On the Hypocrisy of Tithing to Finance Lawsuits

This post is not directed at any particular group of Episcopalians (or Anglicans or Christians, for that matter). Instead, if the shoe fits, wear it.

At this time of year, churches across the land are seeking to establish their annual budgets, and are asking parishioners to submit their pledges. The unavoidable fact is that the recession we are currently experiencing will adversely impact those budgets. It therefore becomes all the more important for both churches and their parishioners to allocate their priorities, in order to maximize the benefit of each dollar donated. Thus one has to wonder why churches in tight financial straits would allocate any significant portion of their budgets to lawsuits. And one has to wonder even more at why parishioners, who are perhaps struggling to keep their donations to their church at least on a par with the previous year, would let their money be used in such a wasteful way.

This will not be news to many who reflect for even a moment on the matter, but it needs saying, and saying repeatedly: lawsuits are one of the most inefficient ways that exist to spend money to achieve a given object. Any of the alternatives to a lawsuit---mediation, arbitration, or even face-to-face, unmediated talks---are preferable to taking a case to trial, if the object is to put the dispute behind you as quickly as possible. Of course, if that is not your object---if your object, instead, is to "teach the other side a lesson," or to humiliate them, or to punish them for the hurt they have caused, then you will naturally be drawn to litigation as a means to such an end.

But we are talking about Christians, not pagans, or illiterates, or mugwumps. You know whom I mean---the persons who pray (at least, they used to every Sunday) that

all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

You who are contributing to budgets that finance lawsuits do not need me to tell you that the "bond of peace" is not what litigation is all about. Litigation is war, pure and simple. Listen to St. Paul on the subject of lawsuits between fellow Christians:

6:1 When any of you has a legal dispute with another, does he dare go to court before the unrighteous rather than before the saints? 6:2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to settle trivial suits? 6:3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary matters! 6:4 So if you have ordinary lawsuits, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? 6:5 I say this to your shame! Is there no one among you wise enough to settle disputes between fellow Christians? 6:6 Instead, does a Christian sue a Christian, and do this before unbelievers? 6:7 The fact that you have lawsuits among yourselves demonstrates that you have already been defeated. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 6:8 But you yourselves wrong and cheat, and you do this to your brothers and sisters!

St. Paul would have known this passage from Proverbs, and probably could quote it by heart:

"Do not go out hastily to litigation, or what will you do afterward when your neighbor puts you to shame?"

In a lawsuit between Christians, one of them will put the other to shame. One may turn out the winner in the lawsuit, but both will be losers as Christians.

This latter sentiment is expressed perfectly in this old Spanish proverb:

El judío échase á perder con pascuas, el moro con bodas, y el cristiano con escrituras.

The Jew ruins himself on passover feasts, the Arab on weddings, and the Christian on lawsuits.

But the point is not merely that lawsuits between Christians are un-Christian, or that they cost a ruinous amount of money. The point is the utter disconnect between tithing to a church so that the church may instigate and maintain a lawsuit.

The tithe originated with the Temple in Old Testament Jerusalem. Priests in the Temple did not "work" for a living, and so had to be supported by tithes. Leviticus 27:30 says:

Any tithe of the land, from the grain of the land or from the fruit of the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord.

The New Testament did not change the character of the tithe; it simply took it as a given (e.g., Mt 23:23). As the tithe sustained the Temple, so the pledge of today sustains the Church. The business of the Church, however, is not lawsuits, but mission---fulfillment of the Great Commission that Christ gave to his Apostles.

The usual response given when someone makes this point runs like this: "Well, yes, but the lawsuits are necessary. The group who left were the ones who started it; they took the church buildings and property with them. That was theft, and they cannot be allowed to get away with it."

Just stop and think about that statement for a minute. What is it really saying?

