FALL, 2003
THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF OUR CHURCH
By The Rev. Donald K. Vinson
WAVES OF CHANGE
Long-time members of the Episcopal Church agree on one thing: the church has changed considerably over the past thirty-five years. Even in my time (since 1977), I’ve seen some pretty remarkable developments—brave or foolish, as one may perceive them. Most people seem to be strongly persuaded that the Episcopal Church, once a staid champion of conservatism, has become a liberal denomination. The decisions of consecutive General Conventions would tend to bear out that view. But to make that observation is only to notice one pole of the way we have changed. It is important, but there is another, less acknowledged shift that has occurred quietly but steadily over this same period of time. I submit that the present march toward schism which we are on is the natural result of this second and opposite pole, even more, at this point, than the first (because we have pretty much recovered from the first.)
First, let me observe that, in the end, it is not really about liberalism against conservatism, though those terms are the ones most often used. But like “high church and low church,” “liberal and conservative” have come to be less and less helpful as descriptions, used more today because of their connotative ordinance, for firing broadsides at others who disagree with one’s own position. In fact, one can be liberal about some things and conservative about others, and most Episcopalians would fit that description—only about different and conflicting things. The real issue that divides Episcopalians today is not liberalism or conservatism in general, but the same one that is driving a wedge through all of Western Christianity: selectively literal versus selectively figurative interpretation of the Bible.
It is true that we have become more socially diverse. In the “old days” (prior to 1965), the Episcopal Church, USA, was a proud bastion of social and economic conservatism, made up almost entirely of the wealthiest, the whitest, the most Anglo-phile, the most socially elite, the most “established,” the most privileged elements of American society. We comment today negatively on those parishes in which a newcomer gets a chilly reception, hardly being spoken to by the regular members. These are simply the congregations that have changed least since 1965: God’s “frozen chosen” in nearly all Episcopal churches used to be that way (aside from a genteel but superficial hospitality encountered in some places). But the key fact is that our conservatism then was socio-economic, not Biblical or theological. The well-connected and well-to-do in every society are always the most devoted to the status quo. They abhor change, whether it be in race relations, gender issues, economic systems, political power, international policy, or sexuality, because of all people they have the most to lose. Change feels like the wind of revolution to them, and revolution turns worlds upside down. Even “progress” is a loaded and scary word to that group, for it also means change, and change equals loss. This Old Guard loved and now miss the “old boy network;” it guaranteed their sons places in the most prestigious universities and firms—including the church.
But the “old” Episcopal Church as a whole was not conservative in its view of scripture or theology, and it had no strong Evangelical character (quite the contrary, as described above). After a period of chest-beating in the nineteenth century, Episcopalians accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution without reservation. Episcopalians have been leading industrialists, scientists, professors, and entrepreneurs, and as a group, they have embraced the findings of modern science and medicine with ease. Episcopalians never participated in any numbers in the crusading movements such as the Temperance Movement. We have watched the great waves of revivalism that have swept the country with detachment—they simply did not concern us. Except for slavery, a big issue that did not cause us to split apart, we have tended to argue among ourselves over amazingly small things, which also did not cause us to split apart—for we had social class to hold us together. Then came the 1960’s.
That decade caused an aberration in the Episcopal Church. Perhaps it was the combined shock of the extreme horror of World War II and the Holocaust, followed by Hiroshima and the Cold War, with its threat of total annihilation. Suddenly, it no longer seemed as if polite society could maintain itself in peaceful dignity. Involvement with the mess the world demonstrably is became unavoidable for many. Episcopalians, especially clergy, came to be visibly and outspokenly involved in the struggle for human rights. First came racism in the form of segregation and discrimination against persons of color. That caused the first and greatest round of defections by the privileged class, for whom black people were maids, chauffeurs, and gardeners, not fellow worshipers. As they fled the inner cities, they abandoned their Episcopal parishes as well, and the Episcopal Church’s old base in the Eastern cities was decimated. Then, to a lesser degree, church leaders took up the cause of peace, advocating for conscientious objectors to the war in Viet Nam. Round two of defections followed: Episcopalians were, after all, at the heart of the “military/industrial complex”. Cultural relevancy was the great hue and cry of the period, and liturgical renewal came next, with development of a new and radically (for us) revised prayer book. In the midst of that debacle came the movement to allow the ordination of women.
