What baffles me, with all due respect, is how people can continue to claim that "We have stated as a church that ALL God's people, regardless of orientation, are eligible to participate fully in the life of the church at all levels" and that "The Episcopal Church at a national level has a very open, supportive stand with regard to GLBT issues." Neither claim is true. Both are simply false.
I pray that people would lift their eyes, their hearts, their ears from the insular experience of the community of their self-contained 'liberal' local congregations. Rather than celebrate how wonderfully everyone there seems to get along with one another, because, as they will tyypically describe, everyone there seems to have entered into a tacit agreement not to discus 'issues' around which real disagreement may emerge. I urge them instead to sacrifice their own experience of beatitude in order to participate in the experience of those to whom beatitude continues to be denied by the Episcopal Church.
Walk away from the appearance at the your local parish, the veneer that suggests that all is well in the Episcopal Church. Do so in solidarity with those whom the Church continues to discriminate against by its official polity. Do so with the determination that you will not again celebrate the blessings that you enjoy until those blessings are available, officially, to all regardless of the bias, prejudice, or bigotry that is offended by the inclusiveness of God's Love. Until you do this, please cease trying to persuade us that your experience of your local insular liberality is normative of the Church. I pray fervently that the modus operandi at such congregations is soon overturned, for some of those unmarried young adults whom people freely say are feeling neglected may well be ga. I pray that the current approach may soon be undone; that approach wherein your congregation seems to operate with some absurd 'don't ask, don't tell' policy in order not to put the rector in a position where she or he might actually have to behave as a leader instead of an appeaser.
As I've observed before I do so here again: the only thing that comes close to a non-discrimination policy in the Church's constitution or canons is Title III, Canon 1, section 2: "No person shall be denied access to the discernment process for any ministry, lay or ordained, in this Church because of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, disabilities or age, except as otherwise provided by these Canons. No right to licensing, ordination, or election is hereby established." This canon applies only to a discernment process. It applies to persons considering lay ministries and ordained.
The Episcopal Church in the United States has NO anti-discrimination policy regarding ordination. NONE. This fact is borne out by the fact that several dioceses continue to forbid the ordination to Holy Orders of persons who are women. You know as well as I that our own Diocese of Texas has a policy of not ordaining persons who are gay and partnered, and that our new bishop has stated plainly that he will not ordain a gay partnered person nor ever permit clergy here to officiate a blessing of a same-sex union.
It's important that we deal with facts and reality. The fact and the reality is that the Episcopal Church in the U.S. has no anti-discrimination policy regarding deployment or employment of ministers lay or ordained. Similarly, there no polity, no canon that forbids disallowing Integrity to purchase a vendor's booth as a diocesan convention, as happened here in the Diocese of Texas. It is pure fantasy to believe that this Church has sort of bottom-to-top policy forbidding discrimination. There is no such thing.
In answer to any question about General Convention Resolution B033, please recognize that by it, the Episcopal Church U.S. has put in place an official and assertively discriminatory policy. People aren't wallowing in the hurt and anger of something of the past, they are angry and hurt by the discrimination that B033 represents and which continues unabated to today. To dismiss it as a 'resolution of the past' as though its effects and implications are not current is simply to remind us that you are out of touch with the reality that exists just outside the doors of your insularity. You can do better than that.
I asked you before and gotten no answer. So I ask again: What is the stand that people believe the Church has taken regarding inclusion of GLBT people in all levels of the Church? Where and when has the Church stated what they claim it has?
I do agree with some are suggesting, namely: that "the time and energy we spend on sexuality issues is disproportionate to the wider problems in the world and our country on which we agree; poverty, spiritual poverty, hunger, children, relationships, etc." I suggest to them, however, that while each of these 'issues' can be distinguished in name, they cannot be separated in practice. How does the Church credibly claim the moral and spiritual authority to address any of these problems until it addresses its own bigotry? Do they really think the Church can long address the problems of 'spiritual poverty, of 'relationships, 'of children' (whatever they mean by this), before quickly being called out for its own hypocrisy? Credibility is the problem for the Church. Without credibility, the Church cannot long or effectively address any of the problems you name. And as long as the Church continues its policy of discrimination, its credibility fades further and further away.
The reality is that the Church hasn't yet spent time and energy on sexuality issues. It has spent time and energy on avoiding them.
I must confess that I don't know what these folks' definition of 'progress' is. It seems to me that they equate 'success' with popularity and numbers. If so, is this is the approach they would have recommended for those addressing discrimination when it was aimed at people who weren't white? Would they have suggested then that everyone wait until the 'acceptance of the black man' became more popular and socially acceptable? Would they have recommended this approach to those Churches who acted to include women clergy among its ordained prior to the Equal Rights Amendment rather than waiting until afterward, as did the Episcopal Church? If so, is there anything that they can imagine that the Church should do, even though it might actually be unpopular? If so, I wonder what would that be.
I would presume to suggest that the General Convention should adopt a resolution that states that this Church, TEC, will adopt for trial use in each of its dioceses a rite or several rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. There should be no 'conscience clause,' as this approach with regards to ordaining women candidates to priesthood has proven disastrous. General Convention should adopt a canonical non-discrimination polity for this Church, without diocesan exception, that forbids discrimination toward any person, lay or ordained, with regard to his or her deployment or employment, including the forbidding of discrimination against clergy or lay ministers who are partnered or may become partnered. I agree that there is no need to address B033, since these two concrete actions by General Convention would nullify it.
Finally, it's important to note the real controversy is not same-sex sexuality. The real issue for the self-proclaimed 'conservatives' is power. The real issue for the self-proclaimed 'progressives' is appeasement. To the first party, I remind them that power resides with God, and that legal and canonical responsibility lie with TEC. Grow up. To the latter party, I remind them (us) that following that path of Jesus is not a popular move by any measure. Get over it.
The Church is dying not from trying too hard to please everybody, but from trying too little to honor and to please God. There is no love where truth is silenced. That kind of love is a self-serving self-comforting counterfeit. The Church, and each of us its members, need to look outside the insular experience of the Church we know, and notice those forced to remain waiting outside. There's no beatitude in the timidity that we have practiced. May God have mercy.
Jim+
No comments:
Post a Comment