LOS ANGELES: Convention called to move 'beyond barriers' to become 'beloved community'
Episcopal News Service. December 3, 2007 [120307-04]
Pat McCaughan
The 112th convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, which opened November 30 to the beat of Native American drummers and enthusiastic approval of the Jamestown Covenant, heralded moving beyond barriers to inclusion of all as "beloved community" and overwhelmingly called for removal of the separation wall between Israel and Palestine.
Bishop Jon Bruno encouraged about 1,000 clergy and lay delegates, visitors and guests to work to remove individual, communal and global walls and barriers. "While in the Holy Land earlier this year, I encountered the separation wall," Bruno told the gathering. "When I returned to L.A., I realized the separation wall exists here, too," preventing full participation of various ethnicities, races, genders, socioeconomic classes, undocumented immigrants, and gays and lesbians, as God's beloved community.
Delegates renewed a three-year companion relationship with the Diocese of Jerusalem and welcomed as guest speakers the Rev. Canon Naim Ateek and Rabbi Steven Jacobs for a conversation about Middle East peacemaking.
A November 30 evening vigil commemorated December 1 as World AIDS Day. Presentations by Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) Program Director Abigail Nelson and the Very Rev. Canon Michael Battle, canon theologian of the diocese and provost of Los Angeles' Cathedral Congregation of St. Athanasius, highlighted ways to incorporate the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals) (MDGs) into individual and corporate practice.
From Jamestown to Jerusalem: all are God's 'chosen'
After Navajo/Dine Benjamin Hale led prayers for the four sacred directions and for land, air, fire and water, Los Angeles clergy and lay delegates unanimously affirmed 75th General Convention Resolution D046, which designates 2007 to 2017 as the decade of remembrance, recognition and reconciliation and full inclusion of indigenous people into congregational life.
The theme of spiritual and cultural inclusion continued during a dinner conversation with Ateek, a Palestinian Anglican priest who founded the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center and a former canon at St. George's Cathedral in Jerusalem, and Jacobs, rabbi emeritus of Temple Kol Tikvah, a reform Jewish congregation in the San Fernando Valley.
Moving beyond win-lose speech and sometimes even the distinctively Christian language of the cross "would go a long way" toward developing trust and honest dialogue in Middle East peace talks, Jacobs told the gathering.
Often, discussions of the conflict in the Holy Land incorporate language about the "crucifixion of the Palestinian people…so Jews react to the image of us as those who killed Christ," he said.
Ateek said such statements are often taken out of context. "As Christians, every time we suffer we try to relate our sufferings to those of Christ, and we look to the cross of Christ for comfort, strength and encouragement."
Criticism of the Israeli government without also acknowledging suicide bombers is also a conversation-stopper, Jacobs added.
Applause punctuated the dialogue, especially when Ateek and Jacobs expressed hope for the November 30 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Annapolis, Maryland, the first such meetings since 2000. They also expressed a desire for mutual trust and honest dialogue among Israelis, and Palestinian Christians and Muslims.
"Overwhelmingly, Muslims in this country are people like you and me," Jacobs declared. "The fact is, Jews are not the chosen people; we chose God. You chose God, all of us are God's chosen people."
On December 1, delegates renewed a three-year companion relationship with the Diocese of Jerusalem and Bishop Jon Bruno announced that he will spend sabbatical time there in 2008.
MDGs as beloved community
In her presentation, ERD's Nelson described the NetsforLife project as a way for individuals and congregations to act locally with global consequences. The three-year program targets malaria in sub-Saharan Africa through the purchase of $12 mosquito nets for people in rural communities. "Every three minutes a wail goes up in a village of Africa because a child has died from 'the fever'," she said.
The program operates in eight countries with plans to expand to an additional eight in 2008. Conventioneers purchased MDG lanyards bearing buttons representing each of the eight MDGs: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education for children; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.
Battle also highlighted achieving global consequences via local actions.
He focused on several Los Angeles-area congregations and Episcopalians, including St. Mary's Church, a historically Japanese American congregation whose community garden has met at least two of the MDGs: empowerment and leadership development among neighborhood women, and working toward environmental sustainability.
"It's the work of the Christian life to figure out how to overcome fences, barriers, the walls that prevent us from being a beloved community," Battle told the gathering.
During a videotaped interview with the Rev. Alix Evans, St. Mary's rector, Battle explored diversity in community. Evans said serving as rector of the mostly Japanese American and Belizean congregation has taught her to "stop thinking the way I grew up and my way of doing things is necessarily the way it needs to be done…to see things through other people's eyes.
"All of that has taught me about listening to hear how God has moved in people's lives in circumstances that are completely different than anything I have ever experienced."
During another video interview, the Rev. Rene Barraza of the Cathedral Congregation of St. Athanasius, discussed anti-immigration sentiment. "Some years ago, there was a wall in Berlin, that separated the East from the West. The American people were not too happy about that, it seems so strange that now we are building one between us and Mexico. I don't understand how the mentality has changed."
Battle said he hopes to make his presentation part of an ongoing discussion and possibly a course on becoming the beloved community. "This world is counting on us to be more than an institution," he added. "This world is counting on [us] to be a movement of God, to show on a global level how we can help the world and, most of all, how the church can be part of the solution rather than making matters worse."
Convention conducts business
Convention delegates elected as clergy deputies to General Convention are: the Rev. Canon Diane Jardine Bruce, rector of St. Clement's, San Clemente; the Very Rev. Canon Mark Kowalewski, rector of St. John's Cathedral; the Rev. Gary Commins, rector of St. Luke's, Long Beach; and the Rev. Altagracia Perez, rector of Holy Faith, Inglewood. The four clergy alternates elected are: the Rev. David Caffrey, rector, Trinity, Redlands; the Rev. Michael Cunningham, priest-in-charge at St. Mary's, Lompoc; the Very Rev. David H. Jackson, dean of the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont; and the Rev. Lynn Jay, rector of St. Stephen's, Santa Clarita.
Four incumbents were re-elected as lay deputies to General Convention: Canon Jenny Ladefoged; the Hon. Joanne O'Donnell, Daniel Valdez, and Jim White. Lay alternates are: Mimi Grant, Annette Graw, Richard Reznichek and Tracy Wood.
The convention also welcomed Holy Family Adoption Agency, a 60-year-old organization, as a diocesan institution; embraced the MDGs as a formal mission priority and action plan; increased by four weeks paid family leave for full-time clergy and lay employees; and approved a $6.4 million amended budget, representing a $600,000 increase from 2007.