|
The L.A. deputation at lunch
Bishop John Harvey Taylor encountered most of the Diocese of Los Angeles deputation after the House of Deputies broke for lunch on July 8. Clockwise from bottom left: the Rev. Rachel Nyback (rector of St. Cross Church, Hermosa Beach), the Rev. Canon Kelli-Grace Kurtz (rector of All Saints Church, Riverside), Canon Jim White (member of All Saints Church, Pasadena), Canon Julie Dean Larsen (vice chancellor of the diocese), Ivan Gutierrez (member, Iglesia del la Magdalena, Glendale), Dan Valdez (member, All Saints Church, Highland Park), and the Rev. Antonio Gallardo (rector emergent, St. Luke's Church, Long Beach).
Not pictured: The Rev. Hsin-Fen "Fennie" Chang (vicar of St. Thomas' Church, Hacienda Heights, and chaplain at Canterbury Irvine) and Canon Andy Tomat, first lay alternate (member of St. Barnabas' Church, Pasadena and treasurer of the diocese). Photo: John Taylor
| |
Above: The Rev. Lester V. Mackenzie, House of Deputies chaplain, breaks the host during convention’s opening Eucharist on July 8 as deacons the Ven. Ruth A. Elder and the Ven. Janice L. Grinnel look on. Photo: Video screenshot. Below right: Deputy Dan Valdez of the Diocese of Los Angeles reads part of the necrology during the opening Eucharist. Photo: Keith Yamamoto | |
General Convention begins with a wi-fi snafu, somber reckoning with racism in the church's history
General Convention started with something of a whimper when the wi-fi refused to work in the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops, bringing business to a frustrating but fortunately temporary stop.
House of Deputies Chaplain Lester Mackenzie (rector of St. Mary's Church, Laguna Beach) presided at the opening Eucharist. As part of the convention's Covid mitigation protocols, the House of Deputies and House of Bishops worshiped separately. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached at both via a prerecorded video. A report on his message is here.
During the Eucharist Deputy Dan Valdez read part of the necrology (remembrance of deputies and bishops who have died since the last General Convention). Valdez (pictured above right), a member of All Saints Church in Highland Park (Los Angeles), is representing the Diocese of Los Angeles at his seventh GC and now officially qualifies as a senior deputy. (There are no perks to that designation, he says: just a yellow ribbon on his name tag and a mandate to mentor newbies.)
| |
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, seen on the screen in the House of Deputies, delivers the sermon at General Convention's opening Eucharist. Photo: Jim White. Below left: The Baltimore Convention Center welcomes deputies and bishops to General Convention. Photo: Keith Yamamoto | |
|
Once the wi-fi issue was resolved, the deputies tackled an issue that is central to this meeting's theme of racial reconciliation: taking responsibility for The Episcopal Church's history of establishing and operating schools for Indigenous children that separated them from their families and tried to erase their culture.
By voting in favor of a set of resolutions proposed by the Presiding Officers’ Working Group on Truth-Telling, Reckoning, and Healing, deputies "initiated a new beginning in the life of the church, overwhelmingly approving resolutions to establish a voluntary coalition for racial equity and justice, and to reckon with The Episcopal Church’s involvement in Indigenous boarding schools," the Rev. Canon Pat McCaughan wrote for Episcopal News Service. See her story below or here for more about the first day of business.
In its evening session the deputies considered more resolutions submitted by the Committee on Racial Justice and Reconciliation. Resolution 126, which “instruct[s] the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to examine all the language of the Book of Common Prayer, The Hymnal 1982 and other approved liturgical material in regard to the colonialist, racist and white supremacist, imperialist and nationalistic language and content and develop proposals for amending texts,” generated some lively debate, but passed overwhelmingly.
