Public Address Given at “Freeze the Senate” rally, Snohomish Indivisible – February 5, 2025; Photo Credit R. Taber-Hamilton, with The Rev. Allen Hicks – Trinity Episcopal Church, Everett, WA
In less than two weeks from now, America will celebrate Presidents Day on Monday, February 17th. The observed federal holiday is officially called “Washington’s Birthday.” The holiday Presidents’ Day helps us reflect on not just the first president but also our nation’s founding, its values, and what Washington calls in his Farewell Address the “beloved Constitution and union, as received from the Founders.” Also, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is February 12, so by calling the holiday “Presidents’ Day,” we can also include another remarkable presidents in our celebrations.
Since 1862 there has been an often forgotten tradition in the United States Senate that George Washington’s Farewell Address should be read on his birthday. I would like offer the following sampling taken from his speech:
George Washington’s Farewell Address
Your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear you to preserve the other.
To put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a part, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, are likely in the course of time and things, to become a potent engine by which cunning ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. The domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension…the disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolutely power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns… to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty….
The continual mischiefs of the party are sufficient to make the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, and foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus, the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
It is important, [therefore] that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. To preserve reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power must be as necessary as to institute them.
Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious…while it’s tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
My friends, our union as a nation was not created by the mere signing of a declaration and writing of a constitution. Rather, our union has been forged from the iron of the blood of millions of Americans who have died in service to the ideals and values they believed in, who fought to institute and sought to preserve the principles of liberty. From this nation’s founding and the Revolutionary War, through the domestic turmoil of our Civil War, and in the two world wars in which we fought beside allied nations against forces of tyranny and fascism, the blood of this nations ancestors is speaking to us now.
Our ancestors are with us today, they stand beside us and fill our hearts and minds with their wisdom, their foresight, and their ongoing commitment to those who have followed them and who are gathered here today. I say this as both a Shackan First Nations woman in the heritage of my mother and as a descendent of revolutionary soldiers and soldiers who served in the Union Army of the Potomac within my father’s American lineage dating back to the 17th century.
In our generation, through the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts; not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who would pervert the Constitution.” Lincoln also said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
The words spoken by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 to commemorate the memorial monument area on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania contain an important message to us today. Listen; hear it word for word beyond the din of current events that are even now circumscribing the national and global battlefields of our time. Listen:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Commander of the 20th Maine Regiment of the Union Army said to his troops before marching to Gettysburg:
[We] are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground — all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free — all the way, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home. But it’s not the land. There’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value — you and me. What we’re fighting for, in the end, we’re fighting for each other.
26 years later during the commemoration of a monument to those members of the 20th Maine who fell during the battle of Little Round Top within the larger strife of the Battle of Gettysburg, Chamberlain concluded his memorial speech with these remarks:
Honor and sacred remembrance to those who fell here, and buried part of our hearts with them. Honor to the memory of those who fought here with us and for us, and who fell elsewhere, or have died since, heart-broken at the harshness or injustice of a political government. Honor to you, who have wrought and endured so much and so well. And so, farewell.
Today, you and I have come to this place from all walks of life, representing a diversity of heritage and culture, of origin and experience. Yet we are here united and indivisible in the face of forces that would seek to divide us and plunder this nation. We are also united by the common ancestors of every kind who have forged this nation and given it unto our keeping for its preservation. We are here for something that our first president seems to have anticipated, we are here for something new that has not existed before. We have each of us been set in this time and in this place to answer a call that none of us thought would be laid upon us – we are the inheritors of the urgings and lessons of those who have gone before us in the aspirational but slow and painful process of freedom for all. We are those who have been summoned across time and place to take up their call to action in our time.
Across the four centuries of American history that unite us in a shared experience of pain and struggle, sacrifice and hope, we are those who have inherited the legacy of preserving the union that is the foundation of our nation’s liberty. Indeed, we are here to fight for one another, to stand beside one another even as they did, with courage of heart and determination of will in order to assure that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Trinity Episcopal Church, Everett, WA – Sermon given on January 26, 2025
Episcopal Diocese of Washington DC, Bishop Mariann Budde, in her sermon at Washington National Cathedral’s Service of Prayer for the Nation on January 21st, called on all Americans to strive for a renewed unity based in honesty, humility and respect for human dignity – and she directed her final words to the newly inaugurated President, who was seated in the front row.
A segment of Bishop Budde’s sermon included this message:
Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops, and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people of all people in this nation and the world.
As Tom Pepinsky noted in his reflection, “We Kneel to No Pope, We Kneel to No King,” Bishop Budde was quickly disparaged by the President and his followers, with Senator Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma even filing a House resolution (H. Res. 59) condemning Bishop Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral as “a display of political activis and condemning its distorted message.” Yet, my friends, as Pepinsky observes, “Bishop Budde was acting from her solemn responsibility as the embodiment of America’s political and religious establishment, reminding the new administration of the values upon which the United States was founded and its responsibility to uphold them. This was not an act of resistance. It was an act of leadership on behalf of the closest thing that the United States has to a national church”.
Pepinsky’s essay reminds us that the separation of church and state is a foundational principle of our nation as articulated by our nation’s founders and embodied in our national history. Many Christian nationalists today find the separation of church and state to be an obstacle and appeal instead to a version of Christianity very much associated with the principles of empire, the same Christian empires that came to these shores from the Roman Catholic principalities of Portugal, Spain and Protestant England, legitimating slavery, genocide, and commercial destruction of vast natural resources as God’s will for providing for God’s chosen people.
The Constitution of the United States was drafted by wealthy, landowning white men, many of whom were slave owners. However, their faith was not Christian nationalism. Their aspirations reflected the conditions of the founding of this nation. Namely, they kneeled to no pope, and they kneeled to no king. That is because they were mostly Episcopalians. The Episcopal Church of the United States of America is, as Pepinsky notes, is the closest thing that the United States has to a national church, “This is a historical fact, and a living contemporary practice.”
There is an institution in Washington, DC called the National Cathedral. It is truly a national cathedral, established by an Act of Congress, aligned with the vision of the Founders for our national capital. The denomination of the National Cathedral is Episcopalian. Bishop Budde is the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and as such, the National Cathedral is her seat as bishop of that diocese. The establishment of the United States of America coincides with the establishment of the Episcopal Church, because the Episcopal Church is the Church of England in the United States.
Pepinsky’s essay additionally reminds us of our church’s unique history. Anglicanism is the belief system and liturgical practices based on the Church of England. As everyone who has learned European history knows, the modern Church of England emerged through a schism between King Henry VIII of England and the Pope Clement VII, which produced the English Reformation. Driven by various spiritual and worldly matters, Henry refused to recognize papal authority over religious affairs in England. Anglicanism recognizes apostolic succession, but it does not recognize papal supremacy. The King of England is the supreme governor of the Church of England. As head of the church, though, and bishop of the See of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury kneels to no pope, and we in the Episcopal Church – reminding you again – kneels neither to the King of England nor to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, a newly independent United States of America had rejected the King’s authority over the thirteen colonies and subsequently separated from the Church of England, which required an oath of Supremacy to the King by all clergy. An early American Anglican clergyman could not take the Oath of Supremacy, because it was essentially an oath to the monarchy. The Church of England was disestablished in the United States, and the Episcopal Church was founded through a series of events that preserved apostolic succession and conceived a system of governance very similar the newly established nation. From that time forward, the Episcopal Church in the United States operated independently of the Church of England. In later generations, it joined with the Anglican Communion – a relationship of international expressions of the Anglican/Episcopal provinces around the world, the remnant leftover of past Christian Empires come and gone.
Finally, as Pepinsky underscores, in Bishop Budde’s sermon, she “articulated a national understanding of the responsibility of faithful leadership towards the American people – the faith tradition of a republic that welcomes all those seeking new opportunity and the chance of a new life for themselves and their children.”
Bishop Budde’s sermon additionally echoed the concerns of the Executive Officers of The Episcopal Church in a letter they issued on January 21st letter to the church, issued in response to the President issuing a barrage of executive orders within the first hours of having taken office, many orders targeting migrants, refugees and other peoples.
The letter released by the Executive Officers of The Episcopal Church urges “Our new president and congressional leaders to exercise mercy and compassion, especially toward law-abiding, long-term members of our congregations and communities; parents and children who are under threat of separation in the name of immigration enforcement; and women and children who are vulnerable to abuse in detention and who fear reporting abuse to law enforcement.”
