2018 General Convention, Day 6

Life in the House of Bishops was pretty mundane today, so much so that we finished our agenda ahead of schedule. So I hung out in the gallery of the House of Deputies for about the last 40 minutes of their session. When the time ran out, they were in the middle of the alloted time for debating resolution B012.

B012 was originally authored by a trio of center-left "moderate" bishops, in consultation with the leadership of the Communion Partners. Their aim was to provide a viable alternative to the more draconian A085, which came out of the Marriage Task Force. A085 would simply mandate a right for same-sex marriage to occur in all dioceses, despite the objection of the Bishop, simply by inserting the new liturgies into a "quickie" revision of the Prayer Book, as well as by amending the catechism on the subject of marriage. B012, as originally drafted, still removes the Bishop's authority to forbit the rites, but leaves the Prayer Book intact, and gives the Bishop the right to insist that a parish wanting to do this accept oversight and supervision from another bishop, not just fot the narrow purpose of the wedding ceremony, but ... in general. B012 also called for the creation of a Task Force on Communion Across Differences, which would be charged with making actual canonical proposals to the 2021 General Convention that would solidify both access of those who wish it to same-sex weddings, and create structures that would enable those who hold the minority viewpoint on marriage to not only exist and survive, but flourish and thrive.

Committee 13 was charged with dealing with both A-85 and B012. They ended of laying A085 aside and sending B012 forward, but with significant amendments. On the plus side of the ledger, from my perspective, short-term insertion into the Prayer Book is taken off the table. But the committee gutted the language about alternative episcopal oversight. They have hailed this as a magnanimous gesture of compromise, but it is, in fact, no compromise at all, but, rather, the same rock disguised by a thicker coat of moss.

Much has been made of the conscience of the dissenting bishops, often in a derisive manner, as if these recalcitrant eight (plus the ones of Province IX) are somehow holding the rest of the church by the throat, merely for the sake of their individual consciences. The reality is, however, that most of these bishops were elected by dioceses that were fully aware of their views on sexuality and marriage. I know I was, and I am quite confident that if I were to be run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow, the 12th Bishop of Springfield would be someone who holds similar views. So it's not just the conscience of the bishop, but the integrity of the diocese, that is at stake.

But it goes deeper. A diocese, including the clergy, and its bishop are, in effect, sacramentally fused. The Bishop is the outward and visible sign of the diocese's inward and spiritual reality. St Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early 2nd century, puts it this way:

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected wit the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. (Epistle to the Smrynaeans, Chapter 8)

Every liturgical and sacramental act of a priest implicates the Bishop, and bears the "spiritual fingerprints" of the Bishop. This is why some form of delegated oversight is critical for bishops and dioceses that maintain the received teaching on marriage. They (we, I should probably say) need a thick layer of insulation to give us plausible distance from a priest and a parish where a public liturgical event happens that, by the lights of most of the Christian world, is a fundamental offense against the gospel. 

In order for both parties to maintain their integrity, they must tread a painful course. If I want to maintain my witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ "as this church was received it" (from the ordination rites), then I must bear the pain of handing over my pastoral authority over a parish that believes itself called to celebrate same-sex marriage to another bishop. If a parish under my oversight wants to celebrate same-sex marriage, then it must embrace the pain of parting company with my pastoral care. This truly hurts, but such things ought to hurt, and hurt a lot, because anything less than that doesn't take seriously the gravity of what we're doing. Such a level of pain makes us think twice ... or three or four times ... about whether this is a line in the sand that we really need to draw. It is a token of the cost of our fidelity to the truth as we have discerned it.

When B012 is taken up again by the Deputies on Monday morning, there will be amendments offered that attempt to restore it to something more like its original form. If tat doesn't succeed, the same attempt will be made in the House of Bishops when we get it. May grace abound and the Lord have mercy.

2018 General Convention, Day 5

The headline news coming out of convention today is that the House of Deputies, by a relatively narrow vote-by-orders, sent to the House of Bishops a resolution calling for a thorough process of revising the Book of Common Prayer. By all accounts, there will not be a first reading of a revision until 2027; hence, if this goes forward, it would become the 2030 Prayer Book. I will be 79 years old by then, so my personal stake is a diminishing one.

The bishops will get it sometime soon, maybe as early as tomorrow, certainly by Monday, I would say. I'm not going to handicap the outcome of that debate. Every bishop I've spoken with about it is skeptical at the very least, but I may just not be hanging out with the right people to get a different result.

In any case, this is very troubling. Again, no hard data to substantiate this, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that the primary impetus for revision comes from aging/aged Baby Boomers, and that the lower you go in the age demographic, support for revision decreases. I'm not a big fan of my own generation. Having been told we were "special" our whole lives--they even build a raft of new schools just for us--we were initiated into adulthood by bucking the establishment, and now as we still hold many (most?) of the reins of power across government and societal institutions, and before that power slips away, there seems to be a keenness to leave one final lasting mark in our wake. What's better than a Prayer Book that will shape the public prayers of at least a couple of generations?

I am not, in concept, absolutely opposed to the notion that the 1979 Prayer Book could be improved.  I have my own list of recommendations, though I expect they would not track very closely with those that the supporters of revision have in mind. 

But I simply have no confidence that the Episcopal Church of today, or of the next several years, is capable of producing a (literal or digital) volume that can bear the freight that it needs to carry. The 1979 book is the fruit of a sort of "perfect storm" of theological ferment, historical research, and ecumenical warmth that had been brewing for decades and peaked just a few years after it was issued. Now we are in an era of ideological purity instead of rich theology, academic stagnation instead of paradigm-shifting scholarship, and an ecumenical winter with the ecclesial rock from which we as Anglicans were hewn, the one with which we have the most in common in the area of liturgy and sacraments, the Roman Catholic Church. The Episcopal Church remains in sharp decline. We are battle-scarred from a decade-and-a-half of conflict and litigation. The great majority of those who voted in the House of Deputies today, and the great majority of now-sitting bishops, will be at least retired in 2030, if not pushing up daisies. How is this not the worst possible time to undertake something as arduous, incendiary, and expensive as revising the Book of Common Prayer?

