The vice president of the House of Deputies has announced an unprecedented bid to oust the president — highlighting a remarkable personal rupture between two women who joyously celebrated each other’s election at the 2022 General Convention.
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, the vice president, announced her candidacy April 21 on her personal blog. Julia Ayala Harris, the president, is standing for reelection at the 81st General Convention in June, in Louisville, Kentucky.
The president of the House of Deputies is the second-ranking officer of the church, and the contested election comes at a time when the top leadership of the church already is in flux. Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry’s successor also will be elected in Louisville, from a slate of five candidates. And the third-ranking officer, General Convention Executive Officer Michael Barlowe, will retire in August after running his fourth General Convention.
The current tension is nothing less than astonishing in light of the interaction captured in a House of Deputies video after the two were elected. In the 14-minute video, Ayala Harris and Taber-Hamilton reveal they had not met before the General Convention, yet they appeared to have a powerful emerging bond.
Taber-Hamilton’s 1,600-word announcement did not mention Ayala Harris by name, and provided little in the way of specific criticism. “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.
She was more forthcoming in an exclusive interview with TLC two days earlier, describing a rift related to the appointment of a fact-finding commission to study the Episcopal Church’s complicity decades ago in mistreatment of Indigenous children in residential boarding schools.
Taber-Hamilton, a priest in the Diocese of Olympia, is a member of the Shackan First Nation, and has long been active in Indigenous issues in both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. She said she was eager to move forward after the 2022 General Convention earmarked $2.5 million to fund the commission, but grew frustrated as time passed and the commission had not been named.
She said that after multiple attempts to get information over a period of months, “I lost my patience.” Ten months after the General Convention, she posted on her Facebook page: “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.”
She said to TLC, “I was told by her chancellor that I embarrassed her. I embarrassed her. And then I didn’t ever hear from her again, I haven’t heard from her since last June.” She added, “it feels like junior high, and we need to be much better than that as an organization.”
Ayala Harris disputes the account. “My office has no record or memory of any requests for updates on this matter from Vice-President Taber-Hamilton prior to her May 2023 Facebook post,” she told TLC by email. “The assertion that Vice-President Taber-Hamilton and I have not interacted since June of last year is not true.” She said both of them attended a meeting related to Indigenous boarding schools in Seattle in late October 2023.
There are two bodies examining the boarding schools, and the October gathering was a joint meeting of both of them. The fact-finding commission created and funded by resolution is co-chaired by Pearl Chanar of the Diocese of Alaska and Warren Hawk of the Diocese of South Dakota. Before the 2022 General Convention, the Executive Council had appointed a committee for Indigenous boarding schools and advocacy, with largely separate membership. Taber-Hamilton is a member of both bodies, as are Curry and Ayala Harris on an ex officio basis.
Chanar and Hawk did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. “The two committees have accomplished quite a bit of work together to clarify and understand their charges, visions, and strategy going forward,” Ayala Harris wrote. “This work is intentional, time-intensive, and ongoing beyond the 81st General Convention.”
This is the second major controversy of Ayala Harris’s tenure. In August 2023, she announced that she had pursued a disciplinary grievance against a retired bishop, whom she did not immediately name, for making “unwanted and non-consensual physical contact” with her, along with “inappropriate verbal statements,” on the day of her election in 2022. She said the complaint had been dismissed in “an obvious abuse of discretion” by the church attorney assigned to the case.
The bishop later was revealed to be her own former bishop, retired Bishop of Oklahoma Ed Konieczny, who denied the allegations. That episode is a key reason why Title IV, the clergy disciplinary canon, is the subject of at least 20 resolutions to be considered in Louisville.
A president of the House of Deputies can serve no more than three terms, with each term spanning the time between General Conventions, normally three years. Ayala Harris, of the Diocese of Oklahoma, was elected to a two-year term at the pandemic-delayed 80th General Convention in 2022, from a five-person slate. A contested race is the norm when the position is open, but no incumbent president has faced a challenger in recent memory.
The canons mandate that the president and the vice president must be from opposite orders — one lay and one ordained. This means the president must be elected in Louisville before it becomes clear who is eligible to stand for vice president. Both elections normally would happen after the presiding bishop election — which currently is scheduled for the morning of June 26, the fourth of six legislative days of the convention. Public Affairs Officer Amanda Skofstad said “the exact dates of the PHOD and VPHOD elections are still to be determined.”
Both positions historically were uncompensated, and the vice president still is. Recognizing the full-time demands of the president’s role, the 2018 General Convention voted to compensate the position with “director and officer fees,” although the president still is not technically an employee of the church. Ayala Harris’s published compensation as an “independent contractor” for 2022 was $223,166 — lower than the salaries of some officers she outranks.
Taber-Hamilton recently was an unsuccessful candidate in the election for Bishop of Rochester.