The letter concludes by encouraging congregations to use the resources of the Office of Government Relations and the Episcopal Public Policy Network and to embody the Gospel through direct witness on behalf of immigrants in our communities. This letter was written in response to the executive orders, The order included measures seeking to suspend the federal refugee resettlement program, declare a national emergency at the U.S-Mexico border, block an “invasion” of migrants into the United States, end the right to birthright citizenship that is guaranteed by the Constitution and resume a policy of making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for their cases to be heard. Other executive orders were related to the federal work force, the economy, energy policy and the environment and they included some measures targeting transgender people. The government, intends to recognize only two sexes, male and female, and seeks to end protections for transgender inmates in federal prisons.
A growing number of Episcopal bishops are speaking out in response to the new administration’s threat to fulfill a campaign promise of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, possibly including raids in churches and other places that previous presidents had deemed off-limits for such enforcement. These bishops speaking out include the bishops of Arizona, New York, Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts, and Southern California. Now, the President of the United States has suspended the country’s 45-year-old program of refugee resettlement, which has long enjoyed bipartisan support. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security issued directives reversing the Biden administration policies that avoided immigration enforcement in “sensitive” or “protected” areas, including schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
I want to say to you that Trinity Everett will remain a spoke in the wheel of our diocesan commitment out of the hub of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle to provide sanctuary, protection, and advocacy to immigrants and refugees. Without a warrant signed by a judge, we will not permit entry of federal ICE agents into our buildings. Bishop Budde is correct when she says that people are afraid now. This is not in the abstract. These orders directly affect people seated in this sanctuary today, maybe even the person sitting next to you. For example, initiatives approved by the new Presidential administration includes a directive that unless both sets of grandparents were born in this country, you are at risk for deportation. Refugees from war that this church sponsors – right here – and that we support are at risk for deportation. Trans people known and beloved by members here and now are and will be subjected to having trans identities revoked. Same gender couples married before God at this altar are at risk of having their marriages invalidated. Even Indigenous Americans are being threatened with loss of US citizenship our their lands are even now being reclassified, opening them for mineral and resource extraction. Removing the cap on the cost of insulin and other medications and life prolonging procedures threatens the health of elders right now sitting in this space and in our community.
It is hard enough for women and LGBTQ persons and people of color in this country to endure the daily onslaughts of racial and gender discrimination, much less experiencing the additional burden of a racist, sexist national leaders informed by an imperial version of Christianity. After my personal experience of the bishop search process in the Diocese of Rochester last year, I posted this message on social media:
Resume, experience, expertise, competency, integrity, values and commitment seem less relevant than the state of my hair in the bishop search processes in which I’ve participated. In one instance, I was wearing four braid loops pinned up (a style of my traditional Indigenous tradition) when a young male search committee member remarked while laughing, “What’s going on there? That’s wild! Ha! Ha! Ha!” In a different interview process, I was wearing two braids with a small feather ornamenting one. An older white woman on the search committee who contacted my references then asked each of them, “Does she always dress like that with her hair?” In the most recent discernment process, I decided to wear just one plain braid over my shoulder (as in my profile picture). One clergy person queried of another, “Why does she wear her braid like that?” They were quite troubled by it. My friends, cultural competency means understanding and respecting other cultural values and ascetics while not expecting others to conform to dominant culture assimilation (racial biases often referred to as “professional” and is essentially racist). In my culture, long hair and braids are a hallmark of cultural pride and connection to ancestors, community, identity, spiritual values and honor. If being a leader in dominant culture church means cutting my hair or making my hair less “wild”, then it’s not a church I want to lead.
With their permission, I would like to share an email that I received from parishioner Linda Gabourel and her husband Po that emailed privately to me in response to my post:
Dear Rachel:
Having heard about your recent Facebook post regarding the comments about your hair style during the Rochester discernment I believe voices need to be raised. I don’t have Facebook, but Kate copy-pasted your comments and sent them to me. (Thank you, Kate).
My initial response was to be angry on your behalf and yes I am angry and dismayed that comments like that would come from people who should know better and do better. There was nothing subtle or veiled about the insult to your indigenous heritage from those few petty individuals. I am so sorry for the pain and discouragement it is causing you. I have some thoughts to share for whatever they are worth. First and foremost, don’t ever let them win! This is where the strong stand up, continue to speak out, lead the way and continue to educate those who need their eyes opened. [Ironically, I say] You are one of the strongest women I have known in my lifetime. If leaders like you give up our church will suffer. Never forget that you are extraordinary, strong, and your voice and example are indispensable to the Episcopal Church moving forward.
When I was in medical school and in training, women like myself, put up with a lot of sexist comments and harassment and we never felt we had the power to change that. It was work hard and keep your head down. What we did do was to stay, keep coming and fight for our place. My husband had a patient during his residency at the Seattle VA hospital, that refused care from him as he, quote, didn’t want a “gook” touching him. He assumed Po was Vietnamese. Po wrote basic admission orders and a note including “patient refused care from a gook”. It hurt. He kept moving forward and physicians of color kept coming. I have great faith in people and believe that they can learn and they can change. With leadership like yours and people like those at Trinity, we will keep coming and swarm the church with love, inclusion and tolerance. To do that they need to hear from people like you. You can change people one at a time. You have a voice. You be who you are. No conformity required!!! Loud and proud right? The fight is a hard one so what can I do to help and support you?
My friends, I do not get emails like this.
Last weekend, I wasn’t here. Father Allen presided and preached in my place, because I was away attending an annual gathering of Indigenous Episcopalians called Wintertalk, which has traditionally been held on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. We experienced the presidential inauguration on MLK Monday and the release of the executive orders that followed, including an order opening up long-protected Indigenous lands for mineral and fossil fuel extraction and the removal of any mention of climate change science from the White House webpages. The events and conversations of this past Wintertalk caused me to face a terrible reality – I have not ever in my professional life felt safe enough to share my full self within the predominantly white spaces in which I have worked and which characterize The Episcopal Church, including here at Trinity Episcopal Everett. There is much for us to explore about that which we might chose to do as we go forward together. For now, I would simply remind you that the Episcopal church’s statement that “All are welcome” needs to apply to clergy in our diocese, as much as anyone else. Allen Hicks who is Citizens Potawatomi and me – a Shackan First Nation woman – are granted the authority and responsibility by the canons of this church to lead this congregation in the teachings, values, and practice of our faith. Yet, I am challenged; I am not seen as an Indigenous woman. I disappear in the words of people who continually say that they do not see color. You must see color. I guarantee you that we see your whiteness.
The actions of the new national leadership are disheartening, and the actions of our government will likely continue to brutalize the vulnerable and further privilege those who are already abundantly privileged within a racist and sexist society. However, Bishop Steven Charleston (Choctaw elder and retired bishop of Alaska) reminds us of the ultimate mission of our church in the following reflection that he posted this past week:
“Shock and awe is a military tactic. Comfort and awe is a spiritual alternative. The military option supports the will to dominate. The spiritual option supports the commitment to liberate. We share with all people an awesome grace: the path to peace, on the walk of truth and reconciliation, with justice lived for the sake of all creation. We do not seek control, but something much more transformational and enduring. We seek kinship.”
My friends – my kin – the Episcopal Church is a faith tradition formed by and for revolution, rooted in the teachings of a brown-skinned socialist Jew living in the Middle East under occupation of Empire. This is our Messiah. His message of love of one’s neighbor and faithfulness to teachings of mercy, compassion, and peace were so threatening to those in power in his day that he was executed by the Roman government for sedition. St. Paul and eleven of the apostles followed in his steps through their own journeys of resistance, service, and hope until they, too, were martyred and their faith was ultimately retooled to fit the purposes of empire under Constantine I.
Resurrection, like revolution, is threatening to those who would rule by force and reject the spiritual and divine quality of mercy. Violence and death have never had the last world, not in our wisdom traditions and not in world history. The Episcopal Church – in case you are Episcopo-curious or you have friends who are Episcopo-curious – the Episcopal Church takes seriously, what it means to be the Body of Christ; we hold dear the responsibility of our Baptismal Covenant to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. We are dedicated to the commandments of the Savior we follow – to love God with all our heart and mind and being, and to love our neighbors as ourselves; and finally, in fidelity to the core principles of the Episcopal founders of the United States of America, we kneel to no ruler but Jesus Christ alone.
