Friday, March 1, 2013

Bishop Marc Andrus on TEC support for marriage equality

We overturned nearly two millennia of set tradition when we began ordaining women 34 years ago. We repudiated the traditional tolerance of slavery and racial prejudice in the mid-20th century. We traded our cultural privilege and hegemony as a largely Anglo denomination for the wealthy and have deliberately become more and more consciously a church for all. In all these things we have prayed and thought and been in earnest conversation in and out of the church, and believed that in the end we have discerned better the mind of Christ than we had in the past. 
It can definitely be unsettling to find that some structures and beliefs are not fixed and unchanging. Add to that the fact that the Episcopal Church has no doctrine of infallibility, of anybody, and one can understand those who prefer more predictability. For me, I hope to stay open to divine surprise.

2 comments:

dr.primrose said...

Today's L.A. Times letters had one of the most bizarre arguments against same-sex marriage (see here) I've ever seen:

"Regarding the claims that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional because it discriminates against gays and lesbians, suppose the White House gave every American a turkey. No rational person would say this discriminates against vegetarians. Just so, Proposition 8 cannot be said to discriminate against gays just because they seek to marry a person of their gender."

For the life of me, I just can't figure out his point!

dr.primrose said...

Good Frank Bruni column in the N.Y. Times - Reading God’s Mind.

"Against God’s wishes. That notion — that argument — is probably the most stubborn barrier to the full acceptance of gay and lesbian Americans, a last bastion and engine of bigotry. It’s what many preachers still thunder. It’s what some politicians still maintain."