That the church property and buildings are what the Church is about? No, because the Church consists of people:

[In the New Testament t]he temple motif is not discarded but transformed. The new temple consists of people: its foundation is Christ (or Christ together with “the apostles and prophets”); its stones are “living”; it is ever “rising”; no less than the old temple, it is the habitation of the holy God.¹¹⁸ According to another image, believers serve as priests in God’s temple, offering their praises and indeed themselves.¹¹⁹ Their “spiritual sacrifices” are the very qualities which Yahweh longed to see in his people under Moses.¹²⁰ As the redeemed, they perpetually remember Christ’s death—as Israel under Moses remembered the passover.¹²¹ While unrepeatable, the cross possesses atoning efficacy which sinful believers must repeatedly invoke.¹²²

___________

¹¹⁸ See John 2:19–22; 1 Cor 3:11, 16; Eph 2:19–22; 1 Pet 2:5; Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1981), pp. 747–749; Ridderbos, Paul, pp. 429–432.

¹¹⁹ Heb 13:15; Phil 2:17; 4:18; Rom 12:1; Eph 5:2.

¹²⁰ J. N. D. Kelly, The Epistles of Peter and of Jude (London: A. & C. Black, 1969), p. 91, comments on 1 Pet 2:5b: “Many OT writers had already glimpsed the truth that what pleases God is not external sacrifice in itself, but rather such things as prayer and praise, thankfulness, a broken and contrite heart, and a life of justice and compassion.” He cites Ps 50:14; 51:16–19; 69:30–31; 141:2; Hos 6:6; Mic 6:6–8. Heb 13:15–16 calls readers to the twin “sacrifice” of loving God and neighbor.

¹²¹ For the affinities between the Last Supper and the passover, see Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (New York: Scribner’s, 1966), pp. 15–88.

¹²² For the Eucharistic “remembrance” of Christ’s death, see Matt 26:26–28 (and parallels [Lk 22:19-20, Mk 14:22-25]); 1 Cor 11:23–26. Heb 13:10 probably speaks of a heavenly altar (cf. 9:11–28) rather than of Calvary or the Lord’s Table; see I. Howard Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), pp. 139–140. For Christian appeals to the cross, see 1 John 1:7; 2:2. On the peril of living in disregard of the cross, see Phil 3:18–19; Heb 6:4–6; 10:26–27. For suggested parallels between the Eucharist and Exodus 24, see F. C. Fensham, “The Covenant as Giving Expression to the Relationship between Old and New Testament,” TB 22 (1971): 91–2.

(Johnson, S. Lewis ; Feinberg, John S.: Continuity and Discontinuity : Perspectives on the Relationship Between the Old and New Testaments : Essays in Honor of S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988, p. 198.)

If a majority of a congregation chooses to leave The Episcopal Church today, but continues to use the church building and property as before, have they committed theft from The Episcopal Church, or from those who remain with that Church?

The only basis upon which such a charge could conceivably be made is on the basis of the so-called Dennis Canon, enacted in 1979. The measure was passed in a last-minute flurry at General Convention, with almost no debate or discussion, and for a long time it was uncertain whether it had even passed. By attempting to impose unilaterally a trust on all Episcopal parish property in favor of the Church, without the participation, consent, or even (in nearly all cases) the knowledge of the parishes thereby affected, the Canon itself may be regarded as an attempted "theft" in its own right. Indeed, by imposing a trust on property without the owners' knowledge, the enactment of the Canon was decidedly an undemocratic and un-Christian act for the Church to have taken, and to insist on enforcing it today in the courts just compounds the offense.

Thus it is no response to accuse those leaving and keeping the property as committing "theft"; the charge is as unhelpful as was the passage of the Dennis Canon itself, and gets us nowhere in dealing with the litigation problem. It would be far better to look to traditional Christian principles to see whether or not a mediated approach could succeed in lieu of the "winner-take-all" outcome of a court battle.