We follow the liberating strength of God’s love and come together every week to celebrate the true freedom that is to found in unconditional acceptance and mutual support as a spiritual community equal before the eyes of God. We are a people born of both spiritual and social revolution. We are the Episcopal Church, and in the face of all those who would exclude and deride, harm, who would endanger emigrants, LGBTQ persons, women and children, the elderly, the ill, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless, the poor, the addicted, the imprisoned, the Indigenous, the foreigner, the vulnerable. More than a logo, more than a slogan, more than a glib bumper sticker – we say on behalf this nation and of our church, “All are welcome!”
The following blog post is a copy of the sermon that I gave on October 20, 2024 during three services at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Adelaide, Australia as part of my time in the Anglican Diocese of Adelaide where I served for a week as Theologian in Residence. I am deeply grateful to the national Aboriginal Bishop Chris Mcleod for his invitation and to the cathedral community and St. Barnabas College who welcomed my husband Nigel and me, with great kindness and generosity.
My earliest memories include lessons about the intrinsic value of nature. My mother instilled in me, that every animal, plant, tree, insect, lake and stream, mountain, desert, the oceans, star and moon, and the Earth itself has value – not because humans ascribed value to them but because to be in existence is to belong to something much bigger than the self. The nature of the Sacred whole, she said, is relational and is intimately interconnected and interdependent. The resulting woven whole is Sacred – worthy in its unique being, special for never having been before until it came to be, and having a sacred journey and purpose of its own that deserves respect and encouragement. We people, she said, must care for all that is, because only through our understanding and compassion, will Creation continue to be strong enough to provide for us.
As I grew and went to preschool and then grade school, I lived and studied in dominant culture settings of education in the United States. It wasn’t until I was well into my college years that I realized that I was bi-cultural, that I was culturally fluent in two different and often competing worldviews – that of the Shackan First Nation and that of the dominant culture that circumscribed my world as an urban Native, an Indigenous person not living on heritage reserve lands. My father was the descendent of English Protestants who having arrived in 1629 were among the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the English colonies then being established on the shores of what would become America.
Family heritage was important to both my mother and my father. Each had inherited genealogy books from relatives. I loved to listen to the stories they told about the relatives of once upon a time (as well as gossip about ones who were very much alive). My mother died when I was in my 20’s, and I remember a moment when I was talking with my father afterwards and describing some of the research I had been doing on the Indigenous side of my heritage. I had been excitedly sharing with him some of what I was learning when my father became suddenly quiet. After a few moments, I noticed this and paused with a questioning look. With a somber tone in his voice, he gently asked me, “Aren’t you proud of my side of the family?”
What a question, a question that I have spent a lifetime reconciling. Because of what I have had to reconcile within my own identity, I have often served as a bridge builder within the Episcopal Church in my diocese and in our international governance structure as our institution struggles with its colonial identity and longs for a renewed future that it does not yet know how to create. My father’s ancestors lived, prospered, and gained privileges through the conqueror’s side of the historical forces of colonialism known today as the Doctrine of Discovery. The Papal Bulls of the 15th and 16th centuries empowered European powers to conquer the lands of non-Christians. The papacy created the template for the Protestant English and the Church of England for weaponing Christianity to benefit the setters and in the process destroy the New Eden they sought. From the early colonies through the Revolutionary War, from Westward Expansion to the Continentalism of the 19th century – the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the United States was divinely sanctioned by theology in which nature was deemed as soulless along with those peoples who lived within it. The cultural cosmology of the Christianity of Empire placed white, patriarchal Western Civilization at the top of a hierarchical structure of social, ecclesial, and theological ontology. Indigenous people were just another resource divinely gifted for exclusive use by Christian nations to exploit, convert, enslave, and conquer.
Christian colonialism in the Americas perpetrated genocide of Indigenous peoples through several means; through the destruction of environmental habitats and animal populations; through military occupation; through the introduction of rapidly spreading diseases (that killed 90% of the estimated 80 million Indigenous peoples before the English founded the colony at Jamestown in 1607); through forced migration from traditional lands; through the removal of children to government and church run boarding schools; through the prohibition of traditional Indigenous lifeways; and through assimilation into Western culture without being granted the rights of citizenship.
As the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter, I understood from my mother without being told that I had inherited the blessing and the burden of the expectations of leadership within the matriarchal tradition and stories of the family ancestors of my Shackan’ee heritage. My leadership formation began with those first lessons about the sacredness of Creation, serving as the foundation for assuming responsibility for the wellbeing of Indigenous people and my community, for being a healing force and living medicine for communal healing, and supporting every person and being to live fully into reaching their fullest potential of what Creator had made in them to be. Only by cultivating individuals can the community thrive.
As the child of a scientist, I learned from my father to be a critical thinker, to have the courage to advocate for the marginalized, to explore new ideas and develop new understandings. He viewed the world through a lens of humanitarian ethics and scientific study. He appreciated the innovative creativity of his immigrant ancestors, their resilience and independence, their pursuit of knowledge and art, their courage in the face of foes both in war and in intellectual debate. I learned by the age of five that if I was going to argue my point at the dinner table, I had better know what I was talking about. My friends, when I tell you that our world can no longer sustain and suffer an old-world Christianity, with its empire, white supremacy, and monolithic nationalism, I know what I am talking about from both sides of the equation – the conqueror and the conquered.
It has been my professional experience in working with individuals recovering from trauma and communities recovering from intergenerational trauma that the old-world Christianity of empire is incapable of healing the world that it tore asunder; it continues to teach from the story of being dispossessed from Eden when actually Western Civilization through the roots of its Judeo-Christian thought disposed Eden. Our earth and all humanity is in of healing and a new relationship. I believe that the time has come to Indigenize Christianity by reuniting it – in peace – with the tradition of Western Civilization that has developed its own Indigenous understanding of the interdependence of all that is, the kinship humanity has with the Earth and the cosmos, and responded with the expression of awe for which the human spirit hungers. This is to say, Christianity must listen to the story of the Sacred that is being spoken today through science, which is the social institution in Western Civilization that currently holds and expresses the ongoing witness and message of resurrection. The spiritual traditions of Indigenous peoples and Western science have come to the same conclusion – the former based in tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years of oral tradition and the latter based in the last 700 years of the development of Western Civilization.
Brian Swimme is Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe and a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He cites the emergence of a new consciousness in Western cultural cosmology as science has begun to understand the tremendous impact human beings have on the environment. Scientific discoveries about the structures, forces, and energies of the universe have caused many scientists to pause in awe the dynamics of a universe that expanded from a single point of energetic emergence and, like a seed, contained everything needed to become what it is and to evolve consciousness. He writes, “We realize that when we are speculating on the nature of the universe, we are literally the universe reflecting upon itself. Our existence is something that was built into the universe form the very, very beginning. Each of us is a cosmological construction that took 14 billion years to become. There is no ontological difference between ourselves and the universe. We are a further development of the universe. The human mind is a novel emergence equivalent to a geological era, We’ve become a planetary power without realizing our impact until recently. It will take 10 million years to achieve the level of diversity that was present a century ago. It’s easy to become discouraged. But the universe gets itself into situations that seem so bleak on a regular basis – yet the next step is enabled into a new phase of creativity.”
Steven Charleston is an Episcopal Bishop, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, and a Native American elder. Now retired, he served as the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska from 1991 to 1996, and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, from 1999 to 2008. Of his Indigenous spiritual tradition, he reflects, “We acknowledged the sacred kinship of all creatures. All living things have a spirit within them, the handprint of the Potter who shaped them from clay and breathed the breath of life into them as they lay sleeping. Therefore, we have many elders whose wisdom can help us – and not all of those are human.” In another reflection, he adds, “For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired us to change our apocalyptic reality. [As spiritual leaders and people of faith] we must help humanity rediscover [Mother Earth], their loving parent, the living world that sustains them. We must help them feel her love just as we show them how that love can be returned.”
Thomas Berry (November 9, 1914 – June 1, 2009) was an American theologian and Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of the world’s religions. In his work as an advocate for environmental justice, he referred to himself as a “Geologian”. Early in his studies, he noted, “The environmental crisis is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.” In the 1970’s, he felt called to respond to the growing ecological and climate crisis and proposed the need for a “New Story” of evolution suggesting that a deep understanding of the history and functioning of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as a species.
