The COVID 19 pandemic hit the world in the fall of 2019. By March of 2020, that caused the postponement of all gatherings of church bodies from the local church to General Conference for 2020 and into 2021. The Judicial Council struggled with figuring out how to respond to matters raised by annual conferences and the Council of Bishops in 2019 which had been deferred from the November, 2019, session and which began to arise as church bodies found ways to “meet” by using computer programs like Skype and Zoom.
In early December of 2020, on the personnel case of Erik Seise which had been before them in several ways since August of 2018, the Council was polled by the Secretary and it voted not to reconsider (JCM 1400) its decision on his case (JCD 1384). Though we were notified immediately, the formal report was not published until April 16, 2021. The Council actually broke up its Spring 2021 session into four release dates: JCM 1408 on March 22, JCD 1409 on March 25, JCM 1400-JCD 1410 on April 16 (excluding the two already published), and JCM 1411-JCM 1418 on May 5.
Not only was the Council unable to maintain any continuity for the sake of connecting the dots, they had to work remotely rather than face-to-face which further exacerbated their work. These complicating factors could not have come at a more difficult time because the 2019 session of General Conference caused a great deal of consternation among many annual conferences. The Council tried to remain neutral as the “Traditionalists” and the rest of the Church fought over relating to the LGBTQIA+ community and splitting the denomination.
The rule of law, in principle, tends to maintain the status quo, which means we have largely stayed stuck together despite our differences. The internal squabbles have distracted us from the immediate crisis of global warming. One would think that the imminent disaster of climate change would draw us together at least for the short term. But I’m not even sure that our experience of staying home during the pandemic during which time skies cleared of smog and waterways cleared of pollution gave us a feeling of having done something that affected the Earth.
Because we were at home, more of us heard of continent-sized patches of plastic in our oceans and some efforts to diminish their size. We also began to realize how unequal our police enforcement has been toward people of color. For the summer, of 2020, at least, the nine minute twenty nine second death of George Floyd was a story universally watched and internationally protested by people of all races.
These issues were not before the Council in any way, even though they are the major crises facing humanity.
But the Council did clarify some things for the Church. The primary concern in declaring the administrative way conferences (mis)handle troubled pastors unconstitutional (JCD 1408) has to do with the conflict of interest of the Cabinet and Board members voting on the status of a pastor during the clergy session they had previously worked on in their respective groups. Further, the Council made it clear that the Church has no way to be flexible financially during a major world-wide crisis (JCD 1409). The Council showed the denomination has no real way to handle cheating on General Conference votes (JCD 1401). And finally, the Council reminded the Traditionalists again and again that the Church allows disagreement over policies though not over behavior (most of the rest of the Council’s decisions!)
My final observation about the winter/spring work of the Council is that the Council of Bishops has come to be the “go to” group to take questions to the Judicial Council. That means that they become the party at interest and become second-hand purveyors of evidence of cases they bring on behalf of others. I think that hurt the Commission on the General Conference on the voting irregularity situation. I believe it hurt the appeal of a bishop several years ago. Putting the Council of Bishops between an appellant and the Council also worked against Rev Seise. I hope the Council will be wiser about taking jurisdiction when the Bishops appeal like that.
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