but a church with a dispersed hierarchy. We did not invent this understanding of our governance. It has a long and venerable pedigree. For example, in “The Church’s Teaching” series volume on polity, Canon Powel Mills Dawley of General Seminary (working with a committee of church leaders under the auspices of the Church Center) concluded that:
“the dioceses possess an independence far greater than that characteristic of most other Churches with episcopal polity”¦.Diocesan participation in any national program or effort, for example, must be voluntarily given; it cannot be forced. Again, while the bishop’s exercise of independent power within the diocese is restricted by the share in church government possessed by the Diocesan Convention or the Standing Committee, his independence in respect to the rest of the Church is almost complete.”
”¢ As noted, we are not a metropolitical church. Our Constitution has no “Supremacy Clause”; it specifies no office or body with supremacy or hierarchical authority over the Ecclesiastical Authority of the diocese for matters within a diocese. And as bishops, we take no vow of obedience to any other office or body. Priests and deacons pledge conformity to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Church and obedience to the diocesan bishop. Bishops only give the Declaration of Conformity. This was a matter of extreme importance to our founders. Church of England bishops give an oath of “Due Obedience” in which they “profess and promise all due reverence and obedience to the Archbishop and to the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury [York] and to their Successors.” Our founders very intentionally rejected such an oath for The Episcopal Church. We pledge obedience neither to an archbishop nor to a metropolitical church. We pledge to uphold the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Church, but each diocesan bishop is the Ecclesiastical Authority in the diocese.
Ӣ Under the First Amendment, secular courts may not make extensive and searching inquiries into, and thereby interfere with, church doctrine or polity in order to decide secular legal cases. This is standard Supreme Court jurisprudence.
If you do not immediately agree with all these points, we invite you to read our Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of The Episcopal Church, which we published in April 2009. It is a comprehensive examination of these issues. This puts succinctly what we have said in our court submissions. We made these submissions, however, only after we became concerned that the courts were misinterpreting””and thereby forever changing””our constitutional polity based on what we believed was erroneous information about our history and governance.
We began this letter by reiterating, however briefly, what we did say because most of the objections seem to be directed at things we did not say. Turning now to the specific charges made by Bishops Ohl and Buchanan, we can only say that none of them accurately describes what we actually said in our submissions.
1. We do not represent or argue that “dioceses can unilaterally leave.” We stated explicitly on the first page of our amicus brief that “the amici oppose the decision by the appellants (“Diocese of Fort Worth”) to leave The Episcopal Church, but in its ruling against them the court has misunderstood, and thereby damaged, the constitutional structure of The Episcopal Church.” We do not address in the brief whether withdrawal is permitted under the Constitution. Indeed, some in our number have at great cost ruled such proposals out of order in their own dioceses. Our legal submissions are concerned only with the nature of authority in our Church; we do not address the exercise of that authority by Bishop Iker or any other bishop.
2. We do not “deny the Dennis Canon.” In fact, we do not address property issues at all. The Dennis Canon and property trusts are not even mentioned in our amicus brief. The Episcopal Church parties in the Texas litigation have presented extensive argumentation to the Texas Supreme Court that they are entitled to the disputed property even under neutral principles of law. We do not address this issue at all, but our legal analysis that secular courts must use neutral principles of law if they cannot readily identify the nature of a church’s hierarchical authority can hardly be prejudicial to the Episcopal Church parties when they argue themselves that they win under such a standard.
3. We neither deny that this Church can “recognize its own bishops” nor claim that Bishop Iker is still the bishop of the diocese recognized by our Church. In fact, we explicitly state in the amicus brief that “The Episcopal Church clearly has the constitutional right to select a new bishop.” We recognize Bishops Ohl and Buchanan as the bishops of the TEC-recognized dioceses. Indeed, one of our number participated in the installation of Bishop Ohl’s predecessor. We acknowledge that Bishop Iker was the Ecclesiastical Authority of the diocese until the vote to withdraw, which is the crucial time period in this dispute, but that is undeniable. We conclude that if the court applies a deference to hierarchy standard””an issue on which we explicitly take no position””the Ecclesiastical Authority at the time of the vote to withdraw was Bishop Iker. We consider that conclusion inescapable given our polity. To the extent that this is a question of nomenclature, the Texas Court has previously ruled that Bishop Ohl and his diocese are not yet entitled to claim the name of “The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth” pending the final result of this litigation. Thus, Bishop Iker and his diocese continue to use this name. This ruling, however, plays no role in our analysis. It is not our concern.
