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July 22, 2009
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Thank you for keeping the General Convention in your prayers these past two weeks. Members of our deputation were faithful in their responsibilities, and lived through the challenging events with open-heartedness and serious devotion. The deputation team was comprised of of 4 clerical and 4 lay deputies: The Rev. Craig Burlington, The Rev. Bill Locke, The Rev. Scott Gunn, The Rev. Jennifer Pedrick, Missy Bennett, Caryl Frink, Mary Ann Kolakowski, and Dee Tavolaro, along with alternates in attendance, The Rev. Jennifer Phillips, The Rev. Al Barnaby and Becky Gettel. As you see these deputies in the coming weeks, please thank them for their dedicated service to our diocese and the wider Church and Communion.
The House of Deputies and the House of Bishops addressed hundreds of resolutions, the passage of which occurred when both houses concurred on the resolution at hand. Two resolutions received significant attention in the mass media, and many others are important for our diocesan life. The call for church-wide health insurance, should result in lower costs for medical coverage. Our Church’s commitment to the Church in the Sudan, reaffirms our Companion Diocese relationship with the Diocese of Ezo. A reduction in the apportionment responsibilities to The Episcopal Church will have a small but important effect on our diocesan budget. The firm support for Hispanic ministry, matches our diocesan focus for this mission. The two resolutions that resulted in the most media attention were Resolutions D025 and C056 dealing with issues related to sexuality. As is often the case, these resolutions have been interpreted in different ways by different people.
Resolution D025 deals with the discernment and call of suitable individuals to ordained ministry.
“Resolved, That the 76th General Convention recognize that gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships [committed same-sex partnerships] have responded to God’s call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst; and be it further Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.”
This resolution affirms the existing canonical responsibility of the Bishop, Commission on Ministry, and Standing Committee in vocational discernment to the ordained ministries of our Church.
The ministry of gay and lesbian priests and deacons in our diocese has been exemplary, and the discernment process, deployment, and committee and commission membership remain fully open to the participation of all.
Resolution CO56 asks the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to “collect and develop theological and liturgical resources” for the blessing of same-sex unions and report their findings to the next General Convention in 2012. This allows for a theological context in which to discuss potential liturgical rites. The resolution goes on to say, “bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of the Church.
My oft-stated policy for the Diocese of Rhode Island remains the same; Until such time as General Convention officially authorizes such rites, I will not authorize same-sex unions in our churches or on any church property.
Both resolutions passed by overwhelming majorities, approximately 2-1, and I believe both clearly express the mind and direction of The Episcopal Church. Personally, I was grateful for the clarity. However, in my opinion, these resolutions effectively supersede the moratoria requested of us by our wider Anglican fellowship, in regard to the consent to the episcopate of a partnered gay or lesbian person, and the provision of “generous response,” as stated above. I remain committed to the Windsor Process, as many of you know, and this was the predominant reason why I voted “no” on both resolutions.
Our Presiding Bishop was masterful in her knowledge and use of Robert’s Rules of Order, leading us with a firm and gentle hand through many, and often complicated, deliberations. There was a good spirit in the House of Bishops, and a sincere desire to honor both the direction of the Church and the integrity of those who hold a different point of view.
As I prepare to go on vacation, I give thanks to God for you who give so generously to the life and mission of Christ in our diocese. During the Convention, I read Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth. There were a few verses that leapt off the page, as if I had never read them before. They come from the eighth chapter. “…the troubles they have been through have tried them hard, yet in all this they have been so exuberantly happy that from the depths of their poverty they have shown themselves lavishly open-handed.” Good and faithful ministry has its joys and sorrows, yet in the fullness of Jesus’ love the risen life always prevails.
Thank you for being that risen life for me and for the communities in which you serve.
Yours faithfully,
Geralyn Wolf
Bishop of Rhode Island
July 22, 2009
My brothers and sisters in Christ:
The 76th General Convention is now history, though it will likely take some time before we are all reasonably clear about what the results are.
We gathered in Anaheim, as guests of the Diocese of Los Angeles, for eleven full days of worship, learning, and policy-making. The worship was stunning visually, musically, and liturgically, with provocative preaching and lively singing.
Our learning included training in Public Narrative, as well as news about the emergent church, in the LA Night presentation.
We welcomed a number of visitors from other parts of the Anglican Communion, including 15 of the primates (archbishops or presiding bishops), other bishops, clergy, and laity.
