GC81 Daily Digest, June 25: Kentucky Night, legislation progresses and House of Deputies president election
A deputy takes to the microphone to testify during the June 24 House of Deputies afternoon legislative session. Photos: Randall Gornowich
[Episcopal News Service – Louisville, Kentucky] The third full day of the 81st General Convention is underway at the Kentucky International Convention Center. Legislative committees continue to meet in the early morning hours and the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops are meeting in their respective houses for late morning and afternoon legislative sessions.
Today’s big story will be the House of Deputies presidential election, full coverage of it will follow sometime this afternoon.
You can find full, regularly updated ENS coverage here. The ENS primer, or everything you need to follow the 81st General Convention, is here.
A lot can happen on any given day at General Convention. News that doesn’t make it into a full story gets filed into our daily digest. Here are some dispatches from June 25.
Deputies’ Social Justice & International Policy Committee moves peace and justice resolutions along
The deputies’ Social Justice & International Policy committee met this morning, June 25, and first addressed resolutions passed via the House of Bishops June 24 consent calendar.
Deputies voted first to concur with the bishops’ vote on the following resolutions and then voted to put them on the House of Deputies consent calendar:
A110, clarifying the distinction between Biblical and modern Israel.
C002, on “responsible travel” to the Holy Land
D012, conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel on adherence to humanitarian law.
D019, on justice and peace in Ukraine.
D037, encouraging Episcopal ministries to assess their intersections with issues of migration.
The committee then moved to resolutions on which bishops voted to take no further action, per the committee’s recommendations, because their content was integrated into other resolutions. Committee members voted to concur and to put them on the House of Deputies consent calendar.
“Take no further action” resolutions include: A011 and D003, all pertaining to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid; C013, C015 and C022, all entitled “Migration with Dignity”; C027, conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel; and D058, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Next, the committee voted to concur with the bishop’s yes votes on resolutions D075, calling for the immediate release of Palestinian Layan Nasir held in administrative detention without charge by Israel; D006, condemning Christian Zionism; and D062, expressing solidarity with Armenia. D062 was then placed on the House of Deputies consent calendar.
The rest of the meeting was dedicated to strategizing how the committee might present Holy Land resolutions to the House of Deputies by special order or by consent calendar. There was uncertainty around how the committee could discuss Resolution D056, which the House of Bishops postponed the previous day with potential amendments not accessible online at the time of the committee meeting.
-Logan Crews
