Episcopal Press and News
Convention to Fill 12 Council Seats
Episcopal News Service. July 8, 1982 [82163]
NEW YORK (DPS, July 8, ) -- A committee of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has announced the names of 28 persons who are nominated to fill 12 vacancies on the national Executive Council.
The Joint Standing Committee on Nominations has proposed the names to fill the 10 vacancies which normally occur plus names for two unexpired terms. The Convention will elect the Council members at its triennial meeting in New Orleans, Sept. 5-15.
The Council -- which sets policy and develops programs for the Episcopal Church between the meetings of the Convention -- will consist of 40 members following changes in the Church's laws in the fall of 1979. Twenty members will be elected by the Convention; 18 are elected by the Church's nine internal provinces, with the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies as ex-officio members.
The Convention will normally elect 10 members from the Church at large at each triennial Convention for a term of six years. Provincial representatives serve for six years, with half of them elected each Convention year.
Five bishops have been proposed by the committee with two to be elected to serve until 1988. Nominated are Bishops Donald J. Davis of Northwestern Pennsylvania; Walter D. Dennis, suffragan of New York; Jackson E. Gilliam of Montana; Lemuel B. Shirley of Panama; and Furman C. Stough of Alabama.
Davis, of Erie, Pa., has been bishop of the diocese -- whose name has recently been changed from Erie to Northwestern Pennsylvania -- since 1974. Dennis has served as suffragan bishop in the Diocese of New York since 1979, while Gilliam, Helena, has led the Diocese of Montana since 1968. Shirley became Bishop of Panama in 1972 and Stough, of Birmingham, was consecrated Bishop of Alabama in 1971.
The Convention will elect two presbyters (priests) for six-year terms and two for three-year terms.
Nominated for the six-year terms are the Very Rev. Frederick H. Borsch, Princeton, N.J.; the Rev. Sara J. Chandler, Mt. Lebanon, Pa.; the Rev. Austin R. Cooper, Cleveland; the Rev. Leopoldo Frade, New Orleans; the Rev. John MacNaughton, San Antonio; the Very Rev. William F. Maxwell, Salt Lake City, and the Rev. Canon Edward W. Rodman, Boston.
Borsch and Rodman are currently filling unexpired terms on the Executive Council and are eligible for election by the Convention to full six-year terms.
The committee has nominated four priests to fill the two three-year terms: the Rev. Canon Junius F. Carter, Pittsburgh; the Rev. Alex D. Dickson, Jr., Vicksburg, Miss.; The Rev. Wallace A. Frey, DeWitt, N.Y.; and the Rev. John H. Jordan, Jr., Virginia Beach, Va.
Carter is completing a three-year term on the Council this year as one of two representatives of Province III. He is not eligible for re-election as a provincial representative but may be elected by the Convention.
Eight men and four women are nominated by the committee for the six lay vacancies, each for six-year terms: Mrs. Madge W. Brown, Little Rock, Ark.; Paul M. Chalk, Sparks, Nev.; Webster M. Chandler, Jr., Norfolk, Va.; Mrs. Martha Abbot Comstock, Northwood, N.H.; Paul A. Frank, Jr. Akron, Ohio; Hedley Clarence Lennan, M.D., Panama; George L. McGonigle, Austin; John E. Messick, Georgetown, Dela.; Mrs. Jane Oglesby, Indianapolis; Byron Rushing, Boston; Thomas S. Tisdale, Jr., Charleston, S.C.; and Mrs. Margot Woodwell, Pittsburgh.
The committee also made nominations for vacancies on the Anglican Consultative Council, with one bishop and one priest to be elected to serve terms of three meetings of the Council, plus one priest as an alternate member. Bishops nominated are Edmond L. Browning of Hawaii and William H. Folwell of Central Florida. Priests nominated for the membership post are the Rev. Earl Brill of Washington and the Rev. Hays H. Rockwell of New York. Nominated as the alternate priest member are the Rev. Peyton C. Craighill of Sewanee, Tenn. and the Rev. Robert M. Wainwright of Rochester, N.Y.
Dr. Charles R. Lawrence, Pomona, N.Y., President of the House of Deputies, and Mrs. Pamela Chinnis of West Palm Beach, Fla., are continuing participants, as lay and alternate representatives respectively. They were elected by the Convention in 1979 to serve for three consecutive meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council. The Council's most recent meetings was in England in 1981.
A resolution from the Standing Commission on the Structure of the Church will ask the Convention to change its Joint Rule of Order 18 (g) so that hereafter members of the Anglican Consultative Council -- and any other intra-Anglican or ecumenical bodies -- be elected by the Executive Council rather than the Convention in order better to conform the term of office of the Church's representatives to those bodies' schedules. It is impossible to conform the triennial schedule of Convention to the various schedules of the Anglican and ecumenical bodies, the committee pointed out.
The Nominations Committee will also present to the Convention nominations for various other Church boards, such as the Church Deployment Board, General Seminary Board of Trustees, the Church Pension Fund trustees, and the General Board of Examining Chaplains.
The committee is proposing the re-election of the Rev. Canon James R. Gundrum as Secretary of the House of Deputies and Kenneth A. Miller of Garden City, Long Island, N.Y., as Treasurer of the General Convention.
Stough is chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Nominations. Mrs. Mary Durham of Birmingham, Mich., is vice chairman and the Rev. Canon Edward J. Morgan of Hartford, Conn., is secretary of the committee.
The nine provinces have elected the following to serve on the Council until 1988: The Rev. Donald A. Nickerson, Jr., Brunswick, Me. (I); the Rev. Canon Vincent Pettit, Toms River, N.J. (II); the Rev. Canon Kermit L. Lloyd, Harrisburg, Pa. (III); Mrs. Scott T. Evans, Durham, N.C. (IV); the Ven. Arthur B. Williams, Cleveland, Ohio (V); the Rev. Jack Knight, Littleton, Colo. (VI); The Rev. Donald Hungerford, Odessa, Tx. (VII); the Rt. Rev. Edmond L. Browning, Honolulu, Hawaii (VIII); and Sr. Jose Ramiro Chavez, San Salvador, El Salvador (IX).
Hungerford, who had filled an unexpired term, was elected by the seventh province synod to a full six-year term.
In its report, the committee asserted, "Before beginning the actual nominating process, the Committee voted to follow the affirmative action guidelines suggested by the Executive Council so as to produce, as far as possible, a slate representative of the whole Church's constituency."
The House of Bishops and the House of Deputies elect the members from their own houses with the other house confirming the choice. Nominations may be made from the floor for the vacancies.