wfn.org | Episcopalians: Executive Council wraps up triennium with reflection, action

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

May 6, 2003

2003-097

Episcopalians: Executive Council wraps up triennium with 
reflection, action

by Jan Nunley

(ENS) Winding up the business of the last three years and moving 
on towards this summer's General Convention was the dominant 
theme of the last Executive Council meeting of the triennium, 
held at a conference center in Ellicott City, Maryland, April 
28-May 1.

The council spent a day evaluating its performance and 
"graduated" 19 of its 38 members, who will be replaced in 
elections held in Minneapolis this summer. But the "class of 
2003" left continuing members with plenty to do and think about, 
including revisions to a handbook for the next Council and 
preparations for renovating the Episcopal Church Center in New 
York.

Members also passed resolutions calling for opposition to 
expansion or extension of the USA PATRIOT Act and other 
curtailments of civil rights and adopting a policy of 
disinvestment from U.S. defense contractors. 

Rising above gated community'

House of Deputies president George Werner opened the meeting 
with a call to reject what he called the "conventional wisdom of 
the gated community" as a model for the church.  "The 
conventional wisdom' is not the Gospel," Werner admonished. 
"Christianity must never be a gated community.'  The ultimate 
figure of vulnerability in all of art is that of our savior with 
his arms extended on the cross."

"As we prepare for the 74th General Convention of the Episcopal 
Church we are called outside to meet the challenges of the 
pandemic of AIDS, to global debt, to genocide, to the blocking 
of immigrants, to the potential loss of habeas corpus and other 
values, which once made us the hope of the world," Werner said.  
"This General Convention has an opportunity to lead the daring 
and the vulnerable, wisely risking as the wounded loving hands 
of Christ.Therefore, if there is tolerance, if there is grace 
and generosity of spirit between our houses, if we trust our 
system and allow our committees to do their work, if we allow 
the drama to play out, I truly believe that we can rise above 
the conventional wisdom' of our wider community and this moment 
in history and be the church at its best."

In his opening remarks to the council, Presiding Bishop Frank 
Griswold related a question asked by Archbishop of Canterbury 
Rowan Williams at a private dinner following his Trinity 
Institute presentation in New York: "Are we [Anglicans] a 
communion or a federation?" The answer given to that question, 
he said, has a lot to do with how we view the work of 
reconciliation in the church: as "God's work accomplished in 
Christ" or as "human getting-along." To live a "resurrection 
life," he continued, is to experience the "healing and 
transformation of our desires" so that "the structure of our 
desire is to conform to God's desire."

"When we last met I didn't know how much I was going to be in 
the public eye," he continued wryly, reporting on the aftermath 
of critical comments he had made in a January interview about 
the way Americans and American foreign policy are viewed abroad. 
"Everything has been in absolute terms" in response to his 
statements, he said, and many of those responses reflect a view 
that "the only reality is the United States and its public 
policies" and have overlooked the fact that the question of 
"global citizenship" is a vital one for Christians. "How can we, 
by virtue of our citizenship in the body of Christ, help our 
fellow citizens to see globally?" he inquired.

PATRIOT Act rollback urged

Griswold's concern was reflected in two resolutions received 
from the council's National Concerns subcommittee. The first 
expressed "deepening concern" with "emerging policies and 
practices of our government" that target immigrants from the 
predominantly Muslim countries of South Asia. Specifically, the 
measure opposed "any further expansion or extension" of the USA 
PATRIOT ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing 
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") 
Act, passed in October, 2001. The act was originally due to 
"sunset" in 2005, but moves to extend it indefinitely and 
further expand it (the so-called "Patriot Act II") are underway 
in Congress, said the Rev. Richard Parkins, director of 
Episcopal Migration Ministries. 

"This is an area in which I work every day," said council member 
and federal magistrate James E. Bradberry of Southern Virginia, 
who with other federal judges has been critical of the 
government's legal treatment of criminal suspects with Middle 
Eastern backgrounds. Last September, according to news reports, 
Bradberry blasted government officials who sought to detain an 
Egyptian without bond for lying on government forms, and in 
February he repeated his criticisms in a case where government 
agents sought to detain a naturalized Jordanian on charges that 
Bradberry said might not have resulted in the same request for 
"an Anglo-Saxon.'"

"The PATRIOT Act has had damaging effects on our civil rights, 
and what all of us need to understand is that the actions in 
[it] cover us as well as the people that we're aiming to get out 
of the terrorism business," Bradberry continued. "The problem is 
that we cannot afford to give up so many of these rights or we 
wind up literally worse than the people we're pursuingThe 
second version of the PATRIOT Act would allow secret arrests 
with no requirement for accountability. It ought to send a chill 
over your heart."

Bishop Catherine Roskam of New York agreed with Bradberry, 
adding that she "cannot tell you how offensive it is to New 
Yorkers that 9/11, which we experienced and which we suffered 
through, is consistently used as an excuse for this kind of 
oppressive legislation." The council passed the resolution 
unanimously.

Divestment from military industries

The second National Concerns committee resolution, aimed at 
disinvestment from companies that manufacture military goods, 
generated more debate -- mostly over the difficulty of 
determining which companies make what products. 

