The mandate of this report makes it clear that this Committee focuses on global concerns of the Episcopal Church. In their words, any issues beyond the United States "that call for the Church's discipleship and mission." So, this is not just the question of missionaries and the Church's overseas diocese, but it is also our global social justice work. So, it includes the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), educational work we do in the Caribbean and Latin America, rebuilding Haiti and the United Thank Offering (UTO). Further, this is the group that looks at questions relating to our relationship to the Anglican Communion, including issues surrounding the Anglican Covenant.
One of the challenges this Committee faced was in the area of refugee resettlement. The Director of Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) reported several times to Executive Council (EC) itself and also to WM on the challenges of doing this work in the current climate. We had to draw down our staff levels and the size of our refugee resettlement work.
One of the difficulties of the changes made at the 2015 General Convention is that the important work of ecumenism and inter religious dialogue, formerly overseen by its own Standing Commission, has now been absorbed in the work of this Committee. Given that experience, WM is calling for the reestablishment of this Commission. In the meantime, WM was the body that received the World Council of Churches (WCC) document, "Towards a Common Vision" and also the one that dealt with proposals for full communion between the Episcopal and Methodist Churches.
Reaction to the Report
This is a Committee that clearly has a lot on its plate. Overseeing questions of world mission, global social justice, relationships with dioceses and provinces outside the United States (including Anglican Communion work), and all issues of ecumenism and inter religious affairs seems to me to be... too much. I think one of the hopes in 2015 of eliminating most of the Standing Committees and Commissions of the church was that it would enable us to focus our work more clearly. There was a belief in some quarters that Commissions and Committees were simply creating more work for themselves over and over again.
However, almost all of the areas that WM oversees a pretty essential to who we are as a church. Further, if they tell us that they could not give adequate attention to all of them, it seems fitting that we determine if a re-establishment of other Standing Commissions does indeed make sense. I hope that their request for the reestablishment of the Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs is heeded. It seems that Commission also would be an appropriate one to absorb work related to the Anglican Communion, as the two might go well together.
One aspect of their report left me with some lingering questions, however. That is the section on CETALC – Comisión de Education Teológica para America y el Caribe. Since 1977, this group has overseen funding and award criteria for theological education in Latin America and the Caribbean, ensuring it is responsibly and fairly utilized. It does this using the criteria established by CETALC... but this report doesn't note what that criteria is.
My concern is that there is an issue present in theological education in Latin America and the Caribbean which is largely invisible to the broader church. As we were preparing to launch a Latino Ministry Initiative at my parish, I spent some time in the Dominican Republic moving my Spanish closer to fluency. While there, I made friends with several of the students at the Center for Theological Studies, the official seminary for Province IX, housed at Epiphany Cathedral in Santo Domingo.
After I left, I learned of the experience of one of my friends who was a student at the seminary. When his fellow students and professors found out he was gay, he experienced significant discrimination. It became so bad that he eventually had to leave the seminary entirely. However, the diocese to which he returned is not one that affirms LGBTQ Christians and so he also found himself shut out of his parish and cut-off even from his own bishop. I tried several times to find a way to get him to the United States, so that he could learn English and then attend one of our seminaries, but I was consistently unsuccessful, despite working with several other people who are active in the Episcopal Church.
So this young man, a man who clearly has significant gifts for ministry, is now closed off from his vocation. He is even closed off from his church. He has nowhere to go... and this happened through his experience with the official Episcopal seminary of Province IX.
This is not OK. I would like to know the criteria CETALC uses for its work. Further, I think that it is important for that criteria to ensure that LGBTQ students who attend seminaries of our church do not face discrimination from their fellow students and professors.
To be clear, I affirm the importance of room for a variety of views on questions related to human sexuality. I think it is important for us to have room in the church for those who have a more conservative position—but those with a more conservative position must also ensure that there is room for those who are more progressive. No one should go to one of our seminaries and have to leave to due discrimination.
Reactions to the Resolutions
This Committee also had several resolutions attached to their report. I'll take each of those in turn.
