Church Civics: TEC vs. ACNA Polity #1
Legislation: The General Convention vs. the Provincial Council and Assembly.
Let’s talk about polity. No wait, where are you going?! I promise it will be interesting!
Both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America are hurtling toward their main meetings — General Convention and Provincial Assembly, respectively — this summer. Given that these churches are popularly perceived as similar but situated across a liberal-conservative divide, many suppose that their governance must be essentially the same, albeit stacked with ideologues of the respective political camps. This is not so!
In this series, I aim to explain the basic building blocks of both churches’ polities in a simple and accessible way. I hope to help those within TEC/ACNA understand their own church’s government better, and to help those across the TEC-ACNA fence understand the other’s government as well.
A few notes to get out of the way up front:
This is meant to be a very basic overview, presenting the most general information possible. (Think about how you might have first learned about the United States government via something as simple as Schoolhouse Rock). As with all governmental and legal systems, there are always asterisks and edge cases, but I’ll attempt to leave these to the side unless important.
As with all governmental and legal systems, going past basic statements of structure will lead to interesting and sometimes controversial discussions of a historical, legal, or interpretive nature. (Think about how there is today American disagreement about whom the US Senate is meant to represent exactly — the people in the states, or the state governments? —, or about how many justices should sit on the Supreme Court.) These structures have lived some life, and are alive today — they are today the subject of some important debate! We may get to some of this eventually, but at first I will attempt to avoid digressing and aim for simple and neutral presentation of the relevant structures.
As with all governmental and legal systems, there is always someone who is a bigger wonk than you. I have no qualifications other than being an interested, and hopefully attentive, lay person. If you spot errors on points of fact, please feel free to comment or contact me otherwise and we will get them corrected!
Now, let’s get to the first polity topic: legislation.
The Episcopal Church
Let’s start with the legislative process of the Episcopal Church. This church is older, and its polity forms an important basis for understanding American Anglicanism since the early colonial days, whether on its own merits or as a reference point for the reactions of other, newer groups like the Anglican Church in North America.
The General Convention
The General Convention is the legislative body of the Episcopal Church. TEC’s Constitution, which sets up the main governing structures of the church (think about how the US Constitution does the same), says:
The General Convention shall meet not less than once in each three years, at a time and place determined in accordance with the Canons. Special meetings may be held as provided for by Canon.
General Convention, as the representative and governing body of the Episcopal Church, was established in 1785, making it older than Congress! It has met every three years since then, including during the Civil War and both World Wars, with only two exceptions both due to disease: yellow fever postponed one meeting from 1798 to 1799, and Covid-19 postponed another from 2021 to 2022.
The history of the formation of the General Convention is very interesting, but we will pass it by here.
What does General Convention do?
Generally speaking, General Convention governs the Episcopal Church. It has the power to amend TEC’s Constitution or Canons (its body of law), set budgets, regulate TEC’s Book of Common Prayer, set ordination standards, elect executive officers, stake out positions on internal issues, make agreements with external bodies, and much more.
General Convention’s houses
The General Convention is bicameral. Its two houses are the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops.
The House of Deputies is not only older than Congress; it’s larger than Congress, with some 750 members (the number shifts a bit depending on alternates). Each of the 109 dioceses in the Episcopal Church sends a deputation to participate in the House of Deputies. Inside each deputation, there is equal representation of clergy and laity drawn from the diocese: 4 priests or deacons, and 4 lay people. Since each diocese’s deputation has the same structure, this means that there is equal representation of clergy and lay across the entire House of Deputies as well.
Every General Convention means a potentially all-new House of Deputies, since deputies are chosen by their respective diocesan conventions, which usually meet annually.
By contrast, the House of Bishops is a smaller and more stable body: it consists of essentially all the living bishops of the church. There are some 150-300 of these, though those who are retired may or may not choose to participate. (Bishops must retire by age 72.) We’ll discuss how bishops are made in both TEC and ACNA in a future post.
How a resolution becomes an act
“I hope I’ll be a law someday, at least I hope and pray that I will, but today I am still just a bill.”
When the US Congress has an idea, that idea begins life as a bill. After discussion, debate, and a successful voting process, that bill becomes a law. When General Convention has an idea, that idea begins life as a resolution. After discussion, debate, and a successful voting process, that resolution becomes an act of Convention.
TEC’s Constitution says that the House of Bishops and House of Deputies
… shall sit and deliberate separately; and in all deliberations freedom of debate shall be allowed. Either House may originate and propose legislation, and all acts of the Convention shall be adopted and be authenticated by both Houses.
Legislation can start in either House, proposed by a deputy or a bishop. (In fact, there are two more groups that can propose legislation — Standing Commissions, authorized by General Convention to come up with ideas between Conventions, and diocesan conventions themselves — but we’ll leave these aside for now.)
No matter where a resolution originates, it must be adopted by both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies in the same form. For a House to adopt a resolution, a simple majority vote of 1/2 of the House’s members is needed.
Contentious topics and “voting by orders”
The above method is used for most resolutions that come before the General Convention. It ensures that there is majority agreement on the resolution between the bishops and the non-bishops.
For some issues, it is desirable not only to get majority agreement between bishops and non-bishops, but also majority agreement between clergy and laity. In those cases, a slightly modified voting method can be used: voting by orders in the House of Deputies.
