Divisive Issues Force Episcopal Church General Convention to Grapple with the Meaning of Community
Episcopal News Service. July 25, 1991 [91148]
A caravan of 1,100 deputies and bishops from 121 dioceses, attending the 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, journeyed into a legislative wilderness and attempted to set the course of the church for the next three years and beyond. Sometimes the temperature of the debate inside the Phoenix Civic Plaza during the 10-day meeting matched the sizzling heat outside -- particularly as the church turned to sexuality issues.
Many came to Phoenix with suitcases filled with frustration and fear that the church was coming apart at the seams. Others recognized the deep divisions, but felt confident that God would lead the people out of the desert. Some came prepared to push the racism issue and protest holding the convention in a state without a paid holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. Others were excited that the church was ready to lend its moral energy to the environmental movement.
Special interest groups in the church had threatened to scatter from Phoenix like wandering nomads if their expectations were not met. Would the church fragment into lost tribes, or stay together as a community even if the promised land were nowhere in sight?
In that complicated mix of fears and hopes, deputies and bishops would endure a messy legislative process poorly equipped to handle a crushing agenda of concerns -- too much of it eventually brushed aside as the convention lurched towards conclusion.
In his sermon at the opening service, Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning said he anticipated an angry and noisy convention but added that was a sign of health. "Do not make the mistake of thinking that the presence of anger here in this meeting is a sign that the church is in danger. The presence of anger is a sign that the church is alive," and the noise will be "the noise of growth." He said the convention would reveal the church "in all its glory and with every last one of its warts," and that the convention would move through the huge volume of legislation "like an elephant in ballet slippers."
Like a desert storm that appears from nowhere, the sexuality issue burst into the General Convention on the second day. A sharp exchange between two bishops threatened the House of Bishops' ability to withstand the gathering storm of controversy expected on sexuality issues.
It took an unprecedented six closed-door, executive sessions to produce a climate in which the bishops could deal with the issues. "It was critical that we did this," said Bishop Christopher Epting of Iowa. "This church was in a crisis in the first days of this convention."
"We are trying to clear the air, to debate the issues before us," said Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning -- to deal with the anger, confusion, and frustration "we have had with one another over the past couple of years."
Although there were forecasts that an open hearing on sexuality could disrupt the convention, many of tie 3,000 people assembled left with the sense that it had been a productive and informative meeting. "When people talk together you never know the outcome," said Bishop Otis Charles, dean of Episcopal Divinity School. "The people speaking were sharing what was deep and important to them in their lives. My hope is that out of the convention we can hold the whole together."
Faced with the clear option of leaving the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals to local dioceses, or of writing a canon law prohibiting sexual expression outside of Holy Matrimony, the convention chose neither.
Although the storm never completely dissipated during the 10-day convention, the clouds broke long enough to adopt a compromise that:
- affirms the church's traditional teaching on marriage,
- acknowledges the "discontinuity" between the church's teaching and the experience of some of its members,
- confesses the inability of church leaders to reach a definitive conclusion, and
- calls for continued study on the local level and a "pastoral teaching" by the bishops with input from clergy and laity at the grass-roots level.
The compromise emerged from the House of Bishops Committee on Ministry and was amended by the House of Deputies.
Reactions to the compromise clearly indicated that the issue was far from settled. Bishop Clarence Pope of Fort Worth, president of the Episcopal Synod of America, a traditionalist group, called the compromise "a positive sign" by affirming traditional sexual morality. "That's the only real positive -- that it affirms traditional belief," Pope added. "It doesn't stop the problem of continuing ordination of practicing homosexuals. It has no teeth in it."
Bishop William Frey, dean of Trinity Episcopal School for the Ministry, who proposed the canon, said that he does not view the compromise as either a victory or defeat for either conservative or liberal elements of the church. "I don't think we've lost any ground," Frey said.
"We've simply exposed to public view a fact many people have suspected -- that the leadership of the church is, at present, incapable of giving leadership in this particular area."
On the other hand, Bishop Frederick Borsch of Los Angeles defended the compromise resolution, saying, "The bishops weren't wimping out with this resolution. You saw a house with different minds on the issue strike out with integrity. In the long run the debates have helped people see that here's a church that wants to love with mind along with heart, to really -- in a thoughtful and prayerful way -- look at the great issues of our time, such as sexuality."
