The political deadlock in New York’s legislature has been resolved. For the last month, the state Senate in Albany has been unable to pass bills or even meet. Republicans and Democrats were bickering over who was in charge. On Thursday, a renegade Democrat rejoined his party and returned control of the Senate to Democrats.

I caught this this morning on the way to an appointment. The summary of what has occurred is mind boggling. Locked doors. Sneaking keys. Bringing more than one gavel. Screaming matches. My goodness

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What is a mancession, you ask? It’s not this. It’s a recession that hurts men much more than women, and we are allegedly in the worst mancession in recent history. Eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men, said AEI scholar Christina Hoff Summers, and it could get worse.

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Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith, the vice chair of PBF, predicted the constrained budget and asked witnesses to tell the members why their program should be included in the church-wide budget rather than being funded at another level of the church and how it fits into the proposed ministry priorities for the 2010-2012 period.

Those priorities are: networking the members of the body of Christ; alleviating poverty and injustice; claiming our identity; growing congregations and the next generations of faith; and strengthening governance and foundations for ministry. The House of Deputies has approved the list and the bishops are considering the resolution.

The committee, along with close to 275 observers, joined in listening to nearly 50 people spend two minutes each trying to answer the committee’s questions and convince them of the importance of their programs. The first two witnesses, David Early and Steve Holst, used sign language to ask the committee to continue the church’s support of the Episcopal Conference of the Deaf. Other Spanish-speaking witnesses addressed the committee through interpreters.

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The House of Bishops voted to reconsider its endorsement of Resolution A069: Funding the Mission Funding Office. At the close of the business session today during General Convention in Anaheim, the Rt. Rev. Robert C. Johnson, retired Bishop of Western North Carolina, asked the house to reconsider its July 9 vote endorsing the multi-year $5 million program to create a major fund development program for The Episcopal Church.

The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida, added that there had been no debate when the resolution was adopted the previous day. Prudence required that a “massive fundraising project needed some discussion.”

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Archbishop Williams said two clear things to The Episcopal Church on Thursday morning: Thank you for your engagement with the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion loves you. The warm words included some implicit exhortation, however.

“Of course I am coming here with hopes and anxieties. You know that and I shan’t deny it. Along with many in the communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart,” he said. “But if people elsewhere in the Communion are concerned about this, it’s because of a profound sense of what The Episcopal Church has given and can give to our fellowship worldwide. If we, if I, had felt that we could do perfectly well without you, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

The bulk of the archbishop’s meditation focused on Christians being called forth from nothingness.

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The primary reason for the impatience, though, was the conversation that was set to ensue, the topic of B033. B033 was a resolution passed at the last minute at the 2006 General Convention implementing a moratorium on the election of non-celibate homosexual persons to the Episcopacy. Two sessions have been set aside for discussion on this matter to determine the “mind of the house”. A vote of some sort in which one of several actions may be taken is likely, at least in the House of Deputies. The Bishops, not known for their bravery, will probably duck the issue (a number of them are worried that if they vote their conscience it will cost them in the offering plate, sad, but true) thereby consigning the church to three more years of hand-wringing and disingenuous behavior.

To begin our conversation we were instructed to find someone we don’t know (bad) and have a 30 minute conversation with them (worse) about these three questions:

1. What is your story with respect to B033?
2. What is our story as a church with respect to B033?
3. What is God calling us to do now?

What’s missing from the framework? How about God’s story? How about God’s self-revelation through Scripture? How about God’s revelation through history to His church?

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A majority of bishops, deputies, visitors and others who testified before a World Mission Committee public hearing July 9 indicated they hope the Episcopal Church will move beyond resolution B033.

As many as a thousand people attended the two-hour hearing which began at 8 p.m. in the Pacific Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. A total of 51 people testified; 41 said they hoped the church could move beyond B033, a moratorium on the consecration of bishops whose manner of life presented a challenge to the wider church. Ten others indicated they wanted to retain B033.

