wfn.org | Episcopalians: At Executive Council, Griswold,Werner reflect on 'uncertain time'

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

October 24, 2002

2002-248

Episcopalians: At Executive Council, Griswold,Werner reflect 
on 'uncertain time'

by Jan Nunley

(ENS) Immediate financial issues, including a proposed budget 
for the next triennium and plans for a joint project of the 
Episcopal Church Center and the General Theological Seminary in 
New York, dominated the fall meeting of the Executive Council in 
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, October 11-14. But in the background 
loomed the concerns of a nation, and a world, contemplating war.

"We are in an uncertain time," said Presiding Bishop Frank T. 
Griswold in opening remarks to the gathering. "People are 
prickly, people are unsettled" by war and institutional 
failure--especially corporate malfeasance and the pedophilia 
scandals of the Roman Catholic Church. In such a time, Griswold 
said, it's useful to take stock of what's going on personally, 
communally and globally for signs and sources of hope.

He cited his own visits to the Gathering the neXt Generation 
(GtNG) conference in Indianapolis and the Episcopal Youth Event 
in Laramie, Wyoming, earlier this year as just such signs, and 
found himself "encouraged by the spirit, warmth, generosity, 
eagerness and hopefulness" of the generations of Episcopalians 
following his own. He found signs of the diversity of the 
church, he said, in a visit to the Diocese of the Rio Grande, 
and signs of the church's "diverse center" in an encounter with 
a group of five relatively new bishops at the House of Bishops 
meeting in Cleveland this fall. 

Money for war, but not for AIDS

He also spoke of his disappointment at the drive towards an 
expensive war with Iraq by the Bush administration in the midst 
of pressing concerns such as the AIDS pandemic in Africa. 
Referring to a lecture by Stephen 
Lewis, special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, presented at 
the bishops' fall meeting in Cleveland, Griswold said that "the 
rich nations could take care of [the AIDS pandemic] but do not." 

"It is horrifying that we spend a billion dollars a day on 
war and none on AIDS," he said, adding that an entire generation 
of Africans between the ages of 25 and 44 is "disappearing" 
because of the disease. When he attempted to address that and 
the humanitarian crisis in the Mideast at a meeting with Bush's 
national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, in September, 
Griswold said he was "struck by her response"--not disinterest, 
but a clear sense that the administration's "attention really is 
turned elsewhere." He said he found it disturbing that the US 
will "focus briefly on something, we unsettle it and then we 
move on to something else," and cited the Afghanistan conflict 
as an example.

Party spirit condemned

House of Deputies president George Werner had conflicts in 
the church on his mind in his opening remarks. Recalling a 
recent gathering at which he was asked to speak to seminarians	
about his years in ministry, Werner said he realized that "more 
than half my ordained life has been spent in the toxic 
atmosphere of a party spirit" in which "you spend time looking 
at others to find fault." Such a spirit "tells the truth but 
never the whole truth," he argued. Werner went on to blast what 
he saw as a redefinition of orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church by 
partisans who "shoot first and paint the targets later." "It 
excludes me and others," he said, "and that hurts."

At its meeting, the Executive Council endorsed statements by 
both Griswold and the House of Bishops urging the Bush 
administration and Congress to "pursue resolution of the present 
crisis regarding Iraq in company with our allies and with other 
nations, resisting the use of absolute force until the need for 
a military solution has been unmistakably established." 

Council also passed a resolution opposing HR-2357, "The 
Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act," introduced 
by Republican representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, 
which will be coming up for a suspension vote in the next few 
weeks. Current federal law states that houses of worship, like 
other 501(c)(3) organizations, cannot legally engage in partisan 
political activities and retain their tax-exempt status. The 
Jones bill would allow houses of worship to use their tax-exempt 
contributions for political purposes and to endorse candidates.

------

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News 
Service.