2014 Spring House of Bishops, Day 1

• Breakfast at 8:00.
• Morning Prayer at 9:00, with a retreat meditation delivered by Bishop Lloyd Allen (Honduras).
• Free time in silence (with a designation talking area for extroverts). I took the opportunity to take a long walk through the piney woods and sandy soil beauty of Camp Allen.
• Lunch at 11:30.
• 1:00--"check in" at our assigned tables. (We have the same table mates for three years, re-shuffling after each General Convention).
• Presentation from the Task Force for the Study of Marriage, a group mandated by General Convention 2012 and populated by the presiding officers of each house. I cannot see how anyone can deny that it is heavily stacked. It includes prominent LGBT activists, and not one member who approaches marriage from a traditionalist perspective. Not one. Despite discussions and feedback such as we participated in today, I don't think there's any doubt that the eventual outcome will be proposed legislation that will redefine marriage in the Episcopal Church to remove the "one man / one woman" norm. How precisely they will get to that objective remains to be seen. There was some mention from the task force of changing language in the Prayer Book. In my table group, I tried to make the point that this is a slippery slope on many levels. Since the Episcopal Church was founded in 1789, we have had four versions of the Book of Common Prayer, including the present 1979 edition. Each one has been a thorough revision, markedly different from its predecessor. We have never simply tweaked and tinkered with the Prayer Book in a piecemeal fashion. This tradition was slightly altered a dozen years ago when we (temporarily, supposedly) suspended language in the Ordinal in order to proceed with our full communion agreement with the Lutherans. Then, over the last two General Conventions, we actually did follow the process of Prayer Book revision in order to bring the lectionary for Holy Week in line with the Revised Common Lectionary. Yet, I've heard no one begin to speak of the new "2012 Prayer Book." But the camel's nose is under the tent, and I suspect (fear?) that, if we amend the language of the marriage rite to accommodate same-sex weddings, we will continue down that same path for other purposes, and the de facto liturgical anarchy we currently enjoy across the church will only be compounded. Of course, this is to say nothing of the inherent enormity of changing the marriage liturgy for the intended purpose, which would be a theological, sacramental, ecumenical, and pastoral train wreck.
• After a break, we heard from TREC, the Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church. This, too, is a creation of the last General Convention. They are only 24 people, the scope of their task is impossible to comprehend, and their work is seriously underfunded. Yet, they are striving valiantly. The two most salient items on the discussion agenda today were, What does the national church have to do that cannot be done at a more local level? and How should the office of Presiding Bishop relate to the governance structure of the church? Re the latter, my personal opinion, for a number of reasons, is that the Presiding Bishop should retain his or her diocese upon election to the primacy, with responsibility for day to day operations at any centralized church office falling to a General Secretary. My sense is that opinion on this was very divided, with some table groups favoring it in the plenary reports, and others opposing it. As the to larger question about subsidiarity, I have some hope for a future that would be less juridical and more informal, less centralized and more networked. But there a lot of oxen lined up to be gored in such a move, and the inertia of the status quo should not be underestimated. The trick will be how to reduce the ability of various stakeholders to propose resolutions to General Convention. My own idea is that standing committees, commissions, agencies, and boards should be forbidden from creating their own work--that is, proposing resolutions that ask General Convention to ask them to do something. We'll see how that one flies.
• At 4:30 we gathered upstairs in All Saints Chapel for Eucharist, commemorating the lesser feast of Thomas Cranmer. (This is according to the trial use Holy Women, Holy Men calendar; in the still official calendar of the church, today commemorates Thomas Ken). The Presiding Bishop celebrated and preached.
• After dinner we gathered back in our plenary meeting room for the customary event styled "Fireside Chat." We heard from the Bishop of Venezuela about the recently tense and dangerous political and social situation in his country, from the Bishop of the Dominican Republic on the emerging issue of multi-generation Dominicans of Haitian descent being deprived of their citizenship, from the Bishop of Indianapolis on the disintegration of the social fabric in South Sudan, and handful of other items.