FROM INDABA TO UBUNTU: WELCOME TO GENERAL CONVENTION 2009

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn
The Christian Challenge
July, 2008

The 2008 Lambeth Conference had its “indaba” groups, which seemed more of a control device than a sincere nod or gesture of outreach toward mostly-conservative African Anglicans.

So it is, unsurprisingly, that liberal Episcopal Church (TEC) leaders also have pressed an African buzzword into service to help effect the next stage of their church revolution at the 2009 General Convention – which, fittingly, will take place at a California convention center across the street from Disneyland.

TEC has co-opted the word “ubuntu,” from Southern Africa, and also will use “public narrative,” from Harvard, as thematic touchstones for delegates at a convention that some think will give the full go-ahead for further actively gay bishops, same-sex blessings, and possibly even gay “marriage.”

In April 2008, the officials from “815” (TEC headquarters in New York) announced that the 2009 convention will “explore the Episcopal Church’s call to mission through the themes of Ubuntu, Identity and Mission.” According to TEC, ubuntu “is a Zulu or Xhosa word that describes humaneness encompassing a sense of caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation. Finding an exact translation for this word and concept in western thought is difficult.”

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said that she had suggested ubuntu as a convention theme because, since the word is “unfamiliar, it may be able to invite us into a larger and more expansive way of understanding identity in community.”

Ubuntu was brought into the global limelight by Cape Town Archbishop Emeritus and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu. In his book No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu wrote, “When we want to give high praise to someone we say, ‘Yu u nobuntu’; ‘Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.’ Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have . . . We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ A person with ubuntu … is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good.” Some felt that TEC has not measured its own behavior (e.g., its zealous litigation of property disputes and penchant for cutting canonical corners when deposing dissident clergy) against this standard of magnanimity.

Of the “Identity/Mission” sub-themes of the convention, TEC says: “What is it that makes being an Episcopalian different from being a member of another branch of Christ’s church? Once we know who we are (identity), we can address what we are called to do (mission).” The Scriptural statements on the identity and mission of the Church seem to be missing from these plans.

To promote the ubuntu theme among Episcopalians, the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements for General Convention is seeking a logo that illustrates the African term. The deadline for submissions was June 30, and the contest winner – as determined by a panel of four senior TEC staff and priests – will be announced on September 1. The first prize will be a donation of $5,000 in the winner’s name to “an organization that addresses one or more of the Millennium Development Goals.”

If convention planners find untranslatable African jargon insufficient to achieve their goals, they can use the idea of “public narrative,” straight from Western academia. This discussion process is promoted by Dr. Marshall Ganz, a professor from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It claims to be “the art of using stories to translate articulated values into action,” beginning with “the story of self” (a technique that pro-gay Episcopalians have been using effectively for years). Ganz says, “It’s a way in which values become enacted. This is not about making people comfortable … It’s about creating tension that results in creative action.”

Staff from TEC’s Executive Council, and other General Convention planners, underwent training in this procedure at a mid-June meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The planning and arrangements committee has proposed that at General Convention, deputies and bishops familiar with and trained in public narrative as a tool for mission facilitate a public narrative practice.

Source: Episcopal Life Online
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