October 27, 2006
Sangfroid
The well-known Tennessee episcopal electile dysfunction keeps bamming along with yet another episcopate-wannabe walkabout last week. In this past year, we’ve already tried and failed three times over thirty-plus ballots to elect one of four nominees. So a new date with new nominees was set for another go at it tomorrow on October 28th, all to get in under the rather arbitrary wire set by our sitting bishop and apparently effected by his retirement on the 31st.
Our searchers received only seventeen names this time from which to choose. (Historically, elections here have drawn hundreds, a fact that ought to be some kind of a message.) Then, and only after we got five even to accept nomination, two of those, both from the same diocese, promptly withdrew with reasons all full of talk about God’s will and family needs. Strangely, their withdrawal did not come until it was too late to submit petitionary candidates. With wondering about their real reasons still hovering, we’re back now to going for one out of three.
Our incapacity to elect is not the only thing out of synch in this diocese. Some think it’s our polity requiring 2/3s majority-by-orders on the same ballot which, granted, seems like the Dark Ages. But truth be known, that tradition has, up until now, saved our lives from getting punched around by the Dark Side (a euphemism for our resident alphabetized schismatics).
The pulse here in the Diocese of Tennessee seems altogether in favor of electing — if only for the sake of electing — somebody, anybody, even though the evidence suggests we’re not actually capable. But feeling like a minority-of-one, I am opposed to any election at all. I would hope that we might turn to whatever canonical procedure is applicable for us to emplace an interim together with certified facilitators. Then, we could hope for an intentional procedure of reconciliation moving toward enough stability to make possible an intelligent and prayerful choice and a welcome place for a new bishop.
Might it be that the reason for all this obfuscation is that we’ve so eroded here our Anglican tradition of collegially ordered freedom that we no longer have the sangfroid* essential to our decision-making? Are we left now simply to misplace the goal with the process?
(*Aren’t thesauruses wonderful?)