Conference Approves Affirmative Action Policy
Episcopal News Service. November 17, 1981 [81300]
INDIANAPOLIS -- The issue of racism which commanded much of the attention at the third national conference of the Episcopal Church's Task Force on Women was the subject of five conference resolutions, two of which addressed complex questions of the ordained clergy.
The five were passed at a Saturday morning business session at the conclusion of the Nov. 5-7 conference at which black and white church women had grappled with the topic "Claiming Our Power." The conference pressed the resolutions as a means of demonstrating the common ground that had been discovered in the exchanges.
Two -- directed to the Church's Council for the Development of Ministry -- urge "that the process of selection and rejection of candidates for ordination be monitored for affirmative action" and that "serious action be taken on both the recruitment of minority persons for ordination and the competition between black clergy and white women clergy for appointed and other positions at local, diocesan and national levels."
The group also asked that the recently-devised "affirmative action" policy, which the Executive Council has accepted in principle, be extended to all Church committees.
Two other resolutions praise the National Council of Churches and the Church's Standing Commission on Church Music for their sensitivity to both sexist and racist concepts in lectionaries and hymnals.
The final action asks that a planned national conference on racism -- sponsored by the Coalition for Human Needs -- include one of the black women panelists from the Task Force conference among keynoters.