May 6, 2003
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.

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