He felt that we were at a critical turning point, moving out of the Cenozoic era and entering into a new evolutionary phase, which would either be an Ecozoic Era, characterized by mutually-enhancing human-Earth relations, or a Techozoic Era, where we dominate and exploit the planet via our technological mastery. Berry said the transformation of humanity’s priorities will not come easily. It requires what he called “the great work”—the title of one of his books—in four institutional realms: the political and legal order; the economic and industrial world; education; and religion. For my own part, I believe that spiritualty and science are two facets among many on the sparkling gemstone that is the Sacred, two ways of perceiving the mystery and enormity of the universe and the fragility and interdependence of all life on Earth.
Berry was influenced by the work of the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and he served as president of the American Teilhard Association (1975–1987). Berry took Teilhard’s major ideas on evolution and expanded them into an epic story to which humanity belongs. To that end, with the physical cosmologist Brian Swimme, he wrote The Universe Story (1992). This was the first time the history of Western Civilizations study of evolution was told as a story in which humans have a critical role and responsibility, not just a seat at the top of an ideological pyramid.
When I hear in Gospel of Mark how James and John approach Jesus with their request to sit in the seats of honor at his right and left when he “comes into his glory,” I hear the influence of the Roman empire that Jesus is asking his disciples not to reinvent but to live from a new story and a new way of being in relationship with God, with one another, and with Creation. Jesus concisely describes the nature of empire when he says to his friends, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” In his teaching about the nature of the new community, I hear the response of an Indigenous Jesus, a spiritual leader who comprehends the Sacred nature of being held in existence and to not live for one’s self interest. It is likely that the Galilean people recognized in his description how Rome operated. For Jesus’ followers – as with every generation living under the colonizing effects of Empire there is the temptation to imitate them, to continue in ways that harm because they are familiar and navigable for personal success. Some accounts from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean revolution show that there was a lively debate among the Hebrew people on whether to imitate the Greek educational, athletic, artistic, and militaristic activities or to maintain their own unique culture as an expression of their faith. In short, how much should they assimilate just to survive?
Jesus refuses assimilation into the Roman culture of empire and violence, war and domination. He is not a colonizer. Jesus rejects the narrow religious teaching of the Sadducees and Scribes for whom the Law as the covenant with God had become as an idol in itself and was weaponized through interpretation to oppress the people, marginalize the poor and ill, and justify hatred and violence against Samaritans whom they perceived to NOT be among the chosen. Jesus confronts the prejudices and religious class structures of his own tradition that classify people into hierarchical categories of separation that would use their faith tradition as justification for prejudice, racism, sexism, and oppression of others rather than loving one’s neighbor.
Psyche – In the KJV, it is translated 58 times as “soul,” 40 times as “life”, and three times as “mind.” There are some Greek words that cannot be easily translated into a single English word, but psyche is not one of them. The way Jesus uses psyche is the concept of “self,” in the sense of our “conscious self.” Our word “psychology” actually comes from this word. This self is the center of our experiences and the source of all our memories. This “self” is a connection point of our mind, our emotions, our body, and our spirits. This “self” is our awareness that we have a heart, mind, body, spirit, and the temporary and precious life of the flesh. This is the self that eats and drinks and wants to, as evinced in Jesus’ table ministry. This is the self that remembers eating and drinking and remembers that it has all types of needs and obligations. This is the self that God values in every being. This is the life that worries, because it contains a mind and a heart. This is the life that loves, that cultivates other lives, that encourages and weeps and laughs and hopes. This is a personal life, the life of identity, being this specific person at this specific point in time, at this specific location. In this life, the entirety of all that is has found unique expression. Reflective of the nature of the universe as a continuing dynamic of unfolding, the power of Christ’s resurrection was not a one-time moment of the past but an ongoing force of renewal in which we are to participate in our time and place and unique unfolding lifetime of relationships.
In Mark 10:45, Jesus says this about himself: “For even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life/soul/his totality in reciprocity for many unique lives/souls/totalities.” That is to say, Jesus is willing to lose his ψυχὴν (psyche-life/soul/unique expression of the universe) in order to rescue others. I think this points to the courage that discipleship requires – it is not a safe way of neglecting the needs of others in order to preserve one’s own soul. In fact, the paradox of faith, stated so well in Mark 8:35 but often forgotten is that it is in losing our own ψυχὴν (psyche – life/soul/unique totality) that we preserve it because we are part of a much greater universe.
“A stone of stone is born but once; a stone of light is three-times born.” Many years ago, this phrase was given to me during a spiritual vision – something that happens for me from time to time during contemplative prayer or in the twilight time of dreams that are slipped between the covers of wakefulness and sleep. I share it now with you with acknowledged vulnerably and with humility. Take from it what serves you well and please gently leave undisturbed what does not.
Within the context of the vision, images of stones in a river, stones along a path, stones at the base of a cliff, and stones set within a stone wall all came to mind as examples of stones that are “born but once.” The narrative history of the earth as a dynamic and transformative system within the physical cosmos is inscribed within the sedimentary layers of its rocks and yet flourishes in writing new chapters within the life we know during our brief time dancing dizzily upon it. The stones born but once form the foundation of the earth that life inhabits, upon which soil gives rise to new life, the continents are risen from watery depths of the mantel firmament, and from which human societies created tools and homes and ornaments and used as great canvases for art, story telling, and education. All such stones born but once were formed over billions and millions of years of tumultuous birthing before the gaze of the eyes belonging to the first hominids looked upon them and then laid down their bones into the stony layers that tell the tale of life’s history here. Stones born but once surround us wherever we are like a great geological library of books that beckon our remembrance, comprehension, and appreciation. As sacred texts, for me the sedimentary layers of fossils are more precious to our identity and heritage than any gemstone. The earth is made of the bones of our ancestors and is sacred enough by that alone. Stones born but once make all the earth holy ground.
Within the spiritual vision I am recounting, images of what constitutes “a stone of light” flickered by in rapid succession. The images suggested the emergence of life. I saw life that consumes sunlight or thrives on dark energy at the bottom of the ocean. I saw life that is nurtured first within soil before reaching towards the sky, life that is interconnected with other lives on which it depends, life breaching from oceans, squirming onto land, life that emerges from water and is sustained by the fresh water that flows like blood through complex arteries of riverine systems. I saw everywhere life emanating a golden light that I associate with Divine Spirit, the Spirit that enfolds all life within its golden cloak and includes the full cycle of life of which death is simply the manner by which life is reborn and renewed, sustained and nourished, built upon and cherished. In this way, it seemed in my beholding that death is never the end but the way in which life and light emanate, exist, and adhere within the coherency that is Creation. All that we would consider alive are stones of light and are given a second birth or way of being as life itself. In the reel of images shared with me in my vision, I was shown that to become a stone of light that is “three times born” is a state of being in harmonious relationship with all that is once and twice born and that is based on a personal choice. To be a living stone that is three-times born is to choose to live in relationship with the Sacred that is all around us, that is in all the earth and in all that lives, and that is within us.
For Christians, to live as one who chooses to live within intentional relationship with the Sacred is symbolized by Baptism. However, I was shown in my vision that all that exists that is of the earth participates in the Sacred and that all life has the capacity to choose to live in harmony or to live outside of harmonious relationship with the Sacred, with the rest of what is and with what is alive. As a species, humans tend to ascribe choice to what we define as consciousness and associate with free will. In my vision, humanity is invited and encouraged to see and define existence and life far more broadly. Heaven, I was told, is a condition of relationship that is available here/now, if we so choose to live in and from relationship with the Sacred. As Christians, we have perhaps heard this imperative from Christ as, “Love one another, as I have loved you,” but my vision of the Sacred earth that is the here/now heaven so longed for is found/renewed/born when we love/live in Sacred relationship with the earth, with all life, with the Divine in such a way that we intellectually realize and spiritually actualize that there is no “other.”
I am not the first or only human being to have been given this vision. Today, it is seen and held within many faiths, philosophies, and cultures. In Western Culture it is, I believe, best articulated within the physical science of cosmology, the study of the nature of the universe, and by those who have paused to gaze upon the stars and recognize them as ancestors who have made wishes upon us.