As youth, Baby Boomers chafed under the authority of establishment adults. But we counted on the fact that there were adults, people who knew how to fix broken stuff, to take charge and make things happen. Now we're supposed to be the "adults in the room," but we're not. We may use a cane to walk, or be clients of the Scooter Store, but we too often behave like entitled young punks. We demand justice for every conceivable oppressed group, but we don't know how to actually be just. When I was 19, I was sure the "revolution" was coming. Now in my mid-60s, we finally seem to have confected it in the Episcopal Church, but I feel alienated from my own generation.

The reluctance of the majority to even be kind, let alone just, toward the theological minority in TEC arises, perhaps, from acute annoyance about the secular political environment. The progressive orthodoxy that is so regnant among Episcopalians, now having long shed the moniker "Republican Party at prayer," is deadlocked in a stalemate with the populist-conservative axis. Theological conservatives (some of whom are socialist-leaning Democrats!) present an appealing target for ths pent-up ire. Revolutions have little tolerance for ideological complexity, and they eventually consume their own. 

Of course, Prayer Book revision comes with a price tag, estimated to be nearly $2 million, just for the coming triennium. Multiply that by four for the length of the projected process, and that's without actually having printed a single copy of the new book! All resolutions that ask for funds in the budget of the DFMS eventually end up in front of the Joint Committee on Program, Budget, and Finance (PB&F). We're seeing several resolutions that call for the creation of new staff positions, each of which runs $300,000-400,000 for the triennium. There's eventually going to be a train wreck at PB&F. So, even if the Bishops follow the lead of the Deputies, Prayer Book revision still has to run that gauntlet. This is not a done deal yet. Or I may just be thinking wishfully.

2018 General Convention, Day 4

It's very late and I'm very tired, so I'm just going to briefly mention one issue on which my committee spent a great deal of time today.

There was a resolution that would have added a sixth promise in the Baptismal Covenant, in the question following the creed, along the lines of, "Will you cherish the goodness and beauty of God's creation, and endeavor to protect its integrity?" We heard testimony on it yesterday, mostly in favor, and very passionately so. The proponents argue that, with the ecosphere as fragile and compromised as it is, creation-care is a first order concern. 

Opponents argue that, as critical as creation care may be, baptism is about the paschal mystery, dying and rising with Christ, and we should not elevate creation care to the level of becoming a condition of baptism, and that it is presumptuous of us to make a unilateral major change to the conditions of a rite so fundamental as baptism. Besides, doesn't persevering in resisting evil already cover whatever we might do on behalf of creation?

We worked on wordsmithing this for a very long time, for what to me felt like more than an hour. We crafted amendments and amendments to amendments. It was at the same time cumbersome (32 people on the committee), tedious, and passionate. It was a major endeavor, a significant expenditure of emotional and mental labor, and time.

When the moment came for a vote, I fully expected to be on the short end, and was already crafting my argument for the floor of the House of Bishops. The Deputies voted in favor, though not has heavily as I had anticipated (15-6). Then the bishops voted, and to my immense surprise, only two voted Aye, with four voting Nay. Since a resolution has to carry in both orders, it died a sudden death right there. While I believe that was the correct outcome, it kind of seemed a shame in the light of all the work that went into it.

Of course, I also monitored from a distance, with lots of emails, texts and hallway conversations, the progress of the sausage making re same sex marriage in Committee 13. Look around, and you can probably find news. It's still a fluid situation.

2018 General Convention, Day 3 Supplemental

I gave testimony this evening in support of B012, which would require bishops like me to make provision for same-sex "marriage" by granting oversight of a parish wanting to have such a ceremony to the spiritual care, authority, and oversight of another bishop. Why would I support such a thing? Because it's less horrible than the alternative, which is to be required to simply permit it, with no restrictions.

The point is this: Such a practice is so sub-Christian, so destructive to the fabric of the Anglican Communion, so inimical to the gospel, that I simply cannot have my spiritual fingerprints anywhere near it. I cannot be the bishop of a priest or a community that wants to do that. Granting DEPO to a parish would be immensely painful--for me, certainly, and, I suspect, for the parish. But that pain is the lesser evil. Maintaining distance of this sort would allow me to continue being a shepherd in and among the clergy and faithful of the Diocese of Springfield, who elected me knowing full well how I would lead on this issue. So it's not just a matter of my personal conscience; it's about the integrity of the diocese.

I'm pretty much getting out of the predicting business. Testimony tonight was overwhelmingly in support of B012. But that, in itself, means very little.

2018 General Convention, Day 3

Though the legislative sausage-making has barely only begun, and it's way too early to make predictions, the "buzz" is that some move toward Prayer Book revision is getting more traction than I, personally, had expected. The SCLM's "Option Two" proposal (get better acquainted with the Prayer Book we have) appears headed for oblivion. 

Leaving the whole marriage issue aside, the energy toward revision emanates from the discomfort felt in some quarters with language that might be understood by someone with no theological formation as implying that God is "a guy in the sky," or, as a once-popular euphemism puts it, "the man upstairs." So the masculine pronouns--he, him, his--are the putative primary offenders here. (There is another stratum that objects to any pronouns, masculine or feminine, that support the notion of binary gender, but I won't go down that rabbit hole here). Closely following are terms that are felt to denote patriarchy--Lord, Kingdom, and the like. And, of course, there's Father, as in the First Person of the Trinity. While nobody in this conversation, to my knowledge, disputes that the Second Person of the Trinity became incarnate two millennia ago as a male human being, there is a resistance, when not referring specifically to the historical Jesus, to using Son. The Holy Spirit seems to get a pass.

I'm not going to solve this issue, or persuade anybody of anything, in a blog post. And I've paid attention to the arguments; this is nothing new. So all I want to do here is flag the idea that Christianity is a revealed religion. Literally, "you can't make this stuff up." We know nothing about God that God has not decided to make known to us. There is general revelation, in nature and in the human intuition. There is the supreme revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And there is specific revelation about God, made available to us in the words of sacred scripture. (Ordinands in the Episcopal Church are required to profess belief that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are "the word of God.")