Another issue at hand was the location of future meetings of General Convention. The next convention is scheduled to take place in 2024 (getting the triennium back on track after the pandemic delay). The present convention must also determine the location of the 2027 gathering (Resolution A001). Resolution D054, yet to be voted on, would direct church leadership "to consider the relocation of the 81st General Convention currently scheduled to take place in Louisville, KY, as well as all future conventions, to a venue that commits to an 'equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care' which we view as 'an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.'"
| |
Deputies and alternates rise for the opening Eucharist on July 8. Photo: Keith Yamamoto | |
|
Covid-19 protocols
Convention in a time of pandemic calls for strict protocols to keep everyone safe and healthy. At right, Deputies Kelli Grace Kurtz and Rachel Nyback, along with volunteer floor manager Kate Lewis, demonstrate the use of masks and hand sanitizer. Full vaccination and booster shots, along with daily negative Covid tests, are also required of all attendees. The usual GC gathering of some 10,000 Episcopalians is scaled back this year to about 1,200, with no visitors, no exhibit hall and limited volunteers.
Photo: Keith Yamamoto
| |
|
How do resolutions get through General Convention?
Resolutions at General Convention may be proposed by bishops, deputies, diocesan conventions or committees and commissions of The Episcopal Church. Before the convention, the resolutions are assigned to one of 20 or so legislative committees, made up of deputy and bishop representatives as assigned by the presiding officer of each house. The committees examine the resolutions, combine similar ones, and refine the language to make sure it fits canonical requirements. Then the committees submit the resolutions to one of the houses of convention. Both houses must concur for a resolution to become an official act of convention.
More about resolutions is here. A graphic outlining how a resolution moves through General Convention is here.
Because of the Covid pandemic, this meeting of General Convention was scaled down from nine to four legislative days. The convention will consider only resolutions deemed to be essential to the church's operation and ministry; others will be deferred to the next convention, planned for 2024.
| |
Deputies engage in ‘holy listening,’ begin process toward healing by passing racial equity resolutions
By Pat McCaughan
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 8, 2022] On the first day of the 80th General Convention following heart-wrenching testimony, the House of Deputies on July 8 initiated a new beginning in the life of the church, overwhelmingly approving resolutions to establish a voluntary coalition for racial equity and justice, and to reckon with The Episcopal Church’s involvement in Indigenous boarding schools.
“The pain and suffering caused by white supremacy cannot be minimized or denied,” Arizona Deputy the Rev. John Kitagawa said when introducing Resolution A125, a substitute amendment offered by the Racial Justice and Reconciliation Committee, which he co-chairs. The resolution would establish a voluntary Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice among dioceses and congregations.
“The veil of the continued complicity by institutions, including our church, is lifting to expose the wounds of generational trauma and internalized oppression,” he said. Dealing with these challenges, he added, would constitute “a seismic shift” for the church.
The proposed coalition was first unveiled in March in a report produced by the Presiding Officers’ Working Group on Truth-Telling, Reckoning and Healing. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies, created the working group last year to sharpen the church’s focus on confronting its past complicity with racist systems and the lingering legacy of white supremacy embedded in institutions like the church. The coalition also is seen as a remedy to the church’s uneven track record of prioritizing racial reconciliation, at the churchwide level and across its more than 100 dioceses. The proposal also calls on the church to set aside $2 million annually to carry out the work.
Read more here.
| |
Hundreds of Episcopalians march, calling for an end to gun violence
By Melodie Woerman
[Episcopal News Service – Baltimore, Maryland – July 8, 2022] A murder on July 7 near the site of General Convention and the urging of two bishops, including one who happened upon the scene as it unfolded, prompted a march of hundreds of people from the Baltimore Convention Center to an open area a few blocks from the scene of the shooting, coordinated by Bishops United Against Gun Violence.