Another storm cloud gathering on the eve of the convention was the church's willingness to address its own racism. Many deputies and bishops arrived with lingering doubts about the wisdom of meeting in a state without a paid holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
As they gathered in the first legislative sessions in both houses, a substantial number of bishops and deputies declared that they were "present under protest." In an effort to address the anger and frustration, the entire convention participated in a racism audit -- "an institutional CAT scan," according to Diane Porter, interim executive of the church's Office of Advocacy, Witness, and Justice Ministries, and staff liaison to the Standing Commission on Racism. Porter said that the 58-question audit was designed to sensitize participants to both personal and institutional racism, and to serve as a data baseline for church programming for the next 20 years.
"We have lots of perceptions, but we don't have actual facts," said Porter. The Rev. Harry Nevels, Jr., a deputy from Ohio, said the church's growing awareness of its cultural and ethnic diversity is relatively new. The purpose of the audit and the church's other efforts, he said, is "to develop a common ground on which to talk" since "we are talking about different cultural expressions of a truth."
In a presentation of the audit's results, Dr. Lennox Joseph, a consultant who helped to design the audit, said that the results indicated "a clear mandate that the church must press on with its work on racism. There is a clear signal from the Episcopal Church that new programs should be developed to encourage the explicit recognition and appreciation of racial differences within the church," he said.
Porter contends that the results of the audit "portend an openness to change and a willingness to engage this issue seriously." She added that the audit demonstrates "that the church is ready to get on with being an inclusive community."
In responding to the results, the presiding bishop said he would do all in his power to assure that the church take racism seriously and "combat institutional racism at every level."
The Rev. Joseph Pelham of Massachusetts agreed that church leaders must now "pin down the accountability question." Pelham, speaking for The Consultation, a umbrella for 20 social activist groups, said that there is "a difference between good intentions and solid actions."
Bishop Herbert Thompson of Southern Ohio expressed his disappointment that a convention dedicated to issues of racism left so many resolutions until the closing hours. "Such delayed attention is inconsistent with what we've said," he said. "What we do here is what is significant."
Although not all the resolutions on racism were dealt with in the crush of the legislative process, :everal emerged that will have long-range effects on the church. One resolution, for example, dedicated the Episcopal Church to spend the next nine years "addressing institutional racism inside our church and in society." Another urged each diocese and local congregation to conduct a similar racism audit. And another urged each diocese to establish a commission or committee on racism.
Perhaps the most tangible decision around the issue of racism was the establishment of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Scholarship Fund. The fund will provide scholarships for ethnic minority students.
The original intent to lift up the presence of Native American ministry in the Episcopal Church was almost lost in the storm of controversy over the choice of Phoenix as the site for the convention. Bishop Steven Plummer of the Navajoland Area Mission reminded the convention that Native Americans share with other Christians the same spirit, a belief that "the earth is our mother and the heaven is our father."
In the opening Eucharist of the convention, Navajo chant and prayer blessed the huge worship space and spawned a vision of reconciliation that would be woven throughout the entire convention.
During the daily Eucharists, deputies and bishops seated at 3Go round tables served one another from newly designed ceramic chalices and patens made by Navajo craftspeople. The altar cloth and vestments incorporated a variety of traditional symbols. Banners of white, yellow, blue, and black -- traditional Native American colors for the points of the compass -- decked the walls of the worship area. Participants were assigned to tables at random by computer, in what the Rev. Charles Cesaretti, project coordinator, called "an attempt to build another community here, gathered around bread, wine, and Scripture."
In a centerpiece worship service on Saturday, a "holy ground ceremony" brought together representatives of 20 tribes who mixed soils from their homelands symbolizing the mixing of two cultures, “to become a new creation of strength, wisdom, hope, and joy," in the words of Bishop Steven Charleston, a Choctaw who is the new bishop of Alaska.
Following the traditional Native American invocation that addressed the four compass points, several participants bore witness to the pain of the 500-year encounter with European culture and offered prayers for reconciliation. Several recited a sobering litany of massacre, slavery, eviction, and assimilation, but dispelled the assumption that Indians are a vanished people.