We didn't invent God. God has self-disclosed to us. And part of what God has self-disclosed is an identity as Father, the Father of the Eternal Son, who is Lord of lords and King of kings. That's what it is. That's the revelation of God. Does that information exhaust the reality of who God is? Heavens, no. Is God a man, or any sort of male? Certainly not. Christian tradition has been clear on that all along. Is God revealed in masculine gender categories, and not feminine or neuter gender categories? Yes, he is. Those are the cards we've been dealt, and it's above humankind's pay grade (to say nothing of the competency of the General Convention) to ask for a re-deal. 

I get it that some find this reality very troubling. It's not my place to dispute anybody's experience or analyze their motives. But, I believe our collective invitation is to engage things that are challenging, even sources of pain, with courage and faith, looking for a way through and not a way around. The language about God that is in our liturgical tradition, including all the masculine pronouns, is there, I dare say, because God put it there (by putting it in scripture). Even if it were possible to felicitously render our liturgical texts in ways that skirt the offensive language and somewhat resembles actual spoken English and does not fall into heresy, an aspiration yet to be demonstrated, we would be stepping outside to scope of our authority in doing so.

I expect to be pretty much a voice crying in the wilderness on this, but I had to get it out there.

Since I'm writing in the late morning, and there is more to happen today, there will probably be a supplementary post late this evening.

2018 General Convention, Day 2

The most intense and substantive portion of my day was devoted to the work of Committee 12: Prayer Book, Liturgy, & Music. We met from 0800 until noon--partly in plenary hearing testimony (only about 45 minutes), partly in plenary talking amongst ourselves, and partly in subcommittees. 

The two major items in front of Committee 12 are draft proposed revisions of the Book of Occasional Services and Lesser Feasts & Fasts. I serve on the subcommittee for the latter. The first obvious issue is that there are within the Episcopal Church quite divergent attitudes toward what a liturgical calendar even is and just what it means to include or omit someone. We experienced this divergence even within our subcommittee. What might be called the "low church" position is that those whom we include on a sanctoral calendar are exemplary witnesses to the gospel, whom all the faithful should endeavor to emulate. 

The counterpart "high church" position relies on a three-layer taxonomy: the Church Militant on earth, the Church Expectant in paradise, and the Church Triumphant in heaven. This the traditional Catholic vision. Those who depart this life are presumed to join the Church Expectant, a condition of purgation and sanctification--ongoing growth and refinement in holiness. It feels right for the Church Militant to persistently pray for members of the Church Expectant, that they will have the grace to continually yield themselves to the healing touch of the Great Physician, the "Shepherd and Bishop of [their] souls." (I Peter 2:25) The members of the Church Triumphant are those in whom the process of sanctification has been brought to completion, who can look in a mirror and see Jesus, who can behold the unfiltered presence of God and not be turned to dust. They do not need our prayers on their behalf, as they have attained perfection. But we can certainly benefit from their prayers for us. These are the ones whom the Church discerns to be capital-S Saints. 

As you might imagine, I advocate the high church viewpoint on this. My immediate subjective filter when I hear about someone proposed for the liturgical calendar is, would I be comfortable saying, "Blessed N. pray for us"? Not everyone sees it this way, however. They're more comfortable with a standard of "exemplary Christian (and the occasional exceptional non-Christian) who did great things, or is at least worth knowing about." So, it's with some surprise that I can report a possible way forward brewing that might address the substance of both notions of the calendar. Stay tuned.

Of course, while doing my own committee work, my ear is constantly to the ground about the work of a committee I am not on, but is dealing with matters that are of critical importance to me--namely, how the Episcopal Church's theology of marriage intersects with the process of Prayer Book revision. Procedurallly and politically, this is very complex, with multiple balls in play, and several different ways each of them can bounce. For my Communion Partner colleagues and me, the bottom line is to find a way, in the midst of a church that tolerates and encourages practices that we find questionable at best, the official teaching, even if it is widely flouted or ignored, remains orthodox. We're willing to live and let live. But we want to be an object of the "letting," and not just the subject. Our opponents seem determined to deprive us of any amount of wiggle room. Is it pathetic that we're here desperate just for "wiggle room." Well ... yeah. It is. But here we are, just the same. We need at least a toehold.

2018 General Convention, Day 1

I'm going to be numbering the days of our time in Austin relative to my own experience; hence this is Day 1, even though the only thing official that has gone on is committee meetings. 

Brenda and I left Springfield on the 0600 American Airlines departure to DFW, where we enjoyed/endured a three-hour layover before the short hop to Austin. Everything rolled out smoothly--cab ride to the Hampton Inn downtown, getting settled in our room, walking the one block over to the convention center to register and receive our ever-necessary name tags. (This photo of the convention center was taken from our room.) We accomplished that work with dispatch, running into people we know and wanted to connect with briefly at nearly every turn. Stepped across the street for a seafood lunch with part of the Springfield deputation. Took some time to get the lay of the land--cruised the exhibit hall, located the meeting room for the House of Bishops. Back to our hotel room to process some emails, then, finally, over to a ballroom in the nearby Hilton for a 5:30 organizational meeting of Committee 12: Prayer Book, Liturgy, and Music, of which I am a member. We didn't do anything substantive, just some ground rules and get-to-know-you stuff. The real work begins tomorrow, when the committee will hear testimony on all resolutions having to do with the sanctoral calendar. That's invariably something of a hot potato, so it should be interesting. We concluded our agenda a little past 7:00. Brenda and I caught a delicious meal at a Chinese restaurant right across the street from our hotel.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 6

No dramatic or particularly compelling photo ops today. What you're looking at here is a fuzzy shot of the Rev. Robert Williams of the United Methodist Church, who flew all the way out from Philadelphia to advocate for the emerging full-communion agreement between the UMC and the Episcopal Church. This matter won't come before General Convention until 2021, but its proponents are doing all they can to get it on everyone's radar.

