"Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends"--Marriage and General Convention
Three summers ago, all of the news reports out of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church was "the Episcopal Church approves same sex marriage." One might have thought that this would be the end of the matter, but, indeed, it is back on the agenda for the 2018 General Convention kicking off in Austin, Texas in a couple of weeks. For those not following this matter closely, here is the primer. The vehicle by which same sex marriage approval was accomplished was two-fold. First, GC15 approved a change to the canons of the church that explicitly authorizes clergy to marry same sex couples. This change retained the provision that a clergyperson has an essentially unconstrained right to refuse to marry any couple. Thus, an Episcopal priest or bishop who does not support same-sex marriage can never be forced to marry a same sex couple, as they could always use the general opt-out provided for in the canons.
If you look for that sort of didactic, "position paper" approach to theology in the Anglican world, you will generally be disappointed and frustrated. You will often find things that vaguely look like what you see in Papal encylicals and Protestant faith statements, but they are often much vaguer and amorphous. But, perhaps more to the point, they are taken far less seriously inside the church. General Convention meets every three years, and the worldwide Lambeth Conference meets every four, and both produce a multitude of statements on a wide variety of topics, but most people (of all theological persuasions) treat them as at best an accurate reflection of where people's heads were at on a particular day and time, but not any sort of binding doctrinal statement. Indeed, I think there is a strong case to be made that the famous 1930 Lambeth Council statement on birth control had orders of magnitude more impact in the Roman Catholic Church (insofar as it prompted Pius XI to issue Casti Connubii in response, and thus tying Papal authority to its position birth control) than it ever did in the Anglican world.
This casual approach to doctrinal statements is not (as I assumed, and as almost all of the critics of the Episcopal Church/Anglicanism would say) a product of Anglicanism "having no theology" or being a muddled mess. Instead, it's a reflection of the idea that theology is to be found in and expressed through an embodied form, primarily in terms of liturgy (here, Anglicanism has some substantial commonalities with the Orthodox churches). If you want to know what the Episcopal Church believes, the best way to do that is to come to a liturgy and see it play out. Failing that, you can pick up the BCP and read what it says and how it instructs the church to play that out.
For this reason, the history of the Episcopal Church is basically a running series of fights over liturgy and/or the Prayer Book (and/or the procedural mechanisms by which the first two can be altered or changed). It's not that there aren't theological issues "behind" those liturgical fights--there are--but that the fights occur in and through a liturgical context. The first of the myriad of "continuing Anglican" denominations in the U.S., the Reformed Episcopal Church, got going as a result of a fight over whether or not candles should be placed on the altar. Now, that dispute is the flashpoint for a much broader discussion of the relative positions of the Catholic and Protestant wings of the Episcopal Church, but it came down to something liturgical.
All of this is to say that what the liturgies and the BCP say are a really big deal, maybe the Biggest Deal. Having the BCP say that marriage is between two people, not necessarily a man and a woman, represents the authoritative statement of the beliefs of the Episcopal Church. If this is what the Episcopal Church believes, and based on everything that happened in 2015 and after it is, then it follows that the BCP should say that. On the flip side, it is not just formalism or persnickety-ness that motivates the resistance by conservatives to the inclusion of this language into the BCP. If and when the change is approved, every person who does not believe same-sex marriages are appropriate and capable of being blessed by God becomes, in essence, dissenters in their own church. Speaking from experience, that's not a great feeling or place to be in. So, I get it, but for me that doesn't change the basic equation--is our theology that same-sex marriages are OK or not?
Second, GC15 approved a group of liturgies that were gender neutral, and as such could be used in the context of a wedding of same-sex couples (they could also be used, and have been, for opposite sex couples who prefer them). These liturgies were approved as "trial rites," meaning that they are not included in the Book of Common Prayer. By virtue of being a trial rite generally, and also explicitly in the resolution that approved them, use of these rites was subject to approval by the local bishop. In other words, a bishop could prohibit or put conditions on the use of the rites, and thus prohibit or put conditions on the availability of same sex marriage in his or her diocese. The authorizing resolution further stated that bishops who decline to authorize the trial rites must "make provision" for same sex couples from their diocese that wish to get married.