At common law, when an association broke up, the property was divided among the members in proportion to their respective interests. That is, if 80% of the members did something that the other 20% did not agree with, and the 20% decided to form their own new group, they could claim 20% of the former association's property. (This assumed that all members had contributed equally to the property to begin with. If the facts were otherwise, and the differing interests could be accurately traced and calculated, then the property would be divided up according to the actual interests.)

There is no reason why Christians, in the proper spirit of St. Paul's advice, could not agree to sit down and work out compensatory payments, perhaps scheduled over time, by which the majority could buy out the agreed interest of any minority in the church buildings and other assets. Such a result would be based on equity and Christian principles, and would be far preferable to staking precious dollars on an all-or-nothing outcome that will take years to conclude.

The alternative of the status quo is not only detracting seriously from the mission of both those who are suing and of those who are being sued, but even worse, I say, is the psychological disconnect that arises from saying and professing the exact opposite of what one is doing. Any outsider who sees a Christian praying: " . . . and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (or, to bring the point home even more keenly, how about " . . . and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us") would be justified, on seeing that same Christian agreeing that all of the money he or she contributed could be used to further a lawsuit against other Christians, in citing Jesus' parable of the unforgiving slave:

The Parable of the Unforgiving Slave

18:23 “For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. 18:24 As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him. 18:25 Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made. 18:26 Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ 18:27 The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt. 18:28 After he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him one hundred silver coins. So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ 18:29 Then his fellow slave threw himself down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ 18:30 But he refused. Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt. 18:31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place. 18:32 Then his lord called the first slave and said to him, ‘Evil slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! 18:33 Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?’ 18:34 And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed. 18:35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Thus every week in Church, Episcopalians and Anglicans (meaning those whom the Presiding Bishop has now decreed are no longer Episcopalians, after leaving her Church) pray to the Father that their own trespasses be forgiven, but like the unforgiving slave, they then turn around and do the opposite with their fellow Christian. Not only do they not forgive, but they approve the use of their tithes to harass and oppress, just as the unforgiving slave threw his debtor into prison.

This disconnect cannot long continue, because the sickness that comes from doing the exact opposite of what you profess eats slowly into your heart and conscience, and affects your ability to "be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life." And the saddest part of all is that it is the spiritual leaders of the Church who are being most led astray by the hypocrisy of acting contrary to the principles of the faith they have sworn to uphold.

Not all is gloomy, however, as there are a few stellar lights here and there who are doing exactly what they preach. Listen to this excerpt from a recent interview with Bishop Jack Iker of the (withdrawn) Diocese of Ft. Worth (H/T: Texanglican):

What do you foresee, legally and financially, for the local congregations that want to remain in Episcopal Church? Are lawsuits likely?

The congregations in this diocese that want to remain in TEC [Episcopal Church] will have to organize a new diocese or join an already existing diocese such as our neighboring Diocese of Dallas. I have offered my assistance to help them achieve this, as has the bishop of Dallas. I certainly hope that lawsuits over property will be avoided and that a negotiated settlement will satisfy the interests of all parties. Sadly, the TEC authorities have been all too eager to litigate in disputes like this. However, unless the local churches want to litigate against the Diocese of Fort Worth, there isn't much that the TEC leaders can do about it. Charity and forbearance are required on both sides.

My hat goes off to Bishops Iker and Stanton. They are preaching the best sermon of all: they are setting the example for others to follow.

A Classic Restated: "Christianity and Liberalism"

In 1923, J. Gresham Machen, Professor of the New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, published a classic study of the postmodern ideas that had begun to replace traditional theology, titled Christianity and Liberalism.

