The genie is out: gay couples are here. So what is the pastoral response?

You absolutely, positively, have to go read the whole thing.

Last October, Bill ...left his home in Columbus, Ohio, for a business trip...he thought he felt an old cold coming back. Then he developed a nasty cough.

He remembers nothing of that day, but Mike ... recalls sharply how doctors in Philadelphia called him in Columbus to say they suspected pneumonia. Mike...is Bill's partner of 30 years.....At 3 a.m. the next day, the phone woke him up. It was a doctor in Philadelphia. Mike needed to come to Philadelphia immediately. Bill had gone into septic shock and might not survive more than a few hours.

"Here's the key principle," Peter Sprigg, a gay-marriage opponent with the Family Research Council, said in an April radio interview on Southern California's KCRW. "Society gives benefits to marriage because marriage gives benefits to society. And therefore the burden of proof has to be on the advocates of same-sex marriage to demonstrate that homosexual relationships benefit society. Not just benefit the individuals who participate but benefit society in the same way and to the same degree that heterosexual marriage does. And that's a burden that I don't think they can meet."

Can't they?

Having just been told, at 3 a.m., that his partner of three decades might die within hours, Mike .. was told something else: Before rushing to Bill's side, he needed to collect and bring with him documents proving his medical power of attorney. This indignity, unheard-of in the world of heterosexual marriage, is a commonplace of American gay life.....

National Review has a cover story this month by Maggie Gallagher, a prominent anti-gay-marriage activist, subtitled: "Why Gay Marriage Isn't Inevitable." She is right, in a sense. Most states explicitly ban same-sex marriage, often by constitutional amendment, and the country remains deeply divided. The national argument over marriage's meaning will go on for years to come.

In another sense, however, she is wrong. Never again will America not have gay marriage, and never again will less than a majority favor some kind of legal and social recognition for same-sex couples. The genie that gay-marriage opponents still hope to stuff back into the bottle is out and out for good.

Oddly, Gallagher, Sprigg, and other gay-marriage opponents don't understand why this has happened.... It comes down to Mike and Bill......Peter Sprigg and Maggie Gallagher ...have in common what they offer to couples like Mike and Bill: silence. The same is true of nearly all other prominent opponents of same-sex marriage. ....If gay couples can't be allowed to marry, what should they be able to do? ...Effectively, conservatives are saying that what Mike and Bill do for each other has no significance outside their own bedroom.

If cultural conservatism continues to treat same-sex couples as outside the social covenant, the currents of history will flow right around it.

But what happened in that hospital in Philadelphia for those six weeks was not just Mike and Bill's business, a fact that is self-evident to any reasonable human being who hears the story. "Mike was making a medical decision at least once a day that would have serious consequences," Bill told me. Who but a life partner would or could have done that? Who but a life partner will drop everything to provide constant care? Bill's mother told me that if not for Mike, her son would have died. Faced with this reality, what kind of person, morally, simply turns away and offers silence?

Not the sort of person who populates the United States of America. If Republicans wonder why they find themselves culturally marginalized, particularly by younger Americans, they might consider the fact that when the party looks at couples like Mike and Bill it sees, in effect, nothing....

Conservatives have a decision to make. They can continue pretending that the bond between Mike and Bill does not exist, is of no social value, or has no place on conservatives' agenda. ...Or they can acknowledge what to most of the country is already obvious: Whether the nation finally settles on marriage or on something else for gay couples, Bill and Mike are now in the mainstream and the Republican Party is not. If cultural conservatism continues to treat same-sex couples as outside the social covenant, the currents of history will flow right around it, and future generations of conservatives will wonder how their predecessors could ever have made such a callous and politically costly mistake.

2019: vision for the church

The Anglican Church of Canada has been running a series on the church in 2019. Here is one I like.

What about divorce?

From a sermon at Southwell Minster by Jeremy Pemberton about the Abps reflections on GC. Mimi has already posted much of this, but I really, really want to return your attention to this bit because the argument about divorce seems to be very important. Undeniably there are a lot more Biblical strictures explicit against divorce (and no arguing required about translations), yet movement on that issue occurred as described. Why are other issues that are much less clear Biblically, so much more intransigent?

When I was a young man there were no divorced clergy or bishops, divorced people could be and were refused the Holy Communion, and there was no thought that divorced people could be remarried in church. Marriage was once, for life, and any deviation from that standard was thought to threaten the whole institution. It is certainly the case that there is apparently substantial Scriptural backing for that position – where Jesus says that anyone divorcing, except under very prescribed circumstances, is committing adultery.

