Episcopal church pushes triennial meeting to 2022

The U.S.-based Episcopal Church has postponed its 80th General Convention by a year, the church’s presiding officers announced Nov. 20.

In a letter to bishops and deputies, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and president of the House of Deputies the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings wrote that they had “spent the last several months riding waves of pandemic news,” Episcopal News Service reported.

Despite the news that vaccines might be approved in the near future, “it is unlikely that even highly effective vaccines and robust federal intervention would permit us to gather as many as 10,000 people safely by next summer, as we had originally planned,” the letter stated.

The convention was originally set to take place in July 2021. It has been rescheduled for July 7-14, 2022 and will be held in Baltimore, Maryland. With this rescheduling, the meeting will conclude two weeks before the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in Canterbury, U.K., which was rescheduled for July 27-Aug. 8, 2022.

General Convention is the triennial meeting of the church’s primary, bicameral governing body. Among its responsibilities is the approval of a three-year budget plan for the national church as well as a host of liturgical and public policy resolutions. Planning for each General Convention begins seven years in advance, and the churchwide budget includes $750,000 for holding each General Convention.