Dunn and Williams
The Rev. Alyce Weaver Dunn (left) and the Rev. Dr. Jay Williams (right) each speak to the Northeastern Jurisdiction after delegates approved delaying election of a second bishop to 2024. Rev. Dunn and Dr. Williams were the front-runners in the balloting prior to the postponement. (UM Insight Screenshot from Northeastern Daily Christian Advocate)
Faced with what seemed to be unsolvable impasse, delegates to the 2022 Northeastern Jurisdictional Conference voted to postpone the election of a second bishop until the 2024 Conference.
While the motion does not bind the 2024 NEJ Conference, it put an end to further balloting in the current session and, with the other business completed, brought the business to a close.
Over the course of 18 ballots total, 15 since the ballot electing Bishop Hector Burgos, the top two candidates were consistently close, with no significant movement toward the needed majority for either candidate.
Presiding over a tangle of rules and interpretations of the rules, presiding Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi walked the body through the process of suspending the rules, calling the question, and other parliamentary procedures.
The NEJ rules state that voting must continue until a candidate gets 60 percent of the ballots or “all the vacancies are filled.”
Delegates then raised the question of whether it was necessary to suspend the rules in order to reaffirm the original motion. That motion passed.
However, to ensure that the motion “would be protected,” Bishop Moore-KoiKoi allowed further questions and points of inquiry to ensure the motion “would be protected” and could not be undone later. The second vote on the motion also passed.
Rev. Alyce Weaver Dunn asked for a moment of privilege to speak to the body after the motion not to elect a second bishop had passed. Even to be considered has just been a privilege and an honor, she said.
She spoke of the difficulty of this day and the personal difficulty she is feeling at the loss of mother, who had died four years ago today.
“I want to speak a word,” she said. “I am the first female candidate endorsed by the Western Pennsylvania Conference. … and, so, I stand here giving thanks for those who have gone before me who never had this honor. I stand here as a testimony to younger clergywomen coming after me. There may be hope yet that a female from Western Pennsylvania can one day become a bishop.”
The Rev. Dr. Jay Williams, who had been alternately second and first among the candidates, also spoke to the body.
“When I was baptized in the Metropolitan UMC in Buffalo, New York, I decided to follow Jesus, I decided to follow Jesus. No turning back,” Williams said.
He recalled his confirmation and the baptismal vow to fight evil and oppression in whatever form they present themselves.
“My heart is heavy that The United Methodist Church still makes a willful choice to oppress,” he said.
“To my beloved siblings, friends, colleagues, especially those who love like me, even though the Church may be broken, we are not. We’re created beautifully in the image of a God who loves us into freedom.”
Rev. Cristian De La Rosa, who was polling third, led the body through a practice that she had done with the interview groups.
“Reach your hands forward to give thanks to God and all our ancestors who came before us,” she said. “Reach your hands back and pull the generations that will come after us forward.
Reach back on the other side to tell them to hurry up. We need them here today. And finally, reach out to person next to you because God calls us to recognize and respect god’s dignity of all of us.”
The Northeastern Jurisdiction held a special called conference in mid-October to resolve a difference between the recommendation of the Jurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy and the Northeastern College of Bishops. The bishops, keeping faith with discussions on the churchwide Council of Bishops regarding dwindling funds to pay for bishops, recommended the election of only one bishop. Citing the missional needs of the region, the Committee recommended two elections. Delegates to the special conference approved the committee's recommendation for two elections.
However, as the lead continued to pass back and forth between Rev. Dunn and Dr. Williams, concerns apparently arose about splitting the jurisdiction's unity between the first clergywoman endorsed by the traditionalist Western Pennsylvania Conference and the openly gay pastor from Boston, who technically is in violation of the Book of Discipline's ban on LGBTQ clergy.
An apparent compromise was taking shape by the last ballot as Rev. De La Rosa's support was rising in the voting tally while Dr. Williams' votes were slipping. That was when a motion was put forth to suspend the jurisdiction's rules and postpone the second bishop election to 2024.
After postponing the second bishop election, the jurisdiction moved its consecration service forward to Friday. Bishop Héctor Burgos was consecrated late Friday morning.
This article was adapted from the Nov. 4 issue of the Northeastern Jurisdiction Daily Christian Advocate, for which the Rev. Dr. Maidstone Mulenga served as editor for the 2022 session. Insight Editor Cynthia B. Astle contributed to this report.