I was reminded of its relevance to the debate that is still being carried on in The Episcopal Church by this useful short summary of its main arguments, authored by Prof. Michael Wittmer of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and published over at the Koinonia site. I give here just his summary itself, but I urge you to follow the foregoing link and read the whole essay. As you do, you will be impressed, I hope, by how directly Machen answered in 1923 the same old tired points that are still being thrown out by the Church's activists today. (The page references are to the published edition of Christianity and Liberalism.) Prof. Wittmer uses the bold headings to summarize the liberals' "talking points", and then quotes in response what Prof. Machen wrote in his book. Read, mark, and inwardly digest (it's good for you):



1. Living like Jesus is more important than believing in him. Machen wrote that the liberals in his day insisted that “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine,” and that conservatives should focus on “the weightier matters of the law” (Christian ethics) rather than use the “trifling matters” of doctrine to divide the church. (Pp. 19, 160.)

Machen responded that doctrines such as Christ’s “vicarious atonement for sin” are not “trifling” and that Christ is not merely “an example for faith” but is “primarily the object of faith.” He explained: “The religion of Paul did not consist in having faith in God like the faith which Jesus had in God; it consisted rather in having faith in Jesus. …The plain fact is that imitation of Jesus, important though it was for Paul, was swallowed up by something far more important still. Not the example of Jesus, but the redeeming work of Jesus, was the primary thing for Paul.” (Pp. 160, 81; emphasis in original.)

2. People are basically good and free from original sin. Machen observed that the defining belief of modernity was its “supreme confidence in human goodness.” He wrote that “according to modern liberalism, there is really no such thing as sin. At the very root of the modern liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin.” This absence of sin led Machen to wryly observe that the liberal church “is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance.” Machen countered that the gospel must begin with sin, for “Without the consciousness of sin, the whole gospel will seem to be an idle tale.” (Pp. 64, 66, 68.)

3. Penal substitution is unnecessary because a loving God would forgive without demanding a sacrifice. Machen wrote that “Modern liberal teachers…speak with horror of the doctrine of an ‘alienated’ or an ‘angry’ God,” for this implies that God is “waiting coldly until a price be paid before He grants salvation.” Liberals deny that “one person” may “suffer for the sins of another,” and “persist in speaking of the sacrifice of Christ as though it were a sacrifice made by some other than God.” They insist that a loving God would forgive without penalty. (Pp. 125, 129-32.)

4. Christians and non-Christians may unite around their common journey with God. Machen agreed that “The Christian man can accept all that the modern liberal means by the brotherhood of man. But the Christian knows also of a relationship far more intimate than that general relationship of man to man, and it is for this more intimate relationship that he reserves the term ‘brother.’ The true brotherhood, according to Christian teaching, is the brotherhood of the redeemed.” (Pp. 157-58.)

5. Salvation includes many who do not believe in Jesus. Machen said that liberals in his day wanted “a salvation which will save all men everywhere, whether they have heard of Jesus or not, and whatever may be the type of life to which they have been reared.” He replied that such openness would remove the offense of the gospel and change its historic meaning. He wrote: “What struck the early observers of Christianity most forcibly was not merely that salvation was offered by means of the Christian gospel, but that all other means were resolutely rejected. The early Christian missionaries demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion to Christ. …Salvation, in other words, was not merely through Christ, but it was only through Christ.” (Pp. 122-23.)

6. This life matters at the exclusion of the afterlife. Machen said that liberals in his day believed that concern for the next life is “a form of selfishness.” Consequently, “the liberal preacher has very little to say about the other world. This world is really the centre of all his thoughts; religion itself, and even God, are made merely a means for the betterment of conditions upon this earth.” (Pp. 147-48, 149.)

Machen agreed that our Christian faith must change the way we live here and now, but he insisted that “there can be no applied Christianity unless there be ‘a Christianity to apply.’ That is where the Christian man differs from the modern liberal. The liberal believes that applied Christianity is all there is of Christianity, Christianity being merely a way of life; the Christian man believes that applied Christianity is the result of an initial act of God.” (P. 155.)

[End of quote.]

Machen's observations quoted above are both priceless and timeless. Our present-day Episcopal Church is engaged in the "absolutely impossible task . . . of calling the [self-defined] righteous to repentance"; that is why its message is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Why would those who see themselves as inherently good need a church for other than purely social reasons---to see and be seen?

