What Ails the
Episcopalians
Its numbers and coffers
shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the
traditional faithful.
By
JAY AKASIE
Episcopalians
from around the country gathered here this week for their church's 77th
triennial General Convention, which ended Thursday. Although other Protestant
denominations have national governing councils, the Episcopal Church's
triennial gathering stands apart. For starters, it's one of the world's largest
such legislative entities, with more than 1,000 members.
General
Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere.
For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey
steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of
the finest wines.
During
the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper
chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to
develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions
condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote, along with
a resolution to "dismantle the effects of the doctrine of discovery,"
in effect an apology to Native Americans for exposing them to Christianity.
But
the party may be over for the Episcopal Church, and so, probably, its
experiment with democratic governance. Among the pieces of legislation that
came before their convention was a resolution calling for a task force to study
transforming the event into a unicameral—that is, a one-house—body. On
Wednesday, a resolution to "re-imagine" the church's governing body
passed unanimously.
Formally
changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the
reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive
committees under the direct supervision of the church's secretive and
authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the
agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two
houses.
Bishop
Schori is known for brazenly carrying a metropolitan cross during church
processions. With its double horizontal bars, the metropolitan cross is a
liturgical accouterment that's typically reserved for Old World bishops. And
her reign as presiding bishop has been characterized by actions more akin to a
potentate than a clergywoman watching over a flock.
In
recent years she's sued breakaway, traditionalist dioceses which find the
mother church increasingly radical. Church legislators have asked publicly how
much the legal crusades have cost, to no avail. In the week before this
summer's convention, Bishop Schori sent shock waves through the church by
putting forth her own national budget without consulting the convention's
budget committee—consisting partly of laymen—which until now has traditionally
drafted the document.
Whatever
its cost, the litigation against breakaway dioceses—generally, demanding that
they return church buildings and other assets—has added to the national
church's financial problems. Many dioceses are no longer willing or able to
cough up money to support the national organization, and its bank accounts are
running dry. On Monday, for example, the church announced that its headquarters
at 815 2nd Avenue in midtown Manhattan—which includes a presiding bishop's
full-floor penthouse with wraparound terrace—is up for sale.
In
the past, General Convention, for all its excesses, at least gave ordinary
laymen a sense that they had a democratic voice in governing the church. But
many Episcopal leaders have chosen to focus more on secular politics than on
religion over the years. Donald Hook, author of "The Plight of the Church
Traditionalist: A Last Apology," estimates that church membership has
declined to fewer than one million today from three million in 1970. This is
another reason, along with financial woes, to save money with a slimmed-down
legislature.
And
yet there are important issues at stake if laymen are further squeezed out of
what was once a transparent legislative process. A long-standing quest by
laymen to celebrate the Eucharist—even taking on functions of ordained
ministers to consecrate bread and wine for Holy Communion, which is a favorite
cause of the church's left wing—would likely be snuffed out in a unicameral
convention in which senior clergy held sway.
Also
in jeopardy would be the ability of ordinary laymen to stop the rewriting, in
blunt modern language and with politically correct intent, of the church's
historic Book of Common Prayer. The revisionist bishops who would hold sway
over a unicameral convention in the future haven't hid their desire to do away
with all connections to Thomas Cranmer, who was appointed archbishop of
Canterbury by Henry VIII. He was a classic figure in the English Reformation.
But today the man and his prayer book are deemed too traditional by some church
bishops.
For
some, the writing on the wall is already clear. On Wednesday, the entire
delegation from the diocese of South Carolina—among the very last of the
traditionalist holdouts—stormed out of the convention.
Mr. Akasie, a journalist
and Episcopalian, lives in New York City.
A version of this article
appeared July 13, 2012, on page A9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street
Journal, with the headline: What Ails the Episcopalians.
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