Did I mention that the main constituency of the Episcopal Church did not like change, any change? By 1980, we were not the church of the privileged anymore, for in large numbers, they had exercised their privilege to drop out—interestingly not, for the most part, for other churches, but for no church at all. After all, church membership is no longer required for social respectability, which is essential to privilege. But to this day, a million more people claim in surveys to be Episcopalians than show up on any of our rolls or mailing lists.
Their places in the pews have been partially refilled with a different sort of Episcopalian entirely. They are refugees from Evangelicalism, from Fundamentalism, from the Vatican, and from Pentecostalism. They are immigrants. They are the urban, non-white replacements of the era of white flight. They represent a new concept for the Episcopal Church—diversity.
Turn now to the second stream of extreme change in the Episcopal Church, which happened quietly, under nearly everyone’s radar, while we were busy arguing over the first stream of change. Beginning in the late 1960’s, at the same time as these other developments, a whole series of grassroots movements swept our church: Faith Alive, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, and the Charismatic Movement. They were not exactly revivalism as scorned by Episcopalians in generations past, but they packed much of the same emotional energy and conveyed a similar kind of certainty in a very turbulent culture. For the first time, the Episcopal Church had a significant Evangelical wing, and it grew rapidly, especially in the places you would expect, the South and West. These were the growing edges of our church at the time, while in New England and the North, we were taking the shellacking described above in the loss of our traditional strongholds. Evangelicals are still a minority in our church, but a strong and vocal one, with their own seminary (Trinity); in some dioceses, such as Pittsburgh, Florida, and Fort Worth, they are the majority.
The experience of Britain and her Empire was different. The English Church had a strong Evangelical Party since John Wesley and George Whitfield, standing in opposition to the Anglo-Catholics and mediated by the Broad-Churchmen or Liberals. They have worked out a truce, even taking turns between them having the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Runcie was an Anglo-Catholic, Carey was an Evangelical, and Williams is a Liberal). But it was the English Evangelicals who were the missionaries who went out into the Empire, spreading Anglican Christianity in Africa. Naturally, the brand of Christianity they spread was Evangelical, and that remains the case to this day.
This is why we are on the brink of splitting apart today. In the United States, we have become two churches. The socially conservative, but theologically moderate and Biblically disinterested Episcopal upper class is largely gone, and has been gone since the 60’s--‘70’s. What we have left are those who became socially and theologically liberal in response to the injustices of the first half of the twentieth century, and those who became Evangelicals in response to the social upheavals of the second half. The Church in Africa is mostly allied with our own Evangelicals; the Canadians and New Zealanders with our more liberal majority. The English Church has multiple personality disorder.
We are not going to split because we want to become two denominations. We are going to split because we already have.
THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF OUR CHURCH, PART II
DIVERSITY OR TOLERANCE
In the previous section, I stated that the Episcopal Church has effectively been, for some time now, two churches in uneasy union with one another, the fault-line of our division being less the question of the nature of homosexuality, than of Biblical authority. One side is selectively literalist, and the other is selectively figurative in scriptural interpretation.
That does not mean that I consider it to be inevitable, desirable, faithful or beneficial to the cause of Christ that we should separate. No. Quite the contrary, in fact. I do not want the literalists to leave, for a church that values diversity needs conservative voices, and they continue to have a role to play in the unfolding life of the Episcopal Church. If they turn out to be in the right in this current controversy, the church will need them to help us correct our course. My prayer is that as many as possible might be swayed to remain in this communion, for the benefit of all.
