Executive Council called to model prophetic steady action as church navigates time of upheaval

[Episcopal News Service – Hendersonville, North Carolina] Executive Council, The Episcopal Church’s interim governing body, is meeting here Oct. 20-21 at a time of growing political turmoil in the United States and seemingly intractable violence abroad, from Gaza to Ukraine.

“The world does not need a polite church. It needs a brave church,” the Rev. Nancy Frausto, the chaplain to Executive Council, said in her Morning Prayer sermon on the meeting’s opening morning.

Frausto alluded to the Oct. 18 “No Kings” protests across the United States opposing the Trump administration’s tilt toward authoritarianism. She called on council members to help lead a “gospel movement” against injustice – nonpartisan, but prophetic in its words and actions.

“We are full of passion. We have a lot of good intentions. We have righteous statements. But sometimes we lack the structure and strategy to sustain a gospel movement,” Frausto said. “We know how to speak prophetic words in the moment, but do we know how to build prophetic systems for the long haul? We have spirit, but do we have direction? That’s where y’all come in.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe expanded on Frausto’s call for action by highlighting some of the ways Episcopalians are making a difference in their communities, starting with the Diocese of Western North Carolina, which is hosting this Executive Council meeting at Kanuga, an Episcopal camp and conference center.

The region is still recovering a year later from flooding and storm damage caused by Hurricane Helene, which also impacted Kanuga. Rowe spoke of visiting the Ashville-based diocese last month to participate in its Eucharist marking one year since the hurricane, a time to celebrate the region’s resilience.

“The diocese has been making a profound witness to God’s love by providing housing support, household goods, food, medical expenses, relief from rental debt, home repairs, and programs that help people return to work – all while experiencing grief, disillusion and the whole range of other emotions that come during and after a disaster,” Rowe said.

“Being here in Western North Carolina also prompts me to reflect on The Episcopal Church’s response to the increasingly desperate political situation in the United States, which has occupied an enormous amount of our time and energy in the last year.”

Rowe singled out the many Episcopal congregations and ministries across the United States serving Latino communities who now feel threatened by the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws and assertion of power by executive order. Some of those enforcement actions reportedly have involved military-style raids, prolonged detentions and disputed claims of legal authority to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

“As we seek to be strategic with our support for humane and just immigration policy and our ministry with immigrants, we are taking our cues from bishops and other leaders in our dioceses on the southern border and in other communities with large immigrant populations,” Rowe said. “One thing they often ask us is not to issue statements full of outrage and rhetoric that draws attention to their programs.”

Rowe continued that he and other churchwide leaders are taking a similar approach to a very different crisis, in the Middle East. Rowe has been in contact with Jerusalem Archbishop Hosam Naoum, whose Anglican province includes Gaza, and assured him that Episcopalians will “prioritize the needs of the church there and seek to be strategic in our support.”

Israel and Hamas recently agreed to a ceasefire after two years of war that started with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli communities near Gaza’s border. Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory is blamed for leveling much of its infrastructure, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians and leaving many of the territory’s 2 million Palestinian homeless.

“Our choice to limit public statements about Gaza is not an indication that we are ignoring the crisis,” Rowe said. “I am – all of us are – just horrified by what we know of the violence, the human rights abuses, the destruction visited upon Gaza, and I want to do everything we can to help.”

The Episcopal Church can help, he said, by working through its partners in the Anglican Communion, including Naoum, and by offering financial support through the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and The Episcopal Church’s Good Friday Offering.

Executive Council is the church’s governing body between triennial meetings of General Convention. It is responsible for managing the churchwide budget, adopting new policy statements as needed and providing oversight for the work of the program and ministry staff that reports to the presiding bishop.

The presiding bishop chairs Executive Council, and the House of Deputies president serves as its vice chair. Its 38 other voting members are a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms, or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered.

It typically meets three times a year. The dates and location of its next meeting have not yet been announced.

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris also alluded to anxiety over current events in her opening remarks. “We meet in this holy place at a time when the world feels unsteady,” she said.

Ayala Harris listed a range of concerns, from wars and the threat of political violence in the U.S. to declining public trust in institutions and even divisions within global Anglican bodies, after the conservative Anglican network GAFCON announced last week it was engineering a split from the Anglican Communion.

“Our call remains the same: We are to stay anchored to the gospel, not to take each organizational shift in fear, but to lead with clarity, accountability and faithfulness,” Ayala Harris said. “We are called to steadiness, to model what it looks like to lead with courage, to govern with integrity and to stay anchored in the gospel when the ground beneath us moves.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.