Last evening the Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations Committee held a hearing on three resolutions, concerning relations with the Methodist and Presbyterian churches and the Church of Sweden. According to Massachusetts deputy Rebecca Alden, who is marking her third General Convention on the committee, things “got quite involved.” The upshot is that she and two fellow deputies will be filing a new resolution today to replace the proposed A072, “Interim Eucharistic Sharing with the United Methodist Church.”
“The main
purpose is to recognize the issue of how racism has contributed to division of
the denominations, and we don’t want to further divide by working only with
the United Methodist churches,” Becky reported last night after the hearing.
Becky explains:
“At the last convention, at the last afternoon session of the last day, this resolution came to the House of Deputies after being passed by the House of Bishops. Byron Rushing wanted to amend the resolution because it did not include the historical African -American Methodist churches such as the AME, CME and AMEZ. However, he did not amend it because then the resolution would have had to return to the House of Bishops and be passed again. So the unamended version passed, and progress was made in some parts of the country.
“This time, the resolution was to continue eucharistic sharing. As a member of the committee, I brought up Byron’s concerns. Although my original amendment to include further discussion with the historical African-American churches was defeated, the committee added a second resolve that helped to solve the issue. Byron spoke at the hearing and gave us all a history lesson about the Episcopal Church and Absalom Jones and Richard Allen. At the end of the hearing, we voted to have three deputies submit a new resolution that will include both eucharistic sharing with the United Methodist and continued dialogue with the historical African-American Methodist churches. I am one of those three deputies.”
The Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts at General Convention 2009 
The AME, AMEZ, and CME churches have found it difficult to engage in ecumenical dialogue of the sort that the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church have had for some years. It should not be difficult for the Episcopal Church to find the same theological congruence with these churches as it has found with the UMC, but attempts to establish relationships that are not mutually asked for are not wise.