Read it all.

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.”

Read it all.

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.

Read it all.

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.

Read it all.

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.”

Read it all.

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.”

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Read it all.

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.

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.

Read it all.

(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.”

Read it all.

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.

A letter accusing nine bishops of disloyalty to the Episcopal Church and violation of its canons is scheduled for discussion on 6 July 2012 during a closed session of the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops meeting at the 77th General Convention in Indianapolis.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Here is the text:

Resolved, That Rule of Order 34 of the House of Deputies be revised to read as follows:

When any member is about to speak or to deliver any matter to the House, the member shall, with due respect, address the President, state name and Diocese, and confine any remarks strictly to the point of debate. If the member is speaking about a resolution calling for the expenditure of any moneys, including the proposed Budget of The Episcopal Church, the member shall also state the percent of diocesan income that deputy’s diocese has committed to The Episcopal Church for the current year.

By the time we arrived, we had already been inundated with information. The “Blue Book” came out a month or so before convention with 758 pages of legislative information – reports of commissions, committees and agencies of the church, resolutions, and biographies of those running for a position on various councils.

First impressions: the convention center is huge, and so is the church – people from all over with different viewpoints, different worship expressions – and all seeking to find the way we can be church together.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Word is there are a large number of speakers trying to address this matter. The hearing began at 7:30 est.

Make sure to be aware of the text of the resolution and go back also to reread this earlier blog thread on the subject.

The subject of confirmation stirred passionate testimony July 5 before General Convention’s Education Committee. Clergy and laypeople addressed the committee on Resolutions A041, A042, A043 and A044, all of which address the nature of confirmation as a necessary step in becoming Episcopalian.

The Rev. Canon Robert Brooks, vice president of Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission, said the canons conflict with the Book of Common Prayer (1979), which describes Holy Baptism as full initiation into the Church. The resolutions seek to resolve that conflict, he said.

The Rev. Danielle Morris of the Diocese of Central Florida opposed the resolutions, saying confirmation helps create loyal members of the Church through education. She cited an example of a woman in her parish who wanted to serve on the vestry but had not been confirmed. “She said, ”˜I’ll go through the classes,’” Morris said. “By the time she ended those classes, she said, ”˜I had no idea. I’m an Episcopalian because I am now a part of all of that inheritance.’ She will be an Episcopalian for life.”

Read it all.

Today, we gathered in our opening Eucharist to liturgically open the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Indianapolis. In the room were thousands of Episcopalians, perhaps the largest such gathering since the last Convention three years ago. In this Eucharist we celebrated the lives and ministry of Walter Rauschenbusch, who came to believe that Jesus died “to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society” and boldly pointed out our “social sins” which Jesus bore on the cross, which included greed and political power;, and Washington Gladden, who was dedicated to the realization of the Kingdom of God in this world; and Jacob Riis, who did much to awaken the nation to the plight of the urban poor. With those great prophets on our minds and hearts, we celebrated Eucharist. However, this Eucharist was less to me, because in this liturgical expression we once again incarnated the reality of one of, if not our most pressing, spiritual issue for us as Western Christians, and Episcopalians: we failed to take any monetary offering.

I knew there would be many excuses for this, perhaps logistics, there were just so many present that it could not be done, or one I hear often, we are being “nickeled and dimed to death.” In fact, when asked, a few of the worship team stated that they had to “cut time” and this would have added four minutes. Four minutes.

Read it all.

Several resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be considered by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, meeting here July 5-12.

Among them is Resolution B019, which calls on the church to engage actively in the discipline of advocacy, study, and prayer for peace between Israelis and Palestinians; encourages all Episcopalians to travel to the Holy Land as pilgrims and witnesses; affirms the importance of economic measures designed to support a negotiated two-state solution; and calls for positive investment in the Palestine Territories and in the social service institutions of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East.