You can see and hear all this and more at the Media Hub: http://gchub.episcopalchurch.org/
The budget adopted represents a significant curtailment of church-wide ministry efforts, in recognition of the economic realities of many dioceses and church endowments, which will result in the loss of a number of Church Center staff who have given long and laudable service. Yet we will continue to serve God’s mission, throughout The Episcopal Church and beyond. This budget expects that more mission work will continue or begin to take place at diocesan or congregational levels. Religious pilgrims, from the Israelites in the desert to Episcopalians in Alaska or Haiti, have always learned that times of leanness are opportunities for strengthened faith and creativity.
As a Church, we have deepened our commitments to mission and ministry with “the least of these” (Matthew 25). We included a budgetary commitment of 0.7% to the Millennium Development Goals, through theNetsforLife® program partnership of Episcopal Relief & Development. That is in addition to approximately 15% of the budget already committed to international development work.
We have committed to a domestic poverty initiative, meant to explore coherent and constructive responses to some of the worst poverty statistics in the Americas: Native American reservations and indigenous communities.
Justice is the goal, as we revised our canons (church rules) having to do with clergy discipline, both as an act of solidarity with those who may suffer at the hands of clergy and an act of pastoral concern for clergy charged with misconduct.
The General Convention adopted a health plan to serve all clergy and lay employees, which is expected to be a cost-savings across the whole of the United States portion of the Church. Work continues to ensure adequate health coverage in the non-U.S. parts of this Church. The Convention also mandated pension coverage for lay employees.
Liturgical additions were also included in the Convention’s work, from more saints on the calendar to prayers around reproductive loss.
What captured the headlines across the secular media, however, had to do with two resolutions, the consequences of which were often misinterpreted or exaggerated. One, identified as D025, is titled “Anglican Communion: Commitment and Witness to Anglican Communion.” It
- reaffirms our commitment to and desire to pursue mission with the Anglican Communion;
- reiterates our commitment to Listening Process urged by Lambeth Conferences of 1978, 1988, and 1998;
- notes that our own participation in the listening process led General Convention in 2000 to “recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships ‘characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God’”;
- recognizes that ministry, both lay and ordained is being exercised by such persons in response to God’s call;
- notes that the call to ordained ministry is God’s call, is a mystery, and that the Church participates in that mystery through the process of discernment;
- acknowledges that the members of The Episcopal Church, and of the Anglican Communion, are not of one mind, and that faithful Christians disagree about some of these matters.
The other resolution that received a lot of press is C056, titled “Liturgies for Blessings.” The text adopted was a substitute for the original, yet the title remains unchanged. It
- acknowledges changing circumstances in the U.S. and elsewhere, in that civil jurisdictions in some places permit marriage, civil unions, and/or domestic partnerships involving same-sex couples, that call for a pastoral response from this Church;
- asks the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and the House of Bishops, to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources for such pastoral response, and report to the next General Convention;
- asks those bodies to invite comment and participation from other parts of this Church and the Anglican Communion;
- notes that bishops may provide generous pastoral responses to the needs of members of this Church;
- asks the Convention to honor the theological diversity of this Church in regard to matters of human sexuality.
The full text of both resolutions is available here: http://gc2009.org/ViewLegislation. I urge you to read them for yourself. Some have insisted that these resolutions repudiate our relationships with other members of the Anglican Communion. My sense is that we have been very clear that we value our relationships within and around the Communion, and seek to deepen them. My sense as well is that we cannot do that without being honest about who and where we are. We are obviously not of one mind, and likely will not be until Jesus returns in all his glory. We are called by God to continue to wrestle with the circumstances in which we live and move and have our being, and to do it as carefully and faithfully as we are able, in companionship with those who disagree vehemently and agree wholeheartedly. It is only in that wrestling that we, like Jacob, will begin to discern the leading of the Spirit and the blessing of relationship with God.
Above all else, this Convention claimed God’s mission as the heartbeat of The Episcopal Church. I encourage every member of this Church to enter into conversation in your own congregation or diocese about God’s mission, and where you and your faith community are being invited to enter more deeply into caring for your neighbors, the “least of these” whom Jesus befriends.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
Address from Dr. TePaa at General Convention 2009
July 12, 2009
Jenny Te Paa ['01], the “ahorangi” or dean of Te Rau Kahikatea (College of St. John the Evangelist) in Auckland, New Zealand, addressed the House of Deputies July 11 during the Episcopal Church’s 76th General Convention in Anaheim, California.
The full text of Te Paa’s address follows.
President of the House of Deputies, my sister my friend Bonnie, I along with my international colleagues are deeply honored by your invitation to be here present at the 76th General Convention and by this privileged opportunity for us all to address the House of Deputies.