I'm of a double mind on this. I have a deep personal commitment to ecumenism. Reconciliation and unity are of the essence of the gospel. The way the proposal is being framed is that we are being asked to recognize one another as churches, and hence, one another's members and ministries. There is no assertion that we are to agree on every point of faith and practice. That said, I stumble over the Methodists' use of grape juice rather than wine in the Eucharist. That may seem like a picayunish detail, but it's not, particularly in view of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral's articulation of the use of "the elements ordained by [Christ]" when it lays out the benchmarks for Anglican ecumenical discussions.

But there's more. Liberals in TEC are queasy about the proposal because the UMC still officially holds to an orthodox understanding of sexuality and marriage. However, the only reason this is so is because the UMC includes within its ranks large numbers of Methodists in various African countries, who tend to hold traditional views. There is a big showdown scheduled for 2019, and it is anybody's guess what will happen. If the UMC remains intact as is, it will likely continue down the road of orthodoxy and therefore become unappealing to mainstream Episcopalians. If they split, opposition from the left will dissolve. The fat lady has not yet even begun to sing in all of this.

So, what else did we do today? We had a business meeting--an official session, with Roberts' Rules and all that goes with it. The most time-and-energy-consuming part of this meeting was the passage of a "word to the church" on issues of stewardship of the environment, with cognate intersections with racism and other issues of social justice. I don't have access to the "perfected" text just yet, but I'm sure it will be out in cyberspace shortly. I didn't vote against it, but I didn't vote for it either, so I guess that's an abstention. There's nothing glaringly egregious about it, but I think it's theologically weak and is riddled with imprecise language that weakens its impact. I didn't join the plenary wordsmithing discussion, mostly for reasons of keeping my powder dry for other battles. But I am concerned about a pattern of using language like "people of God" and "family of God" to seemingly refer to all people generally, rather than specifically to those who are "in Christ," the community of the baptized. This both flows from and abets sloppy thinking and sloppy biblical exegesis.

Everything else was pretty pro forma. We had the afternoon off, which I used to keep on top of the never-ending stream of emails. We gathered again for a closing banquet, and we're officially finished now. I write at mid-evening local time. Many of us are on a flight that is set to depart at 1:20am, so it's going to be a long night and a long day. Brenda and I have a substantial layover in Seattle and a just-plain-long one in Dallas. It will be bedtime Wednesday by the time we get home.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 5

Every day during this week-long event, aware that I'm going to be blogging in the evening, I'm scouting about looking for a "cover photo" for my post, something that will best encapsulate the significance of the day.

So this is what I've got. It was hanging on the wall of Soapy Smith's, a downtown Fairbanks eatery where Brenda and I had dinner with three other couples from the Class of 2011--a calendar from 1910 promoting a restaurant in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Don't look for any hidden or subtle symbolism in the image, because there isn't any. It's pretty much a cipher, kind of like what went on in the official activities of the House of Bishops today--with one exception, which I will get to in due course.

In both our morning and afternoon sessions, we were asked to spend most of our time in table groups "unpacking" the experiences of the last couple of days--the drop-in visits to native villages on Saturday, and yesterday's potlatch in Nenana. We were supposed to focus on themes of racism and environmental justice. To be blunt, it was too little to do and do much time in which to do it. The afternoon session was noticeably depleted attendance-wise; I myself slipped away to process a mountain of email when I literally found myself alone at my table.

I don't mean to sound cynical (well, maybe a little). I was deeply moved by our experiences, particularly the visit to Ft Yukon on Saturday. It was worth a bit of peer group reflection. Maybe an hour's worth. But not the bulk of an entire day.

At 5:00, following the Eucharist, spouses and other observers were dismissed from the meeting room while the bishops had our customary "fireside chat" with the Presiding Bishop. This is an opportunity to be candid, speak in an "executive session" environment, and deal with sensitive issues. As it turned out, there was nothing brought up that needed sensitive treatment, It could all have easily been done in open session.

In the remarks that follow, I have the permission of those whom I mention or quote.
At one point, a bishop asked the Presiding Bishop if he had any comment on the latest statistics that track the continuing precipitous numerical decline in the Episcopal Church. This question evoked an extended and rather passionate response from Bishop Curry. I wish I had a transcript or a recording, because I would like to be more precise in how I characterize his remarks. But they were along the lines of, "If we concentrate on what we're supposed to be doing, making and forming disciples of Jesus Christ, people who know the Lord and follow him and live the way Jesus call his people to live, we won't have time to even worry about Average Sunday Attendance. That will all take care of itself. If we continue to navel-gaze, then we won't survive, and probably shouldn't survive." It was a clarion call to keep first things first, and focus on the work of gospel proclaiming and evangelization.

On the heels of this, the Bishop of Albany rose and wondered aloud whether there might be a way, at the next General Convention, to consider no resolutions save for those pertaining to the DFMS budget and necessary elections, devoting the rest of our time in Austin to workshops and seminars on how to fulfill the vision that had just been articulated so compellingly by the Presiding Bishop. Of course, there is no constitutional or canonical way to do that, and I suspect Bishop Love knew as much. But I know I'm not the only one who found it an arrestingly attractive notion. What a concept.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 4

This being the Lord's Day, the morning was dedicated to worship. The visiting bishops and spouses were divided between (read: crammed into) three churches in the greater Fairbanks area. I was part of the group that attended St Matthew's, which was walking distance from the hotel, and which observed its patronal feast day today. The Presiding Bishop preached and the Bishop of Alaska celebrated. We were welcomed with over-the-top hospitality, and the entire occasion was altogether lively.

Shortly thereafter, we boarded buses and rode south and west on the highway toward Anchorage for about an hour, ending up at the village of Nenana, one of the 42 native villages in the interior of Alaska, and among those in which the Episcopal Church has been the major ecclesial presence and influence. There we were treated to a traditional potlatch, as the guests of honor. Feeding a couple of hundred guests in a room (the tribal hall) not designed to accommodate nearly that many was a feat of true logistical legerdemain. We were asked to remain seated--just in chairs, not at tables--while the young people of the community served a multi-course meal, the centerpiece of which was roast moose. (We were told that three animals were harvested for this occasion.) There were speeches galore by all sorts of tribal and ecclesiastical dignitaries, and lots of traditional singing and dancing, to the compelling beat of drums.