A035 Commend "The Church Towards A Common Vision" (full resolution here)
This document is a significant result of global ecumenical work. A link to it is not included in this particular resolution, but you can access the document online here. It is a "convergence text." That means, this is a text that tries to articulate what all Christians can say together, despite our ecclesial divisions. To give you an idea of how rare and important a text like this is, the last one was Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry... published thirty-six years ago. That document remans one of the most important texts of twentieth-century Christianity, serving as a theological base for many contemporary practices and beliefs of TEC.
So, suffice it to say, I fully support commending this second convergence text. The focus of this text is ecclesiology—that is, the doctrine of the church. The only quibble I would have with this resolution is in its scope. I hope it will be amended to include a specific mechanism for study—such as a budget for a study document to be created that could be used by Episcopal congregations. This would not take a massive amount of money and would help broaden the level of engagement that the document had in our church.
A036 Affirm Ongoing Work and Dialogue with Ecumenical Bodies (full resolution here)
This resolution simply reflects an affirmation of our ongoing ecumenical work through dialogues with ecumenical partners, the work toward full communion with the Methodists, and the coordinating work with our current Full Communion partners. It should be an easy resolution to approve, changing nothing about what we currently are doing.
A037 Encourage Interfaith Engagement (full resolution here)
Similar to the resolution above, this one simply commends ongoing work. Easy to approve.
A038 Affirm Inter-Anglican Secretariat (full resolution here)
This resolution also is one affirming ongoing work—however, there is a slightly deeper message here. It affirms our active participation and funding of the Anglican Communion through the work of the Inter-Anglican Secretariat (Anglican Communion Office). In 2012, the budget for the Anglican Communion Office was slashed nearly 40%, from $1.16 million to $400,000. The 2015 General Convention restored the budget at a slightly higher level $1.2 million. Many people—myself included—saw this as a faithful act, a manifestation of our commitment to our Communion.
Though the current draft budget slightly drops the amount ($50,000 less, or a 4% reduction), I am glad that this particular resolution affirms the continuation of that commitment in the budget and am hopeful that it will remain at the current proposed level or even return to the amount budgeted in the previous triennium.
A039 Affirm the Work of The Episcopal Church at the United Nations (full resolution here)
This resolution affirms the good news that our church has been granted "Economic and Social Council consultative status." You may be wondering what exactly that entails (I know I was), and it seems to give us greater access to human rights work done by the United Nations. This seems like a pretty good thing and should bring greater effectiveness to our global justice work as a church.
A040 Formal Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision" (full resolution here)
Whereas the earlier resolution on this document, A035, commended this document for study within our church, this resolution deals with a slightly different question: the formal response of TEC to the document itself. There is already a draft response available. The link in the Blue Book is broken, but if you manually enter the address, you'll get the draft response online here. I have not yet read the draft response, but it seems largely to affirm our church's resonance with Towards a Common Vision.
This Resolution refers the draft response to the Joint Committee on Ecumenical and Inter religious Relations with the hope that this body will enable General Convention to issue a definitive response (my guess is that the hope is that GC will approve the document presented as our definite response). I cannot speak for certain on this resolution until I have had a chance to read the full document, but in general I believe we should trust the theologians and ecumenists who work on documents like this and so my guess is that after reading the document I will support its approval.
A041 Episcopal Church-United Methodist Dialogue (full resolution here)
Since 2006, our church has been in a state of "interim Eucharistic sharing." That means that an Episcopal and Methodist congregation can celebrate Eucharist together under certain guidelines. Last year, a proposal for full communion between our churches was published. It is important to note that this resolution does not approve full communion. Rather, this resolution receives the proposal for full communion and encourages its prayerful consideration by our church during the upcoming triennium. The United Methodists would then consider the decision in 2020 and our church would do the same at our 2012 General Convention.
I strongly encourage everyone to read Crusty Old Dean's essay on this proposal. He provides some very helpful historical and theological contextualization and argues persuasively for the importance of this proposal in the life of the church.
I hope this resolution will be approved and that we will be able to find a way by General Convention in 2021 to overcome any obstacles some in our church might identify so that we can be reunited with our United Methodists sisters and brothers.
Note: You can click here for a list of all Blue Book Reports & Resolutions that have thus far been reviewed.
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