4. Strangest of all is the claim that we have violated episcopal jurisdiction. We have performed no episcopal acts in another diocese. All we have done is exercise our civic””not ecclesiastical””rights to petition the government. To our knowledge, no one has ever before suggested that petitioning the legislatures or courts in Washington or state capitols””our brief was filed in Austin, not Fort Worth””requires the consent of the local bishop. To the extent that the claim really is that our submission might have an effect inanother diocese, we would reply that we are simply responding to submissions by others that will themselves have what we believe to be very profound and harmful effects on all our dioceses, not only in Texas but across the Church. And we note that we are not the first bishops of our Church to file an amicus brief this year with the Texas Supreme Court. Others filed a brief in another property dispute involving Bishop Ohl’s former diocese. Clearly, it is the views we express, not the act of filing a brief, to which objection is taken.
This brings us back to where we started. We are convinced that the venerable polity of our Church is under threat due to the temporary exigencies of secular litigation. However much we may understand and sympathize with these objectives, we consider it our greater duty to uphold our constitutional polity. Whether or not you agree with our interpretation””and we all must acknowledge that our polity is in some ways obscure””we hope you will recognize that we are doing our duty to uphold the good order of the Church as we perceive it and that it is no small part of the burden of that duty to know that others take offense from our actions.
Faihfully,
–The Rt. Rev. Peter H. Beckwith
–The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe
–The Rt. Rev. Paul E. Lambert
–The Rt. Rev. William H. Love
–The Rt. Rev. D. Bruce MacPherson
–The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins
–The Rt. Rev. Edward L. Salmon
–The Rt. Rev. James M. Stanton
On the second legislative day of General Convention the House of Bishops consented to the election of eight new bishops after struggling in private with complaints brought against nine of its own.
Meeting in “private conversation” before the start of the public part of the afternoon session, bishops discussed recent complaints against the Rt. Revs. Maurice M. Benitez, retired Bishop of Texas; John W. Howe, retired bishop of Central Florida; Paul E. Lambert, Bishop Suffragan of Dallas; Bishop William H. Love, Bishop of Albany; D. Bruce MacPherson, Bishop of Western Louisiana; Daniel H. Martins, Bishop of Springfield; and James M. Stanton, Bishop of Dallas.
“It was a frank discussion,” Bishop Stanton said after the session.
Heh.
–From Keithy79 on Twitter
You didn’t? Well, it was in his daily General Convention update entry, to which I cannot link every single day. I bet you can find the link (and no I am not going to spoil it). You can also follow John on Twitter.
She just led Noonday Prayer based on the Romans 8 reading for today–read it all.
…average Sunday attendance in Episcopal churches has plunged 23% in the past decade to 657,831. In the Michigan diocese — which includes southeast Michigan, Lansing and Jackson — attendance has dropped 31% from 2000 to 2010. During the same time period, the number of baptized Episcopal members in the diocese dropped 30% to 20,825; nationally, it dropped 16% to 1,951,907.
Some say the drop is because the Episcopal Church has drifted too much to the left on social and political issues. But [Bonnie] Anderson notes that other mainline Protestant denominations have also seen declines in membership; regardless, the church won’t shift its views because people are leaving, she said.
“We’re prayerful, we’re careful, and we pay attention to what we believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to do. And if we lose members because of that, it’s still the right thing to do.”
I consider this a moment of sanity and light–KSH.
The 2009 General Convention of The Episcopal Church is justly known for its landmark passage of resolutions (D025& and C056) that moved the church into a new, more open era with regard to same-gender couples and the episcopate. Less noted is the Convention’s unprecedented recognition of the “T” in LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender).
The 76th Convention passed four resolutions lifting up the lives and ministries of transgender people both within and outside the church (D012, D090, D032, and C048). Two (D012 and C048) put The Episcopal Church on record in support of transgender equality at the federal, state and municipal levels. Two more called upon the church to make facets of its own life more accessible to gender minorities””to design its forms to be open to a wider variety of gender designations than simply male or female (D090) and to hire its lay employees without regard to gender identity or expression (D032).
Through committee hearings, deputy testimonies, writings, informal conversations and the presence of transgender people at Anaheim and beyond, the church has begun to bear witness to the human dignity of a deeply stigmatized, yet strongly resilient population.
On Saturday, July 7 at 7:30 am, the National and International Concerns Committee (Committee 09) will hold a hearing on D018 “Urge Congress to End Discrimination Against Same-Sex Marriages.” If you would like to speak to this issue, please attend the hearing in the Downtown Marriott, Indiana E.
Resolution D002, “Affirming Access to Discernment Process for Ministry,” is now pending in the House of Bishops.
It seems likely that the House of Bishops will take up D002 and D019 on transgender equality in its session that begins at 11:15 am on Saturday.
The session was held to address the two bishops demand that the “House of Bishops set the record straight on the polity of this Church regarding its hierarchical character.”
