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Baltimore, Canterbury, & Beyond

CDSP leaders contribute to momentous summer of church councils

By the Rev. Kyle Oliver, EdD, and Carly Lane

More than 650 bishops attended the 2022 Lambeth Conference, taking several hours out of their day on July 29 to pose for the traditional group portrait. | Photo by Neil Turner
CDSP-Connected Chairs of House of Deputies Legislative Committees:

The Rev. Jennifer Adams ‘94 – Ministry
The Rev. Canon Elizabeth Easton ‘09 – Committees & Commissions
The Rev. Edwin Johnson ‘10 – Social Justice & U.S. Policy 
The Rev. Eric Metoyer ‘11 – Evangelism & Church Planting 
The Rev. Ruth Meyers, PhD – Prayer Book, Liturgy & Music
The Rev. Sandra Walters Malone ‘13 – World Mission

“It felt like half a convention,” the Rev. Edwin Johnson ‘10, director of organizing at Episcopal City Mission in Boston and chair of the Diocese of Massachusetts’ deputation to the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church (GC80), said in an interview with Crossings. “So much of convention is the exhibits, the children’s program, the worship that includes both houses and everybody else. It was wonderful, and by comparison with past conventions it felt more sterile.”

Fellow deputies agreed with his assessment.

CDSP alums pose for a photo at the Deputies of Color gathering in Baltimore in May. From left: the Rev. Isaiah Shaneequa Brokenleg ‘18, the Rev. Michael Sells ‘18, the Rev. Eric Metoyer ‘11, the Rev. Edwin Johnson ‘10, and the Rev. Canon Debbie Low-Skinner ‘97. | Photo courtesy of Brokenleg

“You generally expect that you’re going to see friends there that you might have gone to seminary with, and [with whom] you’ve probably lost touch,” added the Rev. Canon Debbie Low-Skinner ‘97, canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of California, longtime attendee of past General Conventions, and a first-time deputy this summer. “Somehow, when your eyes meet across the convention room floor or as you’re shopping around in the various vendor booths, you’re going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in years!’” she said. “We missed a lot of those opportunities this year.”

Johnson and Low-Skinner were among dozens of members of the extended CDSP community who participated in the convention July 8–11 in Baltimore. And for the bishops among them, it was just the first of two rescheduled international councils of the Church on their summer docket. The once-per-decade gathering of Anglican Communion bishops known as the Lambeth Conference, rescheduled from 2020 in light of the global health emergency, had its own twists and turns.

In both structure and content, a common theme of the events was how Episocpal and Anglican communities can respond faithfully to urgent priorities of their changing societies. This article will survey contributions to and reflections on these events by just a few among the network of leaders connected to CDSP.

GC80: Less debate but wider inclusion

Deputies and bishops alike cited the disorienting effects of the truncated calendar. A ten-day affair in recent years, this year’s iteration comprised only four days of work. Together with other limitations, this change was intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19 at the event, a decision leaders announced amid the spring surge in cases associated with a highly contagious Omicron subvariant. 

“We managed to get our business done in about three and a half [days],” said the Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville Burrows ‘97, bishop of Indianapolis, in a video message to her diocese after the event. “That speaks to the ability for us to be incredibly focused and discerning and faithful to the work God has given us to do.”

Low-Skinner shared with Crossings her experience of the logistics and impact of the changes: “A lot of resolutions wound up being on the consent calendar,” she said. “You can get a lot of stuff checked off that way, but sometimes we missed an opportunity to get a little more visibility on important causes through floor debate.”

The Rev. Dr. Fran Toy (MDiv ‘84, DD ‘96) stands for recognition at CDSP’s 2022 Commencement Exercises. Toy was the subject of a GC80 courtesy resolution, proposed by the Rev. Canon Debbie Low-Skinner ‘97, honoring the former CDSP administrator’s “long career of ministry as a trailblazer.” | Photo by Richard Wheeler

On the other hand, Johnson pointed out that the shortening of convention had at least one very welcome benefit for visibility and inclusion. General Convention has long been criticized for tacitly excluding people who are unable to take as much as two weeks away from work and family responsibilities to travel to the host city. But for the first time, many GC80 committee hearings were held online and therefore open to participation from a much wider public.