In one of the more dramatic moments in the service, nearly 80 Native Americans, slow-stepping to the rhythm of the Lakota drum team, Morning Star, circled the altar platform. A Native American youth led the processional carrying a staff bearing a medicine wheel hoop. The hoop is significant to Indian Christians, explained the Rev. Mark MacDonald, one of the ceremony's coordinators, because it is both a cross and a circle. A cross splits the hoop's interior into four sections which, he said, can represent to Native Americans the four ages of life, the four virtues (wisdom, courage, honesty, and bravery), or the four elements (earth, wind, water, and fire).
In a period of intercession, the presiding bishop and Rosebud Sioux Martin Brokenleg read prayers that used the circle as a motif. "Let us remember that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Great Spirit always works in circles, and everything tries to be round," read Brokenleg. "In the old days it was believed that all power came to the Indian from the sacred hoop of the nation and tribe, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished."
But the hoop has been broken, read Browning, "broken by hurts, wars, massacres, discrimination, and racial jokes; by stereotypes and mean words and suspicious stares... Now is the time to say 'I'm sorry' to each other and to our Creator and again make our hoop, our circle, strong."
With a group of Lakota and Navajo young people singing "On Eagles' Wings," a setting of Psalm 91, the House of Deputies Committee on the Environment introduced a package of resolutions, including measures establishing a national Environmental Stewardship Team and opposing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Committee chair Joyce McConnell of Olympia told the deputies the joint committees of both houses heard five main messages in the testimony they received at the open hearing.
- "Don't put the responsibility on someone else's desk" -- meaning the whole church must be involved in caring for the environment.
- "Don't try to develop a theological statement at General Convention" -- leave it to the wider church -- a lesson that likely grew out of confrontations at the open hearings and elsewhere over the orthodxy of the doctrine of panentheism, the idea that God is present in all creation. Some believe that doctrine is uncomfortably close to pantheism, the concept that God and creation are one.
- "Get a structure in place" to deal with environmental issues.
- "Don't bring a mishmash of resolutions to the floor" -- act on "one good one."
- "Use the expertise and gifts" of Episcopalians who care about the environment.
In a major address at the open hearing, Archbishop Michael Peers of the Anglican Church of Canada warned the Episcopal Church not to get bogged down in the "luxury of correcting each other's theology while the planet continues to die."
Peers emphasized that the crisis in the world's biosphere isn't merely one of scientific or technological import, but a spiritual crisis as well, a religious problem with its roots in "human sinfulness... rebellion against God as source and mystery of all created life." Pointing to the merits of various approaches to the problem, from feminist theology to aboriginal traditions, Peers warned against falling into two of what he called "opposite temptations" in the debate on the environment. One is a stark utilitarianism, viewing the earth as a resource to be exploited; the other is a "romantic cult of nature" that seeks to turn the world into a "global wilderness park." Neither, says Peers, is consistent with Christian faith rooted in the biblical tradition.
The convention adopted what McConnell described as "the beginning of teamwork" for education, advocacy, and action in the church on the environment: the creation of an Environmental Stewardship Team, a 14-member "interdisciplinary, multicultural" group selected by the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies from each province of the church. Funded by a $100,000 line item in the program budget, the team will report to the Executive Council during the next three years and to the General Convention in 1994.
In the midst of debates on major issues, the convention attempted to address a laundry list of national and international issues. Among the major domestic issues were abortion, medical ethics, domestic violence, economic justice, and aging.
On some issues the two houses clearly diverged. The House of Deputies supported exploration of peaceful uses of nuclear power as a way to "protect the environment, reduce dependence on foreign powers, and assure the quality of American life." Bishops, on the other hand, rejected the resolution out of a concern for the radioactive waste created by the nuclear industry.
Attempts to expand the church's 1988 statement on abortion bounced back and forth between the two houses. A strong resolution by 'he deputies opposed any governmental restriction on "the right of a woman to reach informed decision about termination of pregnancy." At the conclusion of convention, bishops failed to concur with the resolution. However, both houses approved a resolution opposing laws requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions.
In a direct outgrowth of the emphasis on economic justice inaugurated at the 1988 General
Convention, both houses concurred to establish an independent National Episcopal Housing Corporation.