Details of the discussions have not been disclosed, though one bishop who asked to remain anonymous said they were rather “warm”.
At the evening press conference, House of Bishops spokesman the Rt. Rev. Clifton Daniel, Bishop of East Carolina did not mention the discussion in his briefing on the bishops’ day. However, he said that the bishops, as was their custom had “met in private for an hour.”
For [Bishop Wallis] Ohl, the first goal of the request “is to bring some reconciliation into the House of Bishops” because the fact that the bishops acted as they did without at least informing either him or Buchanan was “a violation of the norms of our house.”
The other goal is to “give some indication to the people in the dioceses of Quincy and Fort Worth that they have the support of the House of Bishops,” he said.
The two bishops, [Bishop John} Buchanan said, hope for “a message to the world in general about our view of the polity of this church, and the reason that would be helpful is that the view of polity of this church that others have presented is, in my opinion, erroneous.”
Lionel Deimel of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and founder and Episcopal Church convener of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, had no issue with strongly urging the rejection of the covenant.
“The Anglican Covenant is a reaction to developments in church understandings in a fast-paced world,” Deimel said. “Coming from Pittsburgh, I see in the Anglican Covenant the same dynamics that nearly destroyed my own diocese. ”¦ The underlying purpose of the covenant is not to explicate Anglican theology nor to manage change, but to suppress change and preserve a mythical ”˜biblical Anglicanism’ that never was.”
Read it all (and there are over 50 comments as well).
Friction over shares of a shrinking financial pie has animated the opening days of the 77th General Convention meeting 5-12 July 2012 in Indianapolis. The House of Deputies has called for the sale of the church’s national headquarters at 815 Second Avenue in New York, while deputies have protested proposed cuts in funding for favored projects.
While the Church’s Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance (PB&F) has yet to submit a final budget to convention for approval, competing interest groups have sought to preserve their share of the church pie.
Friction over shares of a shrinking financial pie has animated the opening days of the 77th General Convention meeting 5-12 July 2012 in Indianapolis. The Standing Committee on Structure has called for the sale of the church’s national headquarters at 815 Second Avenue in New York, while deputies have protested proposed cuts in funding for favored projects.
(Please note the headline is ENS’ not mine, I intensely dislike the Open Table language and use Communion of the Unbaptized [or Communion without Baptism] instead–KSH).
Emma Grandhauser, from Minnesota, a member of convention’s official youth presence, testified that she didn’t attend church until she was six, and she was baptized at 13.
“I still remember my first Sunday in church at St. John the Evangelist in St. Paul,” she said. “It’s a church with their own open table policy.
“I was blown away by how welcoming the community was,” she said. “They didn’t just tell me about God’s love, they showed me that God’s love is for everyone….
But the Rev. Jason Wells, a deputy alternate from the Diocese of New Hampshire, said that to the unbaptized he offers a blessing at the altar rail “and prepares them for baptism, to make their first communion immediately after that. I don’t do that because there’s a canon on the books. I do it for the theological and biblical rationale. To remove this one line from our canons does not change what my practice would be in the church.”
He called the resolution’s language “confusing and somewhat self-defeating.”
Update: An Anglican Ink article on this may also be found there.
The text of the original resolution D016 [amendment(s) are currently being attempted] is as follows:
Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That it is the will of this Convention to move the Church Center headquarters away from the Church Center building at 815 2nd Avenue, New York City, as soon as it is economically feasible; and be it further Resolved, That Executive Council is directed to appoint a Task Force on Real Property including knowledgeable real estate and finance professionals, to explore alternatives and make recommendations for the most effective economic way of a sale, lease, or other disposition of the Church Center building; and be it further Resolved, That the Task Force on Real Property is to make its report to Executive Council by February 2013; and be it further Resolved, That Executive Council will proceed with all appropriate speed to implement the Task Force Recommendations, including (if so recommended) placing the Church Center building on the market for sale, lease, or other disposition, as soon as it makes economic sense to do so; and be it further Resolved, That Executive Council is directed to appoint a separate Task Force on Church Center Location to identify other suitable alternatives for locating the
Church Center, giving special attention to available properties owned by Episcopal-affiliated entities, locations close to large airports, ease of travel, cost of living for Church Center employees, and cost of acquiring or leasing the properties; and be it further
Resolved, That the Task Force on Church Center Location will make its report to Executive Council by June, 2013; and be it further Resolved, That Executive Council will be prepared to relocate the Church Center headquarters to the new location or locations as soon as it is economically feasible; and be it further Resolved, That the General Convention request the Joint Standing Committee on Program Budget and Finance to consider a budget allocation of $20,000 in the 2013-2015 triennium budget to pay for expenses associated with the work described in this Resolution.
Update: The amended resolution as worded and passed is now here.