I don't know about you, but I have printed out the above summary and posted it above my computer, where I can refer to it easily when the next liberal piece of postmodern nonsense comes my way. The classics are called "classic" for good reason!

"Know the Enemy": Is This the General Convention We Started With?

Readers of my lengthy previous post will be thoroughly informed about the convening of the Church's first General Convention, in the fall of 1789 in New York. After the New England contingent, led by the Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury of Connecticut, signed on to the Constitution, the Convention had delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. The Constitution as adopted in that Convention specified that the various diocesan Churches making up the members of the national Church would thereafter meet in general convention every three years. Each diocese was allowed to elect and to seat up to four clergy deputies and four lay deputies in the "House of Clerical and Lay Deputies," as it then styled itself. Each ordained Bishop would be, ex officio, a member of the separate House of Bishops. Either House could propose Canons for the governance of the Church, which required passage in both Houses to take effect, and revisions to the Constitution, which latter would require passage by both Houses at two successive General Conventions in order to take effect. In order to do business, the House of Deputies required that there be present at least one Deputy from each order (clerical and lay) for a majority of the dioceses with Deputies present; the House of Bishops required a simple majority of its members for a quorum.

In the House of Deputies, any deputy could request that a vote be tallied by orders (under current rules, the request must come from at least three deputations). This meant that the lay and clergy Deputies for each diocese would be polled separately, and a majority of each order of deputations present for a majority of the dioceses represented would be required for any measure to pass that House. Since there were a potential four members of each order who could represent each diocese, this meant that if the vote by the clergy representing a particular diocese was split 2-2, for example, that diocese reported its clergy as "divided" on the question, meaning that the clergy order from that diocese failed to pass that measure. Thus if fifty dioceses were present with deputations in each order, there would be required a minimum of 26 votes of 3-1 or better in each of the lay and clergy orders for a measure to pass the House of Deputies.

The House of Bishops, meanwhile, passed each measure by a simple majority of the bishops present and voting. At first this meant just three dioceses were represented, since there were just three consecrated bishops in America in 1789. Later, it meant that each diocese had one vote, since each diocese had just a single bishop. (For many years, as I explained in this post, the presiding bishop did not resign his diocesan seat on succeeding to the position of the chair.) However, as there came to be suffragan, and then assistant, bishops, a diocese could have more than one person representing it in the House, and the emphasis gradually shifted away from an equal representation by dioceses.

This was the polity created by the Constitution of 1789, and despite numerous attempts to change it over the intervening years, it has remained with us ever since. In the House of Deputies, the emphasis is placed upon the single diocese, regardless of the number of parishioners it has in regular attendance. Thus it is that a mere 12% of deputies in the present-day Episcopal Church could hypothetically, through their votes at General Convention, block any measure from passing, as Mark McCall details in his article at pp. 14-15. (By the same token, as Mark McCall points out in the link just given, a mere 38% of Deputies could, if the votes happened to fall out right, enact any measure despite the opposition of the other 62%.) The enactment of this system in 1789 was intended to equalize the relationships among sovereign, independent dioceses, regardless of the number of their parishioners regularly attending services, and that same fact undoubtedly accounts for why the Church has since been unable to change it.

By the same token, representation in the House of Bishops has over the years become skewed in favor of the most populous and wealthy dioceses, who have the financial wherewithal to sustain the greatest number of diocesan, suffragan and assisting bishops. This fact plays a decisive role in any vote which the Constitution entrusts solely to the House of Bishops, such as the deposition of a colleague on charges of alleged "abandonment of communion". It is rendered even more decisive under the outlandish interpretation of Canon IV.9 entertained by the current Presiding Bishop, who reads it to require consent to deposition by only a majority of those bishops actually present and voting at a meeting of the House, instead of, as the language has required ever since its enactment and until the leadership decided to ignore what it says, by a "majority of the whole number of bishops entitled to vote in the House of Bishops". The words thus emphasized require the counting of retired bishops, whether or not they show up at the meeting to vote, because under the Constitution's Art. I, section 2, retired ("resigned") bishops have "a seat and a vote" in the House. The contrary interpretation by the current Presiding Bishop---as uncanonical as it was undemocratic---allowed just 53% of the dioceses represented to "approve" the deposition of the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan from the Diocese of Pittsburgh last September, when those same dioceses were responsible for contributing 72% of the Church's national budget.

