wfn.org | Episcopal convention to deal with sexuality issues

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2000-098

General Convention will deal with sexuality issues--again

by David Skidmore

     (ENS) The Episcopal Church's efforts to come to terms 
with the role of gay and lesbian members in church life--a 
protracted struggle stretching out over three decades--hold 
little promise for resolution any time soon. 

     Since a 1979 resolution of General Convention said 
that it was "not appropriate" to ordain non-celibate gays 
and lesbians, conventions have waded through a long list of 
position statements, affirmations, resolutions and 
liturgical actions and not come even close to resolving the 
underlying issues.

     Emboldened by the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution 
declaring sexual expression by gays and lesbians "to be 
incompatible with Scripture," staunch conservatives in the 
Episcopal Church have enlisted the support of other 
Anglican conservative groups and bishops to press for a 
more traditional understanding of church doctrine and 
interpretation of Scripture on sexuality issues. And some 
have taken direct action to underscore their anger with 
what they perceive as the liberal drift of the church.

     Dissident congregations in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, 
North Carolina and Virginia have either broken ties with 
the Episcopal Church or sought alternative episcopal 
oversight from conservative bishops, largely over sexuality 
issues. The most radical action so far, and one still 
unfolding, was the consecration last January in Singapore 
of two Episcopal priests--the Rev. Charles Murphy of South 
Carolina, and the Rev. John Rodgers, former dean of Trinity 
Episcopal School for Ministry in Pennsylvania--as 
missionary bishops to the Episcopal Church. 

     Despite stinging criticisms from Presiding Bishop 
Frank Griswold and a number of his counterparts, and a 
statement from Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey 
declaring he could not recognize their ministry as bishops,  
Murphy and Rodgers are poised to exercise their episcopal 
ministry among clergy and congregations in dioceses that 
Murphy contends "have become oppressive, restrictive to 
those of orthodox faith."

     On the other side of the divide, bishops and dioceses 
that have embraced gay and lesbian participation in the 
church continue to push for official recognition of 
committed same-sex relationships and the ordination of non-
celibate homosexual persons.

     The Dioceses of El Camino Real, Hawaii, Michigan, 
Minnesota, Newark, New York, Ohio, and others have taken 
stands affirming the life and witness of gay and lesbian 
church members, and challenging the 1998 Lambeth 
resolution. 

     In Vermont, whose state legislature recently granted 
legal recognition to same-sex couples, Bishop Mary Adelia 
McLeod has issued an "emancipation proclamation" for gays 
and lesbians, declaring "heterosexual and homosexual people 
are equally capable of entering into life-long unions of 
love, mutual support and fidelity." In her statement, 
McLeod stressed that "God's great gift of love and the 
expression of that love cannot and should not be denied to 
those among us who happen to be homosexual. Let the church 
be the first to issue an emancipation proclamation."

     That call has struck a chord in the Diocese of 
Minnesota. Last October it guaranteed access for gays, 
lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons to all the 
church's sacraments, including ordination and the blessing 
of relationships, and charged its deputies to communicate 
this stand to the General Convention. 

     Other dioceses have endorsed the Cambridge Accord, 
authored by Bishop Steven Charleston, dean of Episcopal 
Divinity School, which in part declares that "no homosexual 
person should ever be deprived of liberty, personal 
property or civil rights because of his or her sexual 
orientation."

     Several dioceses, among them El Camino Real and 
Michigan, have taken the next step and called for the 
preparation of rites or curricula for the blessing of same-
gender relationships. 

A voting matter?

     While momentum seems to be building towards a 
resolution of the issue--at least at the diocesan level--a 
number of church leaders, deputies and bishops, are having 
second thoughts about putting it to a vote. The House of 
Bishops has made it clear in statements from its last three 
meetings that an up-or-down vote, similar to the one at 
Lambeth, may be inappropriate or downright divisive.

     Just the opposite seemed to be the case at the 1997 
General Convention when the House of Deputies fell a vote 
short, in both the lay and clerical orders, of calling for 
the development of rites for blessing same-sex partners 
living in committed relationships. The same convention did 
approve measures granting health benefits to domestic 
partners and apologizing to gays and lesbians for years of 
discrimination.

