I just got back from the 78th triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City where I served as a deputy from my diocese. This year marked the 230th anniversary of the convention.
This is the highest legislative body of the Episcopal Church and is a bicameral legislature that includes a House of Bishops including all active and retired bishops of the church, and a House of Deputies comprised of 4 laity and 4 clergy from each of our 109 diocese in the US and around the world.
I had to come home early (ran out of vacation time), but the Convention continues through July 4. Here are some highlights so far:
*The Bishops elected their new Presiding Bishop, the Rt Rev Michael Curry of North Carolina. He becomes the first black PB of the church (his predecessor, Katharine Jefforts Schori, was the first woman in that role).
A resolution to remove gender-specific marriage language in our canons and to begin to gender-neutralize our marriage liturgy has already passed the House of Bishops and will be considered by the House of Deputies later today
The HoD has already allocated large portions of its triennial budget this week to anti-racism initiatives, digital evangelism and church planting.
The Convention has also passed various resolutions on gender equality (including rights for transgender/queer people), gun violence, alcohol abuse within the church, minimum wage increases and worker’s rights, and a host of other issues.
In the next few days the convention will also be considering financial divestment from fossil fuels, and from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Maybe no one is interested, but Christians in general get so much bad press that I wanted to share that there are in fact a sizeable number of progressive Christians in this country who are taking the teachings of Jesus very seriously and trying to live up to work for justice, freedom and peace in the world.
I don’t have any questions but thanks for posting I’ve got a Facebook friend who is a Presbyterian minister (also a lesbian) and keeps me posted on the good things her church is doing. And my brother works for a United Church of Christ which is very open and tolerant. Before she passed, my friend was a minister with an ELCA Lutheran church and she was the epitome of open and welcoming. I’m a Christian myself and I love hearing how other Christians are open and loving, just like me.
It hurts my heart so much to see all the hate. After such a great week last week the backlash is creeping in and making me sad again. So it’s nice to be reminded that that’s not how it has to be.
I was happy to hear about Bishop Curry this past Sunday. I’d had the pleasure to meet him a couple of times when we were living in North Carolina. The Church could not have made a better choice.
The UCC church is having their ruling body meeting the same time ours is going on, so it’s interesting to read some of the cross-tweeting going back and forth between the two groups.
More information about the TEC convention is available at http://www.generalconvention.org/, including links to legislation and live streaming video of both houses (when in session), the daily Eucharist celebration and other supplemental material. Many deputies are also tweeting with #gc78 but most of the tweets are very ‘inside baseball’ and probably hard to follow if you’re not already familiar with TEC.
Regarding Curry - early in the convention the four nominees gave short presentations and did a Q&A with the convention. After Curry spoke I said that I didn’t care if he got elected or not as long as he kept preaching at me all day. He is truly an electrifying and inspirational speaker and I am so proud to have him be the new face of the church. His election provoked a huge celebration.
You go to Assembly and you get to go to Salt Lake City. I got appointed to our (ELCA) Assembly and I got to go to Pittsburgh. I FRIKKIN LIVE IN PITTSBURGH! And I don’t like it very much.
On the serious side, thanks for your service to your denomination. It isn’t always an easy job.
I’ve not heard Curry speak, but this news was was tweeted to us at our Diocesan Council meeting on Saturday and our bishop was very enthusiastic both for the election and about Bishop Curry’s preaching skills.
Not so serious question: How did the “Whiskopalians” adjust to Salt Lake City and Vise-versa?
More serious: Why was it held in Salt lake City, rather than an area with a higher Episcopalian population? I remember the Southern Baptists held their convention there several years ago with the express purpose of evangelizing. The Episcopal Church does not strike me as being that… assholy.
Is this Convention for the US Episcopal church, with visitors from Elsewhere, or is it actually covering multiple countries?
I find the language treatment of the website fascinating. I’m assuming some of the decisions on what to translate or subtitle and to what languages were greatly led by budget and/or resources available, but I’d still love to know (and don’t expect you to have the answer) how come there are videos with subtitles in Spanish but not in English. I expect the difference between how much material is available in Spanish and in French is a matter of resources prioritization.
Oh, the guy can preach. Even more important (to me - a Quaker who attends an Episcopal church), he can remember the first name of someone he had met five years prior… at a different church, to boot.
It’s a worn-out joke that where three or four Episcopalians are gathered, there’s a fifth.
I can answer your question from two angles. First of all, alcohol was readily available in SLC. There was a liquor store across the street from our hotel, and beer/wine/liquor was available at any restaurant we went to. The hotel had a bar, and our deputation had semi-nightly cocktail hours in our bishop’s suite. So the city was very accommodating to Episcopal culture.
On the other hand, that’s not necessarily a good thing. For a while, but especially since we had a bishop kill someone while driving DUI last year, the denomination has been taking a hard critical look at our casual embrace of alcohol and how it affects our members who struggle with substance abuse. The convention is considering a handful of resolutions this week that address how we address potential alcohol abuse in our clergy and staff, and the widespread use of alcohol in our social and outreach programs.