“At one of our committee hearings, we were looking at a resolution that dealt with questionable practices around immigration enforcement,” said Johnson, who chaired the House of Deputies’ legislative committee on social justice & U.S. policy. “A woman gave her testimony, in Spanish, about how these practices were impacting her. It was really great to hear directly from her, as opposed to hearing from someone who could actually make the trip, talking about her.”

He added that the tone of hearings benefited from the onscreen visibility of participants’ everyday contexts as well. The experience mirrored that of many worshippers during Zoom-based liturgies.

“People were offering their testimony, and their elders, their children, their animals were showing up on screen,” he said. “It was more clear that what we were doing was impacting human life, because human life was more apparent in these Zoom boxes than when everybody’s all buttoned up and sitting around a conference table.”

GC80: Staying focused on racial justice

One thematic area that did receive significant attention before the full convention was racial justice and reconciliation within the Episcopal Church and beyond. A special House of Deputies order of business on July 8 dealt with six of the seven resolutions proposed by the Presiding Officers’ Working Group on Truth-Telling, Reckoning, and Healing, on which Johnson also served. 

The first of these resolutions, A125, reaffirmed that “every Episcopalian is called to a lifelong vocation of racial justice and equity and the dismantling of white supremacy.” It also established the Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice “as a voluntary association of Episcopal dioceses, parishes, organizations, and individuals dedicated to the work of becoming the Beloved Community.”

According to Johnson, the working group hopes this new coalition can function in a more agile and responsive way than is usually possible for General Convention and other formal structures of the denomination.

“A huge part of our collective imagination was that the coalition would have an insider/outsider perspective,” he said. “We’re excited about this group having the autonomy to be able to move more quickly to galvanize, mobilize, and engage Episcopalians.”

A CDSP alum with a vocational interest in this work agrees: “I think the coalition is meant to be something a lot of different people could participate in,” said the Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg, Episcopal Church staff officer for racial reconciliation, in an interview with Crossings. Brokenleg represented denominational staff at a pre-convention gathering of Deputies of Color held in May. 

“It could steer some of the work that we do in a way that might be more reflective of the whole church, not just the people who are elected to General Convention or appointed to the presiding bishop’s staff,” she said. “My hope is that all the different voices would guide us toward right relationship in a way that maybe we haven’t always been thoughtful about.”

LGBT bishops of the Anglican Communion gather during Lambeth Conference photo day. From left: the Rt. Rev Kevin Robertson; the Rt. Rev. Bonnie Perry, DMin; the Rt. Rev. Deon Johnson; the Rt. Rev. Cherry Vann; the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool; and the Rt. Rev. Thomas Brown ‘97. | Photo by the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers

Other legislation proposed by the working group and passed by the convention include a forensic audit of the denomination’s funding and its connection to enslavement and other past and current racial injustices, a review of Episcopal Church liturgical materials, and an investigation into the Church’s role in the operation of boarding schools that devastated Indigenous communities in North America.

Johnson was pleased that the shortened convention gave racial justice issues significant attention. “We had the collective lived experience of not being able to meet last year, and I think that helped us get really serious about how to choose the sooner moment rather than the perfect one,” Johnson reflected. “I hope that we keep that urgency moving forward.”

Lambeth: Painful preparations

Responding to the urgency of the moment amid imperfect circumstances was a theme for many Lambeth Conference participants as well, even before the twelve-day event kicked off on July 27. 

For the first time, bishops of the Anglican communion who are in same-sex relationships were invited to attend the gathering. However, this historic invitation was soured by the explicit exclusion of their spouses. The latter were permitted to attend public events such as worship services and to stay in the official accommodations, but they were not allowed to participate in the conference’s official programming for bishops’ spouses.