Very slowly and painfully, and with great attention to the pastoral difficulties that this policy was creating in a society with significant numbers of divorced people not only on the streets but also in the pews, the Church has revised its understanding of marriage, divorce and remarriage. There are now hardly any voices to be heard to say that the new policy is unbiblical and sinful, and quietly, up and down the land, divorced people are marrying for the second time in church. We have among us divorced and remarried bishops and clergy. So the transition, the revision of our sexual ethics, in a way that honours the Lord of the Scriptures and also the society in which we are asked to exercise our ministry and mission, can be done, and unity and charity in the church can be maintained.

A Welcoming Church

Many of you are probably aware of the story of Father Geoff Farrow, the Catholic priest who was kicked our of his California parish for supporting equality for LGBTs.

Last weekend, Father Geoff visited All Saints, Pasadena, the home church of the Rev. Susan Russell. He writes movingly of his experience there and reflects on what he heard about TEC's actions at General Convention:

When I said my first Mass at my last parish, the choir sang, “All are welcomed here.” I winced when I heard them sing that song, because my predecessor had informed me that they would send LGBT parishioners across the street to the Methodist Church, since they could not offer them services at St. Paul’s.

The choir did not sing, “All are welcomed here” at All Saints Episcopal, but the community silently proclaimed that invitation by their actions.

You can read it all here.

When the doomsayers talk about TEC losing members, I think of all the "Father Geoffs" I know, who have found a home in the Episcopal Church. I count myself among their number.

When the "outcasts" feel welcomed, we are preaching the Gospel.

Sauce for the goose

Or, turn about is fair play.

From The Times:

The Times has learnt that talks are already under way about forging permanent links between liberal parishes in England and The Episcopal Church, rather as the conservatives have linked up through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and related bodies. A new US Episcopal Church outpost in London is also being considered, should any liberal parishes in England wish to affiliate with The Episcopal Church in the US in the way that many conservative US parishes have affiliated with evangelical provinces in Africa and the Southern Cone.

Of course there is no source for this last, which sounds suspiciously like someone is stirring things up.

Jake is back!

Well, after a little over a year, I've decided to return. The project that was the primary reason for shutting down Jake's place has come to an end. Beyond that, it has become quite clear to me recently that Jake still has a few more things to say.

Go on...you know where to find it... Father Jake Stops the World.

Small steps that reverberate

Lots of folks are hearing about the Episcopal Church in the news because of the recent events at General Convention that made some small movements towards full inclusion of the LGBT faithful in the life of the church. Articles in major dailies around the country, stories on NPR, all far more noticeable than the usual blog-chatter.

Let's review. The consecration of an honest gay man as Bishop in 2003 became the rallying point for conservatives who resist the changes in the church. Indeed, conservative, anti-gay movement in the church is defined solely by their shared disgust with gays and contaminated by the ultra-partisan conservative political movement in the US. Although they point haphazardly at other issues, it's really only about this one.

Why this issue? A conservative saddened by these events, Fr Tim Chesterton, notes:

They could have chosen a couple of other issues, on both of which the Bible is every bit as clear (more so in my view), and which are every bit as relevant to the struggles of people in the modern world.......Sadly, for the vast majority of Anglicans the issue of homosexuality does not carry that personal price-tag. Most of us are straight; we aren't the ones who would be bearing the cross if the church as a whole agreed that same-sex unions are not a legitimate part of a life of following Jesus. Gays and lesbians are an easy target, because there aren't many of them (tho' more, perhaps, than some Christians would like to think).

Personally, I think it's a tragedy that we're drawing these lines in the sand at all. Historically, it's not been our way as Anglicans. On the (equally clear) biblical teachings about war and peace and about usury, we've allowed for a variety of biblical interpretation. Why is homosexuality so despicable that we don't make similar allowances?

It's the "ick" factor-- and the ultimate "us vs. them". The nasty power play of conservatives in the US is now (mostly) over; their effort to take over TEC failed, they've left the Episcopal church. Plan B is to try to replace the liberal TEC with a parallel structure, but their numbers aren't very high, and schismatics make other people nervous.

Those of us watching know that the problem is not that the American church is uniquely friendly to GLBT. The Americans don't have more gay clergy. And they certainly haven't performed more gay blessings (let's remember that full civil unions are legal in Britain). It's just that the Americans are honest about it. So it was only a matter of time before the conservatives flexed their muscle elsewhere. It's a basic schoolyard fact that if you attempt to placate bullies, instead you embolden them.

Well, the conservatives have tried it in England. The Archbishop tried to placate them with a letter in which he disparaged "gay lifestyles" and even disapproved of partnered gay clergy. And despite pleas from activists like Madpriest that they wake from their somnolence, the liberals have for the most part not stood up to the bullies, or for that matter the Archbishop. Until now. As reported in The Times

Pro-gays in the Church of England are planning a survey of all LGBT clergy, in and out of the closet, in London, Southwark and throughout the Church. In the capital, they reckon, it is as many as 20 per cent. They are also intending to survey precisely how many gay blessings have been and are being done. Again, estimates put the number in the hundreds.

