Executive Council to meet in Parsippany June 11-14
Episcopal News Service. June 6, 2007 [060607-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
When the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church convenes June 11-14 in Parsippany, New Jersey, its members will spend time reflecting on the past, present and future shape of the Church and of the Anglican Communion, as well as considering issues of ministry and governance.
The Church's governing body between General Conventions will, as part of its agenda, look to the past to hear a report about the effort to gather information about how the Episcopal Church may have benefited from slavery.
The Council will look to the present and the future as it discusses how the Church might reach out to Episcopalians in a small number of dioceses and parishes where the leadership is disaffected with the wider Church.
Council will consider a report and resolutions in response to portions of the communiqué issued by the Anglican Primates at the end of their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; get a summary of responses to its invitation for Episcopalians to discuss the proposed Anglican Covenant; and will hear about the experience of one gay Anglican in Nigeria.
"I am sure that a number of international concerns will be the subject of our conversation and deliberation," said Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. "Among them, Anglican Communion issues, of mission including the Towards Effective Anglican Mission meeting and matters of peace and justice such as our Millennium Development Goal efforts. We'll talk about how we can grow our partnerships around the Communion; as well as relationships with our covenant partners such as Brazil, Mexico and Philippines.
"The current conflict around the draft Anglican Covenant and the process for its consideration, as well as the Lambeth Conference and the House of Bishops' response to the Primates' Communiqué, will be discussed. We will also include in that discussion the conflict caused by incursion into the Episcopal Church from other members of the Anglican Communion."
"We will consider domestic issues including the federal Farm Bill and our concern about domestic poverty, as well as matters of internal governance," she continued.
Communiqué response
The EC008 Task Group, requested by the Executive Council (via Resolution EC008) during its March 2-4 meeting in Portland, Oregon, will present the Council with a document outlining Council's roles and responsibilities, and suggesting two resolutions for responding to the Communiqué.
Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson appointed the EC008 Task Group. Resolution EC008 named Anderson, who is vice president of Council, to chair the work group. (Jefferts Schori is president of the Council.)
"The task group worked long and hard to come up with resolutions and a statement that the Executive Council will have a chance to fully review, discuss and amend, if necessary, before the resolutions are brought to Council for action," Anderson said.
The members of the task group, in addition to Anderson, are Puerto Rico Bishop David Alvarez; Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno; Sharon Denton of the Diocese of Western Kansas; the Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas of Massachusetts; Delbert Glover of Western Massachusetts; the Rev. Canon Mark Harris of Delaware; the Rev. Timothy Kimbrough of North Carolina; the Rev. Gay Jennings of Ohio; and Lexington Bishop Stacy Sauls. Anderson's chancellor, Sally Johnson, was a consultant to the task group.
Douglas, who is also a consulting theologian to the House of Bishops' Theology Committee, acted as a liaison between the two groups as the theology committee worked on a study document meant to help bishops in gathering comments in their dioceses prior to the bishops' mid-September meeting in New Orleans where they will formulate a further response to the communiqué.
In the task group's report, the two resolutions are titled "Executive Council's response to the House of Bishops' Mind of the House resolution on the proposed pastoral scheme" and "Commending the report of the Communion Sub-Group."
The first resolution refers to the House of Bishops' declaration that a plan the Primates put forward for dealing with some disaffected Episcopal Church dioceses "would be injurious to The Episcopal Church." That statement was in the first of three resolutions the bishops passed during their March meeting. The resolution urged that the Executive Council decline to participate in it.
The second resolution refers to the report of an Anglican Communion group which generally gave the Episcopal Church positive marks for its response to various requests to explain its decisions regarding same-gender blessings, the episcopal ordination of an openly gay and partnered priest, and its desire to remain a part of the Anglican Communion.
An Anglican Covenant
The International Concerns Committee will discuss the responses it received after a sub-committee published a study guide aimed at helping the Episcopal Church respond to the draft version of a proposed Anglican Covenant. The deadline for comment was June 4. The comments are meant to help Council create a response to the draft at its October meeting in Detroit, Michigan.
Sub-group chair Rosalie Ballentine of the Virgin Islands told Episcopal News Service recently that the responses up to that point "had run the gamut" with some being very long and detailed and others being short and emotional. The vast majority of the responses were not in favor of a Covenant, she said.
