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U.S. and Canadian Councils Strengthen Ties in Historic Joint Meeting

Episcopal News Service. December 5, 1996 [96-1632]

(ENS) For the members of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, a historic meeting in Toronto with their Canadian counterparts, November 7-11, underscored an Anglican sense of community that extends beyond borders.

While the Executive Council and the Anglican Church of Canada's Council of General Synod regularly send representatives to each others' meetings, the two groups decided that they needed to meet together to fully live out that relationship, Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning said.

Anglicanism, Browning said, "is profoundly incarnational in its theology. That is why we are here. We can say we are partners, but talk really isn't enough. In our incarnational understanding of it, we act as partners too. Our physical bodies made this trip here, to this room, to be together, to talk together, to pray together, and together to break eucharistic bread."

The close ties between the churches, he observed, parallel the friendship he shares with Canada's primate, Archbishop Michael Peers.

"You might say that he is without peer among our peers," Browning said in his address to the councils, to the sound of more than a few groans. As a sign of his great admiration for Peers, Browning dressed for the council session in Peers' trademark sweater and beaded moccasins. "When I grow up, I want to be like Michael Peers," he said. "Our partnership is really, truly a reflection of the partnership that exists between our two churches."

Peers, as well, stressed the lasting strength of the ties between the two churches. "If this was simply a friendship between the 24th presiding bishop and the fourth primate, it would go when we are gone," he said.

Partnership reflects wider Anglican unity

More than just the partnership between the Canadian and U.S. churches is affirmed by the joint session, as the gathering "reminds us that we are part of a much larger community," Browning added. "Surely as our faith is in a transcendent reality, we will not limit ourselves in the lives of our churches to dim and partial understandings based on national borders or denominational structures."

Pamela Chinnis, president of the General Convention's House of Deputies, agreed in her address to the councils, noting that she had recently attended another historic joint meeting when the Episcopal House of Bishops met for the first time with the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

"We are surrounded by opportunities to stretch beyond both national and denominational borders," she said. "At the same time we are experiencing great turmoil within our structures. This is a time of tremendous potential, and it is also a time of great risk."

A "powerful ecumenical spirit" but also practical considerations are pushing churches toward cooperation as "in the face of burgeoning needs -- both physical and spiritual -- throughout the world, the pressure of diminished resources requires that we give up some of our autonomy, our turf, our preferred 'way we've always done it,"' she said.

"This is good if it punctures our parochial pride and encourages mutual responsibility and accountability," she said. "It is not good if we turn to each other only out of desperation and fear, if we join together merely to pool our poverty. Rather, we need to work very deliberately to share our faith and hope, to live out of the abundance of God's love, not the scarcity of our own declining coffers."

Canadian council raises issue of Cuba

In addition to their own separate business sessions, each council set the agenda for one day of shared time, offering the other group an opportunity to observe its sister body at work. On its day the Canadian council presented its budget before members of both councils and then joined self-selected groups discussing specific aspects of the Canadian church's program. Members of both councils then joined self-selected groups discussing specific aspects of the Canadian church's program. Peers set the stage in his address to the councils for a resolution by the Canadians opposing the U.S. Congress's Helms-Burton Act, which seeks to restrict trade by other countries with Cuba.

Peers said that when he visited Cuba recently, he hoped to find some Canadian church property taken over by the Cuban government that he could visit in violation of the act. His plan, he said, was to "get myself banned from the United States of America," since "that's the kind of thing that someone might notice." Unfortunately, he said, "the Cuban government didn't take a single church," so "I can't become a victim of Helms-Burton, which I so much wanted to be."

Browning noted his own opposition to Helms-Burton and the United States' long-standing economic boycott against Cuba, but expressed relief that Peers had been unsuccessful.

The Canadian council later approved a resolution supporting the Canadian government's opposition to Helms-Burton, and encouraging church members planning "sun" vacations to choose such destinations as Cuba, the Caribbean or Canada, rather than the United States. Invited to speak to the Canadian council, Bishop Calvin Schofield of the Diocese of Southeast Florida argued against the vacation boycott, which was targeted particularly at Florida, a center of support for Helms-Burton and the U.S. economic boycott, saying that it would increase local opposition to change.