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“Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.” (Loren Eiseley – The Firmament of Time)
“Just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a flower, we are the universe in the form of a human. And every time we are drawn to look up in the night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on itself. And this changes everything. Four billion years ago the planet Earth was molten rock; now it sings opera!” ( Brian Swimme – Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe)
“We come into being in and through the Earth. Simply put, we are Earthlings. The Earth is our origin, our nourishment, our educator, our healer, our fulfillment. At its core, even our spirituality is Earth derived. The human and the Earth are totally implicated, each in the other. If there is no spirituality in the Earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves.” (Thomas Berry, “The Spirituality of the Earth,” in The Sacred Universe)
In February of 2023, the first person asked me to consider running for the role of President of the House of Deputies (i.e. PHoD). The next election for the position will take place during the upcoming General Convention in Louisville, KY in June of this year. If the invitation to discernment had come from one or two individuals or from a special interest group or even a modest set of unhappy folks, I would not have given the request consideration, which was my initial response. Becoming PHoD has never been a goal of mine. If I had even imagined or wanted the position, I would have run for President rather than Vice President at General Convention #80 in Baltimore (2022). At that time, I genuinely wanted to support a layperson (rather than an ordained person) for the role of President, since the previous three terms the position had been filled by a priest. My feeling was that the tradition of alternating the leadership position between ordained and lay was equitable and desirable.
As the early weeks of 2023 turned into months of passing time, more and more people (independently of one another) made the same request, that I discern running for election for the role of PHoD. Some of these same faithful people also warned me that it would be challenging and costly for me to do so, that I would need to raise money for a “war chest” in order to wage a competitive campaign and get the most reach. I was advised by caring people that I would need to be prepared to endure character assassination, that prospects for my future career could be ruined if I were not elected, that if I continued a discernment for the episcopacy my loyalty to the House of Deputies would be thrown into question. One might ask why so many genuinely good, faithful, and dedicated people would hold such worries on my behalf and advise me of the need for such preparations. Are they melodramatic or crazy people? No, they are not. They are, rather, people who have worked for and in the church for many years in local, national, and international contexts of the church. In spite of the many frustrations and pains they have experienced over years of service, many remain dedicated to the work and mission of the church while some have needed to step away for the sake of their own wellbeing. As is unfortunately very common, many are in work situations where they cannot take the risk of speaking out publically because of very real personal and professional consequences.
For over a year, I have been engaged in discernment with people across our church about this question. This has been a weighty decision, and I do not take their cautions lightly. Many skilled and knowledgeable people whom I admire shared with me their concerns and hopes for both the governance and future of our church. Processing the frustrations and pains that people are experiencing is an important pastoral aspect of our conversations. Similarly, encouraging vision development and long-term goals for strategic planning contributed to a significant organizational assessment process for me. Taking the requests to enter into discernment seriously, I asked for personal space to discern until the fall of 2023. People are hurting, and I recognize that I am one among them. For me, vocational discernment requires sincere vulnerability and allowing others to peer at me as one to speculate upon, imagine possibilities, ascribe every worst and best possible motivation to, critique, enjoy, get to know, view as a living Rorschach test, and ultimately have the choice to either reject or support. The choice is the important part.
For me, discernment can feel like falling in love – it is at once both joyful and terrifying. Whenever I have entered into prayers of discernment, an image arises in my mind in which I see two visions of Christ, one imposed over another – something like a lenticular photo in which one or the other image is clearest depending on how the photo is tilted. In my discernment vision, I see the resurrected Christ superimposed over a crucified Christ. Depending on any given moment, one or the other is in view. When I perceive both at once, I know in my bones that no matter the outcome, I must show up.
I’m not certain that I will be elected as President of the House of Deputies at this year’s General Convention, but I have no doubt that I must participate in the conversation that gets us there. I am convinced that the House of Deputies needs a choice. As a House we need to enter a communal time of discernment about who God is calling us to be as church, about how we are to govern and lead through challenging and transformational times, and about what qualities and skills of leadership we will need in order to incarnate God’s love authentically one relationship at a time.
If we want a church that seeks truth and justice, then it is incumbent upon us to:
proactively develop safe and intentional opportunities for truth telling
to see and touch the living wounds among us in our church that even now are being inflicted
to care about the human development and spiritual wellbeing of our staff and the diverse volunteer members of our governing bodies
understand that when we say nothing we are not keeping the peace, we are keeping the tension
to promote leaders who are skilled in emotional intelligence; who are competent in leading crucial conversations in moments of conflict; who take personal responsibility and are intentional about their own accountability; who promote and communicate transparent processes; and who include even dissenting voices and challenging perspectives into decision making processes – the outcomes of which affect us all
For me, the full gambit of leadership elections that will take place during General Convention are about equipping our church organization with leaders in every aspect of our governance who have the ability and capacity to cultivate healthy corporate culture. They must have a genuine and lasting commitment to closing relational divides and building bridges that are based in mutual respect. We need compassionate and skilled leaders of every order who understand that our corporate journey is not about controlling for self interest but about empowering all of us for authentic community.
Through the lens of over 30 years of experience in organizational assessment and development, I am disheatened by what I have experienced and observed over the two years that I have served as Vice President of the House of Deputies. Behind the prose and photos that are public facing, there are unaddressed internal dynamics that in my professional opinion are contributing to an unhealthy corporate culture, jeopardizing our ability for forming the collaborative relationships necessary for effectively moving forward in the crucial work of The General Convention. I am in awe of the staff and volunteer members of our commissions and committees who are doing extraordinary work and maintaining a goal oriented focus in spite of relational challenges, but there are those who are exhausted from expending the amount of emotional labor it takes to function within compromised management systems. Additionally, there are some who are simply striving to stay out of harms way. I call this survival isolationism, and it is indicative of an organizational culture that is unsafe for personal and professional growth. The added messaging from leadership that we are “loving and faithful together in this work” is not especially in touch with our current corporate reality.
I have never had and do not now harbor an ambition to become the President of the House of Deputies – this to me is too narrow a goal. What I do have is an ambition to create a healthy church. I believe that what is at stake at this time in our corporate life is more than how we govern, more than our program reach, more than curriculum development, more than resolving to do all things in all places for all beings, more than any given social justice issue, more than our fiduciary viability and obligations, and more than becoming Beloved Community. While all these things are vital elements of our mission and values as a church, there is for me an overarching concern that encompasses of all this and unites all of us. When we walk on into the eternal life that is to come and thereby transition from being elders into being ancestors, what will be crucial to future generations is what we are prepared to do right now, the legacy we leave to them. What are we willing to hold ourselves responsible to create in our day and with our votes and with our courage, for this is the guide by which they will judge us and will either be a foundation for their renewal or a burden they must leave behind. My friends, what exactly are we waiting for to create? We must do justice NOW, we must be bold NOW, we must use our voices NOW, we must demand organizational health NOW, we must stop strategies that harm and manipulate NOW, and we must elect and hire and call and support healthy leaders NOW.
The outcome of our elections is not about me or any other candidate. It is rather about those who will inherit this church. Whatever the outcome, I am running for President of the House of Deputies NOW, because I want us all to experience a healthier organization NOW. The next discernment is NOW yours.
In Christ’s Peace,
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton,
Vice President of the House of Deputies of The General Convention of The Episcopal Church
For the first time in its history, the meeting of the Conference of Parities hosted a Faith Pavilion – a dedicated space for interfaith dialogue, prayer, and faithful action on climate change. For me, the Faith Pavilion was a powerful experience in collaboration, theological discourse, and emergence of significant global relationships among diverse faith leaders sharing a mutual commitment to faithfully intercede in meaningful ways on behalf of the world’s suffering in light of climate change.
A Brief Background on COP
The UNFCCC secretariat is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. UNFCCC stands for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Convention has near universal membership (198 Parties/Nation States) and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The ultimate objective of all three agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which theoretically is intended to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally while enabling sustainable economic development in human societies.
The annual COP meeting is the supreme decision-making body of the Convention. All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, at which they review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention. At the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, COP 21, governments agreed that mobilizing stronger and more ambitious climate action is urgently required to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Further, industrialized nations agree under the Convention to support climate change activities in developing countries by providing financial support for action on climate change beyond any financial assistance already provided to these countries. A system of grants and loans has been set up through the Convention and is managed by the Global Environment Facility. Industrialized countries also agree to share technology with less-advanced nations. Reports submitted by all Parties for 2023 (COP28) are available here: https://unfccc.int/reports
The Faith Pavilion at COP28
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) and religious leaders are an important presence at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties demonstrating that religious and spiritual communities are essential to the fight against climate change and to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), through the Faith for Earth Coalition, the Interfaith Coordination Group on Climate Change served as a coordination hub for collaborative Interfaith engagement towards COP 28. The Group is a global effort made up of approximately 60 actors from 35 different FBOs and civil society NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations, usually non-profits). The Core Team served a smaller action group that met weekly to provide key strategic direction to the Coordination Group. The Episcopal Diocese of California was one of the six institutions represented on the Core Team by Bishop Marc Andrus, who additionally served as the chair of the Episcopal delegation that participated in COP28.
