A lay member of The Episcopal Church Executive Council has resigned, believing that the mainline denomination’s leadership failed to be more inclusive of minorities.
Sandra Teresa Soledad Montes Vela, a lay Executive Council member who identifies as pansexual, took to Facebook on Oct. 23 to announce her resignation from the church leadership body.
“October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I must also name spiritual and institutional violence,” she stated in a post quoted by Episcopal News Service.
“I’ve been reminded that love without safety is not love, and faith without truth is not faith. I can no longer keep going back to be hurt, hoping the cycle has ended.”
In a follow-up Facebook post on Oct. 24, Montes said that she refused “to let the Episcopal Church’s wounds and oppressive systems become part of my narrative.”
“My voice has been consistent — calling for Spanish language justice, Indigenous justice, Latinx justice, and queer celebration, not tolerance. That work doesn’t end with my resignation,” she stated.
“I pray my departure brings even a little change. Maybe without the ‘aggressive and scary’ Brown, Indigenous, Latinx, Queer, cis, fat woman with an ‘undesirable’ accent, and a voice too loud and angry in the room … Executive Council will look inward and face what I named in every meeting.”
Montes had filed a Title IV disciplinary complaint against Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe over a verbal altercation in June. The complaint was officially resolved with what churchwide authorities labeled a “pastoral response.”
Via Zoom, Montes attended a church leadership meeting last week at Kanuga, an Episcopal Church facility located in the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
During the meeting, according to ENS, Montes and other Executive Council members confronted Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe on the handling of a previous vacancy on the council.
Joe McDaniel, an African American member of the council’s Nominating Advisory Committee, asked why he had not been consulted about the criteria for filling the vacant seat.
“It doesn’t make sense to appoint a committee with people of color and not empower them to proceed with exercising that power,” McDaniel said at the meeting, as quoted by ENS. “That is a manifestation of white supremacy, and I just wanted to point that out.”
Rowe responded that McDaniel’s committee has an advisory role, while the Executive Committee makes nominations. Rowe asked the Executive Council to proceed with voting, telling Montes and others that he was clarifying the process. From there, Rowe asked a chaplain to say a prayer before the body moved on.
“I’ve lived through gaslighting, silencing, and a Title IV process that ended with a ‘pastoral response’ where there should have been accountability,” Montes said in her Oct. 24 post.
“This is what it looks like when white comfort is chosen over collective repentance. When a Black member names white supremacy and the meeting simply moves on, that’s not neutrality — it’s protection of power. Silence isn’t grace; it’s avoidance.”
Montes was elected to the executive council by the Episcopal Church General Convention in 2022. Her term was slated to conclude in 2027.
