When it meets in Anaheim, Calif., July 8-17, General Convention will be asked to consider two resolutions pertaining to the status of women in The Episcopal Church and society, including one which calls for the creation of Standing Commission on Women.
In Resolution C074, submitted by the Executive Council’s Committee on the Status of Women, the commission proposes replacing the current subcommittee of Executive Council with a permanent, canonically defined committee. Standing commissions are described in Title 1, Canon 1, Section 2 of the constitution and canons of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church.
“We have critical work ahead, including monitoring specific concerns of women in Title IV proceedings, identifying the barriers to full partnership by lay women in the church, the disadvantaging of women clergy (who make on average $.85 for each dollar that clergymen earn) and laity in employment and retirement, and addressing how the findings of the Church Pension Fund’s Called to Serve survey affect the mission, ministry and policy of The Episcopal Church,” the commission said in response to a request for additional information.
“We believe the breadth of issues that [the Committee on the Status of Women] has addressed over the years, both within the Church and within broader society, cannot adequately be addressed as a sub-committee of a commission that does not have issues pertaining to women as its primary focus,” the committee said in summary.
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3 Comments
What the Episcopal Church needs is not more bureaucracy and more committees, many of which have a vision circumscribed by the political horizons of yesteryear. Rather, the Episcopal Church needs to turn its attention to young people, to focus on youth, and to make that the cornerstone of its future endeavors. Yet, youth are time and again neglected and turned away from, in this General Convention as in those before it. If there is any group that is marginalized in the Church today, it is young people! Despite all the rhetoric about justice, the simple truth of the matter is that it is just various groups within the same generation ultimately looking after their own skin, and neglecting those of others. So, let them form a women's committee made up of the aging; without the young, their vision will not be carried for long!
Pehaps this is for the best; perhaps their own vision is not worth sustaining; perhaps we need a new politics. But, in the mean time, where will I be married? Where will I raise my children? A church that gives no place to the family as the family - and, according to the recent Blue Book, the age cohort in which people start their families is the most underrepresented demographic in the church - is not terribly enticing. Why can the present leadership not see this? Is it so stuck on its own youth - constantly repeated in calls for revolution, whether of the far left or the far right - that it cannot even envision the need to include young people? Is that what this generation is? One cannot help but wonder... Bishop Breidenthal has written that "The generation in power must always deal with the fact that the next generation will have the last word, until in turn it too must give way." I fear that such obvious wisdom increasingly falls upon deaf ears within the higher - or, perhaps, more inner - corridors of the Episcopal Church.
I have been privileged to serve on the Committee on the Status of Women for the past three years -- and am thrilled to support C074. The work of CSW has done a number of things, including strengthening the ties of the Episcopal Church with the rest of the Anglican Communion. If those with access to the official reports to General Convention read the CSW report, they will, I think, be inspired by our work -- and by its scope.
Benjamin -- one of the things to like about the composition of the Committee on the Status of Women are the two young women who sit on the committee. They are involved in every decision, every prayerful discernment and every setting of priorities of the committee. Callie and Nicole will be at General Convention -- look for them there and check out their perceptions of this work.
One other small item: the resolution referenced in this article was not submitted by the Committee on the Status of Women. It was submitted by at least one Province of the Episcopal Church.