Arguing About 'Polity' Avoids the Real Issue

http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=3193

[The Living Church] 24 Apr 2007--I cannot claim to not have racist thoughts and instincts deep within me that surface without bidding. I am an American who has spent much of his adult life in Mississippi, a product of the 20th century, and to claim to be free of the stain of racism would be as ridiculous and as proud as to claim to be free from sin. I can claim, however, to be aware of racism, and to attempt to combat it in my own life and in the community around me. Given this awareness, every now and then I will be struck by the fact that real, measurable change has occurred in little pockets of our society.

The other day at a community health center I was in the locker room at a time when most of the other men in there were young African Americans. Without thinking, we acknowledged each other with the slight nod common to chance encounters in Mississippi. “Hey, how’s it goin’?” “All right now.” It struck me that no one now gives much thought to the fact that we are sharing a public facility, whereas 50 years ago the police would have been called if young African Americans were using a “white” (public) facility like the locker room. Racism remains real, and people in our society still separate themselves and treat each other differently on the basis of race, and yet open, state-sponsored discrimination is a thing of the past.

What was the agent of this change? I would like to think it resulted from a growing enlightenment and sense of justice, even a deepening in Christian love, but in reality a lot of it came about because a power outside of Mississippi (or any other state that supported segregation) took concrete steps to make it happen, using superior power. When that “foreign” power (the federal government) started to say, “You must change,” the first result was resistance. The first argument was “states’ rights,” that sovereign states have the right to determine their own governance for their own inhabitants. In other words, the first argument was that the federal government violated the polity of the states in imposing anti-discrimination laws.

Today we hear an interesting echo of this argument. The primates of the Anglican Communion tell The Episcopal Church that our House of Bishops must commit itself to an unequivocal undertaking on an issue of church doctrine and discipline. The most common first reaction one hears is that this does not recognize the polity of The Episcopal Church (TEC); that the House of Bishops cannot bind TEC absent the consent of the House of Deputies, given in General Convention. Leaving aside the finer points of canon law, this argument, like the states’ rights argument against federal legislation, is one that exalts procedure over substance, and thus attempts to avoid the underlying issue.