The resolution, proposed by Diocese of Northern California Bishop Barry Beisner and endorsed by Olympia Bishop Gregory Rickel and Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services & Federal Ministries Jay Magness, also commends the leadership of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in calling all Episcopalians to advocate for an end to the conflict and increase support for the Jerusalem diocese and the other Christian communities of the Holy Land.

Read it all.

Each province of the Anglican Communion is autonomous because there is no central authority uniting them. Adopting the covenant would mean the church would need to amend its constitution and canons, said Paul Valliere, a professor of religion at Butler University and an Episcopalian.

“As beautiful as the idea is of a united, global Anglicanism, it’s probably an unworkable ideal,” Theusen said.

A report prepared for the convention by the key House of Deputies Committee said the church’s angst about the inter-Anglican Communion and other issues “appears to be easing.”

Valliere said he disagrees with that assessment, calling the recent schisms “arguably the biggest schisms in the history of the Church.”

“I think the Episcopal Church is in denial over what’s happened in the last decade,” he said.

Read it all.

A proposal to expand the U.S. Episcopal Church’s nondiscrimination canons for the ordained ministry to include “gender identity and expression” passed its first hurdle on Thursday, when it won committee approval at the church’s General Convention…..

“Please don’t focus on us as an abstract issue,” said Rev. Vicki Gray, a deacon at Christ the Lord Episcopal Church in Pinole, California, who identifies as transgender. “We are flesh-and-blood human beings.”

“The resolution is important so transgender people can have access to our church. ‘All’ is not sufficient,” said Gray.

Read it all.

….because the Episcopal Church canons and the Book of Common Prayer describe marriage as between a man and woman, some bishops have not embraced same-sex blessings or weddings. Bishop Gordon Paul Scruton of the ­Diocese of Western Massachusetts, does not allow priests to do either.

Scruton, who is retiring Dec. 1, and Bishop-elect Douglas John Fisher said through a spokeswoman Thursday that they planned to issue a joint statement following the General Convention vote. They did not indicate what it might say, and they declined a request for an interview beforehand.

At the last diocesan convention in October 2011, Scruton said the diocese would move toward allowing the blessing of same-sex unions if the ­General Convention adopted the new liturgy this summer, said Steve Symes, diocesan ­coordinator of Integrity USA, a group within the church working for the full inclusion of gay people.

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Although 2009 was the first time that any resolution on transgender concerns ever made it out of committee and onto the floor of either House, several trans-friendly resolutions were passed by wide margins, including a resolution calling for national, state and local laws to protect transgender persons from employment discrimination and violence. However, the resolution on access to the ordination process ultimately failed.

It did pass the House of Deputies by a super-majority, but after much debate was amended in the House of Bishops to drop reference to all specific protected categories such as race, gender, national origin, etc., in favor of the word “all.” Because “all” does not always yet mean all in the Episcopal Church, and because naming those protections has been a long struggle over years, TransEpiscopal, Integrity, and other groups recommended that the House of Deputies vote no on the amended resolution, effectively killing the resolution.

This year D002 brings back that same resolution, along with D019 to address access to the church’s wider life. TransEpiscopal is sending another team of advocates, and Integrity has made passage of these resolutions a top priority for this convention.

Read it all.

Read it all. I have found the livestreaming from both Houses has been working pretty well. You may find the links to such here where you have see the colored squares for “Deputies” and “Bishops” for the two Houses.

The Text of resolution A036 follows–

Resolved, the House of _______ concurring, That the 77th General Convention give thanks for the full communion agreement between The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2011; and be it further Resolved, That the Church acknowledge that there exist areas of theological divergence that hinder the fullest degree of communion possible; and be it further Resolved, That the Church commit itself to address those areas that hinder this
relationship, including but not limited to the diaconate and lay presidency of the Eucharist; and be it further Resolved, That the Church invite the ELCA to a new season of bilateral dialogue to discuss and address these matters; 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 $60,000 for the implementation of this resolution.

You can read more there and you can see a picture there (thanks to David Simmons).

Watch it all (video report).