Sunday, February 13, 2011

Transperancy, Servant-hood, and Leadership

At our annual Council, held yesterday, our Diocese of Texas had some opportunities to express our support and care of 'the least of these' among Jesus' followers and those who might yet choose to follow him.  The proposals that some of us here at ECR offered for approval provided the diocese a number of chances to do more than rhetorically oppose discrimination against LGBT persons and others who are on the margins of society, both in and outside the Church.  Each was a chance for the community of the diocese transparently to declare by actual deed its position on exclusion and discrimination against people marginalized for being outside the norm and refusing to apologize for it.  The diocese rejected each one and, by this, transparency was achieved. 

Some will point to another resolution that was proposed successfully, i.e. in that it was passed.  Broad in range and shallow in depth, it called for no real action, no change, but simply restated the conceptual implications of the baptismal vows of every Episcopalian.  It required nothing of anyone in terms of tangible response and brought to light no specific need or concern.  It offered no leadership.  It offered no expression of servant-hood.  An example of the classic self-congratulatory 'feel-good' resolution, it passed with flying colors.  Even our bishop's address promoted its adoption.  Interestingly, the bishop's address also noted that it was a resolution that the Committee on Resolutions had put together.  This is a curious thing indeed, in that the committee is not charged with putting together resolutions, but only with accepting them as submitted, ensuring that they are properly formatted, and offering a recommendation for passage, for rejection, or offering only a neutral 'no recommendation.'

In this case, though, the committee went well beyond what it is canonically commissioned to do.  After having duly accepted the submissions of three proposals, each of which happened to mention 'bullying,' the committee decided to persuade the submitters to accede to the most generic and non-specific proposal, which mentions bullying once with no further description.  The other two resolutions were specifically aimed at bullying of LGBT youth, in reference to the tragic spate of gay teen suicides last September, each related to anti-gay bullying.  One submitter agreed to surrender the proposal that the submitter had offered and which had been accepted already by the committee.  We here at ECR, however, chose not to lose the distinctiveness of our proposal to the one clearly favored by the committee.

Our resolution is available to read on this blog site.  One will note that it is specific and calls for specific action.  It was gently modified at Council by our submitter to add the words 'in principle' to those sections that referred to support for legislation.  Thus we avoided the appearance of calling for Council to pre-determinedly favor legislation that has not yet been written.  At pre-Council meetings and again at Council, the claim was made by diocesan officers that the reason this proposal was recommended for rejection ('not recommended') is that this proposal was 'encompassed' in the previous, i.e. the more generic one; the one that makes no reference to gay teens.  The favored proposal  that 'the committee had come up with' and which was promoted by the bishop refers once each, and only conceptually, to sexual orientation and sexual identity amongst a litany of other conceptual categories.  Due to our desire to be specific in our proposal, we resisted increasingly persistent efforts by the committee to surrender our specific address of the evil of anti-gay bullying. 

Two other proposals were offered: one that sought to end the presumption of the diocese to define unilaterally the sacrament of the Church known as Holy Matrimony, and another that sought to create a canon for pastoral care for couples for whom the sacrament of Holy Matrimony was inaccessible (gay people) or for whom a state marriage license would involve extraordinarily punitive consequences.  Senior citizens on fixed incomes or undocumented workers subject to deportation are examples of couples that would fit the latter group.  The majority of the committee on constitution and canons responded with such hyperbole in their reaction to this proposal that it would be out-loud laughable were it not so serious.  These two proposals are also viewable elsewhere on this blog site.

With no official accountability, this committee, too, far-exceeded its canonical responsibilities.  The published opinion of the committee failed to note, first, that their recommendation for rejection was an opinion, not a ruling; and second, that their recommendation was only a majority opinion, that in fact a member of the committee did favor the adoption of this proposal.  The extraordinary official mis-characterization of this proposal took over people's attention, effectively over-shadowing the actual content of the rather modest proposal itself.  The committee made absolutely transparent its disdain for this proposal based on its fixated belief that it was a proposal of same-sex blessings.  The committee paid no attention to the other groups of couples described in this proposal.

It is particularly sad that the leadership style in this diocese was glaringly evident yesterday.  This style has long involved the assumption that the people are to be told and trained what to think and how to vote on matters that should be entrusted to the minds and hearts of people's faithful reflection.  Under the influence of the delusional mantra of 'we are one Church', difference of opinion is not only feared in the culture of this diocese; it is hated. The abiding predisposition in this diocese against any overt welcome of or support for LGBT persons is transparently present from the leadership on down to the people in the pews. 

In the case of one of the proposals, debate itself was shut down by a motion to table it moved by a self-proclaimed proponent of LGBT inclusion.  A proponent of inclusion perhaps, but more accurately, of inclusion later on, but not yet because, in the opinion of this supposed advocate, 'now is not the time,'  One cannot help but remember the same claims made to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by people who convinced themselves that they were in favor of equal rights, but whom Dr. King knew to be 'the dangerous moderates,' a group more harmful to the cause for equal rights than even the out-right bigots. 

The propositions that we at ECR offered for debate at Council were rejected in order to discourage the people of the diocese from daring to think differently from the preferences expressed by the dominant powers of the diocesan community.  Leadership in the culture of this community is less about servant-hood to all, and far more about the most-privileged imposing upon the wider community their preferences and prejudices simply because they can do so, and get away with it.  Servant-hood involves humble restraint of privilege in order not to abuse the responsibilities of authority.  In the culture of this community, as is true perhaps of this state, leadership is understood to be about the quiet accruing of power in order to deprive the people of the opportunity for mature reflection from which might rise minority viewpoints, and the bald abuse of power to punish dissent. 

As was claimed by the purposefully unchallenging self-serving resolution that passed in the name of advocacy, a public statement indeed was made by the Diocese of Texas yesterday.  The Diocese of Texas publicly refuses to condemn specifically the bullying of gay teens.  The Diocese of Texas publicly rejects pastoral care for couples as couples when their relationships differ from the cultural norm.  The Diocese of Texas publicly rejects the Church's authority to define for this diocese the sacrament of Holy Matrimony (and perhaps the other sacraments?).

A public statement was made yesterday that shouts loudly and clearly of the obstinate embrace of oppression as a tool for creating the illusion of unity in a diocese that desperately fears its own diversity.  Transparency certainly was achieved yesterday.  Oops.

Jim +

No comments:

Post a Comment