Isn’t to discern the Will of God what we all want? If two poles make that decision separately and categorically, and do not live out together the consequences of their decision, then what results is at least one, maybe both, struggling along down a futile path with no balancing force to correct their navigation.
. The irony is that both sides have clear and well-laid-out positions which, at this stage, can be honorably held and defended up to a point.
The loose-interpreters of scripture, who have the majority in ECUSA, believe with sincerity that homosexuality is neither chosen nor learned, but by some unknown mechanism, inborn in some people—just how some folks are made. If they are correct, then that is part of the working of Natural Law, like left-handedness, and it cannot of itself be wrong. In fact, it would be wrong to pressure gays to try to pretend to be heterosexual and to marry, for that not only would not work, but would harm others as well—even worse than trying to “fix” left-handers to make them “right.” The liberals take the field under the banners of Love, Grace, and Mercy, and they are trying to define a way for gay and lesbian Christians to have a loving and committed relationship that the Church need not condemn—a practice which has ostracized and rejected the best-meaning and most committed of their number from the Christian fellowship. Chastity, they maintain, is fine for those who choose it, but it should not mean having to live one’s life coming home in the evening to no one but a cat. Far from being destroyers of marriage, they believe that they are such strong supporters of marriage that they would have its benefits expanded to include faithful same-sex partners as well as opposite-sex ones; their alternative to promiscuity need not be total abstinence, but could be committed monogamy.
The strict interpreters of scripture see themselves as holding the Biblical citadel against yet another onslaught from revisionists of the secular culture. Their banners are Tradition, the Authority of Scripture as historically translated and understood and, in their view, Christian Orthodoxy itself. Some of them are bruised and hurting, having lost hard-fought battles already, over ordination of women and other matters. Many have defined this as their last-ditch effort. To their credit, most in our church are not suggesting that homosexuality is a “lifestyle” or a choice. But they do not consider the orientation to be natural, either. Rather, they strongly believe that homosexual urges are learned gradually through a variety of influences, and that they can be un-learned. To them, homosexuality is and must remain an aberration in the natural order. They do not see themselves as gay-haters; what they advocate is a combination of spiritual and psychological healing so that new heterosexual relationships can be established and maintained. Lacking that, they demand that homosexuals live celibately in order to remain in the church.
Guess what—BOTH sides have anecdotal testimony to support their claims. NEITHER side has achieved a preponderance of scientific evidence, which will take another generation to produce. (I’m not sure the present crop of people living today will accept it even then, however; but our grandchildren will.) For this conflict to be settled, we must wait as patiently as we can and be as tolerant of those who are different from us (i.e., those who are “wrong”) as we can. Patience and tolerance, alas, at present, are in short supply.
While I plead for tolerance, let me be clear what I mean by that term, because I have heard the view expressed many times that the Episcopal Church has become entirely “too tolerant.” When people say that, I think we ought to ask exactly what they do not want us to tolerate—we might be surprised. Perhaps it will help to clarify what is going on in our church today if we consider that there is a big difference between tolerance and inclusiveness. George Will just made the error of confusing the two in his column for Newsweek on November 10. They are not the same thing.
Tolerance is putting up with something even though one knows it is wrong or harmful. I just, in my paragraph above, urged that we tolerate one another even though we “know” that those who disagree with us are wrong. Inclusiveness is deliberately making room for that which rightfully does belong. It may help us to understand this controversy if we recognize that the Episcopal Church did not decide to tolerate homosexuals. It decided to include them.