Of the 101 dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States (there are dioceses in other countries that are part of the Episcopal Church), the bishops of 73 of those dioceses have approved the trial rites without restriction (including my diocese of Southern Ohio). Twenty additional dioceses have approved the rites subject to conditions, such as the Diocese of Colorado which requires the parish that wants to conduct same sex weddings to undertake a process of formal approval. This leaves 8 dioceses that are the holdouts. In a couple of the hold-out dioceses, the bishop has also forbidden priests of the diocese to perform same sex weddings at all. This greatly restricts the ability of those dioceses to "make provision" for same sex couples in their territory to get married. One of the hold-out bishops, Dan Martins of Springfield, Illinois, described his understanding of "make provision" as "I would assist those wishing to arrange for a ceremony in making contact with a priest in a neighboring diocese, who could come into the geographic territory of the diocese and preside at some venue not owned by or associated with any of our churches."
So, with that as the backdrop, we come to GC18. The resolution on the table, A085, does several things. First, it reauthorizes the trial rites approved in 2015 for another three years, as they would technically lapse as of the First Sunday of Advent 2018. Second, it makes a series of revisions to the text of the Book of Common Prayer, specifically the catechism and the Eucharistic Prefaces for Marriage, to make them gender neutral. Third, there is some tightening up of the "make provision" language, to now say "bishops . . . will make provision for all couples asking to be married in this Church to have reasonable and convenient access to these trial liturgies." In addition (or perhaps as the vehicle to effectuate the "make provision" language), it removes the specific requirement that the rights be approved by the bishop in order to be implemented, a change that the drafters interpret as removing the ability of a bishop to prohibit same-sex marriages in his diocese. And, finally, it explicitly states that the trial rites are being put forward, along with the revisions to the Prefaces and the catechism as the first of the two required "readings" of an amendment to the BCP. In other words, if A085 is approved, and similar language is approved again in 2021, those texts and those changes would be officially added to BCP.
So, that's the background. One can find a wealth of commentary on these issues, but I want to note three things that have struck me about this discussion, from the point of view of someone new to these issues--"picking them up in the middle" as you might say.
The ball, it seems to me, is in the conservatives' court. I think it has been made clear to them that the status quo with regard to "make provision" is unacceptable, and they have made it clear that they don't want a BCP amendment. The way forward, it seems to me, is to ask them "what fix to this is acceptable to you?" If the answer is, "nothing, we insist on being able to prohibit same-sex marriages in our dioceses completely," then I think it makes sense to just go forward with the resolution and the BCP amendment. By taking that position, they will have demonstrated that they are going to be mad at anything other than total capitulation, and the amendment is the cleanest and most straight-forward solution to the existing problem. If, on the other hand, they are open to allowing anyone in their diocese who wants out to get out, then I think that is worth exploring as a compromise. But the compromise should contain an explicit understanding that if the hold-outs drag their feet or throw up roadblocks to parishes that want to perform same sex marriages, then the BCP revisions will be back in 2021. Either way, without buy-in from the conservative hold-outs, I feel like some of these compromise proposals are negotiating against yourself.
So, that's the background. One can find a wealth of commentary on these issues, but I want to note three things that have struck me about this discussion, from the point of view of someone new to these issues--"picking them up in the middle" as you might say.
The first issue is ecclesiological, and more specifically the relationship between the Episcopal Church as a whole, the diocesan bishops, and individual priests/congregations. Not surprisingly, the group most mad about the proposed changes are the eight "hold out" bishops, who have prohibited same sex marriages from taking place in their dioceses. It is important to keep in mind that there is no proposal, and no enthusiasm that I can see, for getting rid of the essentially unfettered discretion of priests to decline to officiate any marriage. So, even if the BCP were to be amended, priests who were opposed to same sex marriages would be free to decline to perform them. Their conscience rights would be protected.
The place where the rubber meets the road here is with regard to the progressive parishes/priests scattered among their conservative brethren in an otherwise conservative diocese. Keep in mind that, contrary to the state of play in Roman Catholicism, a bishop does not assign clergy to parishes; an individual parish selects and approves its rector, subject to confirmation by the bishop. So, you can, and do, have congregations and clergy in conservative dioceses that would be willing to perform same sex marriages in their communities, but for the ban imposed by their bishop (here's an example from the Diocese of Dallas; here are similar efforts in the Diocese of Tennessee). Likewise, these parishes often have the majority of LGBT Episcopalians in an otherwise perhaps unfriendly diocese, as they reasonably gravitate toward communities that are pro-LGBT and have fully affirming leadership. Thus, it is not simply a question of whether LGBT couples can get married in the Episcopal Church in the abstract, but often whether they can get married in their own communities of faith, presided over by their own clergy. Right now, they can't; if the resolution passes, they could.
