Episcopal Discernment —
Through a Social Justice Lens

As a gift to the Western Jurisdiction, WMJM gathered more than sixty people from across the Jurisdiction in a July 31, 2022 webinar to develop questions with a social justice focus for episcopal candidates. These questions can assist annual conference delegations and other groups to keep social justice concerns before episcopal candidates through the discernment process of electing new bishops this November 2022. (You can download the questions.)

Here are the questions developed by the webinar participants:

1. Where do you see connections between colonization and racism in the life of the church? How will you pursue an anti-racist and decolonizing agenda at the different levels of our connection: local ministry, conference, jurisdiction, denomination?
2. What is your experience doing social justice in and beyond the church? If you have been a District Superintendent or served in another conference leadership role, how did you incorporate social justice into this role?
3. How do you define anti-racism? What will you do as bishop that is intentionally and explicitly anti-racist, and that would move beyond quotas and tokenism?
4. Give examples of how in the past you've worked in multi-cultural spaces. Tell how working cross-culturally has impacted and changed you.
5. What is the church’s role in affecting public policy? What are some ways the church does this effectively? If you see a national, state or local policy that violates a key social justice value, how will you respond in your role as bishop?
6. What does it mean to be compassionate in the role of the bishop? What does it mean to be prophetic? How are these two roles connected?
7. What was a Bonhoeffer/Martin Luther King Jr./Tutu/Romero moment for you?
8. What is your experience with demonstrations for social justice and public acts of civil disobedience? (e.g. marches, protests, at the border, D.C., etc.)
9. Where do you go to find courage? How has this helped you to “keep on keeping on” when things got tough in working on a social justice concern?
10. Using a lens of the experience of indigenous people, how has that changed your understanding of social justice? What are some specific ways the church is called to respond to these experiences?
11. What do you see as the appropriate role for science in the setting of global, national, state, and local policies and how should testimony from the scientific community be evaluated vis-a-vis the testimony and demands being made by religious communities?
12. What value do you see in interreligious conversations between different religious communities in the U.S. and beyond? In the movement for social justice, what is the role for interreligious cooperation?
13. How would you as an episcopal leader work with the deeper longings which come from marginalized people wanting to be free to pursue their dreams? How would you, as an episcopal leader, do more than just advocate and fight for the survival of marginalized communities and work with others to create a beloved community?
14. What spiritual practices do you use to stay open to collaboration? When, if ever, does collaboration become impossible and how do you compassionately address that reality?
Questions submitted were merged and edited to create a social justice focused, comprehensive list.

Resources from the webinar

During the web event, participants met in small groups, and shared their thoughts via Menti polling and conversation.
To set a focus on values that the Western Jurisdiction already has determined, two documents were raised as resource material for the conversations. These came from jurisdictional work groups that met in July of 2021.

Event attendees found these items to be very helpful, and urged that the video introductions also be shared with a wider audience.

The first report was “The theological and missional context of the work of bishops with a report section entitled “the role of the episcopacy” Rev. Mary Huycke, chair of the Jurisdictional Committee on Episcopacy explained that report and the values it encompasses in the video below (left).

Second was a Values Rubric that lifts up inclusion, contextualization, connectionalism, and decolonization. The rubric is designed to assist in viewing the work of ordering and administering the ministry of the church in a new way. Monalisa Tu’itahi presented the rubric at the web event, and has recorded a similar explanation for this website (below right).

Episcopal Discernment —Through a Social Justice Lens

1. Where do you see connections between colonization and racism in the life of the church? How will you pursue an anti-racist and decolonizing agenda at the different levels of our connection: local ministry, conference, jurisdiction, denomination?

2. What is your experience doing social justice in and beyond the church? If you have been a District Superintendent or served in another conference leadership role, how did you incorporate social justice into this role?

3. How do you define anti-racism? What will you do as bishop that is intentionally and explicitly anti-racist, and that would move beyond quotas and tokenism?

4. Give examples of how in the past you've worked in multi-cultural spaces. Tell how working cross-culturally has impacted and changed you.

5. What is the church’s role in affecting public policy? What are some ways the church does this effectively? If you see a national, state or local policy that violates a key social justice value, how will you respond in your role as bishop?

6. What does it mean to be compassionate in the role of the bishop? What does it mean to be prophetic? How are these two roles connected?

7. What was a Bonhoeffer/Martin Luther King Jr./Tutu/Romero moment for you?

8. What is your experience with demonstrations for social justice and public acts of civil disobedience? (e.g. marches, protests, at the border, D.C., etc.)

9. Where do you go to find courage? How has this helped you to “keep on keeping on” when things got tough in working on a social justice concern?

10. Using a lens of the experience of indigenous people, how has that changed your understanding of social justice? What are some specific ways the church is called to respond to these experiences?

11. What do you see as the appropriate role for science in the setting of global, national, state, and local policies and how should testimony from the scientific community be evaluated vis-a-vis the testimony and demands being made by religious communities?

12. What value do you see in interreligious conversations between different religious communities in the U.S. and beyond? In the movement for social justice, what is the role for interreligious cooperation?

14. What spiritual practices do you use to stay open to collaboration? When, if ever, does collaboration become impossible and how do you compassionately address that reality?

Resources from the webinar

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Episcopal Discernment —
Through a Social Justice Lens