Category Archives: Episcopal

A Psalm by Lakota Chief Yellow Lark (1887)


For the past few years, our church youth group has made an annual pilgrimage to the Borderlands Education and Spiritual Center in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Along with hikes and ceremonies to help them encounter God in nature, the teens learn about Christian settlers’ oppression of the Native Americans, and potential spiritual common ground between the two cultures today.

Last week we heard about their transformative journey in a Sunday morning service that incorporated Lakota music and prayers. This poem was read in place of a psalm. I particularly like how it strikes a balance between personal tranquility and concern for the wider world (“help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me”).

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds.
And whose breath gives life to all the world.
Hear me! I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes
Ever hold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made.
My ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand
The things you might teach me.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
In every leaf and rock.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother.
But to fight my greatest enemy, myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
With clear hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset.
My spirit may come to you without shame.

The Episcopal

Big Gay News: Massachusetts Judge Deems DOMA Unconstitutional


Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley wasn’t able to hold onto the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat for the Democrats, but she got my vote for supporting this lawsuit against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 federal law prohibiting the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex marriages in any context. The AG’s office argued that the U.S. Constitution leaves the definition of marriage up to the states. Since gay marriage is legal here, the federal government shouldn’t force Massachusetts to discriminate in distributing federal benefits.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) brought a companion case on behalf of several gay couples who argued that DOMA violated their equal protection rights with regard to federal income tax, Social Security, and federal employee benefits for Massachusetts residents. GLAD was also behind the lawsuit that led to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s landmark gay marriage ruling in 2003.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled in both cases that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. Read the decision and GLAD’s press release here . Read more analysis in The Advocate magazine here . Visit the Courage Campaign website to send President Obama a message urging him not to appeal the ruling.

From The Advocate article:

…“Today the court simply affirmed that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages,” said GLAD Civil Rights Project director Mary Bonauto, who argued the case. “I’m pleased that Judge Tauro recognized that married same-sex couples and surviving spouses have been seriously harmed by DOMA and that the plaintiffs deserve the same opportunities to care and provide for each other and for their children that other families enjoy. This ruling will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.”

In his 39-page opinion in Gill, Tauro dismissed lawmakers’ intentions in passing DOMA to “encourag[e] responsible procreation and child-bearing,” among other identified societal aims.

“Even if Congress believed at the time of DOMA’s passage that children had the best chance at success if raised jointly by their biological mothers and fathers, a desire to encourage heterosexual couples to procreate and rear their own children more responsibly would not provide a rational basis for denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages,” Tauro wrote. “Such denial does nothing to promote stability in heterosexual parenting.

Preserving marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution for the interests of “responsible procreation” was a central argument for attorneys defending Prop. 8 in federal court — one that faced similar scrutiny during closing arguments last month from U.S. district judge Vaughn R. Walker, who has yet to reach a decision in the case.

In oral arguments in May, Bonauto argued in Gill that the government has no reason to withhold the more than 1,000 federal benefits of marriage from same-sex couples, noting that a 1996 House Judiciary Committee report “explicitly stated the purpose of DOMA was to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.”

In Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Health and Human Services, Maura T. Healey, chief of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Civil Rights Division, told Tauro during oral arguments that Section 3 violates the state’s right under the federal constitution to sovereign authority to define and regulate the marital status of its residents. Healey called DOMA an “animus-based national marriage law” that intrudes on core state authority and “forces the state to discriminate against its own citizens.”

Christopher Hall, representing the Department of Health and Human Services, argued that Congress should be able to control the meaning of terms, such as “marriage,” used in its own statutes, and should be able to control how federal money is allocated for federal benefits provided to people based on their marital status.

In considering whether the federal government had any legitimate need for DOMA, both Bonauto and Healey had urged Tauro to apply strict scrutiny review, which requires the government to show a compelling reason for a law that affects a fundamental right or a vulnerable group. In both lawsuits, however, Tauro said that DOMA failed to meet even the most simple judicial review, rational basis.
…


Also of interest in The Advocate’s June-July issue, a profile of Mary Glasspool, the new suffragan bishop of Maryland and the first openly lesbian bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church. My favorite quote:

…Why is the issue of sexual identity so difficult for so many churches—Episcopal or otherwise? “I think the basic issue is gender,” Glasspool says. “And one can see this being played out in the Roman Catholic Church. The issue is the status and role of women, and the balance of the feminine and masculine in the way in which we experience and encounter God. Where we allow women to be in positions of leadership and power and authority, we have a more balanced view of the community that is the world.”
…

Peace be with you, Bishop Glasspool!