Thus, the proposed resolution would empower individual parishes and their clergy leadership at the expense of the power of the bishop and the diocese, as the locus of decision-making on same sex marriages would move from the diocesan level to the congregational level. It would also be, at least in a symbolic sense, a statement of the power of the Episcopal Church as a whole visa ve individual dioceses, since the national church removing would be that authority from the bishops and relocating it to the parishes and parish clergy.
These balance-of-power questions are set against the backdrop of a theology and ecclesiology coming out of the conservative end of North American Anglicanism which advocates for an almost monarchical model of the episcopacy. This is reflected clearly in the structure of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), where, to take one example, each bishop can determine whether it's appropriate to ordain women or not. Much of that enthusiasm for a strong episcopate is a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Episcopal Church and General Convention, but it also flows down to a strong hand on individual parishes. You can see that in the fight with Truro Anglican Church in Northern Virgina, who tried to enter into a permanent arrangement with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia (which owned the land and the historic buildings) only to be forced to withdraw in the face of withering criticism from ACNA bishops.
Fr. Tobias Haller makes, I think, a persuasive case that this ecclesiology is incoherent. But, whatever the merits, it seems to me that this spirit is in large measure behind the absolute insistence on the part of the hold-outs that they be allowed to forbid same sex marriage in their diocese. It's not simply the merits of the change (which they vehemently disagree with), but also with the idea that they, as bishops, can and should be forced to give way to the desires and discernment of both the entity "above" them (i.e., the Episcopal Church expressed through General Convention) and "below" them (i.e. a particular congregation and its clergy leadership).
A compromise solution that has been floated by some is some version of "Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight" or DEPO. Under that model, a parish that wants to perform same sex marriages in a hold-out diocese would be allowed to essentially "secede" from their diocese and affiliate themselves on a temporary basis with a diocese that would authorize them to go forward with the weddings. The Church of England has implemented a version of this plan for parishes that refuse to be under a woman bishop, and there have been similar arrangements in the Episcopal Church. But under the previous versions of DEPO, the bishop who currently has jurisdiction over the parish would have to agree to allow DEPO for the disaffected parish. So, for this to work, either all of the hold-out bishops would have to agree to grant DEPO to any parish in their diocese that asks for it, or there would have to be some rule that allows for a parish to get DEPO status unilaterally, even in the face of opposition from their bishop. One suspects that the second option would provoke just as much push-back from the hold-outs as the proposed solution, especially as "episcopal teaching authority" is the raison d'etre offered by the conservatives for why he has a blanket prohibition on same sex marriages in the first place. "I can forbid same sex marriage in my diocese, except that any parish that disagrees with my decision may unilaterally elect for me not to be their bishop any more" is not much authority in a practical sense.
The place where the rubber meets the road here is with regard to the progressive parishes/priests scattered among their conservative brethren in an otherwise conservative diocese. Keep in mind that, contrary to the state of play in Roman Catholicism, a bishop does not assign clergy to parishes; an individual parish selects and approves its rector, subject to confirmation by the bishop. So, you can, and do, have congregations and clergy in conservative dioceses that would be willing to perform same sex marriages in their communities, but for the ban imposed by their bishop (here's an example from the Diocese of Dallas; here are similar efforts in the Diocese of Tennessee). Likewise, these parishes often have the majority of LGBT Episcopalians in an otherwise perhaps unfriendly diocese, as they reasonably gravitate toward communities that are pro-LGBT and have fully affirming leadership. Thus, it is not simply a question of whether LGBT couples can get married in the Episcopal Church in the abstract, but often whether they can get married in their own communities of faith, presided over by their own clergy. Right now, they can't; if the resolution passes, they could.