After that, bearing in mind the General Synod elections next year, they will make a push for the Church of England to approve gay blessings and gay ordinations to the priesthood and episcopate, as The Episcopal Church has done.

And in a related letter, a wide group of English liberals protests (rightly) against the Abp of Canterbury's missive-- which also compared faithfully partnered gay people to straight people having an affair. Well then. Someone woke up!

The really offensive nature of the Abp's letter is particularly striking given the change in his own views. As quoted by commenter klday in the comments to a previous FoJ thread below, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University says

In an essay entitled “The Body’s Grace” (1989), Williams suggests that the problem with homosexuality is sexuality itself. Unlike heterosexual relationships, which the Church can reduce to reproduction, “same-sex love annoyingly poses the question of what the meaning of desire is—in itself, not considered as instrumental to some other process.” Facing desire itself, we face our own vulnerability—to loss, to humiliation, and to joy. Williams then goes on to sketch non-reproductive desire as an image of God’s (often unreciprocated) yearning for humanity, grounding his vision in Hosea, Samuel, and even Paul. If anyone can still stomach it, then, those who undertake the “painstaking exegesis” for which the Archbishop calls would do well to start with his own.

(More resources on the theology of same sex marriagehere).

But I want to finish with a quote from our regular FoJ commenter counterlight, who in the same thread comments,

The Anglican World seems to be such a separate world sometimes that we forget that this conflict has major consequences far beyond our intramural struggles.

What would be the consequences for the struggle for gay rights? What would be the effect on gay cultural life, if a major historical branch of Christianity dropped its policy of segregation? What would the effect be on the religious conflicts within the lgbt community if this church not only accepted them but actively sought their participation in all aspects of its life including leadership?


What would be the effect on the larger society of such a change? How would the public image and the credibility of Christianity change?

Isn't that a fascinating question? Imagine! The forces of hate would lose the "ownership" of the "Christian card". Religion could become a tool for hope, rather than a weapon of destruction. This would allow all of us to move beyond this stupid obsession with the bedroom. Rather, we would simply apply the same rules of fidelity and integrity to any couple, and instead focus our efforts together on things that really matter, like poverty and peace and justice, like feeding the hungry and healing the sick--things that unite people of faith and secular progressives to improve our world.

And this possibility, so loaded with promise beyond a relatively small (if historically powerful and influential) denomination, explains why the press keeps returning to the question of The Episcopal Church to its new potential of hope, occupying a position at the forefront of justice, rather than following along behind.

If the Episcopalians, the definition of Establishment America, can do it, well then......it can be done.

Imagine...


Cross posted at Street Prophets

Upcoming Conference

Why Homosexuality? Religion, Globalization, and the Anglican Schism
Saturday, October 17, 2009 , Yale University

Rather than restaging the arguments for and against the ordination of openly gay clergy, this day-long conference analyzes the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion in order to examine wide-ranging and interrelated issues of religion, secularism, globalization, nationalism, and modernity. How and why, we ask, has homosexuality come to serve as a flash point for so many local and global conflicts?

Sounds interesting, for those in the vicinity.

For more discussion of Homosexuality and the Anglican Debate from a variety of scholars, see the blog The Immanent Frame . (The Immanent Frame is a collective blog publishing interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere.)

Katie Sherrod lays it down

Mark Harris points us to Katie Sherrod's latest:

Yes indeed, we don't all agree on how issues of human sexuality should be handled theologically and we don't all agree on how faithful Anglicans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender should be included in the life and ministry of the church. We've lived for centuries with many other differences more significant than this one without splitting.

So what solution have these men come up with? Destroy classic Anglicanism and replace it with a centralized, top down, clergy-in-charge system complete with power to punish those [read the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada] who get out of the narrowly-drawn-lines these men will put into place.
....
For the most part, it's been ostensibly straight white men who have been screaming that the inclusion of LGBT folk in the life and ministry of the church is the worst sin of all because they are the worst sinners of all.....

The amount of male hysteria they have stoked up has been amazing to see. These men are clearly not only willing to split the church, they are willing to do so at the cost of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. ....

Go to Katie Sherrod's blog and see her suggestion for how to fix it.

Giles Fraser on the ABC and Anglicanism

From the Church Times. Replace "CofE" with "TEC" and the point is the same.

Another kick in the teeth from the Archbishop of Canterbury comes this week in his reflections on the US General Convention. It looks as if we are heading for a two-tier Anglicanism, with the anti-gay lot being able to have “representative functions”, and the inclusive lot being edged out of any decision-making processes.

Actually, we have been something like a two-tier Church for a while, but the nature of this division is different from the one Dr Williams describes. One tier is called the Church of England; the other is called Anglicanism. Ordinary people in the pews are members of the former; those with “representative functions” — bishops and the like — are often of the latter.