Following the hearing, Bishop Gene Robinson -”” who was among those testifying -”” said his “spirit is buoyed” despite stories of pain. “I was overjoyed at the hope and reconciliation people have found in our church. Someone mentioned being a beacon of light. That is a ministry we can reclaim.”

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It’s grown men in brightly colored underwear on bikes.

–Neil Everett of ESPN’s SportsCenter describing the Tour De France

More than 50 people testified on a collection of resolutions requesting marriage equality or rites for same-gender blessings, with a vast majority speaking in favor of the resolutions, in hearings before the joint Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music Committee on July 9.

Four resolutions proposed canonical changes, while seven recommended developing rites for same-gender blessings or marriage. Witnesses supporting the resolutions varied in age, gender, sexual orientation and marital status, including one newly engaged visitor planning a same-gender wedding for 2011 who told the committee, “I am counting on you.” Retired Utah Bishop Otis Charles and his partner Felipe Sanchez Paris each testified, while the Rev. Reid Farrell, Vermont alternate deputy, testified with Dale Willard, his partner of 20 years, at his side.

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The link is here as a reminder. I have had it jam up a bunch on Firefox and Internet Explorer, and found Safari is best.

I ended up posting comments below in real time for those interested–KSH

Some valuable detail here.

The Windsor Report 2004 begot the Ridly Cambridge Covenant Draft Text, which proposes to limit participation in the Anglican Communion if a member refuses to defer controversial action. Martins drafted a resolution that adopts the language while the issue is studied until 2012. A panel is already studying gays and theology. Member identity is secret.

One has to wonder what is preserved for the American church by continued Anglican affiliation, as treasured as that has been. What is valued in unity that trumps the faith of believers excluded from sacramental blessings and church leadership?

Bishop Gregory Rickel, of the Diocese of Olympia covering Western Washington, sees a bigger picture for the church. He wants Anglican ties to survive because, “we do better together.” He is also mindful that “the resolutions and legislative process are not going to change our hearts or change our church.”

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From here:

We also had a disturbing private (no one in the gallery) conversation in the House of Bishops that led me to feel discouraged about what lies ahead. That conversation is private, so I can’t detail it, but there seems to be a kind of belligerent attitude toward the House of Deputies by some of our bishops. Their vision of the episcopate is way too “high and mighty” for my taste, or my theology, and I am not happy about it. The last thing we bishops need is a larger measure of arrogance. Didn’t Jesus save his most serious criticism for the religious powers-that-be of his day who lorded their power and position over others

This contrast was even reflected in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s meditation at the midday Eucharist. There will surely be many other posts, blogs, and reports about what he said or didn’t say; I came to General Convention worried that Rowan Williams might be here to twist arms over the Windsor Report, the demands of Primates, dioceses jumping ship, human sexuality, same-sex blessings and marriage, or other points of contention in the greater Anglican Communion. I am pleasantly surprised that he hasn’t done much of that at all. The closest I heard him come to this was as he prefaced his meditation before the whole Convention by reflecting on the importance of The Episcopal Church to the Anglican Communion (Why else would there be controversy around our church’s decisions?). . . and how he hoped, personally, that we would be cognizant of our significance to the Communion in our deliberations. A veiled bit of arm-twisting? Maybe. But he ended his preface by saying something like this: “Now, down to business. . .”

And the “business” he launched into was a beautiful theological reflection on the scripture readings of the liturgy ”“ the foundational story of our faith.

This told me something profound about why we are here at General Convention, and what the real “business” of Convention is, and it’s not sausage-making. It’s sharing story….

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I am coming here with hopes and anxieties. I hope and pray that there will not be decisions in the coming days that will push us further apart. If people elsewhere in the Communion are concerned about this it is because of a profound sense of what TEC can give us world wide. If I felt we could do well without your presence there would not be a problem,. But the bonds of relationship are deep. The words of Paul are helpful here. In the middle of his tension tensions and the way of challenges were for Paul sharper than those we face. He writes: “Why? Because we do not love you. God knows we do.”

