News Analysis
In a continuation of a low-key leadership struggle in the House of Deputies, two priests have declared their candidacies for vice president. Their bids recognize that the current VPHoD, the Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, is running against Julia Ayala Harris, the incumbent president of the House of Deputies (PHoD).
The intricacies of these moves highlight the ways in which leadership of the Episcopal Church both resembles and differs from the secular United States government. The struggle also seems to have undermined an initiative related to Indigenous residential boarding schools that was launched with a $2.5 million budget in 2022.
The priests who announced their bids for VPHoD on their respective Facebook pages are the Rev. Charles Graves IV of the Diocese of Texas and the Rev. Steve Pankey of the Diocese of Kentucky. Graves also described his candidacy on his personal website. Additional candidates could still emerge for either president or vice president, although anyone who wishes to run must have declared their interest by April 24, because of a requirement for background checks.
Both new candidates are well known in church governance circles. Graves has been a member of the Executive Council since 2019, is the vice chair of one of the council’s four standing committees, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Executive Council, which is empowered to make certain decisions between the thrice-yearly meetings of the full council. He is the Episcopal campus missioner at the University of Houston, and will be a first-time deputy at General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in late June. He is a member of the General Convention’s Deputies of Color, Deputies Under 40, and LGBTQ+ caucuses.
Pankey was on the Executive Council from 2020 to 2022, and currently serves on the influential Standing Commission on Structure, Governance, Constitution and Canons. He is a four-time deputy to General Convention, and chairs the deputies’ Rules of Order Committee. He is rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, about 120 miles south of Louisville.
Graves and Pankey both serve on Ayala Harris’s PHoD Council of Advice, and both expressed strong support for her, without explicitly endorsing her for reelection. Pankey’s announcement referred to “the extraordinary leadership of President Ayala Harris,” and Graves told TLC it is “an honor to serve” with her.
But while they did not endorse Ayala Harris, their prospects depend on her success. Under Canon I.1.b, the president and vice president must represent opposite orders — one lay, and one ordained. If Taber-Hamilton is successful in unseating Ayala Harris, who is a lay person, Graves and Pankey would immediately become ineligible to serve as VPHoD. As of this writing, no lay deputies have declared for vice president, and it is not known whether any applied to do so before the April 24 deadline. This opens the possibility that the vice presidency could remain unfilled if Taber-Hamilton is elected president.
On the other hand, if Ayala Harris wins reelection — and that is widely considered the more likely outcome — Taber-Hamilton would have the option of immediately declaring for vice president. Taber-Hamilton told TLC she does not intend to run for vice president, but she would be entitled to do so. In the secular U.S. government, candidates run for president and vice president in a simultaneous election, but in the House of Deputies they are elected on separate ballots, since the election of the PHoD disqualifies half of the potential candidates for VPHoD.
The biggest similarity between VPHoD and vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the heartbeat-away factor. In both cases, if the presidency becomes vacant through death or resignation, the vice president immediately ascends to the presidency. During the 10 years the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings served as PHoD, her vice president was Byron Rushing, a lay deputy from the Diocese of Massachusetts. Rushing used to joke that whenever he attended a church that has candles, he would light a candle and pray for Jennings’s continued good health. “Sometimes, to make sure she believes me, I take photographs,” he said.
Ayala Harris and Taber-Hamilton were elected on successive days at the 2022 General Convention. They had not previously met, and started their joint tenure with a moving video celebrating each other’s success as a woman and a person of color. (Ayala Harris is Latina, while Taber-Hamilton is a member of the Shackan First Nation.) Less than two years later, their relationship had soured to the point that Taber-Hamilton launched a long-shot bid to unseat her colleague.
It’s a long shot because of the considerable advantages of incumbency.
As PHoD, Ayala Harris is the second-ranking officer of the Episcopal Church, after Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry. Curry and Ayala Harris jointly serve as ex officio members of virtually every meaningful committee or task force of the church, and the hundreds of lay and clergy leaders who serve on those bodies were appointed or jointly appointed by Ayala Harris.
Ayala Harris’s compensation is $236,757 for 2024, and she is supported by two staff members: a director of operations and a director of communications. She is featured prominently on the houseofdeputies.org website and in a monthly newsletter, and she has taken on an expanded leadership role in the Executive Council in the past year because of Curry’s repeated health challenges.
There is a much sharper disparity between president and vice president of the House of Deputies, compared with the U.S. government. VPOTUS makes a six-figure salary, has Secret Service protection, votes to break ties in the U.S. Senate, and lives in a well-staffed government mansion on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Washington.
Taber-Hamilton receives no compensation as VPHoD — she is employed as rector of Trinity Episcopal in Everett, Washington. She is not a voting member of the Executive Council, although she is accorded seat and voice at council meetings. Taber-Hamilton has not prominently participated in Executive Council deliberations during her tenure, but in recent weeks has been actively testifying in legislative committee hearings as General Convention approaches.
