Matters of the Upcoming General Convention

Matters Concerning the Church
and the upcoming 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church

In the Church's seasons of controversy, taking no public position is sometimes the prudent and charitably Christian thing to do. But the Church is realizing that it is time for those who once spoke out with bold and godly clarity on behalf of others, whose voices were refused legitimacy, to lay aside polite diplomacy and speak up again. The Church has been wrestling over the past decade with discerning the time to take a clear position on the issues roiling the Church today, and freely to accept the consequences of speaking plainly the Truth of the Gospel. This is the process that we will soon witness at the Episcopal Church's General Convention in July. Here at Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, the community with whom I serve God, we are discerning ways that our own gift of hospitality has had us speaking the Gospel boldly in word and deed all along. Rightly, we may be humbly proud that this is so.

Currently, the precipitating concern over the last few General Conventions has been homosexuality, i.e. the question of what is the place, if any, of the gay person in the community of the Church? Around this controversial center, other matters of disagreement orbit: biblical interpretation and application of scripture, limits and privileges of constitutional authority, the meaning of communion in Christ, and the definition of Anglicanism. It is telling, I think, that most people concede that these other concerns are subject to legitimate differences of opinion. In addition, much could be said about what lies behind almost every controversy, namely: xenophobia (fear of difference); but homosexuality continues to orient the debate today.


Since at least 1993, I’ve heard the claim repeated, “It’s all really about anal sex.” The common sense represented in this plain-spoken insight recognizes a fact too easily overlooked, namely: that for many of those who seem to be profoundly disturbed by men like the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson and his partner, the idea of same-sex activity between two women simply somehow fails to elicit in them the same passionate revulsion. For them, the idea of gay male sex is repugnant , while the idea of gay female sex is more an object of quiet curiosity.

This may suggest an important insight into the nature of the current dispute. Currently, historically, and biblically, the objection to homosexuality is primarily and most energetically expressed by men. Also it is primarily and most energetically focused upon the sexual activity rather than upon the sexual orientation itself. Please note that this observation is not an endorsement of the intellectually silly notion that one can ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner.’

It is to suggest that that a driving objection to male same-sex sexuality is misogyny, i.e. hatred toward women. The objection to male plus male sexual activity is an objection to the ‘womanization of Man.’ Male same-sex activity seems to involve the willingness of one or both male partners to serve as ‘lowly woman’ to the other, and in the willingness of one or both to treat the other as such. From this, it becomes logical to suggest that misogyny lies also behind the condemnation of lesbianism as the ‘man-ification’ of Woman. Further, it may well be an enculturated misogyny in heterosexual women themselves, a deep form of self-loathing, that shapes the fear and hatred expressed by some of them toward gay people.

It should be important to an agenda that is truly Christian to know that fear and hatred of homosexuals may be rooted in the fear and hatred of women. It suggests that the real issue finally is not anal sex, but a lingering highly un-Christian hatred of Woman. It’s important because Jesus himself contradicted both hatred and sexism, and taught his followers to do the same.

If then we can support a healthy Christian skepticism toward the condemnation of homosexuality, perhaps we can turn more productively toward speaking up for a Christian theology of same-sex love and union. The homophobe and gay-hater will often imply that the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ is equivalent to promiscuity and sexual predation. But it is widely known that love between consenting adults has nothing to do with promiscuity, rape, or pedophilia. In fact, it is widely held amongst all Christians, including Episcopalians and Anglicans, that promiscuity and sexual predation are evils that deserve our unanimous condemnation in the Name of the Lord, and are ills from which we should unanimously encourage all people to repent and turn away to God.

There is already substantial agreement that the Church ought rightly to call upon all people not to divorce sex from love, but keep them together; to seek sexual love only within the bonds of the life-long commitment of a couple’s fidelity each to the other, and to base such a relationship upon mutually self-transcending love, charity, and dependence upon God. In this way, skepticism toward condemnation of homosexuality enables the Church to discern some inherently Christian values that can guide and bless all couples, both gay and straight, and which also condemn genuine sin, such as sexual promiscuity and sexual predation.

Until this discernment emerges, good Christian people will still be thrown over, sent to the back, and kicked out, all for the sake of nothing more than the community’s mere appearance of unity. Regular old-school evangelical Christians who simply don’t believe someone has the right to tell them where they are and are not allowed, and so refuse to behave that way toward others, share a common experience with gay Christians and theologically liberal Christians. They all are being dismissed, marginalized, and hushed up in favor of perpetuating prejudice and discrimination for the sake of a superficial unanimity. And this is what General Convention will wrestle with this July under the headline of ‘issues of homosexuality and the Church.’