We got back to the hotel around 6:45. I gathered for light supper (most of us were still full from the potlatch) with seven other Communion Partner bishops and three spouses (there are more of us, but many aren't here). We have strategizing to do as the next General Convention looms on the horizon, and another House of Bishops in between, and a potentially shattering proposal to surgically amend the Prayer Book and catechism just with respect to marriage already formally in the pipeline.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 3

Here's the lovely Lady Brenda, along with Alaska's own Bishop Mark Lattime, boarding our principal mode of transportation today. It took us, along with the Presiding Bishop and his right-hand man Canon Michael Hunn, the Bishop of Wyoming and his wife, and the Bishop of Vermont and his wife, to the village of Fort Yukon, a little more than an hour north from Fairbanks by air (and well inside the Arctic Circle). This was but one piece of a large "apostolic progression" of bishops into several communities in the interior of Alaska. (Bishop Lattime, by the way, travels this way all the time; most of the places he visits can't be driven to.)

A word about the history of Christianity in Alaska is in order. The gospel was first brought to this part of the world by Russian Orthodox missionaries in the eighteenth century. But they tended to concentrate on the coastal areas and not pay much attention to the interior. It was other mainline churches--generally Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Anglican--that were hugely successful in evangelizing the native peoples of the interior in the nineteenth century. But since, in that era, churches were expected to take responsibility for hospitals and schools, the churches prudently decided not to compete with one another, and divvied up the territory. The sprawling plain known as the Yukon Flats became an Episcopalian enclave.

So visiting one of these villages is akin to visiting an English village 75 or 100 years ago. Separation of church and state is not one of their core values. We were greeted at the airstrip by the mayor, the village chief, and the parish priest. They bussed us directly to the village church, St Stephen's, which

was established more than a century ago by the legendary evangelist of the Yukon, Archdeacon Hudson Stuck. We entered the building to the strains of a string band of children and youth--fiddles and guitars--leading congregational singing. It was magical.

Because this  village shares a priest with another, they can't celebrate the Eucharist as often as they'd like, so it wasn't too difficult for them to prevail on Bishop Lattime and Presiding Bishop Curry to lead a somewhat impromptu celebration--again with the fiddles and guitars and a venerable reed organ leading the way. Bishop Curry did what Bishop Curry does by way of a sermon, which means that there were no dull moments.

We were then whisked off to the Tribal Hall, where we were given seats of honor and feted with moose soup, local king salmon from the Yukon River, and sundry side items. It was a feast. With the chief presiding, we were addressed by the mayor, the police chief, the parish priest, and all the members of the tribal council. Two things stood out for me: their sincere and abiding faith in Christ, and the oppressive weight of alcoholism, an epidemic of teen suicide, an anxiety over the prospect of environmental change making it ever more difficult to continue with their centuries-old way of life, which is organically bound up with the cycle of seasonal change, fish spawning, and caribou migration. Then there was more music, this time accompanied by some folk dancing, which they even persuaded YFNB to participate in. (Sorry, no pictures or video.)

We then, literally, went down to the river to pray On the bank of the Yukon, we offered a brief liturgy-of-the-word with the theme of stewardship of creation and blessing of the land. Many commented that they have never seen the water level so low, which only heightens their anxiety. (At that moment it felt to me like we were visiting December in September--it was about 40F, breezy, and overcast. Fortunately, we had been warned to layer up.)

On our way back to the airstrip, we stopped twice: once to visit and offer prayers at the grave of Archdeacon Stuck, and then to bless a newly-constructed morgue building. This may seem a little odd, but burying a body in the midst of a long and frigid Yukon winter is no mean feat. The morgue, which is next to the church, is the place where the casket is constructed, and the body prepared for burial, and preserved (a natural cold storage) while the grave is dug, which is a lengthy and laborious process.

We were back on our single engine overwing aircraft around 4:00, and safely at our hotel 90 minutes later. It was rather an amazing day. Within this calendar year, I have visited Anglican Christian communities in Peru, Tanzania, and now the Arctic interior of Alaska. While there are huge differences between the three places, I find myself tracking a thread of commonalities among these "developing world" contexts. There is much to ponder.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 2

This is a view of the Chena River, the banks of which were once deemed "fair" by the explorer who first steamed up it. I snapped it while on a lunchtime pedestrian excursion with the Bishop of Tennessee. For some inexplicable reason, downtown Fairbanks is swarming with Thai restaurants. I made the mistake of cockily asking the server to make sure mine was spicy. My head hasn't stopped sweating yet. (The weather today was around 50F and drizzly. It feels like November in September.)

The morning consisted of more presentations by members of various indigenous peoples. A 96-year old tribal elder singing "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill" in her native Athabascan language brought the house down. It was impressed upon us how much the ancient peoples of this land rely on a finely-honed eons-old pattern of relationship with nature revolving around the cycle of seasonal change. It's not only their cultural heritage; it's their food supply and their social fabric. There is great anxiety over the effect that proposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would have on this delicate ecological balancing act.

The afternoon session was devoted mostly to preparing us for our various excursions to remote villages tomorrow, include a crash tutorial on videography and video editing on a smart phone. They're encouraging us to shoot lots of video and send clips to the communications wonks in New York, which they can harvest and edit toward the compilation of a collective video narrative.

This was the evening for "class" dinners (I'm in the Class of 2011, which is made up of all bishops who were elected in 2010, no matter whether they were consecrated that year or the following one.) As a class, we bonded extraordinarily well from the get-go, and very much enjoy one another's company.

2017 Fall House of Bishops, Day 1

This is the actual airplane flown by the third Bishop of Alaska, the legendary "flying bishop" Bill Gordon, who was elected in 1948 at the age of 29 and served until his retirement in 1974. The aircraft is on display at the Morris Thompson Cultural Center, a museum in downtown Fairbanks about a dozen blocks from the hotel where the House of Bishops is meeting through next Tuesday. Most of the bishops and spouses made a stop there as part of their afternoon activities. I found it an intensely interesting place.

Our day began with Morning Prayer at our tables in the main meeting room. We were then welcomed by Bishop of Alaska Mark Lattime, who, in turn, introduced two gentlemen from the indigenous peoples of the area, who addressed us at some length. I was particularly impressed by the first one, who maintains a profound sense of connection with the people who have inhabited this land for 10,000 years alongside an uncommonly rich, articulate, and well-formed Christian faith. He had some insights into the story of Melchizedek in Genesis that I had never heard before.

After a break, and the usual "check in" time with our table groups, we heard from Bishop of Central Florida Greg Brewer, speaking on behalf of the Task Force for Communion Across Differences. How can we as a House do a better job of making sure we hear--and actively listen to--all the voices in the room, including those which, for one reason or another, may be soft or silent? Bishop Brewer was speaking particularly of those who represent what has become a minority position on issues of sexuality and marriage, but which has been long held in our church and continues to be mainstream in global Anglicanism. Personally, I found his remarks to be the highlight of my nearly seven years in the House of Bishops. He spoke truth that has desperately needed to be spoken, but which has been either so unwelcome or so inaudible that it has been accorded no venue. I felt light a huge weight was beginning to be lifted.

We continued with discussion at our tables around these questions. As we face a General Convention next year at which there will be a proposal for a surgical revision of the Prayer Book that would articulate an understanding of marriage for which maleness and femaleness are irrelevant, it is essential that the bishops arrive in Austin already having had deep and prolonged listening to one another about the issues in general and the proposal in particular. Our first public conversation about it should not be when we are debating a question that is about to be resolved by means of a vote. In fact, it might behoove us--and I felt some energy in this direction--for us to think of ways of making decisions that do not involve voting of the sort that creates winners and losers. It is, of course, a huge challenge for democratically-conditioned Americans to even conceive of such a thing.

We got back together late in the afternoon for Eucharist in celebration of St Matthew's Day. The Presiding Bishop served as celebrant, and Todd Ousley, lately Bishop of Eastern Michigan and now the Bishop for Pastoral Development, a member of the Presiding Bishop's staff, preached. We then adjourned for a cocktail hour and returned to the same room and table for a banquet-style dinner.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 5

The Spirit blows where the Spirit blows. Some sort of spirit certainly blew here today. Whether it was the Holy Spirit of God or something else is unclear to me without first getting some distance. (Isn't that how the Holy Spirit tends to work? Discernible clearly only in hindsight?)

We began with another table discussion of generous length (about 30 minutes, as I recall). Each table was given a sheet amalgamating all the feedback that had been turned in on sticky notes yesterday concerning how we think we're meeting the personal and institutional challenges of dealing with the way we tend to systematically marginalize individuals and groups based on criteria over which they have no control ("Who I am" rather than "What I do").

This went well enough, and then the plenary floor was open to sharing from the table discussions. All was going according to plan. Then one bishop (whom I will not name, though he probably wouldn't mind) got up and said, in effect, "There's an elephant in the room, and we're ignoring it in favor of a bunch of navel gazing." That's when everything went off the rails. A handful of others got up and said, "Yeah. There's an elephant in the room, and we need to talk about it!" Except ... nobody actually named the elephant. And I was getting the feeling that those who were giving their Amens to the original comment were all talking about different elephants, but I didn't know for sure. Was I the only one who was clueless? So I went to the microphone myself and said, "We have a set of Core Values in this House, one of which is to speak directly. But here I am listening to a bunch of us saying that there's something we desperately need to talk about, and I have no idea what it is."

After a few more speakers, we took a break while the Presiding Bishop, the members of the Planning Committee, and the chaplains all hung heads together to figure what to do. During the break, several bishops greeted me enthusiastically and thanked me for saying what I did, because they were equally clueless. It felt good not be alone in my ignorance.

Then the bishop who had made the comment that got the whole ruckus started came up to me and clarified what he meant. It was all about the Bishop of Washington's sermon on Sunday, and her remark about the number of her own parishes that are slowly (or not so slowly) withering away, without even a spark of the sort of vitality that would be attractive to those seeking a deeper spiritual life ... and here we are spending four days talking about our feelings and our childhood memories. I was glad to hear this clarification, because I had been afraid that it had something to do with the  ongoing post-election anxiety level in the country and among many Episcopalians, and that's not a weed patch I would have been particularly happy about getting down into. (I suspect that some of the Amen-voicers were coming from such a place, however.)

In the round of plenary discussion that followed the break, I went to the mic and said something like this: "Only a handful of us in the room today, if that, were in the House 25 years ago on the occasion of that last 'blowup' in relationships. Bishops almost came to blows during General Convention, and the room had to be cleared of observers. Since then, the House has focused more on 'process' concerns, building collegiality, and less on 'content' issues. Perhaps what we've seen this morning is a sign of pent-up rebellion against dealing with topics of secondary and tertiary importance while not being given an opportunity to talk about the really urgent concerns that we have in this church. I, for one, believe there is still a great deal of truth that yet needs to be told about the events surrounding the massive departures from our church over the last 10-12 years. I know many are in quiet anguish over the issues of congregational vitality that Marianne Budde raised in her sermon. And I know as well that there are some among us who wish we could speak a word of hope into the political anxiety that has enveloped our society. So perhaps this moment is a test. Perhaps it is a test of whether 25 years of focusing on process concerns and relationship building has actually made us more mature in Christ, whether it has equipped us to once again engage difficult subjects with clarity and candor but still be faithful to our vows to 'respect the dignity of every human being.'"

We broke for lunch at noon, but were seriously off our agenda. When we got back together at 1:30, the head of the Planning Committee reported on the deliberations of the group. This did not include a detailed plan, but, rather, a strong assurance that everything that had been said would be taken into consideration as future meetings are structured. But ... wow, I'm not sure anybody saw this coming.

We then plowed through a list of things that we were supposed to have been dealt with in the morning:

• Greetings from the new CEO of of the DFMS (aka the "church center" in New York).
• A report from the Commission on Impairment and Leadership (this group deals with issues of addiction, mental illness, and personality disorders among bishops).
• A report on the Episcopal-Methodist dialogue. There will be a proposal for a "full communion" agreement in front of the next General Convention.
• A report from the Diocese of Texas concerning some of the planning details of the 2018 General Convention, to be held in Austin.
• A report from the Standing Committee on Structure and Governance. To be honest, I can't remember much of what was said, but it wasn't anything momentous. I think it had something to do with finding ways of measuring the vitality of dioceses.

We took another break, and the reconvened in an official business session (hence the photo above of the officers of the House looking more formal than they usually do), with proper parliamentary procedure. It was mostly pretty humdrum stuff on the order of approving a spate of upcoming retirements and resignations. But the skunk at the garden party was a report from the Task Force on Episcopacy, created by a 2015 General Convention resolution. Their broad mandate is to consider the ways that bishops are selected, formed, and deployed. To everoyne's relief, they have already concluded that bishops should continue to be elected rather than appointed, and that the various dioceses should still be responsible for the electing process. Whew! But they are also considering, among other things, the creaton of a pool of candidates who have already discerned a potential call to episcopal ministry, and are pre-screened, with background check results at the ready. Dioceses looking for a bishop would be encouraged to fish in such a pond. It would all be optional of course, but I can certainly foresee tremendous informal pressure put on dioceses to do just that, with failure to do so coming at the potential cost of difficulties in the consent process for whomever is elected. The driving concern, of course, is for greater diversity of gender and ethnicity among the members of the House of Bishops--a laudable goal, perhaps, but it should be allowed to develop organically. This development is scary, and it should be nipped ferociously in the bud. 

As per custom, our final dinner was a bit upscale, with many of the bishops dressing up. Bow ties were particularly in fashion tonight. Me ...  I just swapped out my hooded sweatshirt for a corduroy sport coat. I'm on the 0530 airport shuttle in the morning. This HOB is in the books now.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 4

This is a forest of giant wild rhodedendrons through which the trail that allows circumambulation of Kanuga Lake passes. It's really quite striking. I walked it this morning during some free time.

Ah ... free time. The plenary schedule finally lightened up today. My own schedule, however, did get an early start, with a 0730 gathering of Communion Partner bishops. We were never actually all together--some aren't here, or aren't still here, and among those who are, there was a lot of coming and going due to conflicting obligations. We broke for breakfast around 0830 and then regathered until about 10.

At that point I kept an appointment with a reporter for Episcopal News Service who wanted to interview me about my experience of this meeting of the HOB. I didn't tell her anything I haven't already written in this venue. She was quite solicitous, but my frustration about such things is that, out of our twenty minute conversation, there may be two things I said that will get quoted in her article, and maybe or maybe not in an appropriate context. I understand that's how the system works, so I'm not getting worked up.

So we didn't convene in plenary session until after lunch. Apart from singing Happy Birthday to the Presiding Bishop and the Bishop of Western Kansas, there were two highlights of the afternoon:

• Canon Mark Stevenson, head of Episcopal Migration Ministries, gave a superb presentation on the work of that ministry of the wider church. Given the current climate of suspicion toward refugees, both within governmental bodies and among the public, they do face their challenges. EMM is a long-established agency; they've been around since 1938, nearly eighty years. They do work right out of Matthew 25.
• Bishop Mark Lattime of Alaska gave us an orientation on the September meeting of the House, which will be in Fairbanks. While our main meetings will be in a comfortable hotel, there will be opportunities for field trips by small aircraft to some of the native villages where the Episcopal Church has long been incarnate in that diocese. 

Between our adjournment and dinner, I took the opportunity for some more walking. Yesterday's snow is gone, but it is miserably cold and rainy. This is why I never have pleasant memories of Kanuga; we're always here in March!

After dinner, we observed one of the mainstays of HOB meetings, the Fireside Chat. With the number who are here, as you can see, it's not a cozy affair, despite its name. It's also not, strictly speaking, "chatty." It's pretty well scripted, though there is opportunity for passing the microphone around and engaging in a modest amount of give and take. The big topics tonight included lots of information about goings-on in the Diocese of Haiti, which is in the midst of some pretty nasty conflict, and an extended presentation from the chair of the House of Bishops Planning Committee about the shape and character of future meetings. For one thing, it looks like they'll eventually be shorter by one day. I can give an Amen to that.

I feel like a horse who can smell the barn and has an urge to turn a trot into a gallop. One more day, and then, homeward bound.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 3

We woke up this morning to about three inches of fresh snow. Here's the view from my room. It was lovely, not only for the way it looked, but because all but a trace in isolated shady patches was gone by midday. That's the best kind of snow, in my opinion.

The day's schedule was ... more of the same. More than a handful of bishops were considering stabbing themselves in the eye with a pencil, including YFNB, but we all resisted the temptation, I'm relieved to report. Yet, even in the midst of that procedural drudgery, there were some treasures to be mined. To be reminded of the distinction between feedback that is conditional, related to behavior, and feedback that is unconditional, related to a person's being, I found helpful. Both kinds can be either positive or negative. The goal, of course, is to avoid giving feedback that is both negative and unconditional.

My hackles were raised a bit by a presentation about subtle versions of discrimination that our facilitators suggested can cloak visceral antagonism with a more respectable façade. A little autobiography might be appropriate here: My mother is a southerner by birth. Visiting her hometown when I was young, I am old enough to remember Jim Crow segregation in all of its ugliness. As a pre-teen and teen, I was s strong supporter of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The absurdity of prejudice based on skin color was patent to me. Our presenters labeled this "old-fashioned" racism. "Modern" racism looks for reasons that sound more respectable but have the same deleterious effect on the "excluded" group--like opposing a program that requires one's children to be bussed to a school an hour a way when there's one right in their neighborhood that they could walk to. While I agree that it possible to mask racism (or any other "ism") in such a way, I am not prepared to use as broad a brush as it seemed to be that our presenters were ready to use.

That said, when one of my tablemates invited me to process the question through the lens of being a "theological minority" victim of such subtle-discrimination behaviors (unhelpful "rescuing," blaming the victim, avoidance, denying differences, denying impact), I must acknowledge that it began to make some sense. Much to ponder.

We are now finished with the presentations from Visions, Inc. Tomorrow we move on to other things. So this is probably the place to say that I wish there had been a much richer theological context to what we did. Visions, Inc. is, I think, Christian-friendly, but not Christian-based. They have a lot of clients in the secular world. A group of Christian bishops should be engaging the issues of racism and racial reconciliation from a platform grounded deeply in our  scriptural and theological tradition. The closest we got to that was this morning's table-group bible study, from Ephesians 2, which is magisterial in its relevance to what we're doing. If we had just spent our whole time together mining that material, we would have been better served.

The afternoon concluded with a celebration of the Eucharist for the Second Sunday in Lent. Many of us wish the Eucharist had been in the morning. It didn't feel like Sunday today; it didn't feel special. Worship at House of Bishops is tricky for me. I don't find it a "safe" place spiritually. Yes, I get "triggered"! So I've been taking a walk instead. But, today being the Lord's Day and all, I went. And I was reminded of all the reasons I've gotten in the habit of staying away (texts from Enriching Our Worship, Spanish laced in throughout, metrical paraphrase of the creed, music 75% from the black gospel genre, etc.)

The sermon, by the Bishop of Washington, contained a comment that I found encouraging. The preacher mentioned that she has some churches in her diocese that she could not in good conscience recommend to somebody who is looking for a church--not because they differ from her theologically or in liturgical preference, but because of a lack of spiritual vitality. Many bishops nodded that the same is the case for them. I've thought about it, and I am not in that category. In the Diocese of Springfield, there are Eucharistic Communities that are more "my cup of tea" than others. But, if I were talking to somebody looking for a church in any of the cities or towns where we have one, I would not hesitate for a moment to recommend the one nearest them. For that, this evening, I am immensely grateful.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 2

Our diversity/anti-racism training regimen continued today. After breakfast, we began at our tables with the usual brief announcements from the appointed "MC" for the day, followed by Morning Prayer led by our chaplains. Then it was back to the team from Visions, Inc. for more of what we began yesterday.

To their credit, the team realizes that, regardless of the quality of the material they present, the real work gets done as it is processed by those who are on the receiving end. So they are giving us lots of time for table discussion--more, in fact, than has ever been my experience at a meeting of the House, whatever the topic. This allows for trust to gradually develop between the bishops at a particular table, which facilitates greater candor and self-disclosure. I have been frustrated over the years at how sensitive and important subjects get very superficial treatment on these occasions. So, while I find some of the material we are being asked to engage questionable on multiple levels, and might even question whether the topic itself is the highest and best use of our time together, I am grateful that we are being given the opportunity to "go deep" with it.

Today we were invited to consider the various ways in which life is made either easier or more difficult for us by virtue of factors over which we have no control. Being white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, English-speaking, formally educated, able-bodied, and ordained, I definitely have a few advantages. The only boxes I could check on the other side of the ledger were immigrant (yes, technically I am an immigrant), and elderly (which makes me, I guess, potentially subject to age discrimination, though, so far, it's been the good kind of discrimination!).

One category not on the handouts, however, but which I summoned the requisite courage to mention at my table, is "theological conservative," which, in the context of the House of Bishops, is not merely a minority but veritably an endangered species. I brought this up with some trepidation, and mention it here with even more, because there are many who will cite all the advantages I enumerated in the preceding paragraph and scoff at the notion that I am even potentially a victim of discrimination or oppression on this score. If that happens, I simply receive and take note of the scoffing. I don't have a clever riposte.

But I was gratified by the openness of my table-mates to hear what I was saying about my experience of the last six years, and to honor the feelings about it that I shared. That in itself doesn't solve very much, but it's not nothing.

The day concluded with dinner out by "classes"--in my case, the other bishops who were elected in 2010. We enjoyed a quite pleasant German restaurant.

2017 Spring House of Bishops, Day 1

It's an odd-numbered year, and I'm at the spring HOB meeting, so I must be at Kanuga, a conference center about a 30 minute drive from the Asheville, NC airport. (On the even-numbered years, we're at Camp Allen, about 60 miles WNW of Houston.)

It's now six years since I chronicled my first HOB meeting on this very site. It was a mercilessly jam-packed schedule, and I did not have a good time. Over the years, the pace slackened quite a bit, with copious free time, particularly leading up to and into Sunday. There was an intentional retreat-like atmosphere built into the experience, with relatively modest amounts of "program."

Well, for various reasons, things have apparently come full-circle, as this meeting is crammed full, with Sunday being no exception. One of Presiding Bishop Curry's passions, and therefore one of his major leadership initiatives, is racial reconciliation. That's the theme of this meeting. We are in the hands of a team of consultants who are leading us through what is essentially a course of anti-racism training.

Full disclosure: I instinctively bristle at anything labeled "training," unless it's a particular physical or psycho-motor skill. Otherwise it smacks of "re-education" of a Bolshevik variety. I am, however, endeavoring to keep an open mind and engage the process in good faith. The work consists of listening to a presentation and then doing small group work at our tables around questions related to what we have just heard.

I can't say that I've yet heard anything that I wasn't already aware of. Much of the morning was spent trying to make the melting pot/salad bowl distinction, which has been around a very long time. During the afternoon, we were invited to consider questions of identity--including ethnic and cultural.  I was aware, and shared with my table group, that I don't feel like I have an ethnic or cultural identity. There are several factors than can help describe me--I was born in Brazil, my mother is a southerner by birth, I was raised in the midwest, I'm an oldest child, I'm left-handed, etc.--but none of these define me. They are not who I am. They are not my identity.

I am copiously on record about my commitment to reconciliation--racial and otherwise--not being merely a part of the gospel, or an effect of the gospel, but the very gospel itself. This is what makes me such a passionate ecumenist, among other things. But gospel reconciliation is not a matter of learning to be more conscious of our biases and unearned privileges, real and important as those things may be. It is not about becoming more open to and accepting of other people's cultural identities, as important as it is to do that. It is about forming community with those who, in Christ, have taken on an identity beside which all others pale in significance. In Christ there is neither Bantu nor Yoruba, Swede nor German, Karen nor Hmong. Gospel reconciliation is predicated on receiving the grace to lay aside secondary identities to embrace the one that truly matters: Christian.

I look forward to seeing whether our "training" here will lead in such a direction.