First of all, one funny note I neglected from last night: after all the talk surrounding the malaria project and before the end of the session, Bishop Hanson asked us to sing "Thy Holy Wings", which drew some snickers from the Church Council. He wasn't making a joke, but he did think it was funny after he said it.
One feature of this assembly has been all the swag we're accumulating. Yesterday we got a collapsing water bottle, today we got an insulated coffee mug, an insulated lunch bag, and a few other things. These are reusable, which means that instead of throwing them away, you keep them forever, storing them away with all of your other mugs/cups (as someone who has just moved house, I'm sensitive to such things). I'll keep you posted, and am contemplating building a little altar to sustainability at my seat tomorrow with all of it.
Bishop Hanson started the session by giving some instructions related to the votes for the day and testing out the voting machines.
"And now I'll hand it over to Vice President Pena"
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson" (backing away and applauding)
So we got a rousing speech by Bishop Hanson to start off the day. He's a fan of throwing out applause lines, and only half-jokingly asks why he isn't getting "amens" in certain places. I've been consciously trying not to applaud ever, as I'm trying to do my part not to draw things out (today that didn't apply, since they ended up stalling to make sure there were copies of proposed amendments to the proposed LIFT changes for everyone), and also I don't entirely trust myself to remember not to applaud once speeches start happening (when they care about restricting applause). So if I am applauding, it's because either 1) I forgot I decided not to (this has happened a few times), or 2) if everyone is rising for a standing ovation (I don't have the personal strength to refuse to join in at that point).
River of Hope, the new ELCA church that was formed in Hutchinson when every ELCA church there voted to disaffiliate from the denomination, and their new pastor Laura Aase were name-checked in Bishop Hanson's address, and we got to see a picture of their parade float "Hope Floats" on the big screen. It was a nice mention.
My favorite story from Bishop Hanson during this talk was this: he was walking through an airport, and someone shouted across the hallway (noticing his collar and purple shirt): "Who are you a bishop of?"
"Lutherans!"
(louder)"WE LOVE LUTHERANS!"
"Who's we?"
"FEMA"
They talked for a minute, and according to this FEMA agent, Lutherans had the reputation of showing up immediately when disaster strikes, and sticking around till the work is done. It was definitely said to make us feel proud, and it sure worked!
As I mentioned, they were drawing things out to get paper copies of the proposed LIFT changes distributed, and Bishop Hanson asked us not to leave the hall while we were waiting (this failed). A couple of minutes later, he managed to round up the heads of the Memorials Committee to give their summary introduction early. This assembly, there are 97 memorials (recommendations for the assembly to act, given by synods within the church). A lot of them are grouped together and edited by the committee, and some are already being removed from en bloc consideration (so for example, all of a group of immigration memorials were to be grouped under a single vote, but one of those will now be considered separately).
Then we started on the main business of the morning, the LIFT proposals. There were seventeen proposed amendments to the implementing resolutions of the LIFT report. The Parliamentary Procedure got a little thick here, and some were having trouble keeping track. The situation was that there were recommendations from the LIFT report that people had to offer amendments for by last night. The Reference and Counsel Committee reviewed each of these suggested amendments and offered their recommendation for each (their count was 15). So as each issue came up, the question under discussion was whether to accept the Reference and Counsel Committee's recommendation for each item. If you wanted to discuss the actual amendment, or amend the amendment, one would first have to defeat the question on accepting the Committee's recommendation, and immediately propose the original amendment from the floor (this has not happened yet: so far, all of the Committee's recommendations have been followed.
The first group of proposed amendments (10 of them) dealt with Social Statements. One of the LIFT recommendations was (excepting the Genetics statement), to not consider any more Social Statements until at least 2013, by which time a review of how Social Statements are formed will have been completed. There was to be business later in the week related to Social Statements, so the recommendation here was to defer discussion of this recommendation and proposed amendments until that time. That course of action was approved.