But when people say “the Episcopal Church has become too tolerant,” what are they implying? What else have we done in the past few decades that some people have called “too tolerant?” Did we “tolerate” the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, though we know it to be evil, or did we adopt it because we believed that it better expresses our faith and serves our worship needs for the late twentieth century? Do we “tolerate” divorced and remarried persons in our midst, or did we decide that some marriages are better ended than forcibly and tragically preserved? More to the point regarding inclusiveness, and most telling against the “we’ve become too tolerant” argument—did we ordain women to show that we “tolerate” them—even in holy orders? Or did we discover by prayer, Bible study, and strong advocacy on their behalf that women had wrongly been denied access to their vocations for many years? Did we (belatedly) support true racial equality because we “tolerate” people of color, though they are inferior? Outrageous! No, we acted because we became convicted in the belief that racism is a grievous sin of which we, the church, as well as our society have been guilty far too long.
You see, the changes we have made in our practices, all controversial in their day, were never made out of tolerance for that which is bad, but out of conviction that we can do better. We did those things because we, as an overwhelming majority (though not unanimously to this very day) believed that it is right for us to do so—that it is God’s will. Whether we agree or disagree with their judgment in the matter, we will be much more fair if we acknowledge that the reason the people of the church in New Hampshire acted as they did, and the reason that the General Convention voted as it did, is because they wish to include those who by nature and right belong in the church, not because they wish to tolerate someone who does not.
In living with (tolerating) the tension of an unresolved moral issue, I do not say that the fundamentalists should wait quietly. On the contrary, I believe that it is their right and their duty to speak as clearly and articulately as they know how in advocacy of their fervently-held views. (I would, however, appreciate greater civility and less theatrics, a general ratcheting-down of the rhetoric.) The conservative minority have every right to vote their conviction in vestries, in diocesan conventions, and in General Conventions.
Where I draw the line, though, is in the premeditated, coldly calculated dismemberment of the church and its property, especially in the deceit and hypocrisy of pretending that is not the intent. That is exactly what some, including a few of our bishops, have been planning for several years now. Just as two wrongs don’t make a right, one sin does not justify another in response.
Isn’t it obvious by now that the usefulness of the Protestant Reformation has come to an end, and that insisting on 100% doctrinal purity has not produced the one true church? Do we have to wait until there is a separate denomination for every adult Christian, with himself as pope, to realize that schism is itself a sin? Loping off limbs of the Body of Christ is a sin, equal to or worse than condoning homosexuality! Maybe the first couple of rounds of the Reformation were a necessary evil, to counter tyranny and corruption in the Church, but by this time, we must see that there cannot be a separate denomination for every possible combination of dogma. For the sake of the Kingdom of God, we must all put up with some people with whom we have differences of opinion. And whom do we think we are going to be with in Heaven, anyway, just the two or three individuals on earth who think exactly like us? Where is the victory for Christ in that!
I have a couple of additional complaints against the behavior of the “traditionalists.” One is refusing to accept the ministry of their own bishop, if the bishop disagrees with them on their fundamentalist outlook. As a matter of fact, this is an official heresy, just as traditional as any anti-homosexual view. It is called “Donatism,” condemned by the whole church catholic.
The other is about disgruntled congregations wanting to withhold funds from the National Church, a form of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. The General Convention which endorsed Gene Robinson’s election is a body consisting of all the bishops and representatives of all the dioceses. It is not the same as “815,” the administrative arm of the church. The national church uses its money for ministries of all kinds to support the work of the church, not to support gay causes. Righteous indignation is fine, but inappropriately and destructively directed, it is just anger (another sin). It also looks like stinginess, since it involves holding back money.
What I think Christ would have us do is hang in together and try to love one another as best we can. That, after all, is what he told us to do. I wonder what part of “love one another” we just don’t understand. So we are all sinners. There is nothing new in that. Not that we intend to sin so that grace may abound--but we do sin, and grace does abound. We must be patient with others as we hope they will be patient with us, and we must do our best to stick together, especially in disagreement (it is easy when we agree, no glory there.)
In the long run, right or wrong, the election of Gene Robinson as bishop will prove to be a blessing. If we truly seek God’s will regarding the nature of homosexuality and the proper place of gays in the church, this process, once lived through, will lead us to discover that. On the other hand, if we never allowed it to happen, we would not learn from the experience.