Thus, the proposed resolution would empower individual parishes and their clergy leadership at the expense of the power of the bishop and the diocese, as the locus of decision-making on same sex marriages would move from the diocesan level to the congregational level. It would also be, at least in a symbolic sense, a statement of the power of the Episcopal Church as a whole visa ve individual dioceses, since the national church removing would be that authority from the bishops and relocating it to the parishes and parish clergy.
These balance-of-power questions are set against the backdrop of a theology and ecclesiology coming out of the conservative end of North American Anglicanism which advocates for an almost monarchical model of the episcopacy. This is reflected clearly in the structure of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), where, to take one example, each bishop can determine whether it's appropriate to ordain women or not. Much of that enthusiasm for a strong episcopate is a reaction to the perceived overreach of the Episcopal Church and General Convention, but it also flows down to a strong hand on individual parishes. You can see that in the fight with Truro Anglican Church in Northern Virgina, who tried to enter into a permanent arrangement with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia (which owned the land and the historic buildings) only to be forced to withdraw in the face of withering criticism from ACNA bishops.
Fr. Tobias Haller makes, I think, a persuasive case that this ecclesiology is incoherent. But, whatever the merits, it seems to me that this spirit is in large measure behind the absolute insistence on the part of the hold-outs that they be allowed to forbid same sex marriage in their diocese. It's not simply the merits of the change (which they vehemently disagree with), but also with the idea that they, as bishops, can and should be forced to give way to the desires and discernment of both the entity "above" them (i.e., the Episcopal Church expressed through General Convention) and "below" them (i.e. a particular congregation and its clergy leadership).
A compromise solution that has been floated by some is some version of "Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight" or DEPO. Under that model, a parish that wants to perform same sex marriages in a hold-out diocese would be allowed to essentially "secede" from their diocese and affiliate themselves on a temporary basis with a diocese that would authorize them to go forward with the weddings. The Church of England has implemented a version of this plan for parishes that refuse to be under a woman bishop, and there have been similar arrangements in the Episcopal Church. But under the previous versions of DEPO, the bishop who currently has jurisdiction over the parish would have to agree to allow DEPO for the disaffected parish. So, for this to work, either all of the hold-out bishops would have to agree to grant DEPO to any parish in their diocese that asks for it, or there would have to be some rule that allows for a parish to get DEPO status unilaterally, even in the face of opposition from their bishop. One suspects that the second option would provoke just as much push-back from the hold-outs as the proposed solution, especially as "episcopal teaching authority" is the raison d'etre offered by the conservatives for why he has a blanket prohibition on same sex marriages in the first place. "I can forbid same sex marriage in my diocese, except that any parish that disagrees with my decision may unilaterally elect for me not to be their bishop any more" is not much authority in a practical sense.
The ball, it seems to me, is in the conservatives' court. I think it has been made clear to them that the status quo with regard to "make provision" is unacceptable, and they have made it clear that they don't want a BCP amendment. The way forward, it seems to me, is to ask them "what fix to this is acceptable to you?" If the answer is, "nothing, we insist on being able to prohibit same-sex marriages in our dioceses completely," then I think it makes sense to just go forward with the resolution and the BCP amendment. By taking that position, they will have demonstrated that they are going to be mad at anything other than total capitulation, and the amendment is the cleanest and most straight-forward solution to the existing problem. If, on the other hand, they are open to allowing anyone in their diocese who wants out to get out, then I think that is worth exploring as a compromise. But the compromise should contain an explicit understanding that if the hold-outs drag their feet or throw up roadblocks to parishes that want to perform same sex marriages, then the BCP revisions will be back in 2021. Either way, without buy-in from the conservative hold-outs, I feel like some of these compromise proposals are negotiating against yourself.
The second issue is that the process by which this comes all comes to pass, which the most misunderstood facet of the Episcopal Church, and Anglicanism generally--and the thing I misunderstood the most--is the way in which it does theology. In the Roman Catholic world, if you want answers to the question of "what does the Roman Catholic Church believe about this topic?" you would look to some sort of didactic Papal or conciliar document. So, if you want to explore the question of birth control, you would look to Humanae Vitae and its progeny, which lays out the position of the Roman Catholic Church on the topic from a theological perspective, and represents the definitive statement on the question. In a different form but in a similar spirit, Protestant bodies usually express their theology through some sort of formalized, systematic faith statement.