So the General Convention of the Episcopal Church is anything but democratic. Many of the current problems in The Episcopal Church, ironically, stem from this one fact. It is ironic because a system enacted to prevent the large dioceses from railroading the small ones has instead become, in the hands of TEC's recent leaders, a vehicle for the activist dioceses to railroad the less political ones. In the story of how this happened will be found the story of the decline of The Episcopal Church.

As noted earlier, the General Convention has met triennially from the outset, for a period of approximately two weeks each time. Those who would say that the General Convention is the Episcopal Church, therefore, have some explaining to do: how is it that a body which meets in just two out of every 156 weeks can in any sense of the word be described as a continuous body? For the fact is, it cannot. Each General Convention is a new gathering, whose Deputies (other than bishops) are elected and authorized to act for just that Convention. This observation underscores yet again the lesson derived from my earlier posts in this series that it is the dioceses who form the ongoing body that we call the Episcopal Church. Those dioceses, in turn, elect every three years the lay and clerical Deputies who assemble in General Convention.

It is true that, over the years, General Convention has authorized standing committees, charged with various responsibilities, to meet in the intervening years, and to submit reports to it for action. (And later there was created the Executive Council, which will be the subject of a post on its own.) Those standing committees, however, cease to exist and function while a General Convention is in session; their place is taken by the various legislative committees of the General Convention itself.

The chief function of General Convention is to legislate on behalf of the Church. Revisions to the Constitution and to the Book of Common Prayer require that the legislation pass in two successive Conventions; revisions to the Church Canons can be enacted in just one session. From the original 17 canons enacted in 1789, occupying six pages, the number has grown to hundreds, requiring more than 250 pages of close print for their collation. It is not that the Church is simply larger and more numerous today than it was in 1789; rather, as is true of government at every level, the process by which legislation compounds itself is more akin to the accretion of barnacles on the hull of a ship: each new gathering of the legislative assembly manages to find the need to tinker, to revise, to clarify, to proscribe that which was formerly optional, or discretionary---to add, in short, and only rarely to subtract. The revisions to the Canons to be proposed at General Convention 2009 are some of farthest-reaching that have ever been put forward to date.

As I noted in my earlier post, the Journals of the Church Conventions for its first fifty years are available for downloading online. (Volume I is here; Volume II is here.) A perusal of those volumes shows that other than revising and adding new canons, and authorizing union with newly formed dioceses, the chief business of General Convention was receiving reports on the status of the Church in each of its dioceses and in the several seminaries. There are various resolutions enacted, but they have to do almost entirely with ecclesiastical matters. In sum, the deputies over those years came together, discussed and reviewed the state of the Church, enacted a few canons, and went home to await the next meeting in three years.

Contrast that description with the preparations necessary for a General Convention today. From a simple meeting at which deputies largely bore their own expenses, General Convention has mushroomed to the point that over four million dollars is budgeted for the coming gathering at Anaheim in 2009. And as its Executive Officer points out, General Convention today is about more than mere legislating:

Convention is more than legislation. One of the most interesting parts of convention is the Exhibit Hall. The Exhibit Hall reminds me of an oriental souk: it is a marketplace of goods and ideas in which the organizations and interest groups within the church present their wares, recruit members and do their best to influence legislation. It is a colorful part of convention, and it would not be General Convention without it.