Easter Hymn: “Come, Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain”


A belated happy Easter to my readers! (The liturgical season of Easter is actually 50 days long, so this post is not as untimely as it might appear.)

NetHymnal.org has posted a list of 188 Easter hymns, with lyrics and music to sing along. This is one of my favorites. Listen to the melody here.

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God hath brought forth Israel into joy from sadness;
Loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters,
Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

’Tis the spring of souls today; Christ has burst His prison,
And from three days’ sleep in death as a sun hath risen;
All the winter of our sins, long and dark, is flying
From His light, to Whom we give laud and praise undying.

Now the queen of seasons, bright with the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts, comes its joy to render;
Comes to glad Jerusalem, who with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains Jesus’ resurrection.

Neither might the gates of death, nor the tomb’s dark portal,
Nor the watchers, nor the seal hold Thee as a mortal;
But today amidst the twelve Thou didst stand, bestowing
That Thy peace which evermore passeth human knowing.

“Alleluia!” now we cry to our King immortal,
Who, triumphant, burst the bars of the tomb’s dark portal;
“Alleluia!” with the Son, God the Father praising,
“Alleluia!” yet again to the Spirit raising.

Palm Sunday Non-Random Song: “My Song Is Love Unknown”


This is one of my favorite hymns for Holy Week. Both the music and the lyrics are complex, and the message goes straight to the heart. Words by Samuel Crossman (1624-1683), tune by John Ireland (1879-1962). Sing along at Oremus Hymnal, an online version of the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal.

Here’s an intimate, low-key performance by Barbara Dickson, against the beautiful backdrop of Lindisfarne island.

My song is love unknown,
my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.
O who am I
that for my sake
my Lord should take
frail flesh and die?

He came from his blest throne
salvation to bestow,
but men made strange, and none
the longed-for Christ would know.
But O my friend,
my friend indeed,
who at my need,
his life did spend.

Sometimes they strew his way,
and his strong praises sing,
resounding all the day
hosannas to their King.
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
and for his death
they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
he gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
themselves displease,
and ‘gainst him rise.

They rise, and needs will have
my dear Lord made away;
a murderer they save,
the Prince of Life they slay.
Yet steadfast he
to suffering goes,
that he his foes
from thence might free.

Here might I stay and sing,
no story so divine:
never was love, dear King,
never was grief like thine.
This is my friend,
in whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

The Motherhood of God


MadPriest, a/k/a Reverend Jonathan Hagger, is one of my favorite Christian bloggers. He combines a naughty sense of humor with a passionate concern for the poor and marginalized. What he modestly calls his “bog-standard sermons” are anything but. In his latest one, he muses on the different ways we have tried to express the feminine aspect of God within a monotheistic religion and a patriarchal culture. An excerpt:

…Our pagan ancestors understood the importance of the feminine in the scheme of things and this understanding led to the creation of female deities. Looking at the world, and the balance between male and female, our forebears projected their world view onto their gods, and because they had many gods, they could have both male and female gods. Of course, this could not be done in the monotheistic religions, the religions, such as Judaism, which only had one god. In such religions all the attributes of godliness had to be included within the personality of just one god. In a fair world this would have meant that the understanding of God would have been of a deity who was both male and female or neither. Unfortunately, human projection of their own society onto the society of the godhead, meant that in a predominantly patriarchal society, God came to be seen as predominantly patriarchal himself . God was seen as male. A full blooded, dominant, aggressive male at that.

However, the need for a balance in the human understanding of the divine nature of God, meant that there was never complete acceptance of a completely male God. Even in Judaism, that most male dominated of religions, there can be found hints of femininity within God’s personality. In the book of Isaiah God says, “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labour, I will gasp and pant,” and elsewhere, “ For thus says the LORD: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm, and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” In Psalm 131 we hear the psalmist say, ‘But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.”

More important than these brief references was the Old Testament understanding of the Wisdