General Convention news unrelated to gay bishops, Windsor, and first woman Presiding Bishop

Posted by Sappho on June 22nd, 2006 filed in Anglican Communion News, News and Commentary

OK, now it’s time for me to check on what the General Convention did other than the stuff related to Windsor. Fortunately, they have their own official legislation site, so that I can get the news unfiltered by some other blogger’s bias, and instead inflict my own bias on you guys.

We start out with a bunch of resolutions which look really boring: rules of order are approved, budget items are passed, a survey of congregations will take place. Then they’re doing stuff about poverty: Millenium Development Goals, and a Call to Partnership with a whole bunch of other churches as part of a global effort to fight poverty. There’s a series of resolutions on Israel and Palestine, but since most of them are still listed as “Pending,” it’s not clear to me what actually passed, though it looks as if, at least, everyone agreed to pray for the Holy Land. Probably something else was agreed on as well.

Now we have immigration. Episcopalians are in favor of it:

adopt the following fundamental principles included in “The Alien Among You” as the policy of the Episcopal Church.

Undocumented aliens should have reasonable opportunity to pursue permanent residency.

Legal workers should be allowed to enter the United States to respond to recognized labor force needs.

Close family members should be allowed to reunite without undue delay with individuals lawfully present in the United States.

Fundamental U.S. principles of legal due process should be granted all persons.

Enforcement of national borders and immigration policies should be proportional and humane.

Some constitutional amendments follow; they appear to be just simplifications of existing wording, except for one, which lets bishops allow Evangelical Lutheran Church of America ministers to take positions in the ECUSA, if they’ve made some sort of appropriate declaration or other. I think this must have to do with the agreement that was reached between ELCA and ECUSA a while back to be in communion with each other.

Adjustments to the canons follow, which I can’t make much sense of. I think some of them may be minor wording adjustments that relate the the agreement between the ELCA and ECUSA, since they seem to relate to churches in communion. But I could be wrong; it’s all a bit over my head. What stands out is that for some reason, General Convention 2006 is clarifying the process for the trial of bishops. Just in case someone might want to put a bishop on ecclesiastical trial. This actually did happen to a bishop named Wallter Righter, back in the 1990s; I think the upshot was that he was acquitted (or whatever the ecclesiastical trial equivalent is).

Then I see they discuss missions and evangelism for a while, and then come the information technology resolutions, which make sure the church uses best computer practices and has proper standards for its computer data.

Ecumenism: Episcopalians are in dialog with the Methodists.

Liturgy, Music, and Church Calendar: There is liturgy in development for lesser feasts and fasts. Among others, Harriet Tubman has a place on the calendar, among the lesser feasts and fasts. So does Bishop Oscar Romero. And there’s a liturgy for space exploration. Also a liturgy for adoption of children – wait, this is just being proposed to be developed, not actually ready yet. Anyway, there are tons of liturgical resolutions. Whoever is working on liturgy is busy, busy, busy, making sure there’s liturgy available for any possible occasion for which you might want it.

Then the GC addresses a whole raft of things: resolutions on ministry and pastoral care (including one on training people to recognize signs of abuse), anti-racism, civil rights for gay and lesbian people, the “culture of debt” and teaching people better money management and handling of debt, prison ministry, missions, slavery and racial reconciliation, employment policies, restorative justice, affirming creation and evolution (God is our Creator, and the theory of evolution makes good scientific sense),sustainable agriculture, a series of resolutions about HIV/AIDS. Being a computer nerd, I notice that the church archives are going digital. And there are resolutions on sexual harrassment and exploitation.

This is where we get to Windsor, which I already blogged, but it turns out that there were a couple more Windsor related resolutions, that didn’t get so widely reported, largely, I think, because all they said was, let’s keep talking with the rest of the Anglican Communion. One is titled “Commitment to Windsor and Listening Processes.”

I’m skipping ahead, because I still haven’t seen that resolution on anti-Semitism that bloggers were talking about. Ah, here iit is.

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the 75th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to collect and develop materials to assist members of the Church to address anti-Jewish prejudice expressed in and stirred by portions of Christian scriptures and liturgical texts, with suggestions for preaching, congregational education, and lectionary use, and to report to the 76th General Convention.

* Resolution is final but status and text are still under review before publication.

That’s it. Virtue Online expressed outrage:

Not only does the resolution aim to address perceptions of anti-Jewish prejudice in the Bible and Episcopal liturgy, but it suggests that such prejudice is actually “expressed in…Christian Scriptures and liturgical texts.”

I note that a couple of qualifiers are omitted in this report, specifically “portions of” and “stirred by” (I at least see “stirred by” as allowing for an interpretation where the anti-Jewish prejudice lies more in the use and interpretation of those portions of scripture than in their original meaning).

At this point, I’m quitting; there’s still a bunch more legislation. I think this is enough to give a general idea of what gets done there, though.

Later I’ll try to find out more about the background of the new Presiding Bishop, but tomorrow I’ll get off ecclesiastical news for long enough to tell you more about Lyme disease and rotavirus.