If you look for that sort of didactic, "position paper" approach to theology in the Anglican world, you will generally be disappointed and frustrated. You will often find things that vaguely look like what you see in Papal encylicals and Protestant faith statements, but they are often much vaguer and amorphous. But, perhaps more to the point, they are taken far less seriously inside the church. General Convention meets every three years, and the worldwide Lambeth Conference meets every four, and both produce a multitude of statements on a wide variety of topics, but most people (of all theological persuasions) treat them as at best an accurate reflection of where people's heads were at on a particular day and time, but not any sort of binding doctrinal statement. Indeed, I think there is a strong case to be made that the famous 1930 Lambeth Council statement on birth control had orders of magnitude more impact in the Roman Catholic Church (insofar as it prompted Pius XI to issue Casti Connubii in response, and thus tying Papal authority to its position birth control) than it ever did in the Anglican world.
This casual approach to doctrinal statements is not (as I assumed, and as almost all of the critics of the Episcopal Church/Anglicanism would say) a product of Anglicanism "having no theology" or being a muddled mess. Instead, it's a reflection of the idea that theology is to be found in and expressed through an embodied form, primarily in terms of liturgy (here, Anglicanism has some substantial commonalities with the Orthodox churches). If you want to know what the Episcopal Church believes, the best way to do that is to come to a liturgy and see it play out. Failing that, you can pick up the BCP and read what it says and how it instructs the church to play that out.
For this reason, the history of the Episcopal Church is basically a running series of fights over liturgy and/or the Prayer Book (and/or the procedural mechanisms by which the first two can be altered or changed). It's not that there aren't theological issues "behind" those liturgical fights--there are--but that the fights occur in and through a liturgical context. The first of the myriad of "continuing Anglican" denominations in the U.S., the Reformed Episcopal Church, got going as a result of a fight over whether or not candles should be placed on the altar. Now, that dispute is the flashpoint for a much broader discussion of the relative positions of the Catholic and Protestant wings of the Episcopal Church, but it came down to something liturgical.
All of this is to say that what the liturgies and the BCP say are a really big deal, maybe the Biggest Deal. Having the BCP say that marriage is between two people, not necessarily a man and a woman, represents the authoritative statement of the beliefs of the Episcopal Church. If this is what the Episcopal Church believes, and based on everything that happened in 2015 and after it is, then it follows that the BCP should say that. On the flip side, it is not just formalism or persnickety-ness that motivates the resistance by conservatives to the inclusion of this language into the BCP. If and when the change is approved, every person who does not believe same-sex marriages are appropriate and capable of being blessed by God becomes, in essence, dissenters in their own church. Speaking from experience, that's not a great feeling or place to be in. So, I get it, but for me that doesn't change the basic equation--is our theology that same-sex marriages are OK or not?
The final issue involves the reaction from the rest of the Anglican Communion. We have various dire promises from folks both inside and outside of the Episcopal Church that this move will result in a permanent severing of relations with other Anglican bodies. As a preliminary comment, I think much of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the other Anglican churches is being offered in bad faith. Back in January 2016 at the Primates Meeting, the GC15 authorization was treated, in an unqualified way, as "the Episcopal Church allows for same sex marriages" and was the basis for the "consequences," such as they were, that were imposed on the Episcopal Church. Now the new talking point is that amending the Prayer Book is where things get "really real" and will have serious consequences, as if what happened in 2015 doesn't really matter. What, are you going to put the Episcopal Church on double-secret probation now? The whole thing is a transparent exercise in moving the goalposts--"we really mean it this time." Plus, they can't hide behind the idea that they didn't see this coming--Bishop Curry was very clear to the Primates in 2016 that there was essentially no chance that the Episcopal Church was going to reverse course.