I pause momentarily and ask you all to note that President Bonnie has here represented Brazil, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Aotearoa New Zealand — what she has done of course is actually invite the true global south into your midst!
Sisters and brothers all of the House of Deputies, I bring you very warm greetings from the primates, indeed from the Church of the Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. Ours is a province, which has always prided itself on its global partners in mission relationships, on its diocesan exchange relationships, on its ability and willingness to variously give generously and to receive graciously from among those 38 provinces and 6 or 7 regional churches, which together comprise our beloved global Anglican Communion. Our enduring mutual affection for this The Episcopal Church is readily evidenced in the historical record.
We are as a provincial church both proudly autonomous and yet not to the extent that we cannot hear the cries of the poor beyond our own national gates. We are as a provincial church confidently relational and yet not to the extent that we render our unique identity ambivalent. We have in past times been bold in asserting what we see as necessary ‘innovations’ for our context and times. We have brought these respectfully to the councils of the global Anglican Communion and we have on occasion known the sharp sting of rebuff and rebuke. Many of you may not realize that my province is the only one to ever have been officially censured by the Anglican Consultative Council. It was recent and was to do with our 1992 decision to revise our Constitution along what our critics claimed were ‘dangerously unprecedented racially prescriptive lines’!
The proposal lacks theological credibility said some. The proposal unjustly privileges one [racial] group over another, said others. We proceeded anyway, and we continue to live with faith and endless hope into the promises and the sometimes still untidy consequences of our rightful, timely and necessary decision.
We were at the time thankful for the opinions of others, we were appalled and saddened by others but at the end of the day we sought to proceed to do what we truly believed God was calling, urging, pleading with us to do, which was in our case to do with redeeming our Churches historic legacy of grave injustice toward minority indigenous peoples including indigenous or Maori Anglicans.
I see clear parallels here. Episcopal Church sisters and brothers, you too must follow your contextual spiritual conscience because in the first instance you have to live justly with yourselves in order that you can in turn and in time, live justly and in good faith with others in the communion.
Permit me if you will at this point to offer a few observatory remarks.
Firstly a reflective comment on your polity. It is truly a formidable governance instrument, not in any oppressive sense but rather in its unequivocal demands for precision, in your attention to detail, in your faithfulness to procedure and in your deep concern for enabling appropriate consensus to emerge among and between your Houses.
Yours is a somewhat globally unique system and certainly it is one which holds in check, in fact preclude any tendency toward authoritarianism or autocratic presumption.
It may be worth my repeating here something I said the other day in my contribution to the Chicago Consultation luncheon event at which I spoke. I was sharing in all humility one of my deepest regrets (one that I know is shared by other Commissioners) that as members of the Lambeth Commission we were never fully apprised of the full facts of your polity and in particular of the limits to the power of the office of Presiding Bishop.
As a result of that crucial gap in knowledge and understanding it is my belief that the very unfair, in fact the odious myth of ‘The Episcopal Church acting (in the matter of the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson) with typical unchecked US imperialism’, was more readily enabled and abetted to grow wings and fly unchecked for way too long across the reaches of the Anglican Communion.
It was only in hindsight as a number of us as Commissioners managed to catch our breath, to compare notes and to consult with our trusted Episcopal Church sisters and brothers that I realized, that we realized, to our utterly deserved chagrin that we had perhaps failed albeit inadvertently to prevent something of the unprecedented vilification of the Episcopal Church and especially of its leadership that inevitably resulted. (Here I want to pay special tribute to the careful and valuable teachings which the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves and the Rev. Ian Douglas so generously and patiently provided me during this period).
I share this with you not by way of exploiting the privilege of this public platform as a confessional site but rather by way of affirming with boundless respect and gratitude the truly mutually redemptive moment it is that you now enable us all to live into.
Your generosity of spirit in spite of all you have suffered so unjustly and unnecessarily over the past few years is just so perfectly admirable. That you continue with such magnanimity to gather international friends, to share with us so openly, so willingly all that you do so formidably, so precisely, so efficiently and so compassionately is a gift offering of such magnitude that it seems so utterly insufficient for me to simply say thank you, thank you, thank you.
If I could be so bold I want also to assure you that among ourselves as your international friends we are now all quietly urging you not to dwell unduly with any sense of uncertainty about your place within the global Anglican Communion. Sure the fearmongerers abound – they always have and they always will but surely our gaze must always be fixed beyond the horizon of fear and just as surely that gaze must always apprehend first and foremost the images of those who are the least among us.
