“Amalgamation”: General Synod Diary, Day 2
Posts and diary entries from the Anglican Church of Canada’s 2023 General Synod, meeting for part of that time conjointly with the Evanglical Lutheran Church in Canada. Earlier posts in this series are here.
Instead of Eucharist this morning, I went for a long walk and found a pond teeming with noisy bird life greeting the new day. May we all always be so animated by each new day God gives us.
A Bible passage for today: “I will feed them with justice” (Ezek. 34:16) from this morning’s Bible study on Ezekiel and exile. Animated conversation this evening about the translation of the Hebrew word mishpat, which is both justice and judgment. How does this passage sound if it is “I will feed them with judgment”? It was an excellent study by the way.
Highlight: Hearing Lutheran National Bishop Susan Johnson use the word “amalgamation” to declare her vision of the future development of the Anglican-Lutheran relationship. This made my organic union heart sing — though I also know how people in church world react to the a-word. I asked some Lutherans at dinner if they thought the church was with her on this. They diplomatically responded that she was probably expressing an aspiration. (It did sound to me like the words of someone close to retirement, though I have no insight into when that may be for Bishop Johnson.) But still: to hear it stated so clearly was wonderful. I didn’t capture everything she said in my notes so when I have more time I’ll try to find the video clip to get the full text of what she said because she went on at some length.
Probably the best part of the day followed the “state of the union” address from Primate Linda Nicholls and National Bishop Susan Johnson when they took questions from the 400+ of us on the floor. The questions were excellent and the answers were pretty good. Not only did Susan go much further in describing our ecumenical relationship than I’ve ever heard in public, there was some practical material about actually increasing co-operation, part of it in response to concerns I had raised yesterday on the floor (and previously online) that we have two separate anti-racism commissions. There was also a frank acknowledgement of areas where we continue to differ from one another, such as diaconal ministry and confirmation. The conversation felt both hopeful and honest.
I was pleased to learn at dinner that this afternoon when we were meeting separately the Lutherans passed a motion to “seriously consider working with the Anglican Church of Canada on any current or future task forces in order to avoid duplication of work/effort/resources and encourage and facilitate collaboration between the two churches.” Terrific! May this be the last time in which our churches have separate anti-racism commissions.
It has bothered me that all of our worship life to date has been in English and that the business of Synod is conducted entirely in English when it is clear that English is not the first language of all delegates. (We had three first languages at my table group of six this evening.) I was grateful when a delegate stood up today and spoke to us in Inuktitut (and then English) and reminded us how hard it is to follow quickly moving proceedings in a second language. This takes a lot of courage and it was well received — though no changes to our rules of order were made.
The first of the C resolutions (those put forth by delegates themselves, rather than church bodies) were made public today. You may not be surprised that my name is on some. (You can see the status of all the resolutions here; C ones are all the way at the bottom.) I will highlight one dealing with Medical Assistance in Dying, which is the fruit of a lot of consultation I’ve been doing in recent weeks and months. Realistically, there is an exceedingly slim possibility this will actually be considered on the floor because…
What word might best describe the afternoon Anglican-only session: Fiasco? Debacle? Car wreck? Naturally, because this is the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, it involved voting procedure and vote counting. We came in after lunch expecting to consider a whole host of resolutions on trans-gender liturgies, licensing of clergy, and ecological and social justice — and then were told that we were being asked to suspend the rules of order to reconsider the motion from yesterday that we had already defeated extending the primate’s term of office. Apparently, there were concerns about the vote counting yesterday and “discernible discontent in the House” about the result. So first we had to suspend the rules of order to allow us to reconsider a motion, then we had to re-debate the motion, and then we had to re-vote, which was done by a recorded vote. The decision was made in planning for this Synod not to invest in an electronic voting system — we were told at a pre-Synod webinar that this was mostly due to the high cost ($10,000 to $15,000 as I recall). But given that we spent more than 90 minutes of valuable Synod time (at least 20 of which was actually having our votes manually recorded) redoing yesterday’s debate, I think it might have been $15,000 well spent to have clarity yesterday. There was also a later, relatively minor confusion over voting for prolocuter.
And in all of this the motion to extend the primate’s term in office was again defeated, this time again in the order of bishops though again with a quite narrow margin in the clergy. If my math is right, the vote would have passed if the proposed motion to change the 2/3 threshold in each order had been in place. As it was, the votes of two bishops from no to yes would have changed the outcome. During the debate, two bishops spoke to say they had supported the motion yesterday but were now voting against because they resented being asked to consider it again.
The afternoon session left me feeling dispirited as we watched valuable legislative time vanish. Since we can’t actually do any legislative business while we meet with the Lutherans — mostly it feels like we are given scripted talks, some of which are quite good but still lack the vigour and engagement of a good legislative debate — and a huge chunk of our afternoon was given over to redebating an issue from yesterday, I’d say we had about 75 minutes of actual legislative time for new issues today. We used it to pass the “transformational aspirations” for the church, cast ttwo ballots for prolocutor (with no result), pass the no debate list, and hear a report from the Council of the North.
The General Secretary told us yesterday that “the General Synod is the best thing about the Anglican Church of Canada.” (He also added that it was up to us to make it the best thing, which is fine as a pep talk but perhaps it could approach being the best thing with an adequate voting system, which is not our responsibility to provide.) As a conversation starter with people I meet, I’ve been asking them what they think the best thing about the Anglican Church of Canada is. The answers are terrific. How would you answer the question?