Voting by orders can be triggered in two ways: the Constitution or Canons could require it for a certain kind of resolution (like a Prayer Book modification); or, three or more dioceses’ clerical deputies or lay deputies could ask for it specifically for a particular resolution.
In a vote by orders, each diocesan deputation in the House of Deputies splits into its lay and clergy components, and votes are collected from these two categories separately. To pass a vote by orders, a majority of all deputations’ lay components and a majority of all deputations’ clergy components must agree to adopt the resolution.
When the General Convention meets for about a week every three years, this is its business: to discuss, debate, amend, refine, and adopt (or not) resolutions that become acts of Convention and go on to govern the activities of the Episcopal Church accordingly.
The Anglican Church in North America
While the Episcopal Church has one major body with one major meeting every three years — the General Convention — and that meeting is taking place this summer, the Anglican Church in North America has several bodies whose meetings coincide this summer, constituting an equally important ecclesiastical event for that church.
If ACNA doesn’t have one body but rather several bodies, what are they, and how do they work to govern the church? We’ll work backwards relative to the TEC section, first starting with the path a canonical change must take to be effected, and then looking in more detail at the bodies that make it happen.
Changing the law
To get a new piece of canon law enacted, the idea must be successfully put before two bodies: the Provincial Council and the Provincial Assembly, in that order.
At first, this might seem similar to TEC’s bicameral legislature consisting of its House of Deputies and House of Bishops. But in fact the two churches’ systems are quite different.
One major difference is that the Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly do not usually meet at the same time. The Council is regularly scheduled to meet yearly, while the cadence for Assembly is once every five years (although special meetings can be and have been called). This summer, the two align: both Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly will meet, so the items adopted and accumulated by Provincial Council since the last time these meetings aligned can all be put to Provincial Assembly.
Another major difference is that the Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly do not have the same purpose or abilities in the legislative process. According to ACNA’s Constitution and Canons, the Council has the authority to “deliberate upon matters” that come before them and “adopt changes” to the canons as they see fit (Canon 1 Section 1); if they obtain a simple majority, they will pass the matter to the Assembly at its next meeting. The Assembly’s job is simply to ratify or decline to ratify the items passed to them by the Council — they cannot make further changes.
Let’s look at these two bodies that participate in the legislative process in detail now.
Provincial Council
As the diagram above suggests, the Provincial Council is smaller than the Provincial Assembly, having some 110-130 total members. ACNA’s Canons identify the Council as
the governing body of the Church [with] the authority to establish the program and budget of the Church, including such organizational decisions as may facilitate the work of the Church.
In addition to the power of the purse and the power to adopt legislation (subject to ratification by the Provincial Assembly), the Provincial Council also has the authority to confirm ecumenical relationships initiated by the bishops.
Who sits on the Provincial Council, and where do they come from?
Like TEC’s House of Deputies, the Provincial Council is (mostly) composed of a fixed number of members selected by each diocese, and each diocese’s members (called delegates rather than deputies) are composed of equal parts clergy and lay. But there the similarities end:
Provincial Council members serve for 5-year staggered terms, making this body rather stable.
A bishop belonging to each diocese is always a part of each delegation.
ACNA’s Constitution and Canons do not provide for something like voting by orders.
Once a piece of legislation is adopted by the Provincial Council, it is accumulated and scheduled to be heard at the next meeting of the…
Provincial Assembly
The Provincial Assembly is the larger of the two bodies, numbering some 250-300 members. It only has the power to ratify (or not) any legislation that Provincial Council sends to it. ACNA’s Constitution and Canons explicitly identify its main role in the life of the church not as legislative, but as missiological:
The chief work of the Assembly shall be strengthening the mission of the Church as defined in Article III of the Constitution. The role of the Assembly is to deliberate on any matter concerning the Faith and Mission of the Church and to make recommendations to the Provincial Council concerning such matters.
and indeed at meetings of the Assembly, non-legislative activities such as “worship, plenary speakers, and breakout sessions” comprise most of the schedule.
Nevertheless, the Provincial Assembly plays a key legislative role in ratifying what the Provincial Council sends it; if they decline to ratify, the legislative process must begin again, with their next consideration of any legislation to take place only at their next meeting.
Unlike the Provincial Council, the Provincial Assembly is proportionally representative, including extra clergy and lay representation for each extra 1,000 people reported in the diocese’s Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) figures.
Astute observers will notice also that all of a diocese’s bishops (i.e., the diocesan with jurisdiction, as well as any bishops suffragan or coadjutor) sit on the diocesan delegation to the Provincial Assembly. This guarantees at least one point of overlap with the diocese’s delegation to the Provincial Council: one of the bishops.
In fact, it is anticipated that these bodies will overlap at many more points than just the bishops. Consider this provincial diagram:
This brings us to the end of the first post in this series. There is much to say in the way of analysis and opinion — which of the systems is stronger? what are the benefits and drawback of each method? what is each component of each system designed to promote, and have they been used successfully or unsuccessfully to those ends? to what degree is legislation an important part of church governance? — but we will leave this for the future. However, please feel free to comment or share with your own opinions about these things!
Stay tuned for further installments: we’ve got more structures to get through.
Very clear and informative. I believe the lavender diagram near the end should be labeled "Provincial Assembly" not "Provincial Council."
Very clear—thanks for helping me understand!