Well we all bore such poignant and powerful witness to just where the gaze of this church is the other evening, especially in the second half of the Global Economic Forum. We see that your gaze is clearly and justifiably so upon the plight of the first peoples of this land. Sarah Eagle Heart’s very gracious ministry presence enjoined with what I have to notice are still surely way too few Native American delegates in this House, makes for very compelling, very urgently needed missional responses. Michael Schut’s appeals for an end to environmental degradation are clearly unable to be ignored any longer. Dr. Dzisi’s extraordinary malarial preventive ministry work was simply overwhelming.
You must all claim with such pride all of these tangible, creditable and powerful missional commitments because they are but a tiny part of your incredible overall contribution to the building up of the global Anglican body of Christ. My sisters and brothers of The Episcopal Church, in the cause of local, national and global mission you are treasured and needed for the common good of the Anglican Communion.
Theological education is yet another example. At any one time there would be across the Episcopal Church’s seminaries any number of students drawn from across the Anglican Communion studying at all levels of theological educational endeavor. As one such beneficiary myself I remain profoundly grateful for the gifts of knowledge and understanding, for the gifts of care and hospitality, of nurture and comfort I received from this church during the time of my own doctoral studies at the Graduate Theological Union. My sisters and brothers of The Episcopal Church, in the cause of theological education you are treasured and needed for the common good of the Anglican Communion.
At the most recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council held in Jamaica, the impact and influence of the communion’s Networks was for the first time very specially acknowledged and affirmed as being crucial to the very lifeblood of mission and ministry across the Anglican Communion. Because of my close association with at least five of these networks which have only been able to have impact and be influential as a direct result of the resourcing and generous trust of The Episcopal Church then once again, I say from a place of absolute sincerity to you my sisters and brothers of The Episcopal Church that in the cause of the precious ministries of the communion’s networks, you are indeed treasured and so needed for the common good of the Anglican Communion.
Relationality is of course of necessity, a reciprocal matter – at least with and for those relationships where quality and longevity are seen as optimum components!
And so I come to what I trust will be received as a word of loving advice from your indigenous sister.
I come from a cultural context characterized still by the absolute urgency of cultural, linguistic, artistic, traditional survival. We indigenous peoples are in many ways understandably very protective of our culturally unique traditions, we are very conscious of the ways in which aspects of our traditions have become such beacons of light and hope in a world increasingly bereft of strong kinship networks, of strong familial identity, of meaningful spiritual regard for all of God’s creation. We have seen how attractive indigenous spirituality; in fact indigenous tradition in its many forms has suddenly assumed a level of contemporary interests and attractiveness. We have in all of this become desperately afraid of cultural appropriation and so as this intensely beautiful and endlessly complex concept of ‘ubuntu’ is uttered and claimed, explained and proclaimed I cannot help but wonder if all the necessary precautions against even unwitting appropriation have been taken?
Now as I said I offer this comment not by way of a criticism but rather by way of a word of loving advice from this your indigenous sister. I don’t know what precautions you may well have taken but if I may suggest, one of the markers which we indigenous peoples have found most helpful in these matters is to ask of those seeking to enter more fully into the very different socio, politico, spiritual, cultural worlds of ‘the constructed other’, are you intent on becoming one with or one of ‘the other’?
The most respectful of these options if of course the former. In this way we are each freed to become fully whom God created us to be and to flourish into that God given identity. The actions of one seeking to become ‘one with’ are those of selfless, sacrificial and loving solidarity whereas the actions of one seeking to become ‘one of’, are likely to be characterized by unashamed self-interest! The former option is thus more likely to be true ubuntu, but then I would not be so bold to determine such a thing! I simply raise a respectful cautionary flag.
My friends the time is now to go forward together into our shared faith-filled future. Let me once again say to you Bonnie, indeed to you here gathered as the House of Deputies, thank you for your abundant generosity, your enabling missional presence in God’s world through your significant contributions to the Christian life and witness of the global Anglican Communion.
Your invitation to your true global sought friends to be with you is so deeply appreciated, especially in this precious time of being and shaping and becoming ever more fully the body of Christ that God so tirelessly, so patiently wills us ever more to become!
Thank you so much for allowing me this time to speak with you. Dr. Jenny Plane-Te Paa
To follow General Convention in Anaheim July 6-18, try these links:
www.erisen.org (our Diocesan newsletter follow the link to Scott Gunn’s fine blog – he will be attending)
www.ecusa.anglican.org (The Episcopal Church website – General Convention button) and http://ecusa.anglican.org/episcopal_life.htm
www.episcopalcafe.com (good articles on many subjects)
www.churchtimes.co.uk (if you are interested in the British church take)
www.anglicansonline.org (various opinions & essays) and check out Jennifer’s Facebook page.
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