The American council on its day presented the reports from a year of visits by council members and national staff to most of the Episcopal Church's dioceses. The visits, designed to let the council "hear the wisdom and mind of the church as to how we can best do mission," as John Harrison of the Diocese of Pennsylvania put it, generated 12 recommendations that particularly emphasize partnerships between the national church and dioceses and congregations.

The two councils broke from their business to attend a dinner, concert and review of some of the urban ministries of the Diocese of Toronto, hosted by the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto. They also worshiped together daily and shared in Bible study and prayer.

A Canadian Indian's plea

In a moving presentation following the closing Sunday morning Eucharist, before the Canadian council departed, Bishop Gordon Beardy, recently elected as Canada's first indigenous diocesan bishop, pressed the U.S. church to increase its support of efforts at autonomy by indigenous peoples in the church.

Rather than use the term "Americans," Indians traditionally called European immigrants "long knives," Beardy told Browning. "Because of the long knives, we are a conquered people," he said. "We cannot call you Americans until we are brothers and sisters. We want to sit with you, to counsel with you."

Browning, in his response, noted the several mentors who have helped him understand more about "the broken promises, the pain and the suffering, the indignities" faced by Indians in North America, and who have helped shape the emphasis he has placed on Native American ministries. While asking forgiveness for the "lack of understanding" that remains, he noted that the Episcopal Church has begun over recent years to be more active in supporting ministry to and with Native Americans. "We have started in a manner in which there is no turning back," he said.

Long Island update offered

During its own business session, the U.S. council paused to hear a report from Browning, Chancellor David Beers and Bishop Harold Hopkins, bishop for pastoral development of the House of Bishops, on recent claims made in Penthouse magazine about sexual misconduct by clergy in the Diocese of Long Island. In support of a statement issued by Browning, the council approved its own resolution affirming the steps taken by the diocese to investigate the situation, deploring any efforts to use the allegations to "inflame and polarize" the church's ongoing discussions on sexuality, and calling on "all members of the church to pray for healing for all affected."

The council approved a $40.5 million budget for 1997, turning to surplus from 1996 and other reserves to offset less-than-anticipated income from dioceses.

The council also learned that the church has recovered all but about $100,000 from the $2.2 million embezzlement by former treasurer Ellen Cooke. According to a report from the treasurer's office, insurance, proceeds from the sale of real estate owned by Cooke, and other payments to the church have totaled $2.1 million. After deducting about $320,000 in costs associated with the case, the net loss to the church has been $422,094, the treasurer's office reported.

While much of the U.S. council's discussion looked toward next year's General Convention in Philadelphia, the council approved the choice of Denver as the site of General Convention for July 5-14, 2000.

Theologian Henri Nouwen, who was slated to be a featured speaker at the Philadelphia convention, was mentioned frequently during the council meeting as both Browning and Chinnis mentioned their sorrow at his recent death. Before leaving Toronto at the close of the council meeting, Browning and Chinnis made a pilgrimage to the L'Arche Daybreak Community of physically and mentally disabled people where Nouwen spent the last 10 years of his life, met with several of the residents and staff members, and visited Nouwen's grave.

Program resolutions address social needs

In addressing issues presented by its program committee, Executive Council reaffirmed an earlier resolution that called for reform of the welfare system, and urged support of state efforts to implement welfare programs in the wake of a sweeping welfare reform bill that "fundamentally altered the nation's system for caring for poor people."

Resolutions addressing international issues also urge the United States government to advocate for human rights for women in Afghanistan, and recommend continuing the present level of financial support for another three years for Central American dioceses forming a new province.

Council also approved the filing of a number of shareholder resolutions as well as a resolution requesting that the Securities and Exchange Commission reverse its interpretation that employment-related social responsibility resolutions are matters of "ordinary business" and therefore can be omitted from proxy statements. "The SEC's staffs position of permitting companies to omit these resolutions...has seriously damaged the ongoing process by which shareholders can engage in constructive dialogue with corporations," the resolution stated.

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