A Young Person's Report From General Convention

Late last week, Adam and I went over to Indianapolis to attend the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. (We only went to convention for a day, but the whole thing lasts about a week, and many people, especially the people who have to be there like the delegates and the Bishops, stay for the entire length of time.)

For those of you who aren't Episcopalians, here's a little explanation: every three years, the entire Episcopal Church gets together and decides stuff. We're not a democratic church, per se, because we still have a pretty hierarchical structure, but we do incorporate democratic principles into our governance. So every three years, the two Houses of the Church meet and discuss/debate/pass/reject changes to Church policy and structure. The House of Bishops is composed of all the Bishops in the Church, both current and retired, and is headed up by the Presiding Bishop (the official head of our Church). The House of Deputies is composed of parties of deputies from each diocese, and each diocese gets the same amount of deputies in the House. (In this way, it's quite different from, say, the US House of Representatives, in which representatives are allocated by population.) Some deputies are ordained; others are laypeople. I've observed that there's usually an equal number of each order represented.

So the deputies and the Bishops and anyone else who's interested all show up at the convention, and they consider drafted resolutions, and they write new resolutions, and they amend previous resolutions, and then they vote on them. Resolutions have to be passed by BOTH houses in exactly the same language in order for them to become Church policy. And pretty much anything can be debated and decided at convention-- from changing the Canons of the Church to reorganizing the structure of certain branches of Church governance to changing or emphasizing certain social priorities to budgeting and passing new economic policies. Also, during most legislative hearings, people are permitted to testify in favor or against the pending resolutions, and pretty much anyone can speak--experts, Bishops, priests, regular people in the pews, whomever. It's all messy and kind of frustrating, and that's pretty much how I think faith in action should be--all over the place and difficult and kind of a pain in the ass. Like, y'know, democracy.

 Adam and I spent all of Friday at convention, and I was pretty much in heaven. Everyone we met kept saying, "Wow, you WANTED to come here? But this stuff is so boring and bureaucratic!" And I just kept thinking, well, yeah, that's why I like it. You're talking to the girl who did Model UN in both high school and college (even going on to the National Model UN in my junior year) and was a delegate to Girls' State and did mock Congress and pretty much gets a contact high from hearing people cite Robert's Rules of Order. I love this shit.

Anyways, we went to Eucharist in the morning, which was interesting and kind of weird, seeing as I don't think I've ever worshiped with two thousand people at once. I dunno how the megachurch folks can stand it! Communion takes forever with that many people. At least they used real bread, like they do at GTS and, y'know, every other church in the world except St. John's (*insert loud throat-clearing here*). And also, you will notice that there was none of that intinction nonsense going on, since again, ONLY ST. JOHN'S DOES THAT. :D

What was cool was that, since the Episcopal Church is worldwide and there were representatives from all the dioceses in the world, parts of each Eucharist every day were done in different languages. That day the included language was Hmong, which was cool to hear; the day before, I've been told, was Spanish. It's too bad we didn't come on the day they did French--I could have said the Lord's Prayer in French!

After Eucharist we sat in on a legislative session in the House of Deputies, which pretty much consisted of people arguing about whether or not the NEXT convention should be paperless, to which I say: that's a great idea, but maybe let's focus on this convention FIRST. ;) We got to see them all voting and stuff, which was cool, because they have a whole system for counting votes. First they just have everyone say "yes" or "no" aloud, and then if it's not a clear majority they make everyone hold up colored cards, green for yes and red for no. If it's not clear from that showing, either, then it's time for a vote tally, and everyone has to vote using an electronic keypad. Then the votes are tallied by machine and the percentages show up on the front screens. It's nifty!

Here's a picture of the "yes" vote:

Then we sat in on a House of Bishops meeting, but it was dreadfully dull since they were pretty much just talking to one another about how much they love each other.

And then we wandered around the exhibition hall for most of the rest of the day. We met lots of new friends and saw lots of old ones, including folks from GTS, the former curate of our home parish, and a friend of mine from high school (!). We got tons of cool buttons, and each of us bought a tee-shirt; Adam got one that says "Blessed Are The Peacemakers" and I got one that says "God is not a boy's name" from the EWC.

I've been pleased with the way the resolutions have gone so far--I was very glad to see that they passed a resolution prohibiting discrimination against transgendered clergy and laypersons, and I was equally glad to see that they refused to authorize The Message as an appropriate translation to be used in church. (Explanation: The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible, not an actual translation. While it's useful for Bible study or personal reflection or Sunday school/youth group lessons, I don't find paraphrase appropriate for actual services. We hear so many paraphrases of Biblical teachings already in our culture--most of them inaccurate-- that I think we should use Sunday services as an opportunity to confront people with as accurate a translation of the original Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic as we can manage to produce.) I'm encouraged by the selling of 815 (the church's main building in NYC) and the relocation of the central offices elsewhere, as well as with many of the other restructuring changes, although I'm skeptical of the Tea Party-esque ethos of many of those advocating restructuring.

I feel kind of torn about the presence of young people at the convention. I was both heartened to see that there were many, many young people there, and disheartened to note that almost none of them were there in an official capacity (as deputies, to deliver testimony, etc.) It seems to me that most of the young people who came just arrived on their own initiative--which is great, because it's nice to know that other people my age care that much about the Church, but also kind of sucks because it means the Church still isn't giving us any authority and still doesn't really care that much about involving us in governance.

I think the Church often displays the same attitude towards young people as it does towards poor people: it's eager to help them, to provide aid and comfort, to go out and come to them, but it's really very loathe to actually include them, to consider them a valid part and parcel of the Church, to consider them full members rather than just beneficiaries. Does that make sense?

Anyways, we had a great time, and I wish we could have stayed longer. Overall, General Convention made me feel very good about our denomination and the direction in which we're headed. And in light of the Presbyterians' contentious General Assembly last week in Pittsburgh, and in light of our own relatively drama-free meeting, it was nice not to be the "controversial" church group this year! :)