Address to General Convention
Episcopal News Service. August 6, 1997 [97-1920]
Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning
Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia
Friday, July 18
Sisters and brothers, I greet you in the name of Christ -- as your brother in the faith, with a heart full of thanksgiving for what has been, and immense hope for what is yet to be.
It is fitting that the Executive Council and I report together in this joint session. Adversity can bind people together, or rip them apart. I give thanks that the difficult moments of the last three years have strengthened our partnership in a way that has served the church, and been a great gift to me personally.
At the end of the Indianapolis General Convention, the President of the House of Deputies and I did a video interview. Dr. Chinnis and I were asked to reflect back on the Convention, and we did so -- with no small satisfaction I might say. We also projected a little into the future. In the euphoria of the moment, I predicted that the next three years would be "a piece of cake."
Well, I guess my crystal ball wasn't working. I don't have to tell you -- the leaders of our church -- that Dr. Chinnis, and the Executive Council, indeed the whole church, and I have been through a great deal in these last three years, most significantly with an unparalleled embezzlement which has been one of the greatest personal challenges I have ever faced.
I certainly wouldn't have willed it. There have been days when it was almost more than I could say grace over. But through prayer, diligence and hard work, we have set our financial house in order, justice has been served, most of our losses recovered and we have laid a new foundation of trust for the future and moved on with the mission of the Church.
And in a strange way, these years have been a curious gift -- to me, and to the church. We have been touched by the power of Jesus Christ to redeem the most difficult and tragic of situations.
In these three years we have been wounded and examined our wounds. We have been called to forgive, and asked to be forgiven. I need to say, as an aside, that on a personal level, I am still in a spiritual struggle with the issues of forgiveness and reconciliation surrounding this tragedy. But collectively the Council has moved ahead, in greater health. Scar tissue, they say, is the strongest tissue there is. Out of our weakness, has come new determination. Out of our divisions, has come new understanding. Out of our struggles, has come a new commitment to carry out the mission of Jesus Christ.
And so it is that I can come to you this morning in a spirit of rejoicing and thanksgiving for these wonderful servants of the church. I salute the members of Executive Council for being in such good and creative partnership with me, and ask you to join me in thanking them for their faithful service on behalf of us all.
I also want to thank Pam Chinnis for such sensitive and caring leadership during these days. Pam, you are a trusted colleague and a cherished friend. We are blessed in your love and leadership. You are a model for lay ministry and an inspiration for the ministry of women, and men. You are a model for us all. When we end our work together, I will leave you with deep respect, great affection, and an assurance of my prayers. Though this particular collaboration will end, our friendship is forever. God bless you.
I have been thinking about this day for a long time. I stand before you intensely aware that this is the moment -- my last official moment -- to tell you what is on my heart. I want to reach out to each of you, and touch you, and look you in the eye and see there the presence of Christ. Through that divine presence, we are bound together, forever.
We end one triennium, and we are at the edge of the next. This is a time of endings, and also beginnings. New beginnings. Fresh starts. Clean slates, even as we bring forward into the future what we have been and learned in days past.
As we do so, I want to return to the beginning -- the day of my installation as your Presiding Bishop. On January 11, 1986, in the National Cathedral in Washington, I stood before you and challenged this church to be an inclusive church, and a compassionate church. I challenged us to become more who God intended us to become. This was an awesome and humbling thing to do. But, I was only the messenger. What I held before the church that day was not of my own devising, but rather the values of the Reign of God. They come from Jesus and are part of our inheritance. They belong to this generation, and to every generation.
When I was bishop of Okinawa, I had a congregation of people who were Hansen disease patients -- lepers. At my first confirmation as Bishop, I asked that they not use the white linen cloths to cover the tops of their heads as they had done in the past, so that I might touch the heads of those confirmands. I did so because Jesus taught me to touch the lepers. It is Jesus, not me, who said -- there will be no outcasts.
As I come to the end of my ministry as your Presiding Bishop, I offer again the same challenge. My dear friends, the gospel is always the same. The imperatives don't change. The world changes. Needs change. New problems arise. We don't choose how the world will be in any generation. We are just called to live the imperatives of the gospel in the context of the world as we find it, in this day, in our time, in our place.
On that January day in Washington, I had no idea what I was really asking of you, of this church, or of myself. I had no idea what the personal cost would be to me, to Patti, and our family. I could not foresee how painful my challenge would be to some, and how empowering it would be to others. Responding to the challenge to become more compassionate, more inclusive, to become more than we are, has not been easy, for any of us. But hear this: If I had it to do over, I'd do it all again.
