The hardest day, Wednesday June 21

During the listening sessions and in other conversations leading up to GC 2006, I found myself saying that I had no idea how I would be voting because I had no idea what resolutions would ultimately come to the floor to be voted on. If you had told me in May of early June that I would find myself voting for B033, I would not have believed it. Here is my version of how and why it happened, which I hope makes clear some of the General Convention experience. I make no claim to speak for other Missouri deputies in this narrative.

Before a resolution comes to the floor of convention, it has been worked on by a committee, which has held public hearings as part of its process. Usually there are other vetting stages, for example each resolution is copy edited and checked for canonical issues. And then Dispatch of Business figures out how and when it will come to the floor. There are 22 legislative committees, all of which have the same process, so there is a ton of legislation coming to the floor. In addition, of course, each resolution has to pass in both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops in the same form. This year’s convention had 9 business days – previous conventions have had two or three more. Committee 26, the Special Committee charged with the Windsor Report response resolutions, had the resolutions which came out of the Special Commission appointed by the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies plus various resolutions which came from dioceses, bishops and individual deputies. The hope was that they would have presented resolutions for both houses to vote on before the PB election, but that did not take place. They worked and worked and worked and held hearings including a giant hearing with at least 1,500 people. Strong opinions across a spectrum of belief were expressed on the authority of scripture, sexual orientation and behavior, the relationship of the Episcopal Church to the wider Anglican Communion, the meaning and propriety of expressing regret or repentance and so on. If you have strong feelings about this matter, you probably can pretty much guess for yourself what the speeches were like.
And although both houses had passed easier resolutions: regret for straining the bonds of affection with the Anglican communion, commitment to work towards an Anglican covenant, commitment to a listening process, willingness to have DEPO and, of course, money for the Anglican Consultative Council in our budget and commitment to the Millenium Development Goals, it was not until Tuesday that we got a resolution responding to the Windsor Report for a Moratorium. It arrived, and its language was pretty unacceptable to most of the house.

A161 (Anglican Communion: Election of Bishops)

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, that the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church regrets the extent to which we have, by action and inaction, contributed to strains on communion and caused deep offense to many faithful Anglican Christians as we consented to the consecration of a bishop living openly in a same-gender union. Accordingly, we are obliged to urge nominating committees, electing conventions, Standing Committees, and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise very considerable caution refrain from the nomination, election, consent to, and consecration of bishops whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion; and be it further

Resolved that this General Convention not proceed to develop or authorize Rites for the Blessing of same-sex unions at this time, thereby concurring with the Windsor Report in its exhortation to bishops of the Anglican Communion to honor the Primates’ Pastoral Letter of May 2003; and be it further

Resolved that this General Convention affirm the need to maintain a breadth of responses to situations of pastoral care for gay and lesbian Christians in this Church.

Resolved that this General Convention apologize to those gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their supporters hurt by these decisions.

It seemed too negative and too extreme. The apology at the end appeared gratuitous and unhelpful. For many people, at least for me, the “exercise considerable caution” language would have been much more acceptable. Meanwhile, someone rose to limit the time of debate on the motion and someone else rose to offer an amendment which used the even harsher language of “moratorium”. By the time the house had debated the amendment, there was no time left for a more moderate amendment. We voted the original down. I certainly was not savvy enough to know that in voting against it, I was assuring that there could be no more debate of this matter. There was an effort to reconsider, which I supported, but it did not prevail. This would have meant that the Episcopal Church was refusing to offer any response to the Anglican Communion on the matter of gay bishops, it would mean, as I understood it, just ignoring those in the Communion who had objected in 2003. Then the PB called the combined session, our bishop made it clear that this was our last chance as a house to respond to the WR, which I took to mean, our last chance to remain in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. More than that, our new PB elect, for whom I have huge admiration, asked us to vote for the language of B033, language which I would not otherwise have supported. Also, many respected members of the HOD, including GLBT people and allies said that they would be voting for B033 even though they did not want to. This was more or less what Bp Katharine Jefferts Schori said, assuring the house that this language did not close the door to anyone.
So I voted for B033, even though it went beyond my comfort to appease the larger communion, even though I knew it would be very hurtful to many LGBT people. There was much language at convention about sacrifice, how we in North America must sacrifice for the good of the whole communion. I agreed, however, with Ruth Meyers when she passionately observed that no one can make that sacrifice on behalf of others, straight people cannot ask that sacrifice of gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. But I also believe that as the Anglican Communion unravels, B033 allows the Episcopal Church to claim the high moral ground – we went as far – and maybe further – as we could go to stay in the conversation with the Anglican Communion. We cannot be said to have failed to take the Windsor Report seriously and I think we could have been considered to have done that if we had not made some kind of response to the “moratorium” request. I wish we had had a response which calls for others in the communion to take seriously the call for mutual listening and for an end to invading diocesan boundaries but time was up.
A sadness for me is that we have lost the traditional assumption within the Episcopal Church that the job of Standing Committees is to ascertain that the canonical requirements have been met in an election. Now we are asking SC’s to judge whether a person, not the process of election, is a challenge to others in the communion. And we are in the business of judging generally, I’ve had people say not entirely in jest to me that people who drive SUV’s or people who are agains the full inclusion of GLBT people are challenging to them so if they were on the SC they would vote against them.
A greater sadness for me is that we spent so much time and got so much press attention for this and for the PB election that many other things we did are obscured:

• We adopted MDG’s and called dioceses and individuals to live into them


• We entered into interim Eucharistic sharing with the United Methodist Church


• We expressed the view that the teaching of evolution in the schools was not in conflict with a belief in God as creator and WAS the best scientific thing we could do


• We adopted the Revised Common Lectionary


• We expressed our regret for our complicity as a church in the institution of slavery and called for an investigation of how we might contribute materially to repairing the harm done by slavery