Many church-related organizations hold meetings in conjunction with convention, and there are lunches and dinners hosted by seminaries, provinces, societies, boards and staff offices of the church. One gathering not to be missed is the triennial meeting of the Episcopal Church Women. The ECW meeting has changed over the past several decades; it focuses on the mission and service of the church, and many of the church’s most distinguished members are invited to address this body.

General Convention is a combination of legislative assembly, bazaar of goods and services and family reunion. It is one of the most exciting and, truth be told, one of the most awe-inspiring gatherings in the world.

One would be hard-pressed to find an account of any of the Conventions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which used the word "exciting" as a descriptor. Conventions today not only have a complete program; they have a "theme", replete with a specially designed logo.

The Rev. William H. Swatos, Jr. did an in-depth study of The Episcopal Church in 2003-04, from which I have quoted before: "A Primacy of Systems," published in Roozen & Nieman, Eds., Church. Identity and Change (Eerdmans 2005). His study involved some fifty-five extended interviews with church leadership and staff, both current and retired. He notes:

Another of our interviewees, with a quarter-century of experience as a deputy, aptly described General Convention as consisting of "a representative cross-section of Episcopal Church activists." That is, the General Convention hardly reflects the average Sunday churchgoer. General Convention deputies are selected at diocesan conventions, whose membership in turn is selected by congregations. Although dioceses pay for the expenses of their deputies to conventions, thus removing a direct basis for socioeconomic discrimination in deputy selection, the duration of the convention itself plus pre- and post-convention meeting expectations---not to mention possible appointment to an interim body---ensure that the majority of lay deputies are likely to be either people with excess leisure time or people with a cause. . . .

Precisely: "people with excess leisure time, or people with a cause." From being a body concerned almost exclusively with ecclesiastical matters, General Convention has changed into a body more concerned with social justice issues. A review of the summary of actions taken at GC 2006 shows topic headings such as "Children", "Civil Rights", "Diversity", "Economic Development", "Education", "Environment", "Equality", "HIV/AIDS", "Human Rights", "Immigration", "Justice", "Labor", "Peace", "Poverty", "Reconciliation", "Warfare", "Women", and "Youth".

Although General Convention is empowered to set Church policy in these and other areas, its limited duration makes any kind of ongoing policy supervision or follow-through impossible. Such responsibility must be delegated, either to the interim standing committees, to the Executive Council, to the permanent staff at 815, or to the Presiding Bishop. These bodies in turn impose their own impress on the policy in question, and largely determine how (and even whether) it will be carried into effect. The result is that after they are published in the Journal, the resolutions enacted by any given General Convention assume mostly a historical significance---and not a very great significance, at that. William Swatos reports:

. . . A recent move by General Convention to track the resolutions process has created an interesting data set for a statistical analysis of General Convention resolutions. Beginning in 1994, the General Convention office reported on responses from the dioceses to Gneral Convention resolutions "referred to dioceses for action" . . . . By 1997 (reporting for the 1994 convention resolutions) . . . [o]nly twenty-two resolutions were referred to the dioceses, but . . . whereas only 6 percent of the resolutions in 1994 received no action from any of the reporting dioceses, this proportion rose to 32 percent in 1997. . . . If we take the combination of considered (but not acted upon) and not considered at all, then the negative figure rises to 32 percent in 1994 and 45 percent in 1997.

The low reporting rate for 1997---barely over half, less than half if the nondomestic dioceses are included---combined with a "rejection rate" of almost half among those that did report suggests a considerable gap between General Convention's priorities and those of the dioceses. This is doubly curious, because the representatives to General Convention are sent from the diocesan level and are canonically bound to report back to the dioceses, while the dioceses are canonically bound to make provision for these reports. Yet in spite of this, it appears that in the majority of dioceses the majority of General Convention resolutions fall on a deaf ear, and that this is increasingly so---in spite of a decrease by over half in the total number of resolutions referred.