A specific matter that the Church will need to address is the distinction between the civil contract of marriage and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. It will be helpful for the debate to recognize that the Church did not claim sacramental jurisdiction over marriage contracts until the 11th century. Over the next few centuries definitive lists of the sacraments of the Church came to include Holy Matrimony. Today, the Church is rediscovering the fact that not all marriages equate to Holy Matrimony, i.e. to a union formalized within the Church and blessed by God therein. By the way, the notion that the Church blesses a union or a marriage is seriously mistaken. The Church does not bless, God blesses. So, again, part of the Church’s struggle now with gay people in the Church is its discernment of God’s blessing, or lack thereof, of the love between two people committed to one another in life-long fidelity and to shared faith in God, and who are of the same sex.

The distinction between a secular or civil contract of marriage and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony requires the Church, in my opinion, to discern where the two are similar and where they differ. This then helps the Church discern how it should respond in order to be faithful to God. Several States have eliminated from their respective marriage statutes discrimination against couples who are not heterosexual. Congregations in these states now find themselves in the peculiar position of having married members of their congregation whose union is both legal and loving, but not legitimate in the view of the very Church with whom they worship and serve. In contrast, congregations in states that continue to disallow same-sex unions will someday find themselves part of a Church that recognizes God’s blessing of same-sex couples, but in a secular context that does not.

For this reason, it is likely that the Church will move soon to provide a rite and ceremony that can be used in celebrating the union of a couple that may or may not include the secular contract of marriage. Further, the Church will need to recognize that matrimony itself, by definition, is 'the making of a mother'. Matrimony has not traditionally been related to a couple's love, but has been a ceremony whereby a man identifies the woman who shall bear his legal heir. Not until the late medieval period did marriage begin to be identified overtly with romance and affection. It bears asking whether or not same-sex unions can ever truly be or wish to be understood as matrimony in the truest sense of the word. Here again, the distinction between the civil contract of marriage and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony is helpful. The Church does not define marriage, the state does that. The question for the Church is not about marriage; it is about Matrimony, and whether unions of same-sex couples ought not, perhaps cannot, properly be labeled as such. This is not say that same-sex couples are unable to be parents; clearly any able bodied person can be a parent. It is to say that same-sex couples are not uniting to define ‘the mother’ of the male partner’s heir. Thus, the Church is wrestling with what is the most faithful, pastoral, evangelistic, and intellectually credible response that it can offer to same-sex couples who are called by God to be a couple and are seeking to be united under God’s blessing.

It is further helpful to note that the Church does not and cannot require that a clergy person unite in marriage any couple, at all. To the point: in theory, a clergy person could go through his or her entire vocational life and never ‘perform’ a marriage. The canonical requirement is that the clergy person shall bear the responsibility to determine as best as possible that any couple with whom he or she might enter into conversation around marriage truly are called by God to be joined together. It is possible, then, that a clergy person could determine simply not to marry any couple. In the same vein, then, the Church will not be able to require a clergy person simply to ‘perform’ blessings of same-sex unions. The clergy person would first have to decide for himself or herself to enter into conversation with the couple, a decisioin entriely up to him or her. A clergy person could decide out of hand never to have any conversation about same-sex union with any same-sex couples. It would boil down to a matter of personal discrimination, but at least the stain of official bigotry will have been removed from the Church as a whole, and the couples can look elsewhere for a more amenable, perhaps more discerning, clergy person. If the clergy person does decide to meet with a same-sex couple, he or she still will to determine, to the best of his her ability, whether or not God truly has called these two persons to be together as a couple. So, the process will be one of accountability and responsibility, which is as it should be.

The Church has learned from its past history of participating in discrimination against the poor, the disabled, the left-handed, native Americans, African-Americans, Latino/as, persons in ‘mixed marriages’, persons of blended racial heritage, immigrants, divorced persons, and women. The Church itself was the subject and the object of discrimination when, in its infancy the Gentiles were treated as second-class citizens of God’s Kingdom. One would think that with most Christians since that time being the beneficiaries of the inclusive resolution of that conflict, the Church would have been determined from the start not to recreate the sin of xenophobic bigotry.

Now the Church is moving forward with ridding itself of any further participation in bigotry toward and discrimination against persons who are gay or lesbian. Personally, I pray the Church will soon set aside its participation in discrimination against gay people both as regards being called to be a couple and being called to serve the Church in Holy Orders. As has been true of past efforts of the Church to move beyond discrimination, the Church is responding to a realization of its own participation in sin. This movement is difficult; it is repentant and sacrificial; it is movement that the Church is making only with help and by the grace of God.

My belief is that the community with whom I serve, by virtue of our spiritual gift of hospitality and welcome, is equipped to serve at the front edge of the Church’s movement. Not only with regard to gay people, but with regard to any and all who have ever been told by anyone claiming to speak in Christ’s name that they were not welcome, we boldly say otherwise. We do not straddle the fence of diplomacy. Instead, we stand plainly for what we believe and know to be the Truth of the Gospel. Certainly it is not the easy thing to do; nor is it the safe thing, the convenient thing, or the comfortable thing. But it is the right thing and the good thing. Like the wider Church, the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection has always been about welcoming people to God’s Love for all. It is the godly thing to do.

All God’s Peace,
Jim +