During these last twelve years we, all of us, left and right, progressive and conservative, have been working hard to order our institutional life, and set our priorities for mission based on the values of the gospel given to us in Jesus Christ.
And, we have been doing this when our plate is piled high with all the issues that face our society: racism, children at risk, environmental degradation, drug abuse, sexual misconduct and abuse, the widening gap between rich and poor (especially of women and children), violence, regional wars, the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, human sexuality, health care issues, to name a few. So here we are, bringing the teaching of Jesus, the values of the reign of God, the wisdom of the church from the earliest days, here we are trying to bring these to bear on the thorniest, most contentious problems of our global society. We have been trying to bring our gospel values to those questions for which we have no simple yes and no answers, those questions about which there are passionate convictions, those questions that touch our hearts and shake our sensibilities.
My dear friends and fellow survivors, we have been through a lot! Let me reflect on a couple of the issues that have been so contentious for us today.
We have made a great deal of progress on understanding that racism begins within the heart of each of us and the only way we can rid our church and our society of this evil is to transform our own hearts. I give enormous thanks to every member of this church who has struggled against this pervasive sin. This past January we inaugurated a church-wide anti-racism dialogue. It was an excellent beginning and something to build on. I commend the dialogue to all of you and thank the ad hoc anti-racism task force that Pam Chinnis and I called together. Through our staff, materials were developed and they will be updated and augmented as we go along. Until we have uprooted racism and banished it from our beings, the Reign of God cannot come. Full stop. Racism makes all of us less than we should be.
We have also been in a struggle to discern God's will for the role of women in this church. I long ago reached the conclusion that God never intended that only half of the human race should run this world, or this church. And we now have over 30 years experience since women began entering into leadership at all levels of our common life. I hurt for those for whom this remains painful. But I also have no doubt that experience has affirmed the wisdom of our decisions. The ministry of women has brought a wholeness to our ministry. Our experience has been a model for other provinces in the Anglican Communion, even in spite of our own rough patches along the way.
Let us focus for a moment on our struggles around sexuality. And what could be closer to us than something that is central to each of us, at the very root of our being. We actually do agree on most issues around sexuality. We agree on the sanctity of marriage. We agree that exploitative relationships and abusive relationships are evil. We have a message for our culture about this. We should be delivering it with unity and strength. Instead, we have been diverted by fear, and, let me name it, by hate.
And I have wondered if this diversion does not come from the evil from which we pray daily for God's deliverance. Our witness, which should and could be vigorous and strong, has been divided, and at times ludicrous, to our society, because we do not agree on what a "wholesome" relationship means. Some of the most extreme among us have used the disagreement within our body to foment difficulty and advance themselves and their causes. This is not of God. Surely, this is not of God.
I'm a traditionalist. That's right. I'm a traditionalist because I treasure and believe in the ethos of Anglicanism. As Anglicans, we discern God's will through Scripture, tradition and reason. However, some have chosen to embrace biblical literalism instead of our Anglican tradition. History tells us that biblical literalism was used to support both the practice of slavery and the denigration of women. We have moved past slavery and we are moving past the oppression of women. It is time to move past using literalistic readings of the Bible to create prejudices against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Biblical literalism may be someone's tradition, but it's not our tradition and it's time we came home to our Anglican roots.
Again I remind you: I did not choose these issues. Nor did you. They are the challenge of this generation given to us through the God of history. I believe with all my heart that for the most part, we are responding to them out of the gospel: not some literalist gospel, or a liberal gospel or a conservative gospel, but the gospel of Jesus Christ, whom we know and love.
And because we have persevered to discover what inclusivity and compassion mean for these times, I can offer real thanksgivings today. I give thanks and praise for the women who have enriched the ordained ministry of this church. I give thanks and praise for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who serve this church so faithfully. I give thanks and praise to all people of color in this church, who make us so much more a reflection of God's creation. We are at our best when we can celebrate our diversity and find joy in our being together, joy and thanksgiving for the whole life of this Church and all its members.
I know that not everyone in this hall shares my views today and that some of what I say hurts. But I also know that there are many here who do share my views. I have not been alone.
But that is not the point. The point is to see how we live together in this Church with our differences. I want to share with you that there was a time during these twelve years when I wasn't sure our church could hold together. I feared that we had gotten so polarized around issues that we had lost our center and that our work of evangelism and our mission were threatened. The General Convention in Phoenix six years ago was a pivotal time. Some of you remember this from personal experience. For others it is a page from history. I believe it is important for us to continue to tell each other our story, so let me go back to that time for a moment, so that it might serve as counsel to us in Philadelphia.