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In this context, what are we to make of the controversial comments by Archbishop Williams regarding the local bishop and diocese? Insofar as he has defined bishop and diocese as “primary” with respect to ecclesial “identity” and insofar as he has identified them as the “organ of unity” as opposed to the “abstract structures” of the province, he is presenting a vision of the Church that at least fits within the general notion of pastoral synodality I have outlined above. But might he also be setting his vision in tension with actual Anglican practice? I would argue that he is in fact expressing a tension that Anglicanism itself is working to overcome precisely by moving in the direction of the fundamental reality of pastoral synodality.

There is no question but that Anglican churches have by and large functioned according to a post-Nicene set of structural assumptions. But that functioning has always been under question, and it is the rise of the Communion itself that has had the greatest role in setting up dynamics that have moved us towards a re-appropration of the ante-Nicene understanding, not because it marks some Golden Age to be repristinated, but because it is in fact more properly expressive of the kind of missionary context in which Anglicanism herself has come to flourish. Once Anglican churches grew up within contexts in which they necessarily existed alongside other Christian churches, the Nicene model by definition was deprived of any even tenuous or imaginary theological rationale. The idea that geographical episcopal boundaries demand strict imposition when in fact multiple and often mutually non-communicating Christian churches exist within the same local area simply cannot be sustained with integrity. And even within the single tradition of Anglicanism, unless one views the world’s political nations as the primary ordering of human life ”“ a deeply problematic notion from a Christian perspective to say the least ”“ the division of Anglican churches into national, regionally political, or ethnic groups whose boundaries prove more powerful and imposing than Christian communion itself can only end up by subordinating ecclesial reality to human political and cultural limitations. And it is these that the episcopal press for synodality properly ends by overcoming.

The first Lambeth Conference of 1867 was obviously aware of this tension already inherent in the expanding Anglican churches around the world.

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The presiding bishop’s condemnation of the culture of individualism was not misplaced, Dr.[Mark] Thompson [Dean of Moore College in Sydney] said, but the theological approach she was taking to address the problem was erroneous. “No one was suggesting that Paul ignored the corporate implications of shared salvation,” he observed, but an “unrelenting dichotomy between the individual and the corporate” was a modern phenomenon.

Augustine, Luther, the Protestant Reformers and the Anglican divines all taught that “God’s purposes are deeply relational and hence the very opposite of fragmented, isolationist individualism. Yet they also extend further than simply corporate identity to call on human persons as persons to repent and believe the gospel,” Dr. Thompson said.

For evangelical’s “more serious still” was the presiding bishop’s “caricature” of a confession of faith that she said made salvation dependent “on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus,” Dr. Thompson said.

The confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord” was “certainly a form of words,” but “they are never simply words,” he explained. “They represent a fundamental orientation of life which includes a willingness to have our thinking and behaviour shaped by the One we acknowledge has such a supreme claim upon us,” he noted.

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Because of political turmoil in Honduras following the arrest of President Manuel Zelaya, members of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Killeen have canceled their annual medical mission trip to the Central American country.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, issued a statement last week requesting that people avoid all nonessential travel to the region.

On June 28, soldiers ousted the democratically elected Zelaya before an unpopular constitution referendum went to a vote. The referendum could have allowed the president to run for a second term, which is forbidden by the Honduran constitution. Zelaya, forced into exile in Costa Rica, vowed to stay in power.

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It is a 2 page pdf with four pages of text if you print it out. See what you think.

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A promising young stockbroker worried about losing his job in the City jumped to his death from a rooftop restaurant wearing his best suit and holding a glass of champagne.

Oxford graduate Anjool Malde walked into the eighth-floor Coq d’Argent in the City of London at lunchtime on Sunday, just two days before his 25th birthday, clad in a Hugo Boss suit. He then ordered a glass of champagne and made his way on to the roof terrace, before jumping to his death.

Makes the heart sad–read it all.

