Remembering Pamela Chinnis

by the Rev. Albert Kennington

The announcement by Episcopal News Service of the death of Dr. Pamela Chinnis on August 24 brought a flood of good memories for many Episcopalians throughout the land and beyond.  But when a friend said to me, “I didn’t know who she was,” I took to my keyboard.

Pam Chinnis will be recorded by church historians as the first female President of the House of Deputies of General Convention.  She was elected by acclamation in 1991 and served through the General Convention of 2000.

Although holders of this office never have the high profile of a Presiding Bishop, in the decision making structure and legislative process of The Episcopal Church, the two presiding officers are peers, just as the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops are constitutional peers.  The House of Deputies is the senior house.  The Episcopal Church has bishops because the first clerical and lay deputies wanted and provided for the apostolic episcopacy.  Pam Chinnis took this seriously.

I was honored to serve as a deputy from the Central Gulf Coast throughout her term, and I want to share some of my memories of her.  Three words come to mind: graciousness, equality, and polity.

Graciousness. Pam Chinnis was a gracious lady.  Many liberated women do not like this kind of language any more, but I’ll stick with it.  Pam was not only a liberated woman, but she was a path maker for women and for the Episcopal Church.  She was a gracious lady.  By the time I knew her, she had stopped wearing hat and gloves, but her purse and heels matched, she often wore pearls.

She presided graciously over a very large legislative body filled with lots of godly passions and lots of egos.  She expected everyone to behave graciously.  For the most part, we did.  In tumultuous times, she believed that we could and should speak and listen with civility and courtesy.   With a soft voice and a rare tap of the gavel, she kept the nearly-900 member house in order.  Members “clicked” our fat 3-ring binders to insert and remove papers only when she permitted.  (Have you ever heard the sound of 900 3-ring binders at once?)  She enforced the rule of order that, whenever the house recessed, members did not rise and leave the floor until the chair had risen.  What this pomp and ego on her part?  No.  It meant that members kept their seats and listened to announcements and last-minute business instead of trying to beat each other to the elevator and the bar by leaving early.   With Pam, the house literally “stood in recess.”

She also called on members to sign a pledge to speak civilly about people with whom we disagreed.  Remember the Episcopal Church in the 1990s?  Tumultuous times!  There were lots of code-words for damning people on the “other side.”  Some of her critics accused her of trying to squelch honest debate on serious issues.  She was not.  She was trying to get Episcopalians to behave like Christians are supposed to act—in plain speech, to behave.  She was highly effective in her effort, at least on the floor of the house.

Imagine, in today’s world, in today’s America, in today’s Congress, in today’s campaigns, if all Americans who call themselves Christians spoke and behaved like Christians are supposed to act?  Reckon it might make a different?  Pam thought so, and she cast her influence where she could.

Equality. Current House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson has said of her,

She also was a champion of including the voices of all the baptized in the governance system she cherished and helped to lead.

Long before Pam was the first female president of the Deputies, she was an active member of her parish everywhere she lived.  She was active in the ECW, and in 1976, she was president of its Triennial Convention.  But, equality meant access for women to full participation in the church.  Her journey included being a first female elected to the vestry in her parish,  a first female senior warden, a first female delegate to a diocesan convention, and so on.   She believed that equality of access should be for all ministers of the church–lay persons, bishops, priests, deacons–and she worked tirelessly through the legislative processes of the church to this end, not only to make equality legal in canon to law but to make it happen in real life.  For her entire life, Pam was an exemplary member of the first order of ministry: a lay person.

Polity. Speaking to the Wardens’ Conference in the Diocese of Virginia in 1991, Dr. Chinnis said,

We often hear it said that those who drafted the Constitution of the United States walked across the street, so to speak, and drafted the Constitution of the Episcopal Church.   The Episcopal Church in America quite consciously determined to eliminate any use of the medieval concept of a magisterial prince-bishop, appointed by and responsible to the king.  In its place they sought to recapture the primitive concept of the episcopate as wholly separate from the state, and servants of the Church and not its lords.

She and Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning were good friends and had a good working relationship.  Even so, she was an outspoken critic of the House of Bishops for its meetings between General Conventions.  She reminded the church that the bishops cannot act officially without the concurrence of the Deputies.  In the address cited above, she said,

More and more we see efforts to increase the role and power of the House of Bishops and the national church staff.  We have every right to be concerned.  Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom from a church dominated by the House of Bishops.

She expressed concern about the designation of the Presiding Bishop as Primate.  She understood the intention of giving this title so that our Presiding Bishop was, within the Anglican Communion, a peer of the other primates for the purpose of an equal chair at the table.  But she also understood, and reminded Episcopalians, that the Presiding Bishop was not an archbishop.  She reminded all that, at the end of the day, our Presiding Bishop is the presiding officer of the General Convention’s House of Bishops with certain specified duties and privileges spelled out in the Constitution and Canons.

As a lay person, Pam upheld the important role of laity in church governance.   The significance of this would have not been lost upon those attending the conference cited above.  They were church wardens.

She was aware that the separation of powers extends to parishes and the authority given to vestries in the temporal concerns of the parish.  In the Episcopal Church, rectors are no more corporate soles than are bishops.

The separation of powers within the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, and by extension through the several dioceses, was always in clear view for her.  Like her predecessor-president, Dean David Collins, she reminded deputies regularly that we remained deputies after we went home.  She sent regular mailings to deputies to keep them/us informed since deputies did not gather between General Conventions as the bishops had taken to doing—and still do.

Pam remembered, as St. Paul did, that the body has many members.  Each is as important as another.  Only when all the members work together is the body whole.

Graciousness.  Equality.  Polity.

In 2000, Forward Movement Publications published a collections of her addresses and reflections: Decently and In Order: On Being the Church as the Century Turns.  Dr. Pamela Darling, her Special Assistant, collected and edited this publication.  It may be out of print, but I heartily recommend readers to find this collection and read it carefully, deeply, more than once.  There is great wisdom in her words.

I have a favorite last memory of her.  After the 2000 General Convention in Denver adjourned and her successor had taken office, Pam gave a little thank-you party in her hotel.  Vince Currie, Kit Caffey, and I were among those who were invited.  Champagne was poured.  Pam was making a few loving remarks as champagne was being poured when she was interrupted by the entrance of the Presiding Bishop and Primate, Frank Griswold, dressed as a butler, linen towel over one wrist and silver tray in hand bearing a champagne flute which he served to her with a practiced bow.

What a moment!  It felt Episcopal.  It felt good.

Thank you, Madam President.  Well done, good and faithful servant.  May you rest in peace and rise in glory.

Episcopal Life Online: Related story

The Rev. Albert Kennington is “retired” after serving over 30 years in our diocese. He serves as Priest Associate at St. Paul’s, Daphne, Alabama.  He and his wife, Nancy – also recently retired – live in Fairhope, Alabama and are enjoying being grandparents of two grandsons, Grayton, age 3, and Henry, 9 months.

Email Albert at revsak@gmail.com