The rest of the action related to recommendations (that we dealt with: we ran out of time), was mainly concerned with emphasis. One person thought that the importance of Pastoral development should have explicit mention in the recommendations. Another thought that relationships with institutions should be explicitly considered in the recommendations, etc. For each of these, the Reference and Counsel Committee said either that the recommendations were broad on purpose to be more flexible, or that the proposed additional content was already included in the recommendations or the report as a whole, so the proposed action was "to receive the proposed amendment with thanks" and to forward it to the body within the church responsible for dealing with the issue in question (e.g., the Church Council). Some objected, saying that more specific language was necessary for accountability. One Voting Member explicitly asked what happens to amendments that get forwarded: does the Council, etc., have to pay any attention to those? Bishop Hanson assured us that they did pay attention. Each of the recommendations to forward a proposed amendment, leaving the original recommendation unchanged, was passed by close to 2/3 of the assembly. This was very encouraging to me, and in keeping with the spirit of the LIFT report as I understand it so far. It was a willingness to give the Council and other bodies within the church more freedom to operate, and the initial institutional trust to discharge their duties well, taking into account the concerns of the assembly without needing the force of explicit legislative language as a guarantee. Of course, part of the motivation behind LIFT was the notion that protecting specific interests by legislative language and bureaucratic structures was both ineffective at promoting the interests in question and indeed could stifle the proper workings of the Church. So while it is a risk to give church officers more freedom and trust them to act properly, it was a risk taken with some judgment that the alternative had been tried, and had been a failure so far.
This led into the Program Committee discussion, which I'll handle in a separate post.
Showing posts with label Genetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genetics. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Hello?
It's been a long time!
As you know, I haven't updated in a while, fulfilling any of my ambitions to "think aloud" through the assembly documents publicly before the big event. After having looked for a while at the mocking weekly reminders on my Google Calendar to update the thing, I was ready to scrap this blog as a failed experiment, but since I arrived at CWA there has been enough noteworthy going on to convince me to make this into a report on the proceedings from a participant's perspective rather than primarily an analysis of the business being discussed. Hope you enjoy it!
I could provide a long list of excuses for you (chief among them: in the last 10 weeks we were notified by our landlord that they were selling the property, we found a new house, and moved), but it's still unfortunate. I do regret at least not putting up a more thorough, specific discussion of the Genetics document. To give you the short summary, I was leaning against, until the first part of the very impressive introduction to the statement at tonight's second plenary session (once reminded of specific content, I went back to leaning against). I might explain more fully depending on how late I'm staying up.
Stick around for some posts on the first day's business.
As you know, I haven't updated in a while, fulfilling any of my ambitions to "think aloud" through the assembly documents publicly before the big event. After having looked for a while at the mocking weekly reminders on my Google Calendar to update the thing, I was ready to scrap this blog as a failed experiment, but since I arrived at CWA there has been enough noteworthy going on to convince me to make this into a report on the proceedings from a participant's perspective rather than primarily an analysis of the business being discussed. Hope you enjoy it!
I could provide a long list of excuses for you (chief among them: in the last 10 weeks we were notified by our landlord that they were selling the property, we found a new house, and moved), but it's still unfortunate. I do regret at least not putting up a more thorough, specific discussion of the Genetics document. To give you the short summary, I was leaning against, until the first part of the very impressive introduction to the statement at tonight's second plenary session (once reminded of specific content, I went back to leaning against). I might explain more fully depending on how late I'm staying up.
Stick around for some posts on the first day's business.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Voting Member meeting roundup
Last Tuesday there was another meeting for voting members in my synod (Southwest MN). My regular life has gotten much busier in the meantime, which accounts for the delay here. As I mentioned, I can't promise dates for future posts, but I can say with reasonable confidence that they will be irregular (in bunches, that is).