The affected group included the Rt. Rev. Thomas Brown ‘97, bishop of Maine, and his husband, the Rev. Thomas Mousin. Among other acts of witness, the two participated in an opening-day march organized by the LGBT+ Staff Network at the University of Kent in Canterbury, the facilities host for most Lambeth Conference events.

The Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook ‘03 preaches at CDSP’s 2022 Commencement Exercises. Snook was among the Episcopal Church bishops who brought attention to controversial, and ultimately removed, framing of the discussion about sexuality in the Lambeth Call on Human Dignity. | Photo by Richard Wheeler

“The fact that I am physically going there is, for me, an important part as much as any conversation,” Mousin told the Portland Press Herald before traveling to Canterbury. “Often, this subject gets debated at theoretical levels . . . As people end up meeting persons and not just thinking about this subject, they find that their hearts and minds are changed.”


Further complicating the run-up to Lambeth for LGBTQ+ Anglicans and their allies was a last-minute controversy in response to materials circulated by conference organizers a week prior to the gathering. The original Lambeth Calls document asked participants to come prepared to vote “yes,” or “this needs more discernment” on a range of issues that included reference to a 1998 Lambeth resolution against the blessing of same-sex marriages or unions.

Although the process was subsequently revised, the incident shaped the tone of the conversation heading into the event in ways that discouraged many affirming Anglicans.

“For members of the LGBT+ community who are part of [the Diocese of San Diego], I imagine that this whole Anglican Communion dispute, lasting for years, has been painful and difficult,” wrote the Rt. Rev. Susan Brown Snook ‘03 in a blog post for her diocese. She went on to apologize for that toll and to reassure readers of the autonomy of the Episcopal Church to abide by its own legislative choices.

The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows ‘97 with (from left) the Most Rev. Justin Welby, Harrison Burrows, and the Rt. Rev. Keith Riglin. Baskerville-Burrows wrote, “We are building and renewing relationships one meal, one prayer, one day at a time.” | Photo courtesy of Baskerville-Burrows

Lambeth: Forward together

Still, the promised focus on prayer, study, and relationship-building seems to have been the prevailing tone for many who participated. 

“The Anglican Communion is an incredibly diverse place,” said Baskerville-Burrows in a message recorded from the doors of Canterbury Cathedral. “To be able to sit with bishops, and to hear firsthand how different our experiences of being bishop really are, has been really instructive to me.”

Brown used his turn in a series of updates offered by the bishops of New England to reflect on the major practicalities of what Anglican Communion ties make possible: life-giving collaborative responses to human need.

“What I heard today among the bishops who are gathered here is that . . . what we did during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and what we did around international debt relief, and what we might do about climate change, that’s what will make us the Anglican Communion,” he said in the August 2 video message. “Not structures or a sense of bureaucracy, but the way in which we might respond to God’s mission.” 

Indeed, there was nothing controversial about so many of the issues the bishops discussed: that God makes no distinctions among the humans created in God’s image, that churches and societies should do more to to protect women and children around the world, that all humanity must rally to protect God’s creation and mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

The Rev. Ryan Macias ‘22, a recent CDSP alum, held a volunteer role at the Lambeth Conference. | Photo by the Rt. Rev. John Harvey Taylor

For a robust coalition of Anglicans, it seems possible that the good work of this global community of Christians can continue even as they hold theological differences in tension. The Most Rev. Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, nodded to this hope in his remarks about opposing groups’ understandings of marriage: “They have not arrived lightly at their ideas that traditional teaching needs to change,” said Welby of those in the communion who hold positions like that of the Episcopal Church. “They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature . . . For these churches, not to change traditional teaching challenges their very existence.”

Many leaders in the Episcopal Church received this and similar statements and actions as a sign of welcome progress in Anglican Communion relations. At the very least, these developments helped to end this second summer gathering in a manner not unlike the first—with a sense that God expects much of Episcopal and Anglican Christians in a time of interlocking global crises, and that by God’s grace we can accomplish much in Jesus’s name.

If this summer is any indication, we can expect CDSP students, alums, faculty, staff, and friends to be there in the midst of this work, following Jesus Christ in the mission of justice, reconciliation, and mercy.