The June employment report suggests that the alleged green shoots are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10% by later this summer–around August or September–and will be closer to 10.5%, if not 11%, by year-end. I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11% at some point in 2010, well above historical standards for even severe recessions.

It’s clear that even if the recession were to be over anytime soon–and it’s not going to be over before the end of the year–job losses are going to continue for at least another year and a half. Historically, during the last two recessions, job losses continued for at least a year and a half after the recession was over. During the 2001 recession, the recession was over in November 2001, and job losses continued through August 2003 for a cumulative loss of jobs of over 5 million; this time we are already seeing more than 6 million job losses and the recession is not over.

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The ‘work’ of General Convention -resolution crafting (AKA sausage making) – began this morning in earnest with our opening session of the House of Deputies and more legislative committee hearings. Remember, proposed resolutions are assigned to one of several legislative committees for ‘perfecting’ and perhaps recommendation to either the House of Deputies (Hod) or House of Bishops (HoB).

Yesterday afternoon featured opening remarks by the Presiding Bishop and President of the HoD, an opening session on Public Narrative, and an orientation to the workings of the HoD. In her opening remarks, the Presiding Bishop emphasized the importance of Ubuntu -I am because we are – for the Church.

Unfortunately, I believe this emphasis on our corporate life together came at the expense of our personal relationship with the Lord. She described “the great Western heresy-that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.” This heresy is often expressed by “insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific formula about Jesus.”

As an Evangelical, I am troubled when professions of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, either through the Creeds or a prayer of commitment – are discounted or even considered heretical. The Evangelical expression in the Episcopal/ Anglican tradition emphasizes a ‘both/and’ approach in regard to salvation.

There is BOTH an emphasis on the personal or individual commitment to Jesus AND the importance of the Body of Christ – the Ubuntu dimension – to nurture that relationship in a community of Christian faith. John Stott’s book, Basic Christianity, for example, combines those two dimensions well.

I know my updates are not following a neat and tidy schedule. One reason for that is simply because General Convention has developed a predictable schedule or ‘battle rhythm’ yet. I expect that will develop over the next several days.

–The Very Rev. Tony Clark

Dear Friends in Christ,

Another busy day in Anaheim. This is the first legislative day, which means that the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies met in their first sessions to get organized. The Albany deputation decorated their identification pole with a beaver and a cross, and started a competitive trend! The first legislative sessions were otherwise little more than announcements and technical information. They stood in recess at 9:00 am and we attended the Opening Eucharist, a joyful celebration which featured the announcement that the Episcopal Church of the Phillipines, begun by missionary efforts of The Episcopal Church, has reached a financially independent status. PB Schori preached the sermon, emphasizing the importance of mission for the life of the church. Her text was Ezekiel 36:24-26, wherein God promises us “a new heart and a new spirit.” The music was uplifting and the celebration gave the convention an exciting beginning.

Committees continued to meet after lunch, and the more meaty resolutions are coming up on the agenda. Very little of substance was reported out from committees today, but that will change soon.

Archbishop Rowan Williams arrived today, and is scheduled to address the convention on the subject of global poverty. Look for a report on that tomorrow.

The deputation is in good spirits, getting over the jet lag and excited to dig into the legislative details. Haven’t had a chance today to poll them for specific prayer concerns, but please hold us in your prayers generally. More tomorrow.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Chip Strickland

“Marriage equality is a reality coming soon to a state near you,” Bishop Gene Robinson told an overflow crowd at a July 8 hearing. He was speaking to a proposed resolution that calls for wider-than-usual latitude for bishops to allow blessings of gay and lesbian couples in states in which same-sex marriage or civil unions are legal.

The text of Resolution B012, “Pastoral Generosity in Blessing Civil Marriage,” calls for “generous discretion [to be] extended to clergy in the exercise of their pastoral ministry in order to permit the adaptation of the Pastoral Offices” for marriage. It also provides for the affected dioceses to report annually to the House of Bishops and to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Church Music for help in developing a service of blessing for same-sex marriage if such a rite should be approved by future meetings of General Convention.

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