Members of the Los Angeles deputation join their colleagues in Eucharist in the House of Deputies on July 10. (Photo: Keith Yamamoto) At right below, Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce and Taber-Hamilton take a selfie. | |
Bishops and deputies proceed with elections, legislative actions in spite of continued wi-fi woes
When the House of Deputies elected its new vice president it made history once again.
By electing the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton of the Diocese of Olympia (Washington), the House of Deputies established a leadership team of two women for the first time in its history. Taber-Hamilton is the third woman, and the first ordained woman and first woman of color to be elected the house's vice president. She is a Native American of the Shackan First Nation.
President-elect Julie Ayala Harris, a Latina lay woman from the Diocese of Oklahoma, who was elected on July 9, will be the first women of color to serve as president. At 41 she's also the youngest person in memory to serve in that role. (She wears braces, which emphasize the impression of youth: she told The Living Church that the tin grin is coming off in 10 days. See TLC's story here.)
Ayala Harris will preach the sermon for the convention's Morning Prayer service on Monday, July 11, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. EDT. (Video of the service will be available on demand later.) The livestream can be accessed here.
WiFi woes
The internet connections continue to be spotty in the convention meeting halls, leading Chaplain Lester Mackenzie to post a frustrated prayer on Facebook:
Grant, we beseech Thee, that through the intercession of Saint Isidore, give us comfort through our journeys through the WiFi weirdness before I bunt, throw, drive, heave and expel these wifi routers under the shadow of my styling shoes!"
(St. Isidore of Seville, a 6th- to 7th-century Spanish scholar and cleric, is patron of the Internet, computer users, technicians and programmers.)
In spite of the technical difficulties, actions rolled down like water in Sunday's legislative sessions.
Book of Common Prayer
After much debate, the bishop's passed Resolution A059, an amendment to the constitution of the Episcopal Church (first reading) that would broaden the definition of the Book of Common Prayer. The Rev. Canon Susan Russell, Diocese of Los Angeles canon for Engagement Across Difference, explains: "If concurred on by the House of Deputies, [A059] would, for the first time, define the Book of Common Prayer as “those liturgical forms and other texts authorized by the General Convention.” In other words, liturgies that are not in the current prayer book – such as same-sex marriage rites and gender-expansive liturgies – could be elevated to 'prayer book status,' whether they are replacing parts of the prayer book or standing on their own." (From Russell's Facebook post.) Read more here.
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Budget
In the only joint session of this convention, the House of Bishops joined the deputies on Sunday to discuss a $100.5 million budget proposal. Among those posing questions to the Program, Budget and Finance (PBF) committee was Los Angeles Deputy Andrew Tomat – also treasurer of the diocese (pictured at left in a photo by Deputy Rachel Nyback). Tomat asked if forgiven PPP loans provided by the U.S. government during the pandemic shutdown will be included in diocesan assessments for budget purposes. Deputy Mike Ehmer of Northwest Texas, chair of PBF, said PPP forgiveness is not exempt.
Although they heard the budget presentation together, the houses vote separately as usual. The deputies approved the budget, which now goes to the bishops. Read more here.
Ukraine
Both houses voted in favor of a resolution calling for Russia to cease its aggression in Ukraine. Bishop John Harvey Taylor spoke against amending the resolution to imply a "moral equivalence between Moscow and Kyiv," he wrote in his Facebook/blog post today.
The resolution, already approved by the deputies, passed unanimously in the House of Bishops. "Putin will not lose sleep over it," wrote Taylor. "But if anyone wonders what The Episcopal Church in solemn convention thinks about the war in Ukraine, there you have it."
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Church structure
"The House of Deputies on July 9 voted on six resolutions intended to help The Episcopal Church adapt to changes in society and find new ways of supporting the church’s mission and ministry, from experimenting with creative uses of technology to rethinking how congregations report membership and financial data," writes David Paulsen of Episcopal News Service.
The resolutions were posed by the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church (HODCSC – pronounced "hot sauce").
"President Jennings did a bold thing when she appointed a committee of only GenXers and Millennials," said the Rev. Chris Rankin-Williams (pictured at left), committee chair and rector of St. John's Church, Ross (Diocese of California), appearing via Zoom. "At 54 I’m the oldest member. The younger people on this committee give me great hope for the church."
The six "Hot Sauce" resolutions presented on Sunday call for increased use of technology and data to make the church more effective in “a wide range of cultural and regional contexts.” The deputies voted in favor of five, deferring one concerning funding, which was deferred for more study and action at the 2024 General Convention. Read more here.
During his presentation, Rankin-Williams – a native of Utah who formerly served in the Diocese of Los Angeles – commented, "We began many of our State of the Church meetings with other groups with two questions that generated a lot of fun discussion: What was your first concert? And, what is your dream for the church?