A majority in ECUSA favor a revised view of homosexuality. A minority disagrees. Yet our majority is the minority in the country as a whole, especially among Christians as a whole, and among world-wide Anglicans as well. Never mind. It is not, in the end, about majority rule but about seeking God’s will and trusting that God will give guidance. Minorities always lead the way (check your church history—they ALWAYS lead). We cannot know now which minority it will be this time. For that we must have the patience, the fortitude, the faithfulness, and the humility to wait and see.
Part III: IN DEFENSE OF DIVERSITY
I may have surprised many and dismayed some by letting it be known that I support the decision to consecrate Gene Robinson in particular and the complete civil rights of homosexual persons in general. Knowing how controversial this subject is and how strong the feelings run on the other side, I might be more politic just to keep quiet about it, as I often do on contentious subjects. This time, though, I consider it important for me to be clear about where I stand, and I think you all deserve to know why.
First of all, as a Christian, I operate out of a certain predisposition: I believe that the very soul of Christianity is compassion. For that reason, it is always better, more Christian, to be in the spirit of love than in the letter of law. I also believe that the Holy Spirit is constantly challenging each generation of Christians to grow in love beyond what was expected of their parents, and that this growth is expressed in the flow of the history of western civilization.
As a priest, I have the privilege of knowing all kinds of people perhaps more intimately than most. My experience with gay people, both as friends and as parishioners, has been that unanimously, they know that they have always been attracted only to persons of the same sex. They never chose their orientation, and certainly would never have done so. Many fervently wish they could be “like other people.” In fact, that is what I observe gays and lesbians trying to be: just regular folks with friends and families, jobs and hobbies, faith--like anyone else. “Attraction” is the key word here: people do not choose to whom they feel attraction.
I am also a child of the Sixties—not the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” kind, I somehow missed that, but the era of civil rights and peace, the decade of Kennedy and King, Wallace and Maddox. I have experienced the rigidity and blindness of deep, culturally saturated prejudice, and over the years, I have become convinced that the visceral, instinctive rejection and judgment against homosexuals in our society is very much like the racism I witnessed in my childhood. In fact events and commentary on our General Convention this summer gave me an emotional flashback to 1962. I am not saying the circumstances are the same, but that the cultural programming and response is. This similarity comes from one failing: the refusal to imagine life from the perspective of another, with the result that one is free to define the other as radically different from, and inherently inferior to, oneself. In this way, we reject Christ’s command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
If you lived outside the Deep South, you cannot know what I am describing with regard to race. Of course, there was segregation earlier here in West Virginia, and there has been discrimination and prejudice everywhere, but not institutionalized, codified, and enforced by absolute social rigidity like in the Deep South. I know there must have been some white people who thought that the treatment of “coloreds” was wrong, but the price for ever saying so was complete social ostracism, ruin of one’s business or career, open hostility from neighbors and even family, maybe even violence. Outside of network TV (liberal, Yankee, outside agitators), I never heard one single, white adult express sympathy for the plight of blacks prior to 1968. Kennedy, King, and Earl Warren shared the top of the hate list. Yet, I attended a Christian church three times every week, and every adult I knew was a church-going Christian. We had prayers in school every morning. We all thought we were the very soul of Christian decency, and that outsiders who did not understand us were the problem. But our society was riddled with hypocrisy, evil, and violence.
That is when I learned something very important: what “everybody knows” and “the way things have always been” can be completely wrong. It certainly affected me to learn that 100% of the adults I knew, including teachers, ministers, and beloved relatives, supported unjust customs and laws! Christians are not exempt from the blindness of the culture at large, and when Christian society wants to exclude someone, it finds ways to enlist the Bible in support of its cause. It takes courageous people standing against a powerful status quo to make a shift possible.
