There are those in the upper echelons of The Episcopal Church who have taken up an anxious refrain: “The Church is dying; the Church is dying!” they claim, like a Greek chorus of Chicken Littles. And they take our wealth and spend it on governance and structure, on consultants and conventions, on the dam to stem the tide of their fear: the loss of members, the loss of status, the loss of their own power.

And over the years, I have heard their fears; in the beginning, I believed their version of events, and tried to focus my energies similarly on our own survival. But I have shed such false faith like a first skin, stretching beyond it to discover a firmer truth, well-founded on the love of God we all share.

In recent days, I have seen the discordance between their version of fearful fantasy and my knowledge of a far greater reality play out predictably in the course of the first half of The Episcopal Church’s General Convention.

For various reasons, I had not planned to pay too much attention to the General Convention. While I have participated in this triennial gathering of the Church in the past and have enjoyed the “homecoming” nature of it – the seeing of old friends, the building up of new relationships – there is an air of self-importance that I found too hard to stomach this year. But, my work and advocacy since October 7 on behalf of my people, my fellow Palestinians, demanded that I care at least about some of the work of the Convention. And I did not like what I saw.

Here are just two of the things that happened during the first few days of this iteration of the Church’s triennial convention:

First, on Sunday, in the House of Bishops, the only resolution that I had any interest in came to the floor for debate. Resolution D004 was simple: it called on The Episcopal Church to acknowledge Palestinians as an indigenous people of the Holy Land and to act and advocate for them as such, according to the Church’s own resolves about indigenous people around the globe. I wasn’t even watching the livestream of the bishops’ debate because I assumed (naively) that there was nothing to debate about this resolution. Obviously, Palestinians are an indigenous people of their own land and so The Episcopal Church should treat us as such. What was there to debate?

But, to my shock and devastation, no bishop stood up to speak in favor of this resolution and a few bishops, all of whom appear as white, actively spoke against it, offering rationale that was nonsensical at best and deeply offensive at worst. To hear white bishops “debate” whether or not Palestinians are indigenous to their own lands, to hear a white bishop imply that if advocating for indigenous Palestinians means criticizing Israel, that’s a line we dare not cross as a Church was a devastating experience for this Palestinian Episcopal priest who momentarily considered renouncing my orders in a Church whose bishops so clearly reject my own belonging. To my absolute horror, the resolution was defeated.

Two days later, the organization that I co-founded, Palestinian Anglicans and Clergy Allies (PACA), organized an action in solidarity with Palestinian Christians. It was a simple movement: deputies and visitors held up posters sharing the words of Palestinian Christians in the final half-hour of the House of Deputies’ legislative session that afternoon. A member of PACA – an Egyptian American priest – was  meant to use a point of personal privilege to explain to deputies in the House the meaning behind the demonstration and invite everyone to a prayer service for Palestine immediately afterwards. He never got the chance. When he came to the microphone and asked to make his point of personal privilege, the president of the House denied him, ruling him “out of order” with no explanation. A few moments later, she joked and laughed about a sparrow that had gotten loose in the Convention Center, reminding those gathered of the divine eyes that are ever careful of even the least of God’s creatures. The president seemed bizarrely unaware of the dissonance in her behavior: does she not think God cares at least as much for Palestinians as for the sparrows?

These actions taken in recent days by some of the most powerful people in the current structure of The Episcopal Church are indicative, in my experience, of their overarching behavior. And yet, it seems to me that these powerful people are some of the very same who worry so anxiously about declining numbers and a shrinking membership of our Church. It is no surprise to me.

When old white men in purple shirts dare to define who is indigenous to a land, their Church will surely be doomed to die, for who can stomach such hypocrisy? When people of Color who have been given great power wield that power to revoke the privilege of speech from other individuals, even a whole community of Color, their Church will surely be doomed to die, for who can stand for such silencing?

To my shame, I share a Church with these people – sort of. Indeed, we are all members of The Episcopal Church. But I watch their actions, I hear their words – this time about Palestine but not only about Palestine, about so much else, too – and I think, their church is not really mine. It’s not even truly The Episcopal Church.

My Episcopal Church looks so very different. My Episcopal Church consists of allies who stood with posters in the House of Deputies and prayed fervently for Palestinians, no matter what. My Episcopal Church consists of friends who advocate with and attend to the poor and oppressed, the left-behind and forgotten throughout the world and the Church. My Episcopal Church consists of colleagues – lay and ordained (and even some bishops!) – who labor in the fields of Christ’s mission, sharing good news and inviting others to the abundant feast God has set for us. My Episcopal Church consists of the ordinary people in the pews of the parishes where I preach, who do the extraordinary work of loving their neighbors as themselves, imperfectly, perhaps, but persistently, faithfully, joyfully, vibrantly.

So I will leave bishops and deputies and presidents and “powerful” ones to twitter about rules and resolutions and frantically coddle their self-imposed fears. And I will devote myself to my Episcopal Church, to the ones who see me and love me and support me just as I do them. We are not dying. We are very much alive. We thrive on the love we bear one another and the faith we share in the one God who is the source of our hope in and through all things. No, we are not dying. We are very much alive in Christ!