"My first concert was KISS, and my dream is that someday the Episcopal Church will discover the West Coast."
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Honoring the retiring president, vice president
The House of Deputies honored their outgoing president, Gay Clark Jennings, 71, during Sunday's proceedings with videos and tributes. Jennings tried to rule that they were out of order: nevertheless, they persisted. (Read more here.)
Jennings has served three 3-year terms as president – the maximum allowed by church canons. She stayed in office an extra year because of the pandemic-caused postponement of General Convention from 2021 to 2022.
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The house also cheered retiring vice president the Hon. Byron Rushing, 79 (appearing at left in a photo from the 2012 General Convention). Until 2018 he was a member and assistant majority leader of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He has served as HoD vice president for the past 10 years. (Like Jennings, Rushing served one year past the usual term limit because of the pandemic delay).
He is the longest-serving deputy in the house, first elected for the 1973 meeting. That's a total of 17 General Conventions. Seventeen.
The convention will conclude on Monday, July 11.
— Janet Kawamoto
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State of the Church resolutions seek tools to navigate adaptive change in church’s future
By David Paulsen
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 10, 2022] The House of Deputies on July 9 voted on six resolutions intended to help The Episcopal Church adapt to changes in society and find new ways of supporting the church’s mission and ministry, from experimenting with creative uses of technology to rethinking how congregations report membership and financial data.
The six resolutions were proposed by the deputies’ Committee on the State of the Church, and the votes were preceded by a presentation by the committee’s chair and vice-chair. The committee is appointed after each General Convention, and this roster was assembled in 2018. Its focus shifted significantly in 2020 as COVID-19 began spreading.
“Little did we know when we began this work that a global pandemic would place the church in the midst of the greatest adaptive challenge of our lifetimes,” the Rev. Chris Rankin-Williams, chair of the committee, told deputies. Rankin-Williams, who is not a deputy, spoke from home via Zoom. “The pace of congregational decline across the country has been accelerated by the pandemic, and there is great uncertainty about the future and financial viability of many of our churches.”
Read more here.
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House of Deputies elects Rachel Taber-Hamilton vice president
By Melodie Woerman
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 10, 2022] The House of Deputies on July 10 elected the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton as its vice president. She is the first ordained woman, and only the third woman, to serve in this capacity since the role of deputies’ vice president was created in 1964.
Taber-Hamilton, who is Shackan First Nation, joins President-Elect Julie Ayala Harris, a Latina lay woman from the Diocese of Oklahoma, as the first women of color serving as leaders of the House of Deputies. Their elections mark the first time two women will lead the house.
Taber-Hamilton is an Indigenous priest in the Diocese of Olympia, and she succeeds the Hon. Byron Rushing, who has served since 2012. The other candidate was the Rev. Edwin Johnson of Massachusetts.
After her election, Taber-Hamilton was joined on the platform by other Olympia deputies as she was greeted by the house with a standing ovation.
Read more here.
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$100.5 million budget proposal for 2023-24 presented to General Convention; process reforms advance
By David Paulsen
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 10, 2022] Bishops joined deputies in the same convention hall for the first and likely only time at the 80th General Convention on July 10, to hear an afternoon presentation of the $100.5 million churchwide budget proposal in a joint session, as mandated by The Episcopal Church’s Canons.
The Rev. Mike Ehmer, deputy from North Texas, and Texas Bishop Suffragan Jeff Fisher presented the 2023-24 plan on behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget & Finance.
The committee sees the churchwide budget as “a means to which we do the work God has given us to do,” said Ehmer, the committee chair. The proposed budget “provides continued strong support for evangelism and creation care, with a significant increase in reconciliation and justice. It also ensures funding for the necessary foundation needed to accomplish the goals within those three pillar areas, while also maintaining our commitments and covenants to dioceses of The Episcopal Church and around the Anglican Communion.”
Read more here.
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Bishops pass measure broadening definition of Book of Common Prayer
By Egan Millard
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 10, 2022] The House of Bishops moved forward with a plan to expand and clarify what exactly the Book of Common Prayer is, ending hours of discussion with a unanimously adopted resolution on July 9.
The resolution – an amended version of A059, which had garnered increasing attention in the weeks leading up to General Convention – would amend Article X of the Constitution of The Episcopal Church, which lays out how the Book of Common Prayer can be revised but has never specifically provided for authorized liturgies that are not proposed revisions to the existing book.
A059, if concurred on by the House of Deputies, would, for the first time, define the Book of Common Prayer as “those liturgical forms and other texts authorized by the General Convention.” In other words, liturgies that are not in the current prayer book – such as same-sex marriage rites and gender-expansive liturgies – could be elevated to “prayer book status,” whether they are replacing parts of the prayer book or standing on their own.