This year’s COP was the first time for the Faith Pavilion, which in the case of Dubai was facilitated by the local host Muslim Council of Elders. The Pavilion had three strategic objectives: 1) Encourage faith-based organizations (FBOs) to engage with country delegates and increase their capacity to advocate for specific negotiation outcomes at COP28 and beyond, 2) Increase visibility for environmental advocacy work by FBOs and other spiritual and religious actors, particularly those on the frontlines of the climate crisis and how this work contributes to the goals of the Paris Agreement. Promote multi, and 3) highlight faith understanding by creating a space for spiritual reflection, artistic expression and prayer.
Over the course of the two weeks of COP28, the Faith Pavilion hosted 70 events that incorporated more than 350 speakers through a variety of topical panels. In a spontaneous and generous gesture of inclusivity, Rabbi Yonatan Neril invited me to participate on two panels that he facilitated. Rabbi Neril is the founder and current director of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development (ICSD), a non-profit organization based in Jerusalem.
Cultivating the Human Heart
Throughout my time participating in the second week of COP28, I heard a common message from leaders of faith, leaders of NGO’s, and governmental representatives about the importance of including the wisdom and perspectives of Indigenous people on issues of both climate change impacts and adaptations. During my daily check ins at the Indigenous Pavilion, I heard the overall Indigenous message to the world as one of returning to traditional Indigenous lifeways that are in harmony/balance with nature and that are inherently more sustainable ways of living that promote environmental wellness for the benefit of all life.
For me, the overarching difficulty about the COP framework is its primary focus on economic development as the foundational principle of human development and development of human societies. This narrow view makes it understandable about why a Faith Pavilion has never been a part of COP previously. Faithful living in every religious tradition is a practice of simplicity, humble service to others, and sharing what gifts we have with one another. In contrast, dominant economic culture worldwide tends to value competition for resources, operate out of self-interest, and practice resource hoarding which in turn relies on the subjugation of an inexpensive work force by the economic elite. Therefore, climate justice is closely tied to human rights advocacy.
Faith activism is attuned to the sacred nature of Creation as a foundational belief across religious traditions. Collectively, people of faith believe that we have a responsibility to not only preserve Creation, but to actively participate in its ongoing cultivation as collaborators/co-conspirers with the Sacred in order to enhance the wellbeing of all life. This is not an easy spiritual discipline. We are called to simplicity in living (living simply so that others may simply live), and cultivating a broad and deep understanding of the interconnected nature of life on earth that requires our proactive advocacy at every level of society and within our faith communities.
I have long believed that the Episcopal Church would benefit from some amount of “Indigenization” in its worldview, polity, and practice. For me, Indigenization includes the goal of turning people’s hearts towards the illuminating sunlight of God’s love that is in keeping with Christ’s teaching of simplicity of life, acceptance of diversity, our spiritual connection to all beings, and the sacred trust given to us to be stewards of Creation as a primary spiritual practice. I fear that like nation states, our institutional life undervalues the perspectives of our marginalized global members, subjugates the voices of protest that seek institutional reform and genuine transformation, and continues to prioritize monetary concerns above the spiritual needs of our communities. There is more than one model of economy from which to choose – the dominant model of capitalism is not sustainable either as a society or as a church. The model of reciprocity not only has Indigenous teaching behind it but also is more in keeping with Christ’s teaching of sharing always from what we have in a continual cycle of blessing that recognizes and values our interdependency and relationship with and within Creation.
As many speakers in the Faith Pavilion shared, the current Climate Crisis is also a spiritual crisis. People around the world, in every culture, are seeking meaningful connection with one another for needful systemic change. However, our understanding of the vital nature of our mutual interdependence on one another and the natural world requires the deeper appreciation of connection that goes far beyond one of commerce. People of faith have the opportunity and imperative of acting both locally and globally in ways that make the power of love real in our world. We do this through inclusion for those who have been marginalized, by making atonement real for those in power who are not serving the people and who denigrate the environment, by making reconciliation real between humanity and the environments in which we live, and by developing mutually supportive relationships between faith communities.
The witness of Christ’s ministry teaches us that the gifts of the earth are not resources for the privileged few to exploit. Rather, the Good Gardiner teaches us that the gifts of the earth are ours to cherish and to cultivate for their own sake. We are to love God and our neighbor, but there is no closer divine neighbor to each of us than the sacred earth beneath our feet that grounds us in sacred places, the sacred water that flows through our veins, and the sacred air that gives us breath.
Autumn Equinox Sunrise, View of the Mainland from My Home on Whidbey Island
With the turning of the year towards autumn, I experience an annual time of reflection and stillness that can seem to be at odds with an accompanying desire to get outside and take long hikes on woodland trails. I feel simultaneously nostalgic and energized. I see beauty in the amber tones of turning leaves and hear beauty in the rustle of song birds seeking shelter in the thicket as the nights become colder. I believe that I am most at home in autumn, which is to say that I feel closest to Creation and most at peace with the cosmos during this season. Perhaps the dynamic of restfulness and restlessness has something to do with ancestral instincts that humans share with other animals – urged to move with the energy of migration to a secure place for settling in for winter (the time for long stories and sacred teachings in my Indigenous culture).
The competing desires to be both inside my home in a cozy space by a hearth and outside in nature exploring new trails on new adventures every autumn is perhaps when I identify most with Hobbits. One of my favorite poems since childhood is by J.R.R. Tolkien and is entitled “I Sit beside the Fire and Think”. In the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring), Tolkien includes the poem as a song by hobbit Bilbo Baggins who sings it softly in the elf realm of Rivendell on the evening (of December 24th) before the fellowship sets out upon their quest to destroy the One Ring of enthralling power. The poem is a contemplative piece, sung by the aging hobbit recalling past events and ends in anticipation of hearing returning friends:
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago, and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
In many ways, I believe that the Abrahamic faiths overall and the Episcopal Church specifically are experiencing a particular turning of time, a passing away of how things were and the emergence of how things need to become if we are willing to make the journey together. I recognize that there are Episcopalians who are grieving the loss of the type of church community that may have once been familiar to them. Yet, with every General Convention resolution that causes the church to expand our liturgies, our language, our music, our models of leadership, our ministries, and our ways of being the church – there are those who are feeling more welcomed, more able to find spiritual support and shelter from the cold of a wintery world.
The adventure we are invited to pursue requires the courage to challenge whatever keeps us from the experience of being loved, valued, and seen/heard. Jesus knew that making technical changes in how society and religion function is the easier part of the transformation he sought; he understood that the harder part is the turning of the human heart. He spent his ministry and his life changing his world one relationship at a time – no exceptions. While Christianity became a tool of empire beginning with Constantine I, Christ’s essential teachings to love God and to love one’s neighbor as one’s self remain our best and true heritage. Whatever ideas, theologies, and attitudes that would test Christ’s two commandments are also a test of leadership. The history of Western Civilization used Christianity like the One Ring in striving to bend all human will towards the purpose of fulfilling the commercial greed of European empires during the Age of Discovery and colonialism.
The last two generations of humanity have experienced a collective global turning in light of climate science illuminating our human impact on the Earth and in light of an increasing distrust in patriarchal authority structures that are supported by claims of faith or God’s will (the narrative of colonialism on every continent “discovered” by European venture capitalists). The past sixty years of American history are hallmarked by the environmental movement, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and space exploration – social experiences that enhanced our human understanding of the vulnerability of our planet and the deep desire of all people in our nation and around the world to live without the threat of violence and oppression.
Like Tolkien’s fellowship in the Lord of the Rings, confronting the forces that harm us all requires a mutual commitment among the diverse peoples who inhabit our world. The global interconnectedness of human communities overlays the environmental connectedness of the living systems upon which our species relies, from agriculture to rain forests and from song birds to whales. Our understanding of and commitment to reparative relationships needs to include the development of a theological understanding that comprehends creation as sacred, as having intrinsic value and deserving of our respect. The imperial and colonial worldview is turning its gaze towards the heavens in more ways than one as old ideologies that inform harmful ways of relating to other people and the environment continue to be challenged by the new physical and social realties in which we find ourselves.