One does not have to look far, I would submit, for the reason for the disconnect that the Rev. Swatos describes. Listen once more to the Executive Officer of General Convention as he describes the role which the deputies see themselves as fulfilling in the Church:

Deputies are not delegates; that is, they are not elected to represent the electing dioceses.

Deputies vote their conscience for the good of the church. They cannot be instructed to vote one way or another, for to do so would preclude godly debate and preempt the work of the Holy Spirit. . . .

(I have added the emphasis). Is it any wonder, then, that since the deputies refuse to see themselves as representing the dioceses which elect them and send them, the dioceses in turn feel free to ignore what those deputies decide to enact?

What we have today in General Convention is an unmoored monstrosity. Millions and millions of dollars and man- (and woman-) hours are expended on an "exciting" experience that in the end accomplishes little except self-gratification and the further isolation of those at the top from those in the pews. The problem is, however, that some of General Convention's actions---such as the adoption of Canons, revisions to the Prayer Book, and approvals of appointments---do have a long-term effect on the institution. But without any ownership for their actions, deputies are free to say that they are "following the Holy Spirit", and thus are accountable only to their conscience and their God. As the President of the House, Bonnie Anderson, put it in an April 2008 letter to deputies:

“In the Episcopal Church the belief that God speaks uniquely through bishops, laity, priests and deacons, enables our participatory structure and allows a fullness of revelation and insight that must not be lost in this important time of discernment . . . . [T]he joint work of the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops is the highest institutional expression of this belief.”

This remark actually invokes, as George Conger points out in the article linked, a magisterial role for General Convention that is without precedent in the annals of the Church. The claiming of such a role is all the more remarkable when one considers that just as the Pope controls membership in the College of Cardinals, so do the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies control membership on all the standing commissions and interim bodies of General Convention. The Presiding Bishop appoints the episcopal members, and the President appoints the lay and clerical members. In the opinion archives over at Episcopal News Service is a letter written on September 9, 2008 from a church archdeacon in Australia expressing dismay that the American church would resort to such an undemocratic procedure:

Perhaps it is that I am an Anglican from the other side of the Pacific but the description of the method of appointing committees of the General Convention looks like just about the most undemocratic possible.

In a Church that used to be renowned for its broad based democratic processes how is it that all committee appointments fall to just two people — Bonnie Anderson and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori? Surely it is the Convention, itself, that should appoint its own procedural committees.

What has happened, that such power is concentrated in so few hands? Since some sort of formal establishment of the modern Anglican Communion a century and a half ago Anglicans have been determined to have power dispersed. We have not wanted magisterial power at the center of our international or national lives. We have seen the diocese as the fundamental building block with the unilateral power of the bishop extremely limited by synods and standing committees.

But the American Church seems to be concentrating more and more power in the center and removing power from dioceses and even the deputies of the General Convention.

I thought you guys fought a Revolution to make sure that you were never ruled by a king and his flunkies.You divided power and made sure it was not concentrated. From Australia your system for appointing committees looks very un-American, and most certainly very undemocratic.

The Rev. Edwin Byford is correct. General Convention has gone completely adrift from its moorings, led by two captains who claim that the voice of God speaks through them and the deliberations they lead. It has gone so far astray as to render it almost irrelevant to its original purpose.

In the past, delusions of grandeur have always preceded a fall from grace. General Convention 2009 is shaping up to be the grandest Convention ever. When the fall comes---and mind you, it will---I fear there may not be enough contrition left to go around, because when you are doing the work of the Holy Spirit, there is no time to look back. Episcopalians, pray for your Church:

that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

This prayer was part of the divine services that opened the Church's first Convention in 1789, and continued to be a part of those services until the changes made to the Prayer Book in 1979 relegated it to an entirely optional role. There is all the difference in the world between praying for the Holy Spirit's guidance for the Church, and in claiming such guidance for yourself and those who faithfully follow you---perchance, it may be, over the cliff. May our present leadership see their error in time.