Toward Anaheim: Deputies asked for committee preferences
Episcopal News Service. September 5, 2008 [090508-02]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
In another step toward the Episcopal Church's 76th General Convention in Anaheim, California, the process of forming legislative committees has begun.
Deputies have until September 30 to express three preferences for appointment to one of 23 committees.
While a preliminary review of those completed forms will begin next week, according to House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, no appointment decisions will be made until after the deadline. Anderson will appoint deputies to the committees and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will appoint bishop members.
To aid the appointment process, deputies also have been asked to outline their previous General Convention experience as well as their experience in the wider Episcopal Church. "It's likely that first-time deputies without wider church experience won't be appointed" to the committees, Anderson said.
There is a lot to learn about General Convention, she said, and first-time deputies can find themselves overwhelmed and feeling like observers rather than active participants. Anderson said this can be especially true when first-time deputies are named to legislative committees.
For that reason, new deputies will be invited to participate in an ongoing series of forums during the convention itself to learn in depth about the Episcopal Church and the General Convention. The hope-for end result will be a group of deputies "who deeply understand the workings of General Convention," Anderson explained.
Legislative committees convene only during the span of the convention's triennial meeting. They are different from the church's committees, commissions, agencies and boards (CCABs), which operate in between conventions to study and draft policy proposals, and make recommendations to convention.
Convention committees review and make recommendations on all resolutions submitted for the convention's approval. Committee meetings are normally open to registered convention participants (visitors can register) and committees hold an open hearing on each resolution. Any participant may testify at those hearings.
Anderson said she encourages all deputies to attend committee meetings and to report to their rest of their deputations about what they have heard. Gathering and sharing that information helps deputies when it comes time to vote on resolutions, she said. Resolutions pass General Convention when both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops concur on their language.
Resolutions passed by General Conventions between 1976 and 2006 are available here. A searchable database of all resolutions considered by the 75th General Convention is available here.
The committees open for appointment are: Dispatch of Business; Certification of Minutes; Rules of Order; Constitution; Canons; Structure; Consecration of Bishops; World Mission; National and International Concerns; Social and Urban Affairs; Church in Small Communities; Evangelism; Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music; Ministry; Education; Church Pension Fund; Stewardship and Development; Ecumenical Relations; Communications; Privilege and Courtesy; and Credentials.
Membership on the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance (PB&F), which meets throughout the triennium including during convention and presents the next triennial budget for the convention's approval, is not open for appointment in this process. The convention's Joint Rules of Order call in Joint Rules II.10 for 27 members of the General Convention (one bishop, and two members of the House of Deputies, either lay or clerical, from each province) to be appointed to PB&F after each regular meeting of the General Convention. The Presiding Bishop appoints bishops to PB&F while the President of the House of Deputies appoints the deputy members.
No decisions have been made about whether any special legislative committees will be appointed for the 76th General Convention. In June 2006 the Special Legislative Committee on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion was created to consider the report of a special commission appointed by the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies.