‘Fear Not’ as diocese embraces faith and change, Bruno tells Convention

Presiding Bishop: “Dream God’s dream for the world” 

By Pat McCaughan

RIVERSIDE – The Diocese of Los Angeles may be tackling tough economic times, devastating wildfire recovery and lingering property disputes but “there is something in our Anglican DNA that helps us embrace change,” Bishop Jon Bruno told delegates to the 113th annual meeting of the Diocese of Los Angeles on Friday, December 5 at the Riverside Convention Center.

“Faith and hope are central as we work together on a new strategic mission plan for our diocese,” Bruno said, echoing the convention theme, “Faith and Our Future.” He challenged congregations to address global issues such as climate change, ending the war in Iraq, and the use of cluster bombs, reforming U.S. immigration policy, and expressed dismay at the November 4 passage of Prop 8, a ban on gay marriage.

He announced creation of a “Sacramental Blessing for a Life-long Covenant,” an order for blessing and honoring holy relationships. He said the rite conforms to General Convention 2003’s Resolution D051, which placed such blessings within the context of the local pastoral relationship.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, keynote speaker for the two-day convention, invited the gathering to embrace transition and to be willing “to dream God’s dream for a world where the poor and weak receive justice and equity.

“We are people of the future,” she said while preaching at the opening Eucharist. “We may not expect to see the dream fully realized in our lifetimes but we still live in expectation. That’s what Advent is about.”

Jefferts Schori, on her first official visit to the Southland since she was elected Presiding Bishop, will participate in Los Angeles’ first-ever diocesan convention live web-cast Saturday, December 6. She will discuss issues of women’s empowerment during the inaugural address of the Margaret B. Parker Memorial Lecture. She will also address the convention later in the day on December 6.

Bishop and Mary Anderson celebrated; bishops’ elections planned

Even as delegates anticipated a Friday night dinner celebration to honor retiring Bishop Assistant Robert and Mary Anderson’s ministry, Bruno announced the planned June 2010 retirements of both Bishop Suffragan Chester Talton and Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza.

Anderson is retiring after 12 years as an assistant bishop in the Southland. One of the longest-serving active bishops in the Episcopal Church, he was consecrated Bishop of Minnesota in 1977 at the age of 43.

Carranza, who was formerly the Bishop of Mexico, has served as assistant bishop in Los Angeles since 2002.

His voice breaking as he announced the retirement plans, Bruno called for the election of two Bishops Suffragan during the 114th annual meeting of Convention in December 2009. He said he will announce as early as possible the names of members appointed to a search and nominating committee.

He received a hearty round of applause when he noted that, during a recent series of strategic meetings around the diocese “we heard repeatedly … the importance of bringing a woman bishop to the table of leadership in this diocese—as well as making sure that our Diocese is fully serving its multilingual population with multilingual leaders.”

Bruno also announced creation of a diocesan Office of Community Relations to strengthen technology and communication in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese as well as plans for a new diocesan center for creative ministry to support emergent congregations.

Youthful pilgrims; lively debate

The convention theme, “Faith and Our Future” surfaced in videotaped comments from such well-known leaders as retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu and England’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“Twenty years ago they said it was an impossible dream that apartheid could end … that Nelson Mandela would be freed … that the cold war would be over, that the Berlin Wall would come down; but because men and women of faith and religious belief fought hard for these changes, these things happened,” Brown said during a videotaped speech during the Lambeth Conference.

Several young people from diocesan congregations who participated in a youth pilgrimage to the Holy Land, led by Chris Tumilty, bishop’s intern, and Deb Neal, director of the program group on youth ministry, also addressed the gathering.

Elizabeth Kurtz described the pilgrimage “as a rough and bumpy experience. I wanted my weak faith to be strengthened. I wanted to be sure being Episcopalian or even Christian was really me. I doubted, I felt uncomfortable. I felt ill. I shed tears. I visited holy sites where I had no choice to be overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit.”

Bruno cited Bishop Suheil Dawani of the Diocese of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as someone to learn from.

Mary Bruno made a videotaped plea to help educate young children in Zababdeh whose schools do not teach either English or Hebrew. “All commerce is done in those languages,” she told the gathering.

Their families are invited to leave but are struggling to stay, she said. A grant of $750 will educate a child for a year, including uniform and shoes, she added. “We can be a thread of hope for them,” she said.

Delegates approved resolutions providing for four regional meetings to discuss diocesan deployment practices and also to revise the Diocesan Investment Trust’s Statement of Investment Objectives to reflect socially responsible investing.

Celebrations

At the Convention dinner on Friday evening, Bruno named five honorary Canons of the Cathedral Center: Randy Kimmler, diocesan associate for vocations; Janet Wylie, Secretary of Convention; Bill Seixas, member of St. Peter’s, San Pedro and longtime leader of that parish’s support of Episcopal Relief & Development; the Rev. Gregory Frost, rector of St. Andrew and St. Charles Church, Granada Hills, and the Rev. Anne Tumilty, rector of St James’ Church, South Pasadena.

Bishop Robert Anderson and Mary Anderson were honored for their long service to the diocese. Bishop Anderson received a number of heartfelt tributes—and some gentle ribbing—from his episcopal colleagues, who presented him with an icon of the Trinity, talked about his way of saying unexpected things, praised his unfailing kindness and passionate commitment to justice, and gave him a canoe paddle, not for trips on the lake near the Anderson’s mountain home, but to continue to “stir things up.”

Called to the podium to add her own accolades to Anderson, Jefferts Schori quipped, “I don’t know why you gave him a paddle. He has never been up a creek.”

She described sitting on the bus with Anderson on the way to her first House of Bishops meeting. “I’d been a bishop for about seven days,” she said. She said that Anderson treated her from the first as a colleague and encouraged her as she began her new ministry.

Mary Bruno and April Talton spoke of the special relationship they had shared with Mary Anderson as they presented her with a silver Hands in Healing cross. “Mary B. is certainly going to miss Mary A.” said Mary Bruno.

As the convention continued on Saturday, some 1,500 delegates and visitors packed the Convention Center on December 6 as Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori delivered the inaugural Margaret B. Parker lecture during a live webcast on the second day of the 113th annual convention meeting of the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Click here for a link to the full webcast, and here for the text of the address.

“I think I would have enjoyed Margaret Parker a great deal. She’s an incarnate example of what’s possible when you have vision and passion and persistence,” Jefferts Schori told the gathering after a warm introduction by economist Richard Parker, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

He elicited laughter as he recalled growing up with brothers David and Stephen in the rectory at St. Cross-by-the-Sea, Hermosa Beach, where his father Richard served as rector from 1938 to 1972.

He described his mother Margaret as “a whole partner” in ministry and his parents’ efforts to secure federal funds for low-income housing and create the 1736 Family Crisis Center in the South Bay area, which still offers a long-term haven for runaway youth.

Jefferts Schori said that the Great Depression took away Margaret Parker’s ability to finish college, “but seems to have given her a drive to see others were not similarly deprived.

“We need the God-given gifts of each and every human being to be put to work in service for that dream of God,” she added.

Convention rejects B033, vows not “to discriminate”

After a spirited debate, convention delegates rejected General Convention Resolution B033’s mandate that “Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on the communion.”

The Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity USA and a member of the diocesan Task Force on Marriage Equality, praised the vote. “We are greatly encouraged that the Diocese of Los Angeles has taken such strong steps forward on the full inclusion of the LGBT faithful in the Body of Christ,” said Russell, an associate rector at All Saints, Pasadena.

The task force was convened by Bishop Diocesan Jon Bruno to craft a diocesan policy and liturgy regarding the sacramental blessing of lifelong covenants, which was distributed to conventioneers.

“The Diocese of Los Angeles cannot undo the damage done by BO33 but we stood together to say that we refuse to be party to any further scapegoating of the gay and lesbian baptized. We cannot undo the discrimination written into our constitution by Proposition 8, but we can now officially offer equality in the blessings we offer couples in our congregations and that is a source of great hope and encouragement not only to the church but to the world.”
 
The resolution regarding General Convention was presented by the Los Angeles Deputation to the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church and will be forwarded for consideration at the July 2009 meeting in Anaheim CA. The diocesan policy on blessings was distributed to convention delegates in Riverside and is available on the Diocese of Los Angeles website (see links at top of this page).

Diocesan delegates also: approved a $6.8 million budget; extended the diocesan companion relationship with El Salvador; passed resolutions on socially responsible investing and various canonical changes.

For election results and the vote on other convention resolutions, click here (link will be active soon).

Immigration, new North American province, questions for the Presiding Bishop

The Presiding Bishop fielded questions about the newly created North American province, technology, immigration reform, dialogue with Southern Baptists and teaching children to live into their baptismal ministry during a question and answer session.

It is “highly unlikely” that the Anglican Communion would recognize a newly-created North American Province, made up of disaffiliated Episcopalians, she told the gathering. “The Anglican Communion has never established a province on the basis of theological perspective but only on the basis of geography and the need to spread the Gospel.

“But if they (the disaffiliated Episcopalians) can come together in one body and be an effective witness for the Gospel in North America,” she said, “God Bless them.”

She intends to keep pushing for reform of federal immigration policies that are “excruciatingly unjust,” especially regarding who is allowed to apply for regularized status and visas. She cited the issue of separated families as part of “the enormous work we have to do.”

She said she and other religious leaders are working on a joint statement to President-elect Barack Obama even though “the folks who spend time in Washington are likely to tell us other issues are on the front burner for next year. That doesn’t mean we don’t keep pushing.”

She told the gathering that a Service of Thanksgiving and Blessing for a New Administration is planned for the Washington National Cathedral the day after Obama is inaugurated. She added that she hoped “he is more available to be lobbied by religious leaders of a broad variety of perspectives than the current president has been.

It’s been a long time since someone in the White House has been willing to listen to The Episcopal Church.”

To a student discouraged by small turnout for campus Canterbury events she said: “Don’t sell yourself short because you don’t have a hundred people. I’ve never known an Episcopal campus ministry to be really large. This church often gets into an almost idolatry of numbers. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there will Jesus be. Christian community is actually more effective with smaller groups. You’re doing very good work.”

When asked what she considers most important for the church’s future, she said using the gifts of everyone available. “We’re not monochromatic, of one theology, of one experience and for us to pretend we should be denies the creativity of God. We’ve got work to do. Let’s bless the gifts available and put them to work.”

And to Karen Rogers and her daughter Meg, of St. Michael’s Church in Studio City, who wanted to know what Jefferts Schori could share “with our children about their efforts to live out their baptismal ministry,” she replied: “Start by asking what it is they love, where they know love and how they can help to make more of that.”
 
Bloy House turns 50; Credit union and ERD and companions

Delegates also commemorated the 50th anniversary of Bloy House, the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont (ETSC) and heard presentations from both the Episcopal Community Federal Credit Union and Episcopal Relief and Development.

The Very Rev. David Jackson, ETSC dean, told the gathering that while “in many ways we find some challenges in theological education across the country, from the amount of students being put forward for ordination and other sorts of ministry … at the same time we have experienced God’s tremendous grace.”

ETSC has experienced an upsurge of students from a variety of backgrounds, emergent church to high church. He noted the school’s affiliation with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and welcomed Dean and President Donn Morgan.

Bishop Jon Bruno read a letter to delegates from Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem and the Middle East, with whom the Los Angeles diocese enjoys a companion relationship.

Among other things, Dawani said that his diocese is moving forward in our earnest endeavors for peace, reconciliation and interfaith dialogue. He added that the companion relationship “has given us great hope for the peaceful vision of a life, giving new dawn in our region that greatly strengthens our bonds in faith and opens new horizons of mutuality of purpose in our future together.”

He also expressed concern and offered assistance for the “loss of Mount Calvary Monastery and Retreat Center in Santa Barbara, where so many have been spiritually enriched and empowered to over the many years.”

-- The Rev. Pat McCaughan is senior correspondent for The Episcopal News and associate priest at St. George's Church, Laguna Hills.