According to news reports, 48-year-old Timothy Reynolds was shot and killed after an altercation with two young men who were washing drivers’ windshields at an intersection near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, about two blocks from the Baltimore Convention Center where the 80th General Convention is taking place July 8-11. After words were exchanged, Reynolds got out of his car and swung a baseball bat in the direction of those who sometimes are called “squeegee workers,” one of whom shot Reynolds. He later was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Bishop Susan Haynes of the Diocese of Southern Virginia told Episcopal News Service that she was walking back to her hotel yesterday afternoon when she saw first responders approaching a nearby intersection. She then noticed a body lying in the street and paramedics beginning to administer CPR, later placing the man into an ambulance. “I just felt the need to stay there and pray, because there was nothing else I could do,” she said. “I had a sense that this man was dying, and he needed to have prayer as he died.” Then, she said she “spoke a word of encouragement to the police officers and thanked them for their work.”
Read more here. Photo at top: Melodie Woerman, ENS. Photo above left: Fennie Chang
| |
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.
| |
General Convention, Day 1
By John Harvey Taylor
[The Bishop's Blog – July 8, 2022] The 2022 General Convention of The Episcopal Church is meeting out on the streets this weekend as well as in the chambers of the houses of deputies and bishops (where important, painstaking work is being done, and on a drastically reduced schedule).
At lunchtime it was a joy to run into the Rt. Rev. Silvestre Romero of Guatemala. Sitting by Baltimore harbor over our lobster rolls, we discussed the growing collaboration between our dioceses (he recorded a brief interview with me for his folks) and swapped a story or two about the episcopal life.
Since Guatemala is part of the Anglican Church in Central America, not The Episcopal Church, he’s not attending convention, though he said ARCA bishops have had seat and voice in years past according to a concordat adopted in the nineties. Before attendance at #GC80 was scaled back by nearly 90%, he would have been present as an observer. He came to Baltimore anyway for meetings with colleagues before heading to Pennsylvania to meet with friends of his diocese in its churches.
| |
|
Between afternoon and evening sessions, convention took to the streets for a liturgy offered by Bishops-Episcopalians United Against Gun Violence, lamenting the gunshot death on Thursday of a 48-year-old man in a street altercation. Police cruisers accompanied us as we marched to the site of the incident. We lamented gun violence, the extra burdens borne by working people of color, and our rage-drenched times. Among the speakers was Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry, who touched every heart as he called down God’s spirit of peace and justice.
In the crowd after the prayers, I spotted Mary Douglas Glasspool, bishop assistant in New York and former bishop suffragan in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado of Puerto Rico, who had just been elected to Executive Council.
| |
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. | |
|
At right: The Rev. Canon Kelli Grace Kurtz arranged a collage of essential gear for the well-equipped General Convention deputy, including a caffeine delivery system (those sessions can be long), name tag (can't get into the House of Deputies without it), notebooks, Covid tests (required daily), a mask (required at all times) and, of course, Flat Jesus.
Photo: Kelli Grace Kurtz
| |
|
|
Married couple Pat McCaughan and Keith Yamamoto, both priests of the Diocese of Los Angeles, are working at General Convention; she at her sixth meeting as a reporter for Episcopal News Service and he at his seventh as a volunteer coordinator, currently for public safety. McCaughan is vicar of St. George's Church, Laguna Hills; Yamamoto is rector of St. Mark's Church, Upland.
Photo: Kate Lewis
| |
|
As the House of Deputies gather for its first session on July 8, Diocese of Los Angeles representatives take their places at their designated table, located at the far left side of the convention hall. It is traditional for each deputation to decorate its signpost to represent its location or priorities. This year, the deputies chose to display their support for the people of war-torn Ukraine.
Photo: Dan Valdez
| |
|
At right: Bishop John Harvey Taylor and clergy Deputy Antonio Gallardo met on the way from their hotel to the Baltimore Convention Center for the first worship and legislative sessions of their respective houses.
Photo: John Taylor
| |
|
|
Chaplain Lester Mackenzie shares Eucharist with Sophie Kitch-Peck, who is a sergeant at arms for the House of Deputies and a member of the General Convention secretariat. Kitch-Peck has also created a series of playful TikTok videos for the House of Deputies News, exploring various aspects of General Convention. The videos may be seen here.
