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News Roundup: Chicago Diocese Bishop Election

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Breaking news on the election will be posted at the Bishop for Chicago site.

Lesbian among candidates in election for Episcopal bishop :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Religion

The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago will elect a new bishop on Saturday. The election is receiving international attention because the slate of eight candidates includes a lesbian priest.

Local Episcopal Diocese Could Have Openly Gay Bishop

When Gene Robinson was elected and approved as the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, it ignited a forest fire in the Episcopal Church. Robinson is the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal diocese — a big problem for many church conservatives.The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, of which Kankakee is a part, will hold its election for bishop Saturday, and one of the candidates is an openly gay priest from Cleveland, the Rev. Tracey Lind.

= ‘01020000’ && now”>Traditionalist Pressure Mounts on Anglican Communion

At the same time, liberals in the United States and Canada continue to campaign for their churches to allow blessings for same-sex unions, another policy the traditionalists reject.A lesbian priest, Rev. Tracey Lind, is one of eight candidates in the vote this weekend for the next bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Chicago. Her election would further divide the Communion, but she is apparently not a frontrunner.

It would seem that there is only one candidate for Bishop of Chicago, but a wide variety of news services have picked up on the story only because that one person, the Rev. Tracey Lind, happens to be gay. The diocesan convention will vote today, in a morning and afternoon session, to elect a bishop from among 8 candidates. The field is pretty strong, although in last week’s discussion after church at St. Nick’s, it was clear that there are probably 4 top entries for us to support. The news articles (the Kankakee one is particularly interesting) do the process a disservice by attempting to identify whether someone is a “frontrunner” or not, but really the way it will work out will depend on the workings of the Holy Spirit, and also the mysteries of group dynamics.

As I understand it (I may or may not make it over there today to witness the ballotting) the people of the Diocese of Chicago will vote by order, that is, the lay order and the clergy order have different colored ballots. Each church in the diocese has selected two delegates to send to convention (or should have), with two alternates who step in if one of the delegates is not available at the time of a vote (there are many initiatives to vote on as well, including one that St Nicholas is co-sponsoring).

This isn’t an elimination-round kind of voting – all candidates are entered for each ballot, but are not present. The first few ballots tend to weed out the also-rans pretty quickly; the candidates are informed of the votes (they must be sequestered in hotel rooms somewhere) and can decide each time whether they want to withdraw their names depending on how many votes they have received. From other elections I’ve read about, candidates receiving few or no votes remove themselves pretty quickly from the process, and then the really interesting stuff starts happening, as the balance starts to shift amongst the stronger contenders. There is NO politicking of the sort where one candidate offers to throw his/her support behind someone else and shift votes – they’re not part of the process at all. Whatever politicking happens takes place on the convention floor, or in the hallways around, or over lunch after the morning session concludes, when everyone has a chance to consider how the spirit is speaking to them concerning their remaining choices for bishop.

In our discussion, we talked about how frustrating to us it is to have one of the best candidates virtually unavailable to us, because all things considered, Lind has some of the best qualifications on paper. But in addition to acknowledging that electing her would cause difficulties for our diocese and for the Episcopal Church in the current struggles with traditionalists here and abroad, we recognize that electing Lind could put her at great spiritual, emotional, and physical risk. We asked ourselves with regret, “do we really want to do that to her, as much as we like or admire her?”

We also talked about some of the oddities buried in the biographies of some of the other candidates. As strong as the field is, we hope that the ones least acceptable to us (including one candidate touted by a local paper as a leading contender) don’t receive many votes, and withdraw from the field to leave it clear for the people we think would make a good leader.

epiScope: Out of the ashes

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epiScope: Out of the ashes

Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., San Diego Episcopal Bishop James Mathes will lead such a service at St. Pauls Cathedral, near Balboa Park at Fifth Avenue and Nutmeg Street. Its emphasis will be on prayer and healing for those affected by the firestorms. Afterward, there will be pastors available to pray and talk with people. The cathedral also is a drop-off site for donations.

Members who came to St Nicholas via Holy Innocents in Hoffman Estates will remember meeting +James Mathes when he was Canon Mathes of the Diocese of Chicago. He listened as we tried to outline some plans and offered us suggestions, but at that point we were still a couple of years away from grappling with the issue of merger vs. closure vs. continuing. It was helpful that he was there, but it was clear that we had to figure things out for ourselves, as the diocese didn’t really have a lot of resources to allocate a small, struggling mission unless we could show growth potential within a couple of years.

It’s good that Bishop James is now in a position to offer help and the gift of compassion to people affected by the terrible firestorms.

Anglicans Online | A Tale of Three Parishes

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The good folks at AO often travel, and often find themselves worshiping in an Anglican or Episcopalian church away from home. They’ve recently visited 3 parishes they’ll call “St Almond, St Boniface, and St Cantilupe, and were made welcome (or not) in 3 completely different ways.

How do these ways relate to how we “do welcome” at St Nicholas? Well, it’s certain we’re not like “St Almond.” Let’s hope we’re not erring on the side of “St Boniface,” but achieving something more like “St Cantilupe.”

Anglicans Online | The online centre of the Anglican / Episcopal world

Last week at St Cantilupe, we walked from our hotel past opulent shops, 5-star hotels, and busy bookstores to find the church tucked away near a world-famous tourist trap. Our expectations were low. But immediately inside the narthex, a pleasant and quiet man handed us a service leaflet and said “Good morning. Please sit anywhere you like.”This revealed that he knew we were visiting and that he would not make a fuss over it.

The cantor, a petite young woman with a crystalline, voice stood up to teach the congregation the response to be used in the psalm. This simple act included us because we were learning alongside everyone else. After the greeting, the rubric in the prayer book notes “Words of welcome or introduction may be said.” W’ed never before experienced anyone actually saying such words, but this priest did. What caught our attention was that in those words and all others, he addressed his welcome not to the newcomers, not to the visitors, not to the strangers, but to everyone.

The service continued; it was more than an hour and a half long, but we were enthralled by it all. The endless stream of inaudible or incomprehensible announcements by members of the congregation, just before the dismissal, was a good transition between the extraordinariness of this worship experience and the return to the city streets and the walk back to our own dimension.

It’s been a week since we were at St Cantilupe, 8 time zones from home, and we now understand what they did so well: they were behaviourally inclusive. We visitors were treated neither as interlopers nor as freaks, but as ordinary people, indistinguishable from those standing next to us who might have been there for decades. Simply by being there, by standing in the nave and singing the hymns and eating the bread and drinking the wine, we became at least for that one day one of them. Neither the clergy nor the congregation projected any sense of ownership, any sense of possessiveness, any need to guard their faith or their church or their sacraments against interlopers.

What is “behaviourially inclusive?” It means you are treated as one of us, without question, and without making you stand up and introduce yourself. You don’t have to make yourself over to conform with us, either. We may point you toward the basket of stick-on nametags at the welcome table, but only so you know where they are if you choose to write your name and stick one on. Many of us wear them every week as a courtesy to each other, and also to you; so that you’re not alone in wearing a bland little “Hello My Name Is” label like a lost child or lonely person at a mixer.

Many of us decorate our name-tags with little cartoon figures or silly writing – you can too, if you like.

We hope we’re more like St Cantilupe than either of the other two parishes in the linked article. Be sure to read about how they did in welcoming the Anglican Online staffers on their journeys.