     The razor-thin rejection of a rite for same-sex 
blessings was read at the time like a futures market stock 
quote, convincing many that sheer momentum would push both 
deputies and bishops at the next convention to adopt 
measures authorizing such rites.

     That optimism has faded. The Standing Commission on 
Liturgy and Music (SCLM), which had been given the job by 
the last convention of researching the theological issues 
around same-sex relationships and suggesting ways to 
resolve the impasse, found it could not pick the 
appropriate side of the fence on which to plant the 
church's flag. Instead of a clear-cut endorsement or 
rejection of same-sex rites, the commission left the matter 
up to the conscience of each diocese. 

     While encouraging the church to continue the 
conversation, inviting "genuine and respectful" encounters 
between homosexual and heterosexual church members, the 
commission in its resolution to General Convention directs 
each diocese,  "under the spiritual and pastoral direction 
of its bishop," to determine "the resolution of issues 
related to same sex relationships, including the blessing 
of such relationships, and the ordination of homosexual 
Christians."

     Bishop Paul Marshall of Bethlehem, a member of the 
commission, summarized the commission's quandary in a 
reflection included as part of the commission's report to 
General Convention.

     "When we simply cannot agree that one view compels the 
allegiance of all faithful people, as is the case today," 
wrote Marshall, "the reverently ignorant thing to do is 
either to abstain altogether from making a decision, or 
else to allow dioceses to find their own way in the matter, 
and only much later, if ever, to come to some general 
agreement."

Local option--a can of worms

     Tagged as an endorsement of "local option," which 
would open the way for dioceses to act unilaterally on 
disputed matters of church-wide faith and order, the 
resolution has sparked criticism from both the left and 
right--and opened an awesome can of worms.

     Louis Crew, a veteran deputy from the Diocese of 
Newark and a founder of Integrity, the advocacy group for 
Episcopal gays and lesbians, questions the wisdom of 
converting an informal process, already allowed in the Book 
of Common Prayer, to a church policy. As Crew notes, the 
instructions on page 13 of the prayer book already give 
bishops the authority to devise forms of liturgy for 
occasions "for which no service or prayer has been provided 
in this Book." ("Concerning the Service of the Church")

     To enshrine local option as a policy remedy for a 
single divisive issue raises some very serious questions, 
say Crew and others. If applied to sexual orientation and 
access to sacramental ministry, then what prevents this 
approach from being applied to other disputes, they ask. 
"It becomes a way of solving everything and in doing that 
becomes a way of solving nothing," Crew argues.

     Contention over controversial issues should be 
something the church learns to accommodate and live into, 
rather than shy away from, said Crew. What the church 
cannot afford to do is the approach it took following the 
1976 General Convention vote opening the priesthood to 
women, he said. A year after that vote the House of Bishops 
meeting in Port St. Lucie, Florida, fashioned a compromise 
with conservatives by issuing "A Statement of Conscience" 
which held that opponents of ordaining women to the 
priesthood and episcopate should not be subject to coercion 
or penalties because of their stand. 

     "I don't want to see a repeat of the Port St. Lucie 
option when the church makes the mistake of authorizing 
private consciences that make decisions for the body 
politic," said Crew.

Congregational polity?

     The commission's proposal also troubles Bishop William 
Persell of Chicago. Though in favor of the blessing of 
same-sex partners living in committed relationships, he is 
opposed to unilateral actions at the diocesan level. At an 
April 17 meeting of Chicago's clergy, Persell said the 
SCLM's local option proposal is at odds with the collegial 
nature of the Anglican Communion. "We are a national and 
international church and I think it is wrong to make those 
decisions at the diocesan level," he said.

     The SCLM's proposal did not sit well with conservative 
bishops either. Bishop James Stanton of Dallas saw it as 
"writing into policy a shift of polity," which would 
confirm for many the church's growing "drift into 
congregational polity."

     If passed it would be a disruptive force in the 
church, said Stanton. "It is a very American kind of 
proposal and really flies in the face of accountability."

     Bishop Edward Salmon of South Carolina also read the 
SCLM's proposal as a disturbing shift in policy making. 
"What they came out with is a local option proposition 
which in effect changes what we teach. What it says is we 
will play both sides of the fence. By playing both sides 
you have changed the position," said Salmon.

