Church Civics: TEC vs. ACNA Polity #4
(North) America's Next Top Bishop: Nominations and Elections
Welcome to Part 2 of our discussion on the head bishops of the Episcopal Church vs. the Anglican Church in North America — the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop respectively. Part 1 can be found here, where we talked about the roles and duties of these two distinct offices. Check that post out before reading this one!
In this post, we’ll be answering an important question: how does a person become this head bishop? As you might expect by this point in this series on TEC vs. ACNA polity, the process for becoming the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church vs. the process for becoming the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America are rather different, despite many onlookers supposing a similarity at first glance.
Let’s treat the two in order, each time looking at who is eligible for this office and how they enter that office.
The Episcopal Church
Who can become the Presiding Bishop? An eligible person:
Is a member of the House of Bishops; that is, a living bishop in the Episcopal Church.1
Pass background and reference checks.2
Has been nominated for the office.
The Nomination
The nomination process for the Presiding Bishop is highly distributed in the Episcopal Church. It is run through a special committee fittingly named the Joint Nominating Committee, which is composed of 20 members from all sorts of constituencies within the church.
To write it all out, the Joint Nominating Committee is made up of:3
5 bishops, elected by the House of Bishops
5 non-bishop members of the clergy, including at least one deacon, elected by the House of Deputies (who need not be deputies themselves)
5 lay people, elected by the House of Deputies (who need not be deputies themselves)
2 people from age 16-23, appointed by the President of the House of Deputies
3 people appointed jointly by the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies “to ensure the cultural and geographic diversity of the church” by rounding out whomever may be missing from the previous categories.
Now you see why it is called Joint!
The Joint Nominating Committee is responsible for producing a slate of at least three nominees for Presiding Bishop. In addition to their own search processes, they are obligated to take nominations by petitions originating from bishops or deputies as well. Once the slate is prepared, the Joint Nominating Committee distributes information about the candidates publicly to the whole church. (Note that nominating by petition may also happen after the slate of candidates is broadcast. No matter what, the Joint Nominating Committee is mandated to circulate information about the nominees they produced as well as nominees by petition.)4 The nomination process is thus fairly public and downstream of a broad base of perspectives, clergy and lay.
The Election
Once nominees for Presiding Bishop have been identified, the process moves forward to the election of one of them. Election of the Presiding Bishop takes place at the meeting of the General Convention — so the Episcopal Church will be practicing this process in just a few weeks!
Election is a three-step process:5
A joint session of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies is held, where the Joint Nominating Committee presents the nominees. The two Houses discuss all the nominees together.
The next day (after all have slept on it), the House of Bishops meet for closed discussion followed by election.6 If they are unable to choose someone by majority vote, go back to Step 1 — another Joint Session is held, more collective discussion is done, new nominees are possibly received, all go to bed, then try again the next day. If the bishops are able to choose someone by majority vote, proceed to Step 3.
The Presiding Bishop-elect’s name is presented to the House of Deputies, who confirm (or not) the election. The deputies may hold closed discussion before their confirmation vote. If they vote to confirm by a majority, the Presiding Bishop-elect becomes the Presiding Bishop.7
To sum it up, to become the Presiding Bishop, you must be first elected by the House of Bishops, then confirmed by the House of Deputies. Both Houses are important for determining who the next Presiding Bishop will be, and since the House of Deputies has the power to confirm or not confirm the bishops’ choice, the final word is subject to the voices of both clergy and lay people.
Once elected, the Presiding Bishop normally serves for a nine-year term.8 This term length was established in 1994, brought down from twelve years,9 and while there is no explicit term limit, for as long as the office of Presiding Bishop has been an elected one, none have served longer than twelve years.
The Anglican Church in North America
In contrast to the Episcopal Church’s process for electing the Presiding Bishop, ACNA’s process for determining its next Archbishop is simpler and more unilateral.
