Presiding or Ruling?

As General Convention looms forebodingly, in the near future, much attention is focused on the election of both a new Presiding Bishop and a new president of General Convention. The office of Presiding Bishop is about to be empty because Bp. Griswald’s term is over. The presidency of General Convention however is open because of sheer nastiness. A president must come from among the deputies and alternates, and the diocese of Pittsburg where he is canonically resident refused to re-elect the incumbent. So he cannot stand for another term. Dr. Warner has been scrupulously fair to both sides in the many disputes now facing the church. In Pittsburg that is not an adequate posture.

A number of candidates nominated by the search committee and by the house itself will be on the ballot when the House of Bishops votes. Their choice must be ratified by the House of Deputies, historically an automatic action. While there is a procedure, no one know how the Bishops would react if the Deputies actually refused to confirm an election.

There has begun to be talk, some of it involving deputies and bishops, about changing the election process so that both houses have a vote on the candidates. The case for this is obvious. The office of presiding bishop, extended to include the title “primate” some time ago, is increasingly the focus of communion leadership, the representative of the church internationally, and less the voice of one house. I suppose as a matter of democracy, certainly something we Americans cherish, this sounds like a good idea.

I am against it.

Investing the presiding bishop’s office with the stature that would arise if she/he were the only officer elected by all orders seems to me to be a small but significant step towards a national hierarchy. That alone, I think is a reason to oppose the idea. We have not been a church of prelacy, that is imperial bishops, and one look at Nigeria tells us we do not want to become one.

It is very clear to me that the church has been moving towards a more and more administrative, less and less pastoral idea of the episcopate. Every step we take down that road is a step away from the essential character of the historic church and a step away from the vision of the early church. Bishops should be what we say they are, chief pastors not what we are more and more making them, chiefs.

The trend is for the episcopate to be some sort of pinnacle career goal for careerists. Instead it should be a pastoral office that comes from the desire of the clergy and laity seeking the spirit filled leadership they need. And if anything the presiding bishop’s office should be about supporting that need and those who fulfill it. In the history of the church, one can find priests who were kidnapped from their monasteries and consecrated bishops by the demand of the diocese. A model we should seek at every level including most especially “primate!”

Or so it seems to me.