I make this comparison with deliberation, knowing that the two will seem very different to many people. Whereas overt, doctrinal racism was concentrated in one region, the corresponding level of prejudice against homosexuals occurs in pockets and splotches all over the country (most pronounced in the very regions where racism is also strongest, though). And I do acknowledge that acceptance of homosexuals, at least as a fact of life, is growing almost everywhere. Even so, I find the alienation of the two groups remarkably similar. For example:
· The technique of self-distancing with denial is the same. White southerners prided themselves on how well they treated “their” coloreds. Similarly, straight society tolerates gays as our hairdressers and florists and such, but in our own workplaces, homes, organizations, churches, and classrooms, it can be a very different story. And don’t forget the brouhaha over the military. . (This still grows stronger the further south you go.)
· The same “them vs. us” mentality operates. Stereo-typing is blatant, with all members of the sub-group assumed to be like one another, different from the norm. There are gay characters on TV now, but do you notice how “typed” they are?
· Name-calling and cruel joke-telling are on the same level of hatefulness and loathing. (Derision, by the way, is a particularly powerful tool for repression, and strongly discourages any urge for sympathy, since the same derision will plainly be directed at sympathizers as well.) Have you seen the cartoons ridiculing us Episcopalians? Have your Baptist or Catholic friends made fun of you for being an Episcopalian? I rest this portion of my case.
· Both blacks and gays are the victims of violence simply for being a member of the hated group. Then they are blamed for the violence based on their behavior, though they themselves were not violent. Remember our fellow Episcopalian Matthew Shepherd, how he was brutally murdered, then vilified as if he were responsible for his own crucifixion?
· People used to fear that black men would try to seduce white women; some fear that gays will try to recruit their children. It is the same kind of almost superstitious dread of an unknown future social system.
Am I overstating the seriousness of the discrimination?
In a recent conversation, a fellow priest, for whom I have great personal regard, lamented almost with tears that he did not know if his congregation would be able to continue its ministry to children in the wake of Robinson’s consecration. I was astonished at the incredible leaps of logic (and also the level of sheer prejudice) required to produce such a syllogism: Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire is gay man: day care in rural West Virginia is run by Episcopal congregation : therefore, the children in the day care are in imminent danger of molestation! Do you see the similarity with racial bigotry, and the depth of cultural conditioning that is involved? And how hurtful it is?
So we have a long way to go in eradicating the homophobia that is rampant in our society, and the church should be leading the way, for it is the way toward enlightenment and compassion. Shame on us because, out of fear of the consequences, we have allowed the secular society to take over leadership in the way of compassion, which should be our domain. We have not done a good job with the dialogue and study we were called to do by previous General Conventions. We have not reached a decision on how to support faithful and monogamous same-sex relationships. We have not done the work of distinguishing such relationships from our understanding of Holy Matrimony, and now we are unprepared to offer any guidance to the states as they wrestle with the contentious issue of gay marriage.
(Incidentally, I do maintain that there is a difference between the two which is not very quantifiable, but which has to do not only with the unique capacity of opposite-sex couples to produce offspring, but also with the mystical “ying and yang” nature of Holy Matrimony, the fullness of the “likeness” of the divine being fully expressed in the harmony of male and female. I wish we could have this argument on the level plain of fairness and compassion rather than in the ravine of prejudice and repression. But that is for another time.)
Unprepared as we are, I have some sympathy for my friends who are in a most uncomfortable quandary: they want to be fair and loving to gays and they want not to fence themselves into a narrow, judgmental attitude toward homosexuality only to be proven wrong by later discovery—the Church has gotten its fingers burned so many times by making rash pronouncements in advance of all scientific inquiry. Yet they very much dislike being pressured to make a choice right now. They want to take time to work through the process “decently and in good order.” “Why can’t the gays just wait,” they say, “a little while longer—let us finish our dialogues? It’s been a thousand years—why the great rush now, when we are so unprepared?”
