Our Political Captivity - The Living Church
May 25, 2012
Whatever General Convention will look like in 2015 and beyond, it will be a shadow of its formerly huge self. There is no money. The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls, chief operating officer of the Episcopal Church, is right: this church spends too much money on administration and governance and too little on mission. The money is gone, and endowments are depleted; Episcopalians are far older and roughly a third of the tribe has vanished since the high-water mark of 1965.
A good crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Major structural proposals for change are circulating, including one that Sauls first presented to the House of Bishops. But rather than spend much time on details, we want instead to step back and ask more basic questions about how we make decisions as a church, as the people of God.
We believe the past General Convention structure has slavishly copied in ecclesial ink the politics and legislative processes of American culture. Episcopalians are fond of saying that the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution also created the church's Constitution and Canons. It is an exaggeration but a telling one: General Convention looks and acts too much like Congress and not enough like a council of the Church.
Read the full story at www.VirtueOnline.org
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