The College of Bishops directly and uniquely elects the Archbishop from among its members. An Archbishop serves for a term of five years, and may serve for two terms.10 Only bishops with jurisdiction (i.e., bishops diocesan, not suffragans, coadjutors, etc.) are eligible.11
And that is all ACNA’s Constitution & Canons tell us!
Because of the bare-bones description of the selection process in ACNA’s provincial documents, and because these documents delegate the choice exclusively to the College of Bishops, the College of Bishops have in practice developed their own method for carrying out the selection: a conclave.
A conclave is a private meeting held to accomplish some goal. The word’s etymology (con “with”, clave “[a locking] key”) suggests an image of locking everyone in a room until a decision is reached, and this method is sometimes used in ecclesiastical structures to decide on a leader: in the Roman Catholic Church, the cardinals name the next Pope in conclave, for instance.
Due to the closed nature of the conclave, and because the ACNA has only had two Archbishops in its short history, it is difficult to comment on what the internal workings of these meetings are like and whether they are standardized. To get an idea, we must rely on reports from the bishops themselves. Here is an excerpt from a report from Bishop Bill Atwood on the conclave that chose Foley Beach as the second Archbishop of the ACNA in 2014:
First of all, each of the bishops was given three minutes to share what was on their heart in regards to the church and their view of the direction and priorities for the next phase of our life together. There was a lot of time for worship and prayer, with Scripture being both read and acclaimed as authoritative. There was also time for bishops to share their sense of “words from the Lord,” as distinguished from personal points of view for which there was also ample time to share. Each time someone spoke, there was time for weighing the words that had been given, seeking to honor not only our thoughts and decisions, but also to listen to what God was saying. Naturally, this is something which must be weighed very carefully and measured against Scripture, but the fact that God’s voice and guidance is taken seriously is a great encouragement.
Much of the time was spent articulating different senses of direction for the future of the church, and then resulted in an agreement of what was needed for the present. The process led to prayers of repentance and acts of reconciliation, prayers, brotherly hugs, and even tears. As relationships were strengthened, agreement on what next steps to take and how to engage challenges emerged. In many ways, this was a time of “being the church” and “doing the work of the church.” As trust increased consensus more readily grew, ultimately resulting in enthusiastic and unanimous selection of the new Archbishop.
The ACNA Conclave, Council, and Assembly
American Anglican Council
There appears to be, or at least there was at one time, a vow of secrecy taken by the bishops about the details of their choices in the conclave:
VOL: Can you tell us anything about the process, or is the process as secretive as the cardinals in Rome electing a pope? Were there a number of ballots? Were you elected on the first ballot?
ABP. BEACH: No, I can’t. Sorry. We made a vow together before the Lord that we would be silent about our time in the Conclave.
New ACNA Archbishop Ranges Over Issues Facing the Church
David Virtue, VirtueOnline, reprinted in The Aquila Report
And that’s about all that can be said about that! Unlike in TEC, ACNA’s Archbishop selection is not public, and is subject to the bishops themselves only.
Next time, we’ll be moving on from the Presiding Bishop and Archbishop respectively to a new topic: disciplinary structures.
Thank you for reading!
TEC Article I Sec. 3. “[The General Convention] shall choose one of the Bishops of this Church to be the Presiding Bishop of the Church…”
TEC Title I Canon 2 Sec. 1.d. “… for each Bishop [nominated by petition] to be vetted through the same process of background and reference checks as all nominees…”
TEC Title I Canon 2 Sec. 2. “The term of office of the Presiding Bishop… shall be nine years… unless attaining the age of seventy-two years before the term shall have been completed; in that case the Presiding Bishop shall resign the office to the General Convention which occurs nearest to the date of attaining such age.”
ACNA Article IX.
ACNA Title I Canon 3 Section 2, emphasis added. “The College of Bishops shall meet in the week preceding the Provincial Assembly that marks the end of an Archbishop’s term for the purpose of electing from the active members of the College with jurisdiction a new Archbishop to serve a five-year term.”