I say I have sympathy, but I cannot agree. We haven’t even started our dialogue, because we don’t want to do it. Neither did white Southerners on racism. The same stalling tactic is attempted by all who fear change. First, no great social change—and this is a very great one, indeed—comes about smoothly and gracefully. More to the point, no dominant, oppressing social force gives way of its own volition and decision. Mercifully, the overcoming power does not have to be violence, though it far too often is. But it does have to be extraordinarily powerful, even if it is in the form of moral authority, overwhelming evidence, a great shift in public opinion, or the threat of violence inevitably to come.
Back in 1962, another time when those who feared the turmoil of change seemed ready to embrace almost any tactic to forestall it, the great instrument of change in my neck of the woods was one Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to Birmingham, not far from my home, to lead demonstrations against the racial segregation that was then the law, enforced by police chief “Bull” Connor with his fire-hoses and his dogs. A group of eight prominent clergymen of several Protestant denominations—they even got a leading rabbi to join them—made two sad errors of judgment. First, they wrote a letter to Dr. King asking him to go away and let local matters take their own course, let local whites decide what scrap to offer the black community, rather than risk the peace by leading demonstrations, which were, of course, against the law. (Do you remember how we all really thought there might be a bloody civil conflict over this? Or at least that was what we twelve-year-olds were taught to fear.) Their second mistake was: they made their letter public. The result was that, with the leisure of incarceration, King wrote his famous response, now used in public schools across America as an example of brilliant argumentative prose, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” (For a copy of his work, visit http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf)
Now, here is a sad footnote for our church, showing how we have not always been on the cutting edge of social progress: two of those eight to whom King’s rebuttal is addressed are the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, James Carpenter, and his Coadjutor, George Murphy. Both were fine men, known to Episcopalians for many deeds of charity. To posterity, however, their names are forever inscribed as supporters of an unjust status quo against a non-violent opportunity to correct the injustice. In their letter, they had implied that if violence occurred, King was to blame.
I was disappointed recently that no less a personage than the Archbishop of Canterbury made a similar error by implying that if the Anglican Communion experiences schism, or if the Episcopal Church breaks apart, it is all Gene Robinson’s fault. I believe this is a great disservice to Robinson and to justice. All Robinson did was offer himself for consideration to the Diocese of New Hampshire, believing himself to be called to episcopacy. If anyone erred in his selection, it was the diocese and the General Convention, not Robinson. When someone asks only for justice, to be treated like other people, it is not his fault if others respond destructively. There was, in fact, some rather famous violence in Alabama in 1962 and after, none of it caused by King or his demonstrations. Rather, those who resorted to violence did so out of their own hatred and by their own evil inclination. If other reactionaries tear our church asunder, it will be by their choice, not by Gene Robinson’s.
Finally, in making my own judgment about who is in the right in the matter, I like to consider who my compatriots will be. On the Robinson vote, the list of those who voted in favor included my friends Stacy Sauls of Kentucky, Jim Waggoner of Spokane, Harry Bainbridge of Idaho, Herb Thompson of Southern Ohio, Bud Shand of Easton, Mark Sisk of New York, Neil Alexander of Atlanta, and others. The short list of those opposed had only Henry Parsley of Alabama and, sadly, my own bishop, Mike Klusmeyer, that I know and respect. But in a broader scene, consider this: those who oppose equal rights for gays include in their number the Vatican, the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the Mormon Church, the Skin-heads, the Neo-Nazis, Fred Phelps’ church, and the Ku Klux Klan. From my point of view, and from my life experience, there is something deeply troubling about that combination of forces. I am very comfortable about being in favor of what they all oppose. I don’t want to be numbered with them, or even with Bishops Carpenter and Murphy. As a young person in 1960’s Alabama, I wasn’t as courageous on the matter of race as I would like to have been. I don’t want to make that mistake again.
And I believe that the spirit of the Good News of Jesus Christ and the lessons of history will support me and our church as we seek to be faithful in this matter.
