WEB-EXCLUSIVE

The Church Politic
By The Rev. John Ohmer

Before I left for Columbus to attend this General Convention, parishioners and friends would ask me, “what will you be doing out there?”

“Writing about church politics,” I’d answer.

The days out here start early (7:30 a.m. with legislative committee hearings) and end late (last night we didn’t finish the print version of The Center Aisle until almost midnight), and we work very hard in between, but I have to admit it: so far, it’s been fun out here.

Oh, there are frustrations aplenty. There’s this suffocating sense of self-importance in the House of Deputies and House of Bishops as they consider all sorts of resolutions on every conceivable issue facing our nation. Sometimes the Episcopal Church acts as if the entire United States Senate were sitting around the cloakroom waiting with bated breath to hear what the Episcopal Church has to say. At such times – when I witness a thousand bright, energetic people get tied up in legislative knots wordsmithing inconsequential amendments to amendments – I want to scream.

But the more important, and more encouraging work of The General Convention happens not in the legislative halls but in the hallways. And in the restaurants and coffeeshops. And in the giant exhibit hall where people wander past 250 exhibits, a kind of “trade show of ideas.”

It’s there – the venues outside the official venues – that I run into David, a friend from seminary, now serving a church in Texas, and with whom I trade stories and ideas. It’s there that I get into a conversation about prayer with Kevin from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, who knows a lot about the genre of historical fiction, and who recommends a particular book I make a note to buy and read some day.

And it’s there that today I ran into a reporter from USA Today, whom I asked, “why is your paper so interested in the Episcopal Church?” Her answer was to say that she understood the Episcopal Church as the “California of Protestantism – as we go, so goes the nation.”

I don’t know if that is flattering, or frightening, or a combination of both – but it’s part of the reason that, frustrations aside, it’s been so fun to be out here – writing about church politics.