Diversity, creativity, and relationality are fundamental to the full nature of the universe and of the God in whose image we are made. The power of Christ’s resurrection was not a one-time moment relegated to history in days gone by. Rather, resurrection is the present and ongoing creative force of the God who has promised to make all things new. We ought not to be surprised, then, when our traditions adapt to reflect the beauty of diverse cultures, when our language needs to expand, when our liturgies need to grow beyond the covers of the hymnal and prayer book, when congregations and dioceses need to reimagine their identity and re-vision their ministry, when leadership needs to bring balance to people’s hearts and not only to financial accounts.
The journey of fellowship and challenge towards changing the world we live in and growing evermore authentically into faithful followers of Christ relies upon our willingness and ability to support one another in difficult moments as well as to celebrate together that we are on the journey at all. The turning of our faith tradition from operating as a force of domination into a force of liberation (as Christ intended) is the ongoing task of our time. One relationship at a time, hearts are turned by love like autumn leaves, in reflective acknowledgement of what has been and in faithful anticipation of the new life that is yet to be for all of us. In this turning time, may we reflect and take action, which is the very nature of prayer. How lovely then to ponder autumn as Creation at prayer.
This particular blog post addresses concerns about changes that have been proposed to the Rules of Order for the House of Deputies of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. So, this is a heads up (warning label?) to those who follow my Greening Spirit blog that this particular post may induce you into a coma, unless you have real interest in Episcopal Church governance.
Today, I have sent my response, with the awareness that there is much more discussion to be had and many more voices that need to be heard. You are welcome to add your thoughts in the comments to this post – please speak only for yourself and please be respectful to all, including those who’ve put in their time and effort serving on the appointed Special Committee.
My response to Deputies of Color and The Consultation is below:
To: Deputies of Color and The Consultation:
Dear Friends,
I am grateful to have been included among those addressed in the statements that you have provided regarding proposed changes to the Rules of Order of the House of Deputies reported by the Special Committee appointed for such purpose by the President of the House of Deputies, Julia Ayala-Harris. Madam President has characterized the Special Committee’s report as generating excitement. For my own part, what I am feeling is not so much excitement as perturbation. I share the concerns that you have collectively raised within your respective statements. I am grateful that the proposed changes have been presented for our consideration as a draft, since I cannot support or recommend the proposed changes in their current form.
The three-page preamble to the Special Committee report indicates that the proposed changes are informed by both feedback from deputies and the core values of the Episcopal Church and the House of Deputies. The document infers core values that are not specifically cited or referenced as core values of the organization. However, language within the document seems to highlight that the committee work is directed by goals of improved time management on the floor of convention and overall cost-savings for convention.
Values are like a compass that keep us headed in a desired direction and are distinct from goals. When an organization reflects on how it wants to operate, the community is focusing on values. Goals are the specific ways the community intends to execute its values. A goal is something that we aim for and check off once accomplished. Being responsible is a value. Changing rules of order is a goal. I do not believe that our organizational values are evinced within the proposed goals. As you have recognized, the proposed changes to pre-convention legislative committee work limits the role of elected deputies and the authority of legislative committees for what issues see the light of convention debate. The result has the effect of consolidating decision-making to an appointed few for greater control over the processes of General Convention, which seems to be the overarching goal throughout the proposed changes. For example, the proposed changes will be imposed as the rules of order for next year’s General Convention prior to any floor debate or voting consent by the House of Deputies.
I believe that the Special Committee anticipated push back to the proposed changes, which informs their preemptive framing of the changes as enhancing greater inclusivity and a broader democratic process, which I would argue that the changes do not in fact accomplish. Further, as your statements have noted, the challenges of months of legislative work prior to convention actually have an exclusive impact on lay deputies and the international diversity of our deputies, who struggle to meet across time zones (with challenged or no connectivity for online meetings) and who thrive best in the experience of in-person community development.
I believe that some of the values we hold as a faith tradition include values of community, compassion, equality, generosity, fairness, justice, and welcome. Pre-Convention listening sessions (not legislative sessions) offered for differing time zones and language needs are in keeping with the desire to hear from many voices, and the offering of scholarships supports in-person attendance for a more meaningful relationship across the Church.
I believe that we are called to value people as our most precious asset and that the cost of doing business ought not outweigh the value of community. Thank you for your statements.
Sincerely,
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, Vice-President of the House of Deputies
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church
Diocese of Olympia Clergy Deputy (C1) for GC81 (2024)
The Catechism or Outline of Faith of the Episcopal Church includes the question, “Who are the ministers of the Church?” The answer responds,” The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.” I believe that leadership formation is a vital and ongoing component of each of the four orders of ministry – the life and mission of the Church relies upon the leadership skills of members within each order for the sustainability of the purpose-driven service of the Church.
Leaders are formed and called within each of the four orders of ministry. However, not all those who are elected/selected/self-injected into leadership roles possess the traits and skills necessary for the required relational and organizational work. Part of the difficulty of addressing leadership issues related to ministerial calling has to do with the (usually) unarticulated assumptions of what constitutes a desirable leader within the dominant culture system of the Church. For example, self-promotional arrogance is often mistaken for competence while humility and vulnerability are frequently deemed to be weaknesses. It’s an old story and a reoccurring theme that I have seen repeated in clergy/bishop search processes as well as in parochial ministries and academic settings. For people of color who are informed by alternative cultural values, navigating the dominant culture assumptions around leadership can be especially frustrating within a vocational discernment or call process.
My understanding and aspirations of leadership are informed by both my Indigenous cultural values and more than thirty years of organizational assessment and development. I find that leadership has an ephemeral quality to it when done well. A leader in harmony with community has a feather-light touch that communicates trust and uplifts others with confidence in their abilities, a quality of love for who others are as people, a commitment to their lifelong development and realization of potential. Leadership invites diverse people of genuine talent whose joy and imagination is unthreatening to a leader who is secure in who they are. Leaders do not need to manipulate those around them or expect others to protect the leader’s deficiencies or cater to the leader’s ego needs. Leaders do not marginalize dissenting voices but do insist on mutual respect. Leader’s create safe space for all voices, invite the humble, and moderate the entitled. Leaders model vulnerability while standing in great strength. Leaders challenge injustice and never ever fail to speak up for fear of retaliation or cost. Leaders lead for the sake of the lives of others, for the well being and health of the community. This is the leadership formation I learned in my Indigenous matriarchal culture. I have a preference for these values to what I experience in much of the dominant culture church.
That said, even within dominant culture, there is a common understanding that baptism, ordination, consecration, certifications or academic degrees do not make people leaders; neither do such things assure leadership competencies. Leadership in every sphere of the Church requires a high level of self-awareness, a mature emotional intelligence, a collaborative management approach, and a genuine passion for service that prioritizes the needs of the community over the needs of one’s own ego.
Too often, I have experienced leaders in every order of ministry more focused on establishing their own authority and fiefdoms within the Church than they are actually interested in serving and cultivating others. Once established within the institutional order of things, egocentric leaders can spend the rest of their tenure controlling assets and access to power, assisting only those people willing to facilitate the established rewards system while alienating those unwilling to be codependent to a false loyalty program. It doesn’t take an expert in organizational development to identify leadership dysfunction – usually those most affected are well aware of the issues at hand and only require the supported opportunity to verbalize the emotional exhaustion and pain commonly associated with leadership voids and systems failure.
As one of the best-known and most influential chefs in the world, Gordon Ramsay has developed an intuitive (even if fiery) ability to assess for leadership and organizational dysfunction in every failing hotel or restaurant that he is invited to help turn around. In many instances, Chef Ramsay’s assessment includes the recognition of the loss of passion and vision that originally inspired the operating chef. The capability of leadership and organizational possibilities usually exist, but the instinctive creativity of the chef has become suppressed (even depressed) within systemic/relational dysfunctions. The amazing art of cultivating human encounter through cuisine that shares from the resplendent diversity of human identity to feed the world shares much in common with the mission and challenges of the Church today.