Taber-Hamilton’s chances of election also are limited because she cannot actively criticize Ayala Harris. That would be unseemly. Graves and Pankey both emphasized that they are not running against Taber-Hamilton, but rather because they feel called to serve. “Our democratic process requires us to have elections in the context of discernment,” Pankey said by email, “not to run against anyone.” Graves told TLC he is “absolutely not” running against Taber-Hamilton.
PHoDs are limited to three terms, and typically run unopposed when they seek reelection. The last time an incumbent PHoD faced a challenger was in 2003, when the late Louie Crew, then the church’s most prominent LGBTQ activist, ran against the late George Werner of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, who was seeking his second term. The Journal of the 2003 convention reports that Werner won, but does not provide a vote total. Episcopal News Service coverage of the convention does not shed any light on why Crew was running.
The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, who served with Crew that year as a deputy from the Diocese of Newark, was a friend of Crew and is also a long-time LGBTQ activist. She told TLC she did not recall much about Crew’s candidacy, but said she thought it involved “some concern about what was going on in Pittsburgh,” and whether Werner would be able to serve out his term. This proved “prescient,” she noted, because the bishop and many of the clergy in the Diocese of Pittsburgh were moving toward leaving the Episcopal Church over issues of human sexuality. Werner was denied a third term as PHoD when the diocese voted to replace him on the deputation for the 2006 General Convention, making him ineligible.
In announcing her candidacy, Taber-Hamilton did not mention Ayala Harris by name, and provided few specific reasons for running. “There are unaddressed internal dynamics that in my professional opinion are contributing to an unhealthy corporate culture, jeopardizing our ability for forming the collaborative relationships necessary for effectively moving forward in the crucial work of The General Convention,” Taber-Hamilton wrote.
The 2022 General Convention earmarked $2.5 million — a large commitment by GC standards — for a task force to study the Episcopal Church’s historical complicity in the mistreatment of Indigenous children in assimilationist residential boarding schools. Ten months later, Taber-Hamilton, who has long been active in Indigenous affairs in the church, posted on Facebook: “I am deeply concerned that as of May 2023, the commissions, staffing and archival research set out by this resolution have not yet been formally appointed or initiated.”
Ayala Harris said at the time she was surprised by Taber-Hamilton’s statement, and that the task force had been appointed but not yet announced. The two have since traded contradictory statements about their working relationship and the progress of the boarding school effort.
The conflict seems to have deflated the underlying cause. There are no resolutions at the upcoming General Convention related to the boarding school task force, and TLC has been unable to gather any specific information about what progress has been made toward the $2.5 million initiative.
Two separate committees have been formed related to residential boarding schools. One of them is easy to find on the official list of “interim bodies” on the General Convention website. The Executive Council Committee for Indigenous Boarding Schools and Advocacy was, as it says on the label, appointed by the Executive Council (prior to the 2022 General Convention).
The opaquely named A127 Commission — which cannot be found by searching for keywords such as “Indigenous” or “boarding school,” but only by searching for “A127” — is responsible for overseeing the $2.5 million effort launched by Resolution A127 in 2022. The two bodies have been working together, and both list past meetings in Port Aransas, Texas, in January, and in Seattle in October 2023.
Episcopal News Service reported that the January meeting “centered around sharing stories of the intergenerational trauma experienced today by Indigenous people, as well as healing efforts and the need to specify advocacy priorities. The intergenerational trauma caused by Indigenous boarding schools lingers today in various forms, including poverty, violence and substance abuse.” ENS also reported that “The research commission’s immediate priority is to hire a facilitator and draft a strategic plan to address all points of General Convention’s Indigenous boarding school resolution before the 81st General Convention takes place June 23-28 in Louisville, Kentucky.” The status of the facilitator and strategic plan are unclear.
Taber-Hamilton is an appointed member of both groups, as is Ayala Harris on an ex officio basis. Ayala Harris said both of them attended the October meeting — refuting Taber-Hamilton’s statement that the two had not spoken since last June. Both of them declined to provide any information about the work of the committees, referring TLC to the co-chairs of the A127 Commission. The co-chairs — Pearl Chanar of the Diocese of Alaska and Warren Hawk of the Diocese of South Dakota — have not responded to two requests for information.
The Rev. Bradley Hauff, the Church Center’s missioner for Indigenous ministries, is assigned as staff liaison to both committees, and TLC requested an interview with him. Hauff is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and has briefed Executive Council multiple times in the past. “Church staff will decline comment for this one,” Public Affairs Officer Amanda Skofstad wrote in an email. “I also conferred with PHOD comms, and our sense is that it’s best for you to talk with the task force co-chairs.”
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Episcopal News Service did not appear to have covered the past meetings of the boarding school committees. The article has been updated with excerpts from coverage of the January meeting. The duration of Steve Pankey’s service on Executive Council has also been corrected.