Following are the opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, by House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris to the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church, meeting June 23-25 in Linthicum Heights, Maryland.
Good morning, dear friends and companions in this sacred work.
Just a few days ago, I spoke with an 18-year-old transgender young man named Finn, living in a red state, right in the middle of the country. He had received gender-affirming care as a teenager and is now thriving: healthy, joyful, and fully rooted in his identity.
We talked about the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and its devastating implications. I asked Finn what he hoped the church would say in a moment like this. He paused, looked me in the eye, and said: “Tell them what you’ve seen with your own eyes!” He challenged me to bear witness to trans joy.
And I have. I have seen that gender-affirming care saves lives, especially the lives of children. The Episcopal Church made that witness public and pastoral in 2022 through Resolution D066, which affirms that all people, at all ages, should have access to gender-affirming care and calls on the church to support legislation in line with this affirmation. So let me begin there.
To every transgender young person hearing or reading these words: I see you. I love you. You are wonderfully made in the image of God, crafted in sacred dignity. You are not a mistake. God did not get it wrong when God made you trans. You deserve to live in the whole truth of who you are—with dignity, joy, and respect.
Finn’s story reminds us that the global disruptions we’re witnessing aren’t abstract—they have names, faces, and sacred dignity. His story is one among many—each revealing the high stakes of this moment, and the sacred responsibility we carry as leaders, as a church, and as followers of Jesus.
Because this moment is not only personal—it is deeply political, deeply moral, and deeply spiritual.
We meet in a time of profound disruption: in our neighborhoods, in our nation, in the world, globally, nationally, and institutionally. We are crying out at this deep unraveling of interconnectedness, institutional trust, and standards of morality. War rages in the Middle East and the Holy Land, neighborhoods in destruction, children left hungry.
In the U.S., White Christian nationalism continues to rise, toppling long-professed values of freedom and choice in lieu of control and power. We’ve seen political leaders be assassinated, the rights of our transgender children be attacked, and the rights to free speech met with military control. We’ve seen families ripped apart, with children taken from schools, parents taken from grocery stores, young people taken even while fully participating in the legal mechanisms for asylum and migration—at appointments, hearings. Across this country and across the world, waves of protest call for justice and accountability.
This is not a moment of chaos. It is a moment of consequence. The tactics we are witnessing are not random. They are strategic: deliberate efforts to co-opt public institutions, erode the rule of law, and blur the boundaries between faith and state. These are hallmarks of what scholars call theocratic and state capture—the systematic merger of religious and political authority reshaping how power operates in our world.
In such a moment, institutions like ours must not retreat. We must do as Jesus taught us: to pray and love in community, to serve the vulnerable among us, to rise to action of justice and mercy.
Because friends, even in the midst of this cruelty and disruption, we see signs of the Spirit’s movement—communities choosing solidarity over division, young people demanding justice, communities of faith boldly standing with the vulnerable.
Against this backdrop, we as Episcopalians and followers of Christ are called not simply to pray, but to act—not only in crisis, but in covenant; not only to comfort, but to call deeper. When institutions fracture and truth is under fire, we must intervene when silence would bless injustice. We must become bold.
During the time of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in what is now South Sudan, the semiautonomous interim government collapsed in 2006. I was a 25-year-old, living and working amid a community contending with violent conflict and societal collapse. I witnessed that it was the church that held the social fabric together. Churches became schools, clinics, prophetic truth-tellers, and the shepherds of people’s grief. I saw firsthand that when the state dissolves or turns against its people, it is often the church that stands in the breach.
Though we have not always lived up to our call, as Episcopalians, we carry a deep tradition of resilience, truth-telling, and Gospel-rooted courage. The Episcopal Church was made for times like these.
And in this meeting of Executive Council, we will undertake the necessary work of strengthening our institution—not stability for its own sake, but so that, with sure footing and common purpose, we might more clearly proclaim the Gospel and stand in solidarity and service with the vulnerable.
This is a Jeremiah moment.
In Jeremiah 36, the prophet dictates a scroll—a warning and a hope. It is taken to the king, who reads it, then cuts it piece by piece and throws each section into the fire. Column by column, the Word is consumed and turned to ash.
But the scroll had first been preserved in the chamber of Elishama the secretary, a space of witness and recordkeeping. And when the scroll was destroyed, Jeremiah said simply, “Write it again.” And it was.
This is what faithful leadership looks like: writing the truth again, even after others have tried to erase it. This is what it means to steward the church in a time like this:
- To protect what is fragile, like Elishama preserving the scroll.
- To guard what is holy, like the scribes holding fast to the Word.
- To build what has been broken, like those who rewrote the scroll after destruction.
- To renew what others abandoned, like communities keeping truth alive when power tries to silence it.
This work of preservation and renewal takes concrete form in the business before us.
This Executive Council meeting is not simply about reports and resolutions. It is about building the capacity of The Episcopal Church to meet this moment faithfully.
We will consider the Constitution of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland, a step that honors Indigenous sovereignty and deepens our shared life. This is not merely a governance matter. It is a Gospel one.
We will reflect on the leadership of Episcopal Relief & Development, equipping the church to respond to disaster, displacement, and long-term development with justice and compassion.
We will engage with Episcopal Migration Ministries, not simply as an agency but as a vital, evolving ministry responding with courage and resourcefulness to global displacement and human desperation.
We will elect representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council at a time when Anglican identity, interdependence, and governance structures are being tested and transformed. These elections are not routine; they are part of our church’s global vocation. And they are especially meaningful during Pride Month, as we honor the witness of LGBTQ+ Anglicans and the courage of those in our continuing dioceses who remained steadfast in upholding both human dignity and Episcopal identity—often when the rest of the communion turned its back. Their faithfulness calls us to elect leaders who will speak with moral clarity, advocate for justice, and reflect the fullness of who we are as The Episcopal Church.
We will review our financial stewardship with reports from our new chief financial officer, Chris Lacovara, because a church called to endure must also be equipped to sustain; clarity in our resources enables us to be generous and intentional in the way those resources are deployed.
We will address governance reform, including updates to our own bylaws, ensuring that how we lead reflects why we lead.
And we will hear from the Archives of The Episcopal Church, a reminder to us that institutional memory is not just administrative housekeeping, it is theological work. It is how we protect the stories that power tried to erase.
Through each of these actions, we go beyond plain management of an institution—we steward the soul of a church called to witness. We tend the roots, because fruit without roots cannot last. This is institutional courage—and institutional courage is still courage.
This work may not be flashy. But it is faithful.
It is what it looks like to write the truth again, to ensure our scroll of history extends through the chaos.
Write It Again.
Executive Council, the scroll is in our hands.
To the broader churchwide family reading these words: Wherever you are, you hold the scroll too. In every parish, every ministry, every moment when you choose courage over comfort, you write the truth again.
Let us write it together—with the kind of love that builds bridges, the kind of courage that tells the truth, and the kind of faith that keeps writing the story, even when others try to erase it.
Because resurrection isn’t just a conclusion. It’s a calling to write it again.