Photo: Keith Yamamoto
| |
|
Deputies Jim White and Julie Dean Larsen take part in the first session of the House of Deputies. White has attended nine meetings of General Convention, beginning as a visitor and attending twice as an exhibitor, once as first lay alternate, and five times as a deputy. Larsen is attending her second convention as a deputy.
Photo: Kelli Grace Kurtz
| |
Below are a couple of anecdotes proving that a little levity woven into General Convention breaks up long days, eases tensions and offers deputies and bishops the chance to indulge their sense of humor even as they ponder the serious business of the church. | |
Organization - and entering the 21st century
A required step for both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops to do the work of the church is to formally “organize” itself by electing and appointing officers and declaring the needed quorum. Each house informs the other house of its “organization.”
After the deputies accomplished this step, the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies, decided to convey the house’s official message to the bishops via a FaceTime call to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. She donned a Buffalo Bills hat in honor of Curry’s favorite football team.
Curry was unable to take Jennings’ first call because Rodney Coldren, a public health expert hired to advise Jennings on COVID protocols for General Convention, was addressing the bishops.
“OK, call me back,” Jennings said. Curry did a few moments later. (Deputies giggled as the entire exchange was broadcast over the PA system.)
In the past, the deputies would have sent a delegation to the bishops to announce that they were ready for business. In 2018 Jennings – who is known for her sense of humor as well as her leadership - sent all deputies named Michael (wearing hats emblazoned with the name) to inform Presiding Bishop Michael that they were ready to roll.
This year, pandemic restrictions forced the use of technology to make the required announcement. In response, Micah Jackson, president of Bexley Seabury Seminary, tweeted, "Apparently, we have dragged the General Convention all the way into the early 2000s." (The photo above is borrowed from his tweet.)
– Mary Frances Schjonberg, Episcopal News Service, with addition
| |
Bishops’ ‘swear jar’ penalizes overused jargon
When Bishop Sean Rowe – the House of Bishops’ parliamentarian – spoke to the House about guidelines for moving legislation along, he also mentioned that the House would have a ‘swear jar,’ but not for actual curse words. In this case, bishops must make a donation to Episcopal Relief & Development when they use the cliches that have pervaded the language of church leadership.
The banned words and phrases are: intentional, radical hospitality, lean into, at the end of the day, unprecedented, new normal, and these challenging times.
The first violation came shortly after, as Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce, secretary of the House of Bishops, was giving her own presentation on the rules of order. Bruce was demonstrating the warning sign she gives to bishops who are speaking too long on trivial matters: by donning one, and then two, tiaras, before cutting them off.
“And as you see me lean into the microphone–” Bruce said, and was promptly called out for using a banned phrase, though she protested that it was used in its literal, not figurative, sense.
Rowe is also offering prizes for the best use of the term “perichoresis,” the best random quote and the best fictitious quote.
— Egan Millard, Episcopal News Service
| |
Keeping up with General Convention | |
|
Click the blue headings to find a wide range of information about General Convention.
Communications Hub
This is communication central for the convention, with information about schedules, legislative actions, resolutions, videos, photos and more.
Media Hub
On this page you'll find live video coverage of the House of Bishops, House of Deputies, worship services and the #GC80 Daily Show video series, which showcases the good work of Episcopal leaders and initiatives from around the church.
The General Convention schedule
How resolutions move through General Convention
House of Deputies News
News, commentary, features, live blogs during deliberations, and TikTok videos.
Candidate forums
House of Deputies Zoom forums with candidates for president, and vice president, moderated by the Rev. Albert Cutié.
Forum 1
Forum 2
The General Convention Virtual Binder
For true church nerds: this is the information used by bishops and deputies as they go about their work at the convention, including texts and progress of all resolutions. It is updated regularly.
House of Bishops
House of Deputies
Social Media
Follow social media updates from General Convention with the hashtag #GC80.
| |
Except as noted, reporting by Janet Kawamoto, editor, The Episcopal News | | | | |