One of our voting members is Linden Olson, who served on the Task Force writing the Genetics statement. He gave us an abbreviated version of the presentation he has been using to introduce the statement in talks. He did take questions; he said that in the earliest drafts there was much more of a focus on human experimentation/genetics, but the agriculture experts helped refocus that, making the point that genetic adjustments in agriculture can affect many more people in a very short period of time. I asked whether there was much difference between the original public draft statement on Genetics and the current version, and Linden and the bishop agreed that it was much shorter in the current version and that the structure of the document was different, but Linden did not think that anything important was changed content-wise, just that it was a better, more concise statement after the editing process. Something I meant to ask, but couldn't because of time pressure, was who the specific recommendations are for in this statement (apart from the recommendations on funding). It seemed to me that in many places the statement was trying to contextualize practices (using our own ethical vocabulary) which had already been tested and vetted in the context of a very mature regulatory structure (a friend of mine who has drafted guidelines for working with animals has told me as much). He did provide part of an answer to that in another question however, saying that while we in the USA operate under a firm regulatory structure, this does not hold for experimentation in other countries or for the use of the the products of US genetic research in other countries, which is a fair point.
Another item discussed was the LIFT Task Force recommendations. I'd mentioned previously (about a month ago) that I was interested in it but I couldn't find anything about it, and that the part of the ELCA website devoted to actions of the upcoming assembly did not provide a link. Well, there is a link now with links to all the relevant documents, and it seems like they are (contrary to my original assumption) making every effort to advertise their work. They have a blog, a facebook page, and even a twitter account. I think after the Genetics statement, I'll go straight to the LIFT Task Force recommendations, as they seem to be potentially the most important for the future of the ELCA. Word at the meeting was that the recommendations represent a radical shift in the orientation of the ELCA toward the support of congregations, which our Bishop sees as encouraging: he sees a deep mutual distrust between many congregations and the national church, which at least here has often been able to distract from the church's mission in this part of the state.
Also mentioned briefly was the fact that there will be discussion of a motion to rescind the 2009 Sexuality statement and associated resolutions at the CWA. Southwest MN was considered a likely place for such a resolution to arise (our Synod Assembly has not yet taken place), but another synod has put it on the agenda.
Everyone else at the meeting was going to be at Synod Assembly this coming weekend (I will be unable to attend), so I hope they will keep me updated on any new information.
One of our voting members is Linden Olson, who served on the Task Force writing the Genetics statement. He gave us an abbreviated version of the presentation he has been using to introduce the statement in talks. He did take questions; he said that in the earliest drafts there was much more of a focus on human experimentation/genetics, but the agriculture experts helped refocus that, making the point that genetic adjustments in agriculture can affect many more people in a very short period of time. I asked whether there was much difference between the original public draft statement on Genetics and the current version, and Linden and the bishop agreed that it was much shorter in the current version and that the structure of the document was different, but Linden did not think that anything important was changed content-wise, just that it was a better, more concise statement after the editing process. Something I meant to ask, but couldn't because of time pressure, was who the specific recommendations are for in this statement (apart from the recommendations on funding). It seemed to me that in many places the statement was trying to contextualize practices (using our own ethical vocabulary) which had already been tested and vetted in the context of a very mature regulatory structure (a friend of mine who has drafted guidelines for working with animals has told me as much). He did provide part of an answer to that in another question however, saying that while we in the USA operate under a firm regulatory structure, this does not hold for experimentation in other countries or for the use of the the products of US genetic research in other countries, which is a fair point.
Another item discussed was the LIFT Task Force recommendations. I'd mentioned previously (about a month ago) that I was interested in it but I couldn't find anything about it, and that the part of the ELCA website devoted to actions of the upcoming assembly did not provide a link. Well, there is a link now with links to all the relevant documents, and it seems like they are (contrary to my original assumption) making every effort to advertise their work. They have a blog, a facebook page, and even a twitter account. I think after the Genetics statement, I'll go straight to the LIFT Task Force recommendations, as they seem to be potentially the most important for the future of the ELCA. Word at the meeting was that the recommendations represent a radical shift in the orientation of the ELCA toward the support of congregations, which our Bishop sees as encouraging: he sees a deep mutual distrust between many congregations and the national church, which at least here has often been able to distract from the church's mission in this part of the state.
Also mentioned briefly was the fact that there will be discussion of a motion to rescind the 2009 Sexuality statement and associated resolutions at the CWA. Southwest MN was considered a likely place for such a resolution to arise (our Synod Assembly has not yet taken place), but another synod has put it on the agenda.
Everyone else at the meeting was going to be at Synod Assembly this coming weekend (I will be unable to attend), so I hope they will keep me updated on any new information.
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