An unexpected outcome
Episcopal News Service. March 13, 2007 [031307-06]
Douglas LeBlanc, Member of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Richmond
The Diocese of Virginia has gone through such conflict in recent months that I was rather worried about it in the days before its 212th Annual Council. After the departure of nearly 20 congregations during 2006, followed by several weeks of intermittent battles through press releases, it’s clear that both the diocese and most of the departing congregations are ready to meet one another in court to settle their differences over property rights.
It’s also clear that the annual council — what most Episcopalians call a diocesan convention — supports Bishop Peter Lee and the diocese’s Standing Committee and Executive Board in taking the matter to court. I’m saddened that either side sees court action as acceptable, rather than a scandal that ought to be prevented, but I’m resigned to the inevitability that secular courts will have to intervene where Christian forbearance has somehow failed.
I also worried that widespread anger about these departures would shape all other decisions this council made. I worried that the council might, in electing a bishop coadjutor, shift the diocese toward outright intolerance of conservative parishes like mine.
Council did show flashes of intolerance, mostly through gratuitous standing ovations whenever a speaker would defend the diocese’s actions or question whether the departing congregations could make any real claim to being real Anglicans. But when it came time to vote, the council of 2007 functioned much like the previous council I observed, that of 2004. It received resolutions that sought to move the diocese in one direction or another — this year all that direction was leftward — and then let committees come up with more palatable substitute motions.
The result was a council that often voted in near unanimity, did not spend inordinate time on contentious debates and still managed to pass resolutions that satisfied their authors without disrupting the broader body of Christians.
For instance, this year’s council was asked — after multiple years of observing a moratorium on pastoral blessings for same-sex couples — simply to lift the moratorium and approve a local-option approach. After I spent years using “local option” as a jeering shorthand for ecclesial chaos, I was amused to see it being used straightforwardly as an unquestionably good thing.
Council instead agreed to ask that Bishop Lee appoint a commission that will discern whether there is an emerging consensus within the diocese for a local-option approach to these pastoral blessings. Perhaps there is such an emerging consensus here, but establishing that will require more spadework than simply passing a resolution on a Saturday morning.
The Rev. James Papile, who was among the sponsors of the resolution, endorsed this substitute. Conservatives were happy because the moment of decision was delayed and because the diocese may moderate the proposal still further over the course of a year. The system worked.
The system also worked, I believe, in the election of the Very Rev. Shannon Johnston as bishop coadjutor. I write this not because he was my first choice or because I expected him to win — neither was true for me — but because from the first ballot he was the first choice of this council. When a nominee leads from the first ballot, moves from strength to strength and wins an election in five or fewer ballots, my faith in the Holy Spirit’s presence gets bolstered again.
I had composed another version of this column just before this council met, and I worked myself into enough of a lather to conclude with these words: “Please pray for the Diocese of Virginia.”
Well, praying for a diocese is always a good idea. Who among us doesn’t need or benefit from prayer? But when I conclude a reflection that way, I had just as soon deliberately write it on the feast day of a martyr and point out that feast day.
My point is basic: These days it’s easy for enthusiasts on the right or the left to write or behave as if the church is in the most dire times it has ever seen, and we poor embattled American Episcopalians have so very much to endure, especially from one another.
Speaking for myself, I stay much more balanced when I reflect on even the slenderest sample of church history and remind myself that God has seen the church through much more threatening waters. He even seems to thrive on it.