Among the international issues creating the most heat were attempts to commend or condemn the Bush Administration's Persian Gulf policy. Ultimately, resolutions praising Bush and UJ.S. military leadership during the crisis were shot down.
Resolutions on the Middle East that supported the rights of the Palestinians and criticized Israeli policy stirred strong reactions and drew sharp criticism from a representative of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). After the General Convention declared its support for an international peace conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rabbi Robert Kravitz of the AJC delivered a stinging rebuke, expressing "keen disappointment with the tone, substance, and the timing of the major Middle East resolutions and their lack of fairness... We respond to your resolutions sadly, with a heavy heart. They are unfair and unbalanced and will not be helpful in the peace process."
In declaring its support for the Church of the Province of South Africa, the General Convention endorsed comprehensive sanctions against the government South Africa. The convention also urged the U.S. government to press for a negotiated settlement that would bring an end to the present violence in South Africa caused by political and factional fighting.
While demonstrating its eagerness to deal with weighty national and international issues, the convention dealt with internal issues that help shape the life and ministry of the church. For example, it declined to repeal the so-called "Episcopal Visitors" resolution, adopted in 1988, that provides episcopal oversight to parishes that oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood.
The House of Bishops rejected an attempt to deny the vote to retired bishops. The convention also passed far-reaching legislation affecting pensions for lay employees at all levels of the church.
After several days of parliamentary maneuvering, the House of Bishops rejected a canonical proposal granting equal access to the ordination process
The convention approved a resolution requesting that the Council for the Development of Ministry and the Standing Liturgical Commission study the concept of "direct ordination" and report to the next General Convention. If the concept is approved, candidates could be ordained directly to the orders of priest or bishop without an intermediate ordination to the diaconate.
Deputies and bishops also concurred on a canonical change decreasing the number of bishops required to call for the ecclesiastical trial of a bishop for teaching doctrine contrary to that of the Episcopal Church. The new canon will require one-quarter of the active bishops in the church rather than two-thirds -- or nearly 75 bishops rather than nearly 200, in the current house.
In the final hours of the legislative sessions, there were clear reminders that many of the most explosive issues of this General Convention would continue to threaten the peace of the church until the 1994 convention in Indianapolis.
The House of Bishops was drawn into an attempt to censure two bishops -- Ronald Haines of Washington (D.C) and Walter Righter, former assisting bishop in Newark -- for recent ordinations of noncelibate homosexuals. The resolution, proposed by retired Bishop Gerald McAllister of Oklahoma, stirred a whirlwind of controversy over collegiality and the responsibility of bishops to each other.
McAllister warned that the issue was "one of ordering the household of faith." He said failure to censure would "destroy the fabric of our community life."
In the end a majority of bishops disagreed with McAllister and passed a resolution that expressed the mind of the House of Bishops, recognizing "the pain and damage to the collegiality and credibility of this house and to parts of the whole church when individual bishops and dioceses ordain sexually active gay and lesbian persons in the face of repeated statements of this House of Bishops and the General Convention against such ordinations."
The resolution goes on to "acknowledge the dilemma of conscience faced by each member of this House of Bishops resulting from these ordinations and from the fact that there is no clear consensus in this House of Bishops." The issues swirling around sexuality and collegiality will be high on the agenda of a special meeting of the House of Bishops in March.
Just as they were leaving on the final day of the convention, deputies and bishops were handed a graphic reminder that the future would continue to be clouded on major issues. An "Open Letter to the People of the Episcopal Church" from the Episcopal Synod of America expressed deep fears for a church "which affirms biblical truths, but cannot discipline those who reject them."
"We continue to pray and work for reconciliation, but must recognize the radical, theological divorce between us," the statement said.
As one deputy said, waiting for her cab to the airport, "I'm still not sure what we did here and what it means for the future of my church. But one thing I will carry away with me is the presiding bishop's challenge to 'dream boldly for this church.'
"His call for an inclusive and compassionate church where none feel excluded just because they are different is exactly the kind of challenge I can take home," she added.
As other deputies and bishops began their journey homeward, questions remained about whether they were a community united in a common purpose. Was the fragile peace they helped patch together in Phoenix a further testimony to God's grace? Would their church ever reach consensus on controversial issues? How does the church cling to its deepest sense of community in the face of disagreement?