With debate heating up over prayer book revisions in the House of Deputies, there was another form of drama in the House of Bishops on Friday, July 6, at the 79th General Convention in Austin, Texas.
Bishop Greg Brewer reported in a video feed Friday night that the Rev. Lloyd Allen, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras, voiced a complaint about lack of translation of the proposed “Covenant for the Practice of Equity and Justice for All in The Episcopal Church” for Spanish-speaking clergy and laity out of Province IX (Dioceses of Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Central Ecuador, Ecuador Litoral, Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela). The Episcopal News reported that the covenant was put forth in response to the July 4 “Liturgy of Listening.”
The Diocese of Honduras and the Diocese of Central Florida, the latter of which Bishop Brewer oversees, are companion dioceses.
“Bishop Lloyd Allen … stood up in the middle of the House of Bishops and said: ‘You’re not taking seriously the concern that we have that there is no translation available for many of the things that we have to deal with,’” Bishop Brewer recalled. “’How can we vote intelligently, debate it with any sense of wisdom, if we can’t even read it in our own language when it was first presented?’”
According to the Episcopal News Service, Diocese of Missouri Bishop Wayne Smith moved to delay the covenant until translation could be provided. The House of Bishops then started to discuss Resolution B014 concerning compensating the president of House of Deputies when Allen again voiced concern.
“Literally with five minutes (after he first spoke up), he came back to the microphone, stood up and repeated the same thing, then called for all people in the House of Bishops who were men of color and women of color to come and stand beside him,” Bishop Brewer said.
“It was actually a formidable group of people, easily 20 or more, and again he presented the complaint and said: ‘We have to deal with this now. It’s not fair for us to be so mistreated. He said you know what this tells me? This tells me that I am not welcome. Is that what you want to communicate to this deputation and all of the people standing beside me?’” Bishop Brewer said.
“Tabling the matter is just brushing it off again,” Allen said in a story by the Episcopal News Service. “Something needs to be done. No more.”
Bishop Brewer said it was enough of a forceful presentation to literally stop business and to cause Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to call a group of people together to find a resolution. “Within 10 minutes, a small group of them came back and it was reported that what it came to was that it wasn’t that there weren’t any resolutions to cover the issue of adequate translation; it was that they were not following and living up to resolutions of the past,” Bishop Brewer said. “That will continue because it’s clear to me that the people proposing the kind of renovations to the Prayer Book and other parts of the Church really are being touted by a group of older Anglo people for whom it is their last hurrah.”
It is a group of older Anglo participants who are at the center of controversy concerning Prayer Book revisions, Bishop Brewer said. Resolution A068, which seeks to begin the process of Prayer Book revisions, is a hot topic because it entails a long, drawn-out procedure in which the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the next three years will gather information about how the current 1979 prayer book is being used in The Episcopal Church.
From there, a revised Book of Common Prayer will be established by 2024 and then be used on a trial basis for three additional years. Adoption of the new Prayer Book would have to be approved by successive General Conventions before becoming final in 2030 – a whopping 12 years after this convention in Texas.
“A lot of the drama was actually centered around the presentations that were made being around a vision and revision of the Prayer Book,” Bishop Brewer said. “The controversy is that we have one group of people, most of them who are older, more are Anglo, who make up the vast majority of what is called the Committee 13 who is dealing with resolutions. They are proposing in fact a renovation and rewriting of the Prayer Book that would be a 13-year (actually 12-year) process and, quite frankly, in 13 years, many of the people on that committee would have already retired.
“So, in fact, (because of that) controversy of an Anglo centric nature of that committee, a tremendous amount of protest was written across the board from people who would both be considered liberal and others who are considered conservatives, especially among young adults,” Bishop Brewer said.
Bishop Brewer said there was a lot of dissent over this committee’s proposal of spending millions on the complete development of a Prayer Book when they may not even see the finished product themselves.
“Lots of complaining: ‘Oh, great, you are going to spend over $8 million on the development of a Prayer Book that you will in fact not live to see except in retirement,” Bishop Brewer said. “By contrast, we get to live with this for the rest of our lives, and yet we get no input on it because there are no young adults and there are no people of color on this committee. What’s wrong with this picture?”
“And, so, the debate that took place today in the House of Deputies was very, very strong,” Bishop Brewer said. “People stood up both for and against it. But one of the things that was very clearly evident is that there is a vast number of people who spoke against it were younger people, people of color, across the theological spectrum.”
Bishop Brewer continues to ask for prayers as the Convention moves forward. He is one of 11 people representing the Diocese of Central Florida at the triennial event.