Prepared by the council's Social Responsibility in Investments 
Committee, the resolution was a response to frustration with the 
ineffectiveness of shareholder resolutions filed with defense 
contractors. Such resolutions, asking for actions such as the 
adoption of ethical criteria for military contracts and reports 
on foreign military sales, seem to have little impact on company 
practices, and few receive enough votes to be refiled at 
subsequent shareholder meetings.

The solution, according to the Rev. Brian Grieves, director of 
Peace and Justice Ministries, was to set up a so-called "social 
screen" that would obligate the church to disinvest from 
companies that are among the top five US defense contractors and 
listed among the top 50 that receive more than half their 
revenues from military contracts. 

The top five military contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, 
Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Among the 
other firms affected are BAE Systems and Engineered Support 
Systems; BP Amoco, also on the list, is subject to divestment 
because of its business ventures in Sudan.

Corporate mergers and diversification make it difficult to link 
individual manufacturers and specific munitions. "It's probably 
the case that one company is not the sole producer of land 
mines," explained council member Rebecca Snow of Alaska. "One 
company produces the hardware and another the trigger and 
another some wire that goes into it. That is the problem with 
military contracts -- they could be for uniforms or food or 
thousand-dollar toilet seats." 

Bishop Francisco Duque of Colombia also pointed out that 
chemical manufacturers are frequently involved in 
military-related tasks, such as the fumigation of coca fields in 
his country, that result in the deaths of animals and food 
crops, pollute water supplies, and cause disease in children.

But some members cautioned that a blanket policy of divestment 
from defense contractors would raise further moral dilemmas for 
the church -- questions of lumping the peacekeeping missions of 
the military with its warfighting functions, of the peacetime 
benefits of military-funded research, and the effects of 
divestment on defense industry employees. 

After a pause for prayer, the measure passed 24-10 with two 
abstentions on a roll call vote. 

Home office improvement planned

While a good portion of the past year's council deliberations 
were taken up with the question of whether to proceed with 
moving the Episcopal Church Center's operations to the campus of 
the General Theological Seminary in New York, Church Center 
management still had to tackle the question of what to do with 
the current headquarters, now more than 40 years old. When 
agreements on the seminary project fell through in December, the 
question of what to do with the building at 815 Second Avenue, 
just a block from the United Nations, moved to the front burner.

The major problem with the building, according to treasurer 
Ralph O'Hara, is the  presence of asbestos in the flooring and 
ceiling tiles. No renovation of the space can be done until the 
asbestos is safely contained and removed -- and that means 
gutting the space, O'Hara explained. 

"The need for it is unquestionably there, and we are, in effect, 
behind the times in doing it," he said. 

The present Church Center was built to accommodate a staff of 
more than 300, plus other agencies of the church, but now houses 
100 fewer staff members. Potentially, a renovated and 
reorganized Church Center would free up to three floors worth of 
space, which could be rented out, providing what O'Hara called 
"a sizeable income stream" for the church. Potential uses under 
consideration include commercial retail space on the first floor 
and a conference area and computer training space on the 
mezzanine level. O'Hara said consultants have told Church Center 
management that a year-and-a-half long "phased renovation," 
which would not require moving operations out of the building, 
is possible. 

Total cost of the renovation project is currently estimated at 
$20-24 million. The council unanimously passed a resolution 
authorizing $750,000 to hire an owners' representative and an 
architectural firm and continue with plans for the renovation.

Wounds healed but identified

The council heard from director of communication Dan England 
about the upcoming Episcopal Ad Project and an update on 
progress towards offering church documents translated into 
Spanish and other languages. Archdeacon Helena-Rose Houldcroft 
of the Diocese of Qu'Appelle brought an update on issues facing 
the Anglican Church of Canada, including the native schools 
settlement and the New Westminster controversy.

Members took half a day to complete anti-racism training and an 
entire day, most of it in private meetings, to evaluate the 
council's performance during the last triennium. Encouraged to 
reflect on what assumptions and unspoken norms they encountered, 
members spoke of communications breakdowns and the frustrations 
of unclear relationships of accountability between the council, 
its officers, and national staff members. Some of those concerns 
also emerged in conversations about a revised handbook for 
council members, put into its final form at the meeting.

Hopeful signs identified for the future included "the ability to 
learn from history and move on," the spiritual leadership of the 
presiding bishop, the inclusiveness of diversity in worship, and 
the caring exhibited by council and staff members alike. "The 
first thing the resurrected Jesus does is to show the disciples 
his wounds," Roskam pointed out during the evaluation. "There is 
no divine cosmetic surgery' -- his wounds are healed, but 
identified, and we need to move to the same place."

Other items addressed by resolution at the meeting included:

- acceptance of audited financial statements for the past fiscal 
year;

- a call for a task force to investigate financial problems at 
St. John's School in Guam;

- establishment of a committee to evaluate a request from the 
Episcopal Church Foundation for money to expand its gift 
planning program;

- a request for the Director of Research to provide an annual 
update on the ordination and deployment of women clergy;

- support for an educational resource and video on cultural 
diversity in the ordination process;

- support for the establishment of an endowment fund for the 
Episcopal Church in the Philippines.

The council's next meeting is set for October 24-27 at the Lake 
Geneva Conference Center in Wisconsin.

------

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