The Windsor Report, released in October 2004, proposed a covenant as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints. The Primates received and discussed the draft during their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They then released both it and an accompanying report to the entire Communion, asking for comment from of the 38 provinces by January 1.
Based on those responses, it is expected that a revised version of the covenant will be presented to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops, to be followed by a final text that would be proposed to the 2009 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). If the ACC adopts the text, it would offer it to the provinces for consideration.
During the Parsippany meeting, INC will propose that Jefferts Schori and Anderson appoint an on-going Covenant Review Group to follow the covenant-development process, enable comments from the wider Episcopal Church and provide comments on behalf of the church to the Communion's Covenant Design Group.
The Executive Council's guide and the anticipated review group come in response to Resolution A166, passed by the 75th General Convention in June 2006. The resolution calls for Episcopal Church, "as a demonstration of our commitment to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Anglican Communion," to support the process of the development of an Anglican Covenant "that underscores our unity in faith, order, and common life in the service of God's mission." It also called for the INC and the Episcopal Church's members of the Anglican Consultative Council to follow the development processes of an Anglican Covenant and report regularly to the Executive Council as well as to the 76th General Convention in 2009.
In a letter to the Episcopal Church at the close of its March 2-4 meeting in Portland, Oregon, the Executive Council said "responding to the draft covenant does not presuppose agreement with the terms and principles advanced in the draft."
Also on the agenda
Nigerian Anglican Davis Mac-Iyalla, 33, founder of his country's only gay-rights organization, Changing Attitude Nigeria, will meet with Council's National Concerns Committee (NAC), Vanderstar said.
Vanderstar's committee was also asked by Anderson to discuss the situation of Episcopalians in certain dioceses and congregations who disagreed with their leadership's desire to part from the Episcopal Church. He told ENS that he had asked Council members for any information they had on relationships that had already developed between those Episcopalians and the wider Church. NAC will review that information and discuss how the Episcopal Church might reach out to those Episcopalians and "tell them that the Church supports them so they don't feel so isolated."
Vanderstar also has time on the Council's plenary agenda to summarize for the members what he has learned about how dioceses are living out General Convention Resolution A123's call for every diocese to collect and document its experience of "the complicity of The Episcopal Church in the institution of slavery and in the subsequent history of segregation and discrimination" and "the economic benefits The Episcopal Church derived from the institution of slavery."
Vanderstar said he hopes that, with the help of the Rev. Jayne Oasin, the Church's social justice staff officer, the Council will regularly hear reports about this documentation process.
Shape of the meeting
Council's meeting, to be held at the Sheraton hotel in Parsippany, New Jersey, will begin with three hours of committee time on the morning of June 11. The first plenary session begins at 1:30 p.m. that day. That evening, Council will have dinner with representatives of the host Diocese of Newark and hear reports about the mission and ministry of the diocese and of the Episcopal Church's Province II.
The next day, June 12, Council will travel by bus to spend the day at the recently renovated Church Center at 815 Second Avenue in New York City. While at the Church Center, Council will tour the building, meet with program staff, and be welcomed by chief operating officer Linda E. Watt, who will offer an overview report about work that goes on in the building.
Part of the reason for the visit at "815," as the Church Center is often called, is so that Council members can get a sense of the variety of ministries that are based in the building, according to the Rev. Dr. Gregory Straub, executive officer and secretary of the General Convention.
Straub said that this will be the first time for many Council members to see the newly renovated Church Center, a project first approved by Council in June 2004 and coordinated by now-retired chief operating officer Patricia C. Mordecai. The project included removing of asbestos in the ceilings and floors, installing of new heating and air conditioning equipment, and bringing the building into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and new city fire and safety codes instituted in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001.
The Council members will return to Parsippany that evening and continue to meet through June 14.
The Executive Council carries out the programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, according to Canon I.4 (1)(a). The council is composed of 38 members, 20 of whom (four bishops, four priests or deacons and 12 lay people) are elected by General Convention and 18 (one clergy and one lay) by provincial synods, plus the Presiding Bishop and the president of the House of Deputies.