Truthfully, I think most of the reaction from overseas is theater. If the Anglican Communion was going to do something about the Episcopal Church and same sex marriage, the moment was at the January 2016 meeting, when the Episcopal Church was out alone on the limb as the only one who had approved same sex marriage. But, they couldn't, or didn't, or whatever, at that time. Now you have the Episcopal Church and the Canadians and the Scots, and recently the Kiwis and the Brazilians. If there was limited enthusiasm on the part of Archbishop Welby and the other Powers that Be to kick out the Episcopal Church in 2016, there has to be even less for the prospect of kicking all of those bodies out (especially the Scots, given the delicate relationship between Scotland and England generally these days). And if you just target the Episcopal Church and ignore the others, then the whole thing looks entirely farcical and transparent. Plus, having made Michael Curry a household name in the UK, is Archbishop Welby really going to say "I know I invited this guy to preach at the wedding of the fourth in line to the throne, but now he's persona non grata for being the head of a church that reinforced a thing that it had already done and everyone knew they were going to do"? That seems exceedingly unlikely to me.
With regard to the Anglican Communion, it seems that Bishop Curry's approach is the correct one--stay present, stay engaged, be polite, listen to everyone, but state your position without apology or hesitation, do what you believe to be right in your own context, and call the conservatives' bluff. The track record thus far is that this strategy results in lots of angry communiques and people Mad Online, some pro forma discussions of punishment, and no substantive action. Meanwhile, other parts of the Communion have joined the Episcopal Church on this side of the ledger. The rhetoric coming out of the international conservative faction, GAFCON, is becoming more strident and more transparent, especially since they have elected the head of ACNA as their chairman (which, as commentators have pointed out, is a direct challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury's de facto authority to determine who is Anglican and who is not, as ACNA is not officially recognized). One senses that the folks in Canterbury and the Anglican establishment generally are losing patience with the conservatives--it was all fun and games when they targeted the North Americans, but now that the guns are turned on them, it is less cute.
International relations are important. There is no value in doing things exclusively for the purpose of sticking it in the eye of others. But it seems to me that the responsibility of the Episcopal Church is first and foremost to its own members, especially in this context its LGBT members. This is about people's lives, and their ability to live them here and now, in this country and in this church. I don't believe we should be held hostage to the fears of what might come from folks overseas, especially not at the expense of our own people and our own discernment.
Truthfully, I think most of the reaction from overseas is theater. If the Anglican Communion was going to do something about the Episcopal Church and same sex marriage, the moment was at the January 2016 meeting, when the Episcopal Church was out alone on the limb as the only one who had approved same sex marriage. But, they couldn't, or didn't, or whatever, at that time. Now you have the Episcopal Church and the Canadians and the Scots, and recently the Kiwis and the Brazilians. If there was limited enthusiasm on the part of Archbishop Welby and the other Powers that Be to kick out the Episcopal Church in 2016, there has to be even less for the prospect of kicking all of those bodies out (especially the Scots, given the delicate relationship between Scotland and England generally these days). And if you just target the Episcopal Church and ignore the others, then the whole thing looks entirely farcical and transparent. Plus, having made Michael Curry a household name in the UK, is Archbishop Welby really going to say "I know I invited this guy to preach at the wedding of the fourth in line to the throne, but now he's persona non grata for being the head of a church that reinforced a thing that it had already done and everyone knew they were going to do"? That seems exceedingly unlikely to me.
With regard to the Anglican Communion, it seems that Bishop Curry's approach is the correct one--stay present, stay engaged, be polite, listen to everyone, but state your position without apology or hesitation, do what you believe to be right in your own context, and call the conservatives' bluff. The track record thus far is that this strategy results in lots of angry communiques and people Mad Online, some pro forma discussions of punishment, and no substantive action. Meanwhile, other parts of the Communion have joined the Episcopal Church on this side of the ledger. The rhetoric coming out of the international conservative faction, GAFCON, is becoming more strident and more transparent, especially since they have elected the head of ACNA as their chairman (which, as commentators have pointed out, is a direct challenge to the Archbishop of Canterbury's de facto authority to determine who is Anglican and who is not, as ACNA is not officially recognized). One senses that the folks in Canterbury and the Anglican establishment generally are losing patience with the conservatives--it was all fun and games when they targeted the North Americans, but now that the guns are turned on them, it is less cute.
International relations are important. There is no value in doing things exclusively for the purpose of sticking it in the eye of others. But it seems to me that the responsibility of the Episcopal Church is first and foremost to its own members, especially in this context its LGBT members. This is about people's lives, and their ability to live them here and now, in this country and in this church. I don't believe we should be held hostage to the fears of what might come from folks overseas, especially not at the expense of our own people and our own discernment.
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