A committee of the House of Deputies seeks Episcopalians’ perspectives on the Church Pension Fund and the church’s work for justice.
The House of Deputies’ Committee on the State of the Church offers online surveys on those topics, and will use the findings to prepare its report to the 79th General Convention in 2018.
“The State of the Church committee is canonically mandated to prepare a report on the state of the Episcopal Church for the House of Deputies, which we send to the House of Bishops after we have approved it,” says the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies. “Based on the concerns I’ve heard raised in my conversations with deputies and other leaders at General Convention and as I travel around the church, in 2015 I asked the group to focus on the state of the church in three specific areas: multicultural ministries, justice and advocacy ministries, and the Church Pension Fund.”
The survey about the Church Pension Fund, available in English and Spanish, is designed to collect responses from lay and ordained people who work in the church, regardless of whether they participate in the Church Pension Fund or the Church Medical Trust.
The survey about justice, also available in English and Spanish, aims to gather information about the ways that dioceses and congregations are involved in advocating for a more just society.
“We want to know more about how the church is advocating for economic justice, fair wages, and other justice issues,” said deputy Laura Russell of Newark, who is part of the committee’s working group assessing justice work. “Likewise, we want to know about where the church is not just feeding and assisting people in need, but also working against the structures that perpetuate racism, poverty, and hunger in our societies.”
The surveys, which are available through SurveyMonkey until Aug. 18, are available at these links:
- Church Pension Fund (English) (Spanish)
- Justice/Diocesan Representatives (English) (Spanish)
- Justice/Congregational Representatives (English) (Spanish)
Adapted from the Office of Public Affairs
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
