At the November Vestry meeting, one conservative Vestry member suggested that the Vestry nominating committee should require all potential Vestry candidates to sign a statement of "correct" theological beliefs. Then as she was leaving the meeting, she repeated her suggestion. [UPDATE: The Vestry member in question has read this posting and says she takes issue with it, because she doesn't remember saying "correct theology." She might not have used that exact phrase, but that was indisputably the impression I got from her remarks and from the ensuing discussion at the meeting. If other Vestry members remember it differently, feel free to comment below or to contact me directly.]
This Vestry member is a wonderful Christian woman and wants to do the right thing. But doing as she suggests would be a totally-inappropriate interference in the parish's electoral process. Whether she intended it or not, her proposal amounts to an effort by one faction of the parish to consolidate its control and to lock out people holding other points of view. [UPDATE: The Vestry member in question says that she wasn't proposing a lock-out. She suggests that a happy medium might be to ask each Vestry candidate to include in their biographical material a statement of their personal beliefs, so that parishioners would know more about whom they're voting for.]
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Section 9.1(b) of the Canons of the Diocese of Texas prescribe the declaration to be subscribed to by all vestry members: "I am persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain all doctrine required as necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ; and I accede to the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church." That's simple enough, and it's enough, period.
Vestry members by definition are lay people. The baptismal covenant and the Apostles' Creed are all that any Episcopalian lay person is ever required to profess. They are therefore "good enough theology" for Vestry candidates. (See also Larry's recent "Good Enough Theology" article in The Vine, available on the Web at www.sjd.org.)
At the election, parishioners can decide for themselves how important a Vestry candidate's particular personal beliefs are. There's no need, and indeed no warrant or justification, for requiring candidates to sign a statement of belief, nor for any other non-canonical restrictions on our right to vote for the candidates of our choice
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--D. C.
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