At long last I have time to recap Day Two of Synod Assembly, when we got down to the brass tacks of legislative action.
We had two memorials before us on the sexuality issue. For those unaccustomed to ELCA polity and related lingo - a memorial is a message that we as a synod send to the churchwide assembly, usually advising them to do or not do something in particular.
The churchwide assembly is not bound by these memorials- they can choose to pay attention to them or to ignore them. Often, a memorial can be the thing that gets a ball rolling for the national church - in fact, I believe we are currently at the place we are at in these conversations on sexuality because several years ago, a synod (or perhaps several synods) memorialized the churchwide assembly to generate a social statement on sexuality, and the assembly agreed that would be a good thing to do. Similarly, the Book of Faith initiative is also the result of a synod memorializing the churchwide assembly to "increase Biblical literacy and fluency for the sake of the world," and the churchwide assembly decided that this, too, would be a good thing to do.
The memorials before us were not so much to get a new initiative going, they were more of a weighing in with our opinion on controversial matters currently before the church. One memorial was advising the churchwide assembly to adapt their rules for adoption, so that passage of both the social statement and the recommendations on rostering policies require a "supermajority" (2/3 of the assembly), as opposed to a regular majority (51% - the current standard). The other memorial was advising the churchwide assembly to reject: the sexuality statement, the policy recommendations, and "the concept that individual members, congregations, or synods have the authority to interpret or set aside Scripture on these matters apart from the consensus of the Church." Additionally, this memorial encouraged the churchwide assembly to accept the resolutions from Dissenting Opinion One (including but not limited to putting the kabosh on all discussions of sexuality for the next decade).
I missed the discussion and vote on the supermajority memorial, and the beginning of the debate on the other memorial, as did a number of other folks, because we were getting ready for worship. We were installing authorized lay leaders in the service, and the new lay leaders and their mentors (of which I was one) were instructed to be vested by 9:30 am; the choir (of which I was also one) was also instructed to be downstairs to warm up by 9:30. This meant that probably 20-30 voting members were not on the floor of the assembly when these discussions began, and had no inkling of what we were missing. When I left the floor to vest they were in the middle of somebody's report, I did not anticipate them getting to legislative matters at all before worship, in part because they had been so careful the day before about not dismissing the elections committee to count ballots during the "quasi-committee of the whole," so that elections committee members could participate in the discussion.
I don't believe it was a sneaky political ploy, just an unfortunate miscommunication (the Bishop was honestly shocked in the afternoon plenary when he saw how many hands went up asking for the paper ballot we weren't given in the morning session) - but it was still unacceptable, and believe me, the synod office will be hearing from me about it so that they don't fall into the same situation in the future.
All of which is to say, again - I missed all the initial discussion (which from reports, started to get a little nasty on memorial #2), and the vote on the supermajority memorial (which was approved).
When we picked the matter back up in the afternoon, a colleague submitted a substitutionary memorial, that was not really a friendly substitution to the original memorial at all - the whereases were much more focused on lifting up the gifts of ALL members of the church and finding a way for ALL to serve, and the resolveds were to accept the social statement but reject any rostering policy changes for now, while continuing the discussion to find ways for our homosexual brothers and sisters to serve as rostered leaders of the church, and equipping and encouraging them as strong lay leaders in the meantime.
More debate and discussion ensued. The tenor of the discussion was less civil on this day, especially from those who favored the original memorial (one colleague kept trying to turn the discussion into more of a point-counterpoint debate and was very contemptuous of any argument he disagreed with; another resorted to the old "you're abandoning the Bible" ad hominum, then jumped from the matter at hand into a non sequitur about bestiality - I think in a lot of people's minds, they basically discredited themselves by their rhetoric and their tactics).
Ultimately, we voted to substitute the new memorial for the original, and then voted the new memorial down (85 in favor; 136 opposed), I'm sure because it had enough in it for everyone to hate: both those who wanted to reject the social statement and those who wanted to accept the policy recommendations weren't going to vote for it.
So in the end, we haven't sent any word of advice on to the churchwide assembly on this matter (other than recommending passage by a supermajority), which I think is actually a good thing. Because we believe (or at least, we claim to believe) that the Holy Spirit is at work in the workings of the assembly, thus we ought to trust the Spirit to do its thing, just as we ought to trust those elected to the churchwide assembly to be prayerful people with discerning hearts and minds in this and all other matters before the church. Maybe it's time our words and actions (my own included) reflected more faith in that belief.
Peace,
C.
No comments:
Post a Comment