On the 80th General Convention

Dear Cathedral,

I have spent the better part of a week in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Episcopal Church General Convention. General Convention is a national gathering that meets once every three years, but due to the pandemic, our 80th Convention was delayed by one year. As many of the founders of the Episcopal Church were also founders of this nation, we are a strange blend of democracy and prayer.

We operate like the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches in that we ordain deacons, priests, and bishops which are ontological orders that last a lifetime. Still, we also believe that the laity should participate in the church’s governance to the highest levels and that the least inadequate form of governance is democracy. So we pray a lot, argue a lot, and vote a lot!

Each diocese elects four clergy deputies and four lay deputies to represent us at the General Convention and vote on church matters. We approve liturgical changes, make statements about our beliefs, and elect leaders. As with any democratic process, it is full of debate and often messy, but I believe it is the best way humans know how to be fair and allow everyone a voice in leadership.

This year’s Convention was condensed to four days. There were no vendors or exhibits, and most committees did their work online before the Convention. We were all masked, and we tested for COVID every day. As of yesterday, there were only 17 new COVID cases in a group of about 1,000 people, so I think things went well from that standpoint.

Our most profound work right now is in history and racial reconciliation. Most dioceses look into their past and recognize that many of their bishops and priests enslaved people and that much of the church’s wealth is due to the work of those of color. Significant research is also happening on the many church-run Indigenous boarding schools. Many children were traumatized or even died in those schools.

The Diocese of Maryland has created a fund of one million dollars to reinvest into this city’s redlined parts. A coalition for reconciliation has been formed at the national level to come up with further actions needed. It is time for us to be brutally honest and generous with the reallocation of resources amassed in unjust systems. (If you would like to know more about the work that we are doing at the Cathedral, please consider taking a Sacred Ground class or contact Owene Courtney, our Sacred Ground facilitator, to be plugged into our racial reconciliation ministries.

We elected a President of the House of Deputies, a lay woman of color, and our Vice President, an Indigenous woman priest. Both have excellent qualifications and spoke with passion about their leadership. You may listen to the new President Julia Ayala Harris’s sermon here.

I was proud to represent you and grateful to have a seat at the table at this Convention. Again, democracy is messy and sometimes very frustrating, but it is what I would call the least inadequate solution.

God bless you. I am glad to be home.

With love in Christ,

Kate+