It is a US-based church, but includes a number of foreign diocese including Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Venezuela, Micronesia, and Taiwan. For large meetings such as this they try to make the materials available in Spanish - in fact, if you listen to one of the daily worship services you’ll hear that much of the liturgy is commonly done in Spanish, although just in the few days I was there we had readings done in French, Italian and what I think was Navajo. Spanish is by far our second most commonly spoken language though, not just by the South American and Caribbean deputies but by a large number of Latino members in the US.
In all legislative meetings, there is live translation happening by earpiece for foreign speakers - I think Spanish and French is what was provided this year, by request.
But that explains why have material in Spanish, not why not have subtitles in English. Subtitles in English would be helpful both for the people with English as a second language and for the hard of hearing or deaf.
It might be a matter of “nobody thought about it”. Like I said, I don’t expect you to have been close enough to that specific decision-making process to know its whys and wherefores.
I’m happy to hear from a fellow Piskie! The best thing is the accessibility of our higher clergy; I’ve gotten to know some bishops rarely well and I’m always struck by their presence and grace. I did think it was odd to hold it in SLC. Obviously , we don’t normally evangelize. Perhaps the Mormons will just how much fun a denomination can be!
I converted to the Episcopal Church shortly before my first daughter was born about 14 years ago. My ex-wife was Catholic and I was Methodist. Of course, ‘converting’ just meant walking into a service and declaring that we are Episcopalian now. We chose it mainly because it sounded like a reasonable compromise but grew to really appreciate it in a short time. Our priest was one of the kindest and smartest women that I had ever met. She was former high-powered Washington DC lawyer originally from Scotland who dropped it all to move to the Boston suburbs and serve our rather small church for not much pay but she was outstanding. She and other church members helped my family out greatly during times of unfortunate circumstances both very large and smaller.
I haven’t been to church in a while since she retired. I like the new priest just fine. I just don’t know him very well. The parties and social events are great even though I don’t drink anymore. I would say the stereotypes are mostly true but the fundamentals of the church aren’t really about that.
I too get annoyed when people make sweeping generalizations about Christian culture on this board or elsewhere. It isn’t true for most mainline churches and especially not true for the Episcopal Church. They are among the most truly accepting and social serving groups in existence.
Episcopalians only make up about 1% of the U.S. population but there are a disproportionate number of us on this board just based on my casual recollections.
You were there more as an observer and/or volunteer or were you a voting member? (I’m unsure just what the duties of a deputy are for you) How are your actual decision makers chosen?
(For us you basically have to stand for the appointment at Synod and be elected during that Assembly. There are exceptions but that is the usual route for laity and rostered laity.)
Thanks, Skammer, for this very interesting thread, and for your service at GC.
I dealt with Bishop Curry when he was a witness in an ecclesiastical trial in Ohio a few years ago, and he seemed like a good guy. Hope he can do very well as PB.
Q: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I’ll have you know my grandfather donated that lightbulb!
Any denomination that counts George Washington, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Fiorello H. La Guardia, David Souter, Fred Astaire, Guglielmo Marconi, Cab Calloway, Philip K. Dick, John Steinbeck and Garrison Keillor among its members can’t be all bad.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying. I agree that it would be nice to have English captioning - like you said, that was probably an oversight. I may submit that as a suggestion for the site.
I heard this second hand, but apparently one of the restaurant servers told one of our parties that we were the most fun convention they have had in a long time. (Probably because we’re so nice to the servers).
I think different dioceses may have different ways of selecting deputies. Here in Tennessee, we elect our deputies at a diocesan convention about 18 months before the GC. We elect four clergy and four laity as voting deputies, plus alternates in each order. I was one of the four voting lay deputies for this convention (also in '12 and '09).
Unfortunately, because I have a full-time job, I was not able to arrange enough vacation time to attend the entire convention and had to come home early. So I missed the historic votes yesterday on same-sex marriage. However, I was there for Bishop Curry’s election and most of the other votes I mentioned in the OP. Also, as a member of the “Social Justice and U.S. Policy” committee, I had a direct hand in the resolutions on racism, worker’s rights, gun violence and federal tax/entitlements policies.
Elendil’s Heir - I remember that thread about the 2006 convention - thanks for your service there. It’s hard to fathom how much changed, and how quickly, in our church between the fallout from 2003 (Bishop Robinson’s confirmation) and 2015. Of course the fact that the conservative wing of the church just walked away during that period helped grease the rails for the changes.
I’ve got a Facebook friend who is a Presbyterian minister (also a lesbian) and keeps me posted on the good things her church is doing. And my brother works for a United Church of Christ which is very open and tolerant. Before she passed, my friend was a minister with an ELCA Lutheran church and she was the epitome of open and welcoming. I’m a Christian myself and I love hearing how other Christians are open and loving, just like me.