Bishops and deputies arrived in Phoenix anxious and fearful about what would happen. I sense some of that anxiety present here. Part of the anxiety came from extreme views and dire predictions made prior to Phoenix. May I say as an aside that I have seen some of that same dynamic at work in this present day. Some were angry and came ready for battle. The House of bishops erupted into turmoil and I had to do something I never thought I would. I closed the doors so we could express ourselves openly and begin to work through our anger and our hurt. But God was with us and by the time we were ready to go home, both Houses of that Convention knew that the Holy Spirit had not deserted us after all. God had not forgotten to be gracious. We found common ground and a way forward.
Of course, some believed that they lost because they didn't win. But most of us, most of us learned a great lesson. We learned that we have more to gain from listening and struggling together in charity than we do from passing legislation that leaves some victors and others losers. We accepted the fact that we don't all agree, and that the legislative model has serious limitations when it comes to issues about which there is no consensus. We began to move beyond winners and losers, and to focus on what it means to live in a community where we don't all agree.
During these six years the House of Bishops has come into a new place. At our last interim meeting in March we discussed the fact that the old memories have no power for the 65 bishops who have been consecrated since our first meeting in Kanuga in 1992. The old way of being is unknown to them. They have never experienced a House of Bishops whose members didn't even know one another, who sat in formal rows by order of consecration, who voted after formal debate and little opportunity to know the mind and heart of one another, and to build a new community of trust.
The health of the House of Bishops has not been for themselves, but for their ministries and those they serve. We have also seen a new cooperation between the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies. The fact that our legislative committees are working together as teams gives witness to our new partnership. I give thanks for the strong community of our two houses. Out of this community, we've been able to talk about the difficult issues that have dominated so much of our institutional life. And friends, we need to keep talking and stay in community.
We have not put behind us all of the problems that beset us. That's no surprise. If we did, others would rise in their place as our focus shifted. It is no surprise that these disagreements are hurtful. Some are angry. There are serious differences present in this hall today. Sadly, I know that there are those who wonder if they have a home in the Episcopal Church anymore. But hear me again: for the sake of the gospel, we must stay in fellowship, read Scripture together, pray together, break bread together, and discern God's will for us, together.
Someone asked me how I want to be remembered. I hope I am remembered not just for what I professed, but because I worked for a Church where there is respect and room for everyone.
On Monday the House of Bishops will elect and the House of Deputies will be asked to confirm the election of the 25th Presiding Bishop. I want to give thanks to those bishops who have allowed their names to be considered, and to their families and their dioceses as well. They have given us an enormous gift. The election will be a time of wonderful celebration, because out of it will come new vision and fresh leadership.
Be good to your next Presiding Bishop. Be cautious in your expectations. Do not look for a miracle worker. Do not look to him for all the answers. Pray that he knows the grace of God when he sees it. And most of all, love him. And know that the change from one Presiding Bishop to another won't make all things new. Only God does that.
And give him a gift from this Convention. Give him and this Church a budget to do the mission we are called to do. The dioceses have a decision to make. And you are the decision makers for your dioceses at this Convention. We have to decide whether giving to the budget of this church is about taxation or mission. The dioceses have to understand that collectively they are the national church. We, you, us, together here, are the national church. There is no national church apart from the dioceses gathered together in this Convention and its elected Council. And the financial support of the General Convention budget is the budget of the dioceses, collectively. It's how we do our mission as a partner church of the Anglican Communion. So be bold and pass a budget to further our mission, and have the resolve to support that budget because it's yours, not anyone else's. Claim the national church as our church.
Well, dear friends, it's time to wrap it up. I see the sunset on the horizon and it beckons me. I carry a heart full of thanksgiving today. I want to thank this church for the incredible gift of serving you as your 24th Presiding Bishop. And know this. I am thankful today not just for most of you, but for all of you, because together, as the baptized, we are more than a legislative body. We are the Body of Christ, walking in unity, though not uniformity.
I come to you today to say thank you for your prayers, and for being who you are to me. I will end this particular chapter of my ministry in a spirit of profound thanksgiving because I believe this church has been faithful. Around this hall this morning and across this church there are people who have day by day worked and prayed to usher in the Reign of God. And we know that, at the end of the day, we are in God's hands.
Continue this journey -- in faith, and love, and joy. Seek consensus. Work toward reconciliation. Honor people where they are. And know that as this retiring bishop moves west with Patti, he does so with a promise that you will always be close to his heart and in his prayers. God bless you.