This week bishops, clergy and lay delegates, volunteers, and national church staff will descend upon the city of Baltimore like a pitch of Orioles upon an American elm for the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Although a much smaller and shorter gathering than anticipated, General Convention 2022 still aims to consider the many concerns of the Episcopal Church. The consent calendars for the House of Deputies and House of Bishops are full and indicate a commitment to hearing from a variety of groups that have put forth numerous resolutions covering perennial topics like liturgy and music as well as resolutions that require just the right moment to spark conversation between delegates and the Church at large.
One of those resolutions, D073, was introduced via the LGBTQ Caucus in June. Resolution D073, Task Force to Study Household & Relationship Diversity, makes two requests of the Convention this year. First, that the Convention would, “acknowledge that many diverse types of families and households exist among members across the Episcopal Church, both laity and clergy.” Second, that the Convention authorize a Task Force on Relationship Diversity to create opportunities for discussion, reflection and deepening of understanding about existing diversity of family relationships & households among congregations, dioceses and throughout the Episcopal Church.” To achieve this end, the resolution also requests a budget of $50,000, with $20,000 allocated for the first triennium and $30,000 allocated for the second triennium.
This resolution continues with a petition to the President of the House of Deputies and the Presiding Bishop appoint to the taskforce 15 people–3 bishops, four priests, 8 lay people, of diverse backgrounds, who will engage in prayer and theological study of the types of households, relationships, and families already in practice among the members of this Church. In addition to prayer and study, the taskforce would also present an interim report to the 81st General Convention and full report of their findings, along with resources designed to aid the national church and each diocese in engaging healthy conversation around these practices, to the 82nd General Convention.
The aim of Resolution D073 is to acknowledge that families, households, and relationships do not all fit neatly into one particular covenantal way of being, and, knowing that, seeks to foster open and healthy dialogue around what it means to pattern our families and households in covenantal ways that reflect the household of God, per our baptismal commitment. D073 asks the Convention and the Church to not only examine how we frame our understanding of family, household, and relationship structure, but also consider whether that framework is broad enough to include the variety of families and households already in existence, and the diversity in relationship structure already practiced by members of this Church.
During a June legislative committee hearing, a number of people testified on behalf of D073, and as the name suggests, testimony represented a diversity of experiences and perspectives, all stemming from a similar question: how are the ways that we talk about healthy and ideal families now, exclusive of the realities of single parent, queer, or immigrant families, or families of undocumented people? One priest’s testimony asked the committee to consider how undocumented people join together in marriage if they are not going through the courts. We know that a number of our undocumented families chose not to formally marry as a way of staying under the radar, and that some of those families opt out of communion due to shame, their own or that projected onto them by others. How can we say that God is a God of abundant love and life when some of our families feel they can not come to the table because of their household configuration and immigration status?
Others wondered what it means for the Episcopal Church to affirm queerness and same-sex marriage while continuing to treat those relationships and families as “other” or “alternative” to a more traditional heteronormative nuclear family? Does the Church know and realize that it upholds opposite sex nuclear families as the ideal or right configuration for relationship and household structure and that households that do not present this way can sometimes feel outside of the prescribed way of being?
I testified on behalf of D073, as a queer person and single parent, who relies on queer platonic partnerships in the form a multi-household co-parenting structure that enables care and coverage of our children, and care and rest for the adults. When I talk about my family, and moreso when I mention my queer platonic partners, I receive a lot of questions, namely, “are you allowed to do that? Is that really your family?” The fact that people feel the need to question of what kinds of families and relationship structures are allowed should at least cause us to slow down and ask ourselves, what is the message we are giving about which relationships and families are acceptable and which are not?
In religious practice and theology, language matters. It shapes our understanding and approach to the world around us and to one another. In what ways do we present, by our language and images, what a “normal” family, household, or relationship is? Are we unintentionally–or intentionally–rendering some households and relationship structures as “alternative” or less desirable or worse, outside of God’s intention for healthy and thriving units?
Many people reading this article or who read the resolution will say, of course same sex families are not alternative! Of course single parent families are “normal”! Of course it takes a village/community/team to raise children! Those are mostly foregone conclusions now. But D073 points out that our language and approach doesn’t always lend itself to supporting those conclusions. And, eventually, D073 will open dialogue for broader conversations that are not based on foregone conclusions and will present as challenging to some or many within the Church.
When we discuss diversity in household and relationship structure we will have to consider relationship configurations that include more than two people. Dyads are a common romantic relationship configuration but so are triads, tetrads, and other configurations, and the people in those relationships are becoming increasingly more vocal and public in sharing the dynamics of their relationship structure. Will we have the language to welcome these families into our parishes? Will we be able to extend a welcome and a word of love to them, or will they be made to feel that they are excluded from God’s loving embrace? D073 hopes to help us truly reflect the full diversity found in the love and embrace of the household of God.
The Episcopal Herald 