“What A059 is about, really, is acknowledging that common prayer is evolving,” said the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Lee, bishop provisional of Milwaukee, chair of the House of Bishops’ Committee on Prayer Book, Liturgy & Music and one of the architects of A059. “And it creates a framework for that evolution to happen, including the inclusion of a number of different rites in a curated collection.”
Read more here.
Photo above: Mary Glasspool, bishop assistant in the Diocese of New York and former bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles, speaks during discussion on A059 on July 8, 2022 at the 80th General Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: ENS
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General Convention takes steps toward adding Bishop Barbara Harris to calendar of church saints
By David Paulsen
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 10, 2022] The historic consecration of Bishop Barbara Harris in 1989 will be added to The Episcopal Church’s calendar, and a commemoration of her life will be developed for possible future inclusion in the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts as an Episcopal saint, under a resolution approved July 10 by the House of Deputies.
Harris was consecrated 33 years ago on Feb. 11, 1989, as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Massachusetts, becoming the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. She retired in 2002 but remained an active and prominent figure in The Episcopal Church and a role model for younger generations of Episcopal leaders until her death March 13, 2020, at age 89. Harris also is remembered for her support of social justice causes and her part in the first wave of women to be ordained as Episcopal priests.
Read more here.
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GC80 articles
A list of links to articles about General Convention, drawn from various sources, is here.
Episcopal News Service articles about General Convention are collected here.
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General Convention Day 3
By John Harvey Taylor
[The Bishop's Blog – July 10, 2022] In a four-day General Convention, or even the full-size, eight-day version, every one of us 130 bishops had better not expect to be heard on each of the scores of issues we take up.
Yet we’re all preachers. Temptation ls always lying in wait. Once I got over my fear of approaching the mic at my first House of Bishops meeting in 2017, I resolved to pipe up only if I’d worked on a matter already or a point occurred to me that no one had made yet. It’s a bright group, so the latter doesn’t happen much.
This spring, on the Committee on Social Justice and International Policy, where I was vice chair and the Rt. Rev. Daniel G. P. Gutiérrez chair on the bishops' side, we’d received a resolution on the Ukraine war that, it seemed to me, posited a moral equivalence between Moscow and Kyiv. During our Zoom hearings, I proposed language, which the committees of deputies and bishops adopted, calling on Russia to cease its aggression and respect the security and autonomy of Ukraine.
On Saturday, when the resolution came to the floor, a colleague suggested restoring the old moral equivalence language, so I spoke up, saying that I felt we could find a way both to identify the aggressor and ask both sides to behave humanely. In true Anglican fashion, bishops approved the resolution with both paragraphs.
Then this afternoon, we got the same resolution back from the House of Deputies that we’d originally proposed, holding Russia clearly accountable. It probably meant deputies passed it on their consent calendar, without discussion. This time it passed the HOB unanimously. Putin will not lose sleep over it. But if anyone wonders what The Episcopal Church in solemn convention thinks about the war in Ukraine, there you have it.
I also rose during a Q&A with the Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle, bishop of Texas, who was, with his usual soft-spoken eloquence, representing a group of bishops who’d fashioned a compromise on revision of “The Book of Common Prayer.” We had run up on the rocks the day before, when some bishops felt we were moving too quickly. Others feared we were in danger of further marginalizing those waiting for new, inclusive liturgies to go mainstream.
I told Andy it felt as though the working group was trying to balance two important values: The need to proceed carefully with revising our beloved 1979 prayer book against the need to honor those who deserve to see authorized, non-prayer book rites as centerpieces of our worship life, especially folks who’ve worked so hard for marriage equity over the years.
I asked if the resolution was the best way to do both. When both Andy and the Rt. Rev. Bonnie Perry of Michigan, who had also worked on the compromise, said “yes,” and Bonnie gave me a fist bump, I knew I’d be voting for it.
Photo: Bishops Jeffrey Lee and Andy Doyle during prayer book debate. (Randall Gornowich, ENS)
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The Rt. Rev. John Harvey Taylor is seventh bishop diocesan of the Diocese of Los Angeles. His blog may be found here, or follow him on Facebook here. | |
Where do you go next?
"Superstar chaplain the Rev. Kate Lewis of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has been helping run General Convention for years," wrote Bishop John Harvey Taylor on Facebook July 10. "When bishops were invited to the House of Deputies gallery this afternoon for the report on the 2022-24 budget of The Episcopal Church, I leaned into their sacred space just enough to take this picture and ask, 'Hey, Kate, where are you going after convention?' What do you think she said?"
Well? Where do you think Kate is going after General Convention?
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Except as noted, reporting by Janet Kawamoto, editor, The Episcopal News | | | | |
