The Local Church Serves the Whole

Catholic Voices
The Authority of General Convention: A Conversation
Part 2

By Ephraim Radner

Bishop Franklin helpfully approaches the question of General Convention’s authority as a church “council” by drawing a historical line between the nascent Episcopal Church’s formation and what we now call the “conciliar” tradition. The early Church settled disputes through councils, and by the Middle Ages a reforming movement had arisen which sought both thoroughly to describe this conciliar character of the Church and to reorder the Church in accordance with it.

Key principles of representative voice and voting were variously defined, and theologically defended. From this historical genealogy, through the “English conciliarist model of church government [that] was successfully translated into the new republican context of the United States,” Bishop Franklin argues that General Convention arose as a “unitary form of church government,” one in which “ultimate authority over the Church [is] vested in a convention (council)” of elected church representatives.

I believe that the conciliar connection is indeed a key way of understanding General Convention, but I would understand that history and its implications in a way that is quite different from Bishop Franklin’s. To read more, click here.

The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered - by Bishop William White

This article and Bishop White's treatise offer valuable insights into the basis upon which the Episcopal Church was founded. Presiding Katherine Jefferts Schori has called for the reorganization of the Episcopal and the formation of a special commission to make recommendations on how the Episcopal Church should be reorganized. There is a very real possibility that the Episcopal Church will become even more centralized. The new disciplinary canons that went into effect this past summer have substantially reduced the autonomy of the diocese in the Episcopal Church.

The movement toward greater centralization and reduced diocesan autonomy is not confined to the Episcopal Church. It is also evident in the Anglican Church in North America from recent developments in the ACNA and from its governing documents. The structure of the Anglican Mission, formerly the Anglican Mission in the Americas, has been strongly influenced by that of the Roman Catholic Church and corporate America and is highly centralized.