     The SCLM's chair, the Rev. Bruce Jenneker of Trinity 
Church in Boston, has heard the concerns about local option 
and dismisses them. What the commission proposes is in 
concert with the Anglican principle of subsidiarity, said 
Jenneker--meaning that the church should act at the 
provincial or national level only on matters that cannot be 
addressed at the diocesan level. It is not, he insisted, a 
sanction for unilateralism or congregationalism. "Nothing 
could be further from the truth. This is not a 
congregational decision, this is a diocesan decision."

     The commission struggled until the eleventh hour to 
craft a definitive statement, and realized--well into its 
final meeting last October--that the issue was too 
complicated to resolve satisfactorily at this point, said 
Jenneker.

     "We were very aware that there was a strong call to do 
something that advances the church from where we seemed to 
be stuck for the past two conventions," he said. "But that 
movement forward was not to be at the cost of the life of 
the church."

Living in ambiguity

     A number of bishops and deputies think the commission 
did all it could to fulfill its mandate. Its report 
reflects where the church is on these issues, said the Very 
Rev. George Werner, retired dean of Trinity Cathedral in 
Pittsburgh and vice president of the House of Deputies. 
Though the commission may not have fulfilled its charge to 
resolve the issues, it has "given us the best and most 
honest picture of where we are at this moment," said 
Werner, a leading candidate to succeed Pamela Chinnis as 
president of the House of Deputies.

     The resolution, he added, also is consistent with 
Anglicanism's propensity for living in ambiguity. 

     For Judge James Bradberry, a member of Executive 
Council and the Standing Commission on Constitution and 
Canons, Jenneker's commission was given a Gordian knot to 
unravel and did "an extraordinarily fine job" of balancing 
competing theological views.

     Few observers expect the commission's resolution--
which will be addressed first in the House of Deputies--to 
survive unaltered. The chances for more explicit measures, 
particularly those authorizing blessings for same-sex 
relationships, are even more questionable. 

     More hopeful than most, Bradberry thinks there is a 
reasonable chance that the convention will support a 
resolution advocating the blessing of same-sex 
relationships. For him there is no question where the 
church should stand on rites for blessing same-sex 
relationships. "In a church that can bless inanimate 
objects and animals it seems to me that we ought to be able 
to recognize a commitment between two adults who want to 
make a life together."

     If a measure authorizing same-sex blessing rites were 
to pass General Convention, it would have "a devastating 
impact" on both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican 
Communion, said Bishop Stanton, but it probably would not 
fuel a formal schism. Neither he nor fellow conservative 
bishops affiliated with the American Anglican Council give 
that option serious consideration.

     "Our commitment has always been to hold the church 
together," said Stanton. "A split is something we don't 
either anticipate or think about dealing with, or greet 
with any kind of joy."

Polarizing the church

     Discernment should not be read as a stalling tactic, 
cautioned Bishop Charles Bennison of Pennsylvania. Though 
he is in favor of same-sex blessings, he does not see the 
need to push the matter to a vote and risk further 
polarizing the church. "It is not that people are afraid to 
take on hard prophetic work, but that they want to be 
prophetic and keep the church together," said Bennison. "It 
is not helpful to leave people behind."

     Rather than risk a polarizing vote, Bennison hopes to 
reframe the issue by looking at how heterosexual persons 
harbor and project prejudice against non-heterosexuals. His 
resolution proposing a pastoral teaching and study guide on 
the sins of heterosexism may be a difficult sell, but it at 
least switches the moral focus from gays and lesbians to 
the systemic injustice of an ecclesiastical system. 

     "I think that is where the conversation can find 
common ground. By making that move we can reframe the moral 
arguments," he said.

      In the past three meetings Stanton senses that 
bishops are trying to engage the issues from a spiritual 
standpoint and not politicize them. If that means taking no 
action in July, then that may be the best choice.

     "I would rather see us take our time to continue to 
get clarity on this issue than to err in making a decision 
we would later regret," said Stanton.

--David Skidmore is director of communications for the 
Diocese of Chicago and a member of the ENS news team at 
General Convention.