.....Mrs Jones, who has always worshipped at St Agatha’s, knows that there is a wider international side to the Church...but for her, church means St Agatha’s: Sunday eucharist, the choir, the people. Her views may be more conservative or more liberal than the person praying next to her, but that doesn’t matter much. ....

[T]he genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to worship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.

In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.

Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in committees with other bishops, hammering out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magisterium based on an unhealthy fascination with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.

That is not how Mrs Jones recognises members of her church. She says hello to them in the street. They sit near her in the pews. To replace all this by ideology is the single greatest mistake my Church has ever made.

LA TImes Sunday Editorial: TEC and the Gays

From Sunday's LA Times Editorial:

With a little more than 2 million members, the Episcopal Church of the United States is far from being the country's largest Christian denomination. But its recent pronouncements indicating support for openly gay bishops and church blessings for same-sex couples will have reverberations beyond that church, beyond Christianity and even beyond religion. For all the theological issues it raises, acceptance of gays and lesbians at the altar reflects -- and affects -- the campaign for equality in the larger society.......

One could dismiss the fissure in the Anglican Communion as a purely internal matter that turns on theological issues of little import to non-Anglicans or non-Christians, such as whether the church's policy toward homosexuality should be guided by Jesus' seeming lack of interest in the subject or the condemnations of homosexuality in the Old Testament and the writings of St. Paul. Why should nonbelievers care about this dispute any more than they do about abstruse intra-Christian debates on church structure, predestination or whether the Bible should be read literally?

It isn't breaching the wall of separation between church and state to observe that evolving attitudes within a religious group, regardless of their theological aspects, often parallel views of right conduct and belief in the wider society. Consider equality for women. It would be silly to argue that the Episcopal Church's decision in 1976 to ordain women as priests, which alienated Anglicans in other countries as well as the Roman Catholic Church, was unrelated to gains women in the United States had achieved in secular settings.

In a society that has accepted women as judges, chief executive officers and university presidents, the absence of women at the altar will strike the man -- and woman -- in the pew as increasingly incongruous. The influence works both ways: A young girl who sees a woman presiding over the most sacred rituals of her faith will wonder why there is still resistance to full participation by her gender in earthly activities. A devout gay teenager who is confirmed by a homosexual bishop will be less likely to doubt his worth when confronted with bigotry and bullying at school.

This doesn't mean that religious organizations are obliged to adopt every innovation of the larger society, and obviously many don't. In supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples, this page has pointed out that legislation allowing such unions in no way jeopardizes the rights of churches to define religious marriage. They are as free to limit sacramental marriage to heterosexual couples as the Roman Catholic Church is to confine priesthood to men, despite civil rights laws prohibiting sex discrimination in employment.

As long as the 1st Amendment is in the Constitution, religious groups will be able to define their theology and their worship as they please, excluding from the pulpit not just women and gays but members of racial minorities as well. Although it can take repugnant forms, such freedom is one of the glories of this country.

Still, it's not surprising that the controversy in the Anglican Communion has riveted observers who never have darkened the door of a church. It isn't just that the dispute about homosexuality influences and informs similar debates in developed countries, including Britain and the United States. There is also a global dimension to the controversy......

The strides made by the Episcopal Church thus are especially significant, and especially commendable, because they occur against a backdrop of both cultural and religious resistance. Supporters of Proposition 8 weren't the only ones to cloak prejudice with piety.

And now Los Angeles

From the LA TImes:

Episcopal Church leaders in Los Angeles today nominated an openly gay priest and an openly lesbian priest as bishops, becoming one of the first dioceses in the national church to test a controversial new policy that lifted a de facto ban on gays and lesbians in the ordained hierarchy.

The nominations of the Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco and the Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool of a Baltimore-based diocese are likely to further inflame theological conservatives in the U.S. church and their global partners in the Anglican Communion, who have repeatedly warned about the repercussions of such action.

The two are among six nominees who will face election for two assistant bishop posts at the diocese’s annual December convention in Riverside.
......

In addition to Kirkley and Glasspool, the other nominees are: the Rev. Canon Diane M. Jardine Bruce of St. Clement’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente; the Rev. Zelda M. Kennedy of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena; the Rev. Irineo Martir Vasquez of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Hawthorne; and the Rev. Silvestre E. Romero of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in San Jose.

More information on individual candidates from Episcopal Cafe.

Bonnie Perry, Mariann Budde, Brian Prior nominated in Minnesota

Episcopal Cafe reports that Minnesota has announced its slate for their bishop election. The Rev. Bonnie Perry is a partnered lesbian.

The Rev. Dr. Mariann Budde, Rector, St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, MN.

The Rev. Bonnie Perry, Rector, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Chicago, IL.

The Rev. Brian Prior, Rector, Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Spokane, WA and Vice President of the House of Deputies of the General Convention.

More information on each nominee is here.