Concerning the Conclusion of the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church

Concerning the Conclusion of the 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church concluded its work for this year. It will meet again in 2012. Please know that the Church did far more than address the two resolutions that made a few headlines during Convention. These other matters, equal in importance to the more sensational ones, include adopting the new practice of incorporating into the Church’s budget financial support for the Church’s seminaries. This has never been done before and is long overdue.

The Church also adopted a health care plan that will provide coverage for both clergy and lay persons employed by the Church and which should lower existing costs for these items. The Church called for greater participation by our Youth including seating on Vestry (a proposal that ECR’s own Vestry has been considering already and the logistics of which have been under review for a couple years.) The Church recommitted itself to being intentionally and proactively anti-racist. The Church has also reduced its overall budget and reduced by two the number of days that General Convention shall be held. The Episcopal Church has renewed its budgetary commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, and expressed a new focus upon economic justice for the poor in the United States. All of which helps demonstrate that the Episcopal Church is alive, well, and responding conscientiously to its many responsibilities.


In the meantime, two resolutions seeming to have to do with gay people in the Church have grabbed the headlines. In one sense this is appropriate. The Church’s equivocation over recent years has only made more urgent people’s desire to know what the Church will decide, in order that we can all then get on with the rest of our collective and individual ministries. Both these actions took to form of resolutions. In that they both call for action of a sort, each is binding on the Church unless and until some later piece of legislation reverses it.

D025 is essentially a re-statement of the fact that this Church has had in its Constitution and Canons a policy of non-discrimination when it comes to consideration of persons for Holy Orders, i.e. ordination to serve as deacon, priest, or bishop. Last year’s Convention passed at the last possible moment a controversial resolution inviting the Church to exercise restraint when it came to consecrating as a bishop “any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.” Despite the fact that the resolution was a clear violation of our own canons that forbid discrimination, the resolution passed. Its passage was largely as an expression of the Episcopal Church’s good will toward those primates of some of the African, Asian, and South American Churches of the Anglican Communion whose leaders are angry at the American Church for ratifying, in 2003, the election in New Hampshire of Bp. Gene Robinson, a gay man who declined to hide his sexual orientation.

It is worth noting that these primates became further enraged when, in 2006, the American Church elected as our Presiding Bishop a woman, the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori. There was at the time suggestion that Jefferts Shori be removed from the list of nominees because of the fact that her being a woman serving as Primate of this Church might be offensive to those same Primates who had objected three years earlier to the ratification of Bp Robinson’s election. Wisely, the Church refused to violate our canons further and kept her name on the list. This year, with the adoption of D025, the Church has declared that we are not going to continue to violate our Church’s own rules, and has recognized that the canons of our Church call on us to discriminate against gay people no longer.

In addition, this resolution recalls the Church’s former recognition that couples other than gay people wish to seek God’s blessing up on their mutual commitment and their commitment to God, but for whom the state’s contract of marriage proves to be prohibitive. The best example is that of an elderly couple for whom a contract of marriage would severely lessen the already limited income on which the couple must survive. This recognition was first officially recognized at General Convention in 2000 and passed widely, including the positive vote of our then diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Claude Payne. The resolution in 2000 and this one now provide acknowledgment that the Church does wish to stigmatize people whose love for one another and for God is real and evident, but who for good reason unable to enjoy the status of legal marriage.

Two days later at this year’s General Convention, the Church passed a resolution calling for the Church’s Commission on Liturgy and Music to collect resources for, and to draft, liturgies for the blessing of same-sex unions. It calls for the Commission to present these to General Convention in 2012 at which time, it is widely expected, the Church will consider these liturgies for adoption as a formal part of the practice of this Church. Importantly, the Church is clear that it continues to oppose and to condemn predatory sexual behavior, whether gay or straight. At the same time, the Church does not equate homosexuality with sexual predation. The Church is recognizing in this legislation that, while the membership includes a diversity of viewpoints on the matter, yet as an institution the Church will no longer condemn gay persons and gay couples to secrecy on the margins.

One of the most universally positive effects of the passage of these two pieces of legislation is that they move the controversy around sex and sexuality from the center of the Church’s collective attention. The reality is that the Episcopal Church, like most Churches, does not orient its ministry around either the condemnation or the affirmation of gay people in the Church. It will continue not to do so. For some in our Church and in our parish, being associated nominally and denominationally with a positive institutional regard for full inclusion of all people, including gay people, this may seem like a difficult transition. However, most will find that any transition involved is short and easy. For, despite the headlines, we as Episcopalians have not collectively invested heavily in the outcome of the debate. For most people in the Church, there will be little personal impact. The greatest difficulty some people will address is how they will respond to people’s questions about their Church, in light of these actions at the national level.

And the answer that will emerge for many is to respond by assuring those asking that the Episcopal Church welcomes all, and we really mean it. Neither every congregation nor every individual Church member will be as welcoming of each and every person that comes to worship God or to meet God’s Love in the Church. But this is acceptable because the Episcopal does not require lock-step unanimity of its membership. Some congregations will be comparatively warmer and more hospitable than will be others. The presence or absence of the Church’s welcome of gay people will not change this. However, as a denomination, we do not pass judgment on people based on their sexual orientation or the sexual gender of the person whom they love and who loves them back. As a denomination, the Episcopal Church is truly, amazingly, welcoming to all who love God or who wish to meet God’s Love for all.

As happens anytime that some people win a vote and some lose, some people will indeed leave the Episcopal Church for another denomination hat they believe better accommodates their views. And some of these will find their way back, with a renewed appreciation for the distinctive qualities of this Church. In addition, more people will now come to our Church, tentatively at first, hoping to find a Church that accepts them as they are; hoping to find that maybe, if we are welcoming of gay people, then maybe they will find among us a welcome for themselves, too. People for whom Christ and Christianity stand for reaching across boundaries that separate people instead of erecting and strengthening them will come now with greater confidence that they can know who we are in the Episcopal Church. We can rightly thank God for all of this.

We can also be rightly thankful that the basics of all this, the approach to God and to the world around us, resonates with who we already are here at ECR. We love one another, we appreciate our differences as much as we like our similarities. We do our best to love our neighbor as ourselves. We do our best to love all, and to be honest about whom we like and whom we do not. We welcome the stranger with no other requirement than that he or she wants to meet God, to know God’s Love, and then to learn how to share it with others. We do not pass judgment.

In some ways, yes, the Episcopal Church has changed, but mostly in how we represent ourselves to the world around us. We have cleaned up our confusing presentation of what we mean when we say to the world around us, ‘The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.’ In important ways, we have remained and reclaimed who we have always been. We are God’s people, truly people of the Resurrection of God’s Love in God’s Son and in God’s people, and especially in you and me.

God’s Peace.
Jim +