Voting for Doctrine
Since today is the Feast of St. Andrew, I attended the noon Eucharist in the cathedral downtown here in Pittsburgh. I am not sure who the priest was that took the service, but his sermon was a fascinating dismissal of the entire decision-making process that has been in place throughout the history of the Church. He began by saying that in our American culture today we feel that we can only accept something once we have discussed it at great length and then voted on it. For him, the impact of this is that we do not fully accept any idea or proposition, but rather constantly ask for more proof and more evidence.
He then went on to say that this is also the way that the ‘modern’ Church makes decisions about doctrine, that is, by voting on them, and that this is wrong and goes against true Christian practice and belief. He held up St. Andrew as someone who simply followed what Jesus told him to do, and said that we should do the same. Of course, he didn’t mention what we should do when faced with a problem that Jesus didn’t discuss.
He pointed to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which, he helpfully reminded us, is the largest legislative body in the United States with its ‘900 members’ (i.e. those in the House of Lay and Clerical Deputies — I guess that the House of Bishops and its 300 members is not really relevant somehow), as a body which makes doctrinal decisions by voting on them.
In all of this, he failed to mention that our form of ecclesiastical decision-making in the Episcopal Church was set up in the 18th century after the American Revolutionary War on purpose, to differentiate us from the state-run Church of England. To this day, the Queen of England appoints bishops and Parliament must sign off on any major doctrinal or liturgical changes, such as any revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. The Episcopal Church believes that this democratic process is the best way we have come up with to discern the teaching of the Holy Spirit in contemporary society. Through discussion, debate, and an eventual vote, we are able to try and see what new things God is telling us.
I would certainly not say that the system is perfect. At my first General Convention, I was partly amazed but also partly horrified at some of the ridiculous debates that wasted time, energy, and money. In addition, my experience at the World Council of Churches led me to an understanding that perhaps there is some value to the idea of consensus decision-making rather than straight up-or-down voting.
Now, the other piece of the Church’s history that this sermon failed to discuss are all of the councils that have been held throughout the centuries. In particular, the early Ecumenical Councils, recognized by all mainline Christian bodies as doctrinally unique and centrally important, were, in fact, voting assemblies of bishops from throughout early church. Texts such as the Nicene Creed (which, strangely, we did not say during the Eucharist — perhaps there was no room to fit it in after the lengthly sermon) were created out of these debates and discussions which, in fact, were fairly politically motivated. For example, the Roman emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea in 314 C.E. in order to calm down the fighting factions in the Church of his day, but the main benefit that he was hoping for was political stability throughout the empire.
This idea of democratically-based doctrinal decision-making is not new at all, but, in many ways, forms the basis for the entire Christian theological tradition and points to the idea of continuing revelation — that God is still speaking to us today.
