Do you have a pick for the new Bishop of Rome? If you’re not a cardinal, you can still vote. Just comment on this post.
You can either vote for someone you think will win–or for someone you want to win.
My own guess of who will win would be Cardinal Scola of Milan. –J. Douglas Ousley
“At the 77th General Convention, the Holy Spirit called The Episcopal Church to reimagine itself and how it can more deeply live into its identity in our rapidly changing world.”
This will be news to some, if not most, Episcopalians. Some may wonder what it means to more deeply live into one’s identity.
Be that as it may, a little Episcopal re-imagining would certainly be welcome. And the national church leaders have come up with a task force to do just that; the quotation above trumpets the initial meeting of the group.
The members are now working out an “engagement strategy.” As someone who recently became engaged myself, I couldn’t help but applaud this idea. A little strategy would help, too. And although few members of the Task Force appear to be prominent theologians or church leaders, we may be grateful that they are invoking the help of the Holy Spirit.
As we re-imagine ourselves, we might also employ another invocation, from the Great Litany: “Good Lord, deliver us.” –J. Douglas Ousley
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church recently offered her reflections on General Convention. One of Bishop Jefferts Schori’s few acknowledgements of the deep problems of the Church she leads:
“We’ve begun to realize, pretty widely across the Church, that the way we’ve “done church” for the last century or more no longer fits many of our contexts. We haven’t been terribly effective at evangelism with unchurched populations; we haven’t been terribly effective at retaining the children born to Episcopal parents; family structures are changing and our ability to address the needs of those families has not kept pace, whether we’re talking about ECWs and women in the workforce, or single-parent families, or special needs children.”
Yet she doesn’t list any substantial efforts to address the above issues other than to “restructure” the church (which as far as I can see means, downsize the national bureaucracy.) At least, I don’t see specific programs or other ways to respond to the Presiding Bishop’s real concerns. –J. Douglas Ousley
One of the major topics debated at the last General Convention was “open communion.” The traditional practice of the Church has been to admit only baptized persons to receive the bread and wine at communion. In fact, only in recent years have Episcopalian children and others who are baptized but not confirmed been allowed to communicate.
Some self-declared progressive churches have taken it upon themselves to change this custom (and ignore the underlying canon law), admitting anyone to communion who would like to receive. This supposedly shows the openness of God to feed all his children, whether members of the Christian club or not.
The spirit behind this impetus is admirable but the Convention apparently stuck with tradition. A solid reason for doing so is the desire to show that at least some commitment is required to be a Christian. The communion represents the gifts of God for the people of God–not the gifts of God for anyone who happens to show up in church. If there are no boundaries between Christians and non-Christians, why would anyone bother to join the church?
Still, it behooves us who adhere to tradition to still be open. One delegate to General Convention from the Diocese of New York suggested that when the baptized are invited to receive communion, the unbaptized should also be invited to be baptized! –J. Douglas Ousley
I have not been able to comment on the just-concluded General Convention as much as I hoped; a summary of the resolutions passed can be found here. More comments in the weeks ahead.
An initial reflection would be that the results were entirely predictable. Traditionalists will be dismayed by the same-sex blessing rites, even though these have been coming for years–and will be regarded by the larger culture as the least we could do. The budget worries seemed to have been pushed on into the future, rather like the National Debt. The membership decline seems to have been ignored as past conventions have ignored it.
That said, media attacks on the progressive drift of our church have been equally predictable, and they are getting tiresome to Episcopalians on both sides of the fence. In thousands of churches, people are fed spiritually and enabled to serve God, whatever Conventions do or don’t do. That fact is also worth remembering, and giving thanks for. –J. Douglas Ousley
Actually, that’s an exaggerated headline. The House of Deputies has only voted to sell the Church Headquarters on 815 Second Avenue.
But there is an anti-establishment undertone in this vote, as seen in this comment from a delegate from New Jersey: “815 Second Avenue is the relic of our delusions of being an established church from an imperial era. Constantine has left the building. Unfortunately, Constantine has left us the building.”
Others might argue that instead of acting like the establishment, we have been real estate neophytes. This huge, grossly under-used building in prime real estate a block from the UN actually costs us $7,000,000 a year–whereas it should be making us money or at least breaking even.
In any case, speaking as someone from a parish church that is among the closest to the Church Center geographically, I have to say that I can’t see it would make much different to New York if the bureaucrats left. We hardly see them, nor does anything they do seem to touch our lives. –J. Douglas Ousley
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church begins the day after Independence Day and I can’t imagine there has been a Convention in living memory that has received so little publicity.
The lack of any national print news since Episcopal Life folded and The Living Church became a sectarian theological tract has contributed to the apparent malaise. There will be an election of a new President of the House of Deputies but how many Sunday worshippers even know there is such a position in the Episcopal Church? The big issue seems to be voting for same-sex liturgical blessings–again, relatively few people care about that, as society had already begun to endorse gay marriages without much ado. 40% of the delegates are female and 21% will be persons of color–but a society worrying about jobs and terrorism has in many ways moved on from the 60′s issues of sexism and racism.
The real issue–the accelerating membership decline of the Episcopal Church–will likely be lost in the parade of exotic worship services, the endless reports, and the tendentious resolutions. No wonder there are so few communications in advance of the Convention. –J. Douglas Ousley
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which meets this summer and every three years is well-known to be one of the largest legislative bodies in the world. With 4 clergy delegates and 4 alternate delegates from each diocese and the same number of laity making up the House of Deputies, and hundreds of bishops in the House of Bishops, including any retired bishop that cares to pay his or her own way, the Convention is inevitably run by the few delegates who have managed to be elected again and again and who work their way up the committee food-chain. The bewildered crowds often vote at great speed for all manner of resolutions addressing concerns sacred and secular.
Most conventions in the past decades have at the same time rejected resolutions that would have reduced the number of delegates. Our Assistant Minister just pointed out to me that the Bishop of Long Island recently signalled his intention to introduce such a resolution this summer. He would reduce the clergy and lay delegations by half and permit only active bishops and suffragans to attend the House of Bishops.
The standard objection is that fewer delegates would mean fewer minority representatives. (I don’t think anyone would now worry about fewer women, since the two Convention figureheads and the majority of many delegations are already female.) And many voting will realize that a smaller convention will deprive them of their chance to attend in the future.
Still, Bishop Provenzano’s case is cogently argued and hard to refute. The fact that he is on the extreme liberal wing of the church may also help his plea for radical–yet reasonable–change. –J. Douglas Ousley