Outsiders are interested in Episcopal doings in Columbus and elsewhere and at other times, for various reasons, some more hostile and schandenfreude-ish than others.

I’m interested for a number of reasons. My M.A. thesis, as it happens, was on the role of women in 19th-century American Protestantism, more specificially, the ways in which proponents of a greater role for women used Scriptures.

(And note that "a greater role for women" did not, of course, mean ordination in most Protestant bodies at that time, although it did in some. For most, the "greater role for women" meant questions of whether or not women should be allowed to "speak" in church (1 Cor 14:34) – for example in the less formal prayer meetings that were developing in some denominations or whether women should teach men in Sunday School settings (1 Tim 2), and so on.  My interest was in how Protestants, most of whom still interpreted the Bible literally as a rule for church organization (European scholarship just barely making its way over the Atlantic for most at this point) finessed those passages.)

I’m also interested in what they’re doing in Columbus because of the process. Over here in the RC, we’ve been talking about more participatory, inclusive church leadership and decision-making for decades.

Is this really want we want?

I’m not talking about the fruit here – there are some highly consultative church bodies that are not liberal, after all. And Episcopalians do have a hierarchy, although what function it serves at this point is unclear to me.

No, it’s the process that I watch and wonder about. And this is honest wondering, not snarking, and perhaps we can have a conversation about this.

People run away from church work for many reasons, and one of them is simply, Meetings. Whether you work in a parish or in a diocese, your life is all about meetings and mission statements and committees and consultations.

And for many of us, by the end of our service, we’re more than ready to just let the decisions be made by whoever wants to make them, and we’ll just go along. Let the men in black have it. If I never have to craft another mission statement in my life I’ll be quite happy.

I think of this often as I read about the ECUSA (TEC?) in Columbus, as well as the other Christian bodies meeting this month, but the Episcopalians in particular, for their process seems especially convoluted and lengthy – Andrew Carey, son of former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, now a journalist and blogger, comments on that process here, in video interview. He’s sort of amazed.

On his blog, he comments:

General Convention hasn’t changed. For a British journalist it’s still the same confusing muddle as ever. There are hundreds of resolutions finding their way through committees, public hearings, to the floor of the House of Deputies or Bishops to be amended, cut, voted up or down, and batted back and forth. There is something truly admirable in seeing the committees work in public, when the equivalent work is always done behind closed doors in the Church of England. Do I really need such mind-blowing detail?

Here’s the thing: In the RC context, I have no problem advocating for more transparency and lay participation in governance – I mean, when you’ve got one priest in a parish of 2500 people, you’re talking lay participation in governance and ministry by default, at the very least. As I’ve articulated here before, in the Church of the 21st century, the most energy for reform and revitalization is coming from the laity, either as individuals or in groups of one sort or another. A closed clerical system breeds all kinds of evil, as we have seen in tragic detail – the most vivid examples being clerical sexual abuse and financial malfeasance.

We are one Body!

But is the US Protestant model of regular conventions that make all sorts of decisions about things practical (budgetary issues) and more abstract (resolutions of one sort or another) the natural trajectory for this? Does the path these denominations have taken inevitably lead to messing with doctrinal matters? Do any Catholics have General Convention-envy?