Many of our leaders in each order of ministry are struggling to regather a sense of meaning and creative vision amid the pressures of antiquated (even damaging) ways of being Church. Financial concerns, changes in attendance patterns, unrealistic expectations within limited resources, and aging infrastructure may all be very real issues. However, I believe that the power of adaptive change requires reconnecting with our passion – the original inspiration of our calling as sources of God’s creative and joyful presence in the world.
Leadership at every level and in every order of the Church in every setting needs to stop making excuses for why things aren’t working, take responsibility for our respective ministries, and make the personal and organizational changes necessary to un-hobble God’s next creative endeavor through us. Egocentric leaders need to be challenged or moved out, dysfunctional systems need to be named and changed, and cultural values that do not serve the community need to be replaced by values that do. The alternative is to admit to ourselves that our passion just isn’t there anymore, we don’t have the necessary skills, and it’s time to close up shop.
There are ways in which I identify with Chef Ramsay’s lack of tolerance and bluntness in the face of poor leadership and systems that fail both employees and those being served. I have had my Ramsay moments in the Church and then worked hard to initiate and lead meaningful change. When working for change within the system hasn’t been effective, I have been willing to name issues publicly. While some may say that’s not a prudent choice to make, I feel sure that our Church is on course to die a prudent death in the absence of truth telling regarding leadership and/or organizational dysfunction. Only with courage can we find the way forward together and discover anew the delight of creating the Church we envision, by realizing the amazing art of cultivating human encounter through Christ that shares from the resplendent diversity of human identity to feed the world.
Trinity Episcopal Church in Everett, WA Mission Statement:
Forming leaders and building community by seeking and serving Christ in all God’s creation.
The Kingston Trio released a song in 1959 by the name of The Merry Little Minuet. A reflection of both the concerns of the atomic age generation and global strife occurring at the time, the song injects humor into a fraught social reality in a manner that speaks to the truth of a summation of fears that people were experiencing. Two decades later, friends of mine and I would sing this song as part of a Girl Scout sketch at camp. We understood the humor and the serious social statements behind it. You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVUh5OaiADc
Throughout our elementary school years in Ohio, my friends and I participated in regular school drills intended to respond to the threats of nuclear bomb strikes, earthquakes, building fires, and tornados. Depending on the drill, the three basic responses were: 1) crouch under one’s classroom desk and interlace one’s hands behind head/neck, 2) go out into the hallways and assume a fetal position against a wall, and 3) exit down the stairwells to the outside and walk away from the building.
Though teachers and school administrators never asked for our thoughts or feedback on these drills, after every single one, my friends and I would discuss among ourselves how effective these responses would be in the event of an actual emergency. We concluded that in reality we would probably be turned into radioactive dust, be crushed under tons of bricks and concrete, become burnt toast, or be shredded into debris. We harbored no illusions about potential death and destruction in light of potential catastrophic events, but it seemed to us that the adults certainly did. Perhaps they believed that they were protecting us from anxiety or that we were too young to contemplate the possibility of our death. They didn’t want to scare us or themselves, which is why these various disaster drills were always conducted in silence and with no opportunity for discussion or reflection. The idea of trying to simulate bomb blasts, earthquakes, fires, or tornados would not have occurred to any of those planning the drills.
Two more decades into the future Columbine High School would be among the first schools to experience the violent phenomenon of attempted bombing and active shooters. The shooting inspired dozens of copycat killings, dubbed the Columbine effect, including many deadlier shootings across the world. The Washington Post, which keeps an updated count of school shootings, reports that to date of this blog post there have been 373 school mass shooting in the United States. Across all such incidents, The Post has found that at least 192 children, educators and others have been killed, with an additional 421 victims who have been injured. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/
The response in school safety drills in most schools today include Lock-Down drills and Active Shooter Simulations. The organization of Sandy Hook Promise has raised a serious concern about the impact of active shooter drills, in that many of these drills have morphed into active shooter simulations.
The Sandy Hook Promise website states:
Without a doubt, many of us might think active shooter drills are like fire drills. They should help educate and train students on how to take a crisis seriously. Certainly without putting them in harm’s way. Instead, many of these drills have become live-action simulations of fatal shootings. Rather than empowering students, these simulations can include shooting pellet guns at teachers and spreading fake blood to mimic the scene of a shooting. Sometimes, students aren’t even aware the exercise is just a drill. Moreover, these tactics hurt students and do not help prevent school shootings. Without the right guidance, state legislatures may pass laws that add simulations to the list of approved active shooter exercises. Simulations are not the same as active shooter drills and they must be kept separate. Students should never have to participate in anything that mimics a real-life shooting.
The distinction between types of drills is an important difference to note, especially as more and more faith communities (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian) are turning towards creating active shooter drills in response to rising domestic terrorism concerns related to white supremacist groups and racism. Our faith communities probably need helpful instruction and guidance related to active shooter drills, and the Department of Homeland Security has developed safety resources for Faith-Based Events and Houses of Worship: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/17_0531_NSI_SAR-Faith-Based-Events-Houses-Worship.pdf
Churches are considered “soft targets” for active shooters. The Episcopal Church has a Safety and Insurance Handbook available online that includes a section (Chapter 3) on insurance coverage for Malicious Attack and encourages the development of Violence Preparedness Plans. If you were not previously aware of the availability of such coverage through Church Insurance, now you are: https://www.cpg.org/globalassets/documents/publications/safety–insurance-handbook-for-churches.pdf
However, the process of developing an effective violence preparedness plan requires consultation with a local commercial security company, the local FBI office, or other professional resources that can provide training. Additionally consulting with local law enforcement is highly encouraged. In January of 2022, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said security training at his suburban Fort Worth congregation over the years is what allowed him and the other three hostages to make it through the 10-hour ordeal, which he described as traumatic:
As a rector of a congregation, I have attempted to balance the values of our faith with the recognized need to be prepared in the event of a variety of disasters, including malicious attack/active shooter training/drills. The value of being a welcoming community for all people bumps up against the practical need for safety of those gathered and for preparedness. The words of advice that Jesus gives to his disciples often runs through my thoughts, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” {Matthew 10:16).
Leaders who are tasked with preparedness plans cannot be silent about the culture of violence that we currently inhabit in the United States. Escalating gun violence and the reality of mass shootings, the uptick in white supremacy group activities, domestic violence in the home, and suicide by gun – all of these topics require our attention. Our response as faith communities must include actions that both protect our faith communities and engage in social justice actions that make a difference. Whatever form of active shooter training or drills we create must additionally not traumatize those who participate in them but rather educate, listen to, and empower our members and leadership.
The organization of Bishops Against Gun Violence is a network of nearly 100 Episcopal Church bishops, urges our cities, states and nation to adopt policies and pass legislation that will reduce the number of people in the United States killed and wounded by gunfire. Their website includes educational and liturgical resources for use in congregations to help provide opportunities for discussion and planning, for lament and for action. https://bishopsagainstgunviolence.org/about-us/
Additionally, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship is a network dedicated to non-violence and meaningful action to create peace, even with those with whom we may disagree. The organization has several action groups with which to become involved, including the Gun Violence Prevention action group. There are multiple resources available through their webpage and the opportunity to join in membership. Their site includes education materials, liturgies, and sermons, as well as peace building online: https://epfnational.org/
As my congregation launches our Safety Team and develops drills for various potential disasters, we will need to evaluate everything from our current church insurance coverage to what local professional agencies should be a part of our training and planning processes. At every step, we will need to provide intentional consultation and listening sessions with our members – bearing in mind that we have educators and students, gun owners, military personnel and security professionals among our own ranks.
The reign of God, as Jesus presents it, is a journey away from living within an empire built on violence towards a community of peace. The ends may not always justify the means in the face of a messiah who practiced and taught non-violence and who was crucified by violence, whose apostles suffered terrible deaths, and whose followers were martyred in Roman arenas until Constantine I enrobed the faith in the trappings of empire – establishing core beliefs that would later justify the Crusades and the Doctrine of Discovery.
Perhaps, then, our first step as Christians is to examine the tenets of culture that inform the violence in our faith tradition, tenets alive and well in today’s Christian Nationalism and in the ways we continue to grapple with diversity (racism, sexism, LGBTQIA discrimination) in the church today. Decolonizing our faith probably needs to be included in whatever safety plans we develop to protect our communities from the harm we ourselves may be perpetuating and justifying in society and in the world.
As the Gospel of Luke (6:41-46) reminds us,
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
May God preserve us, instruct us, and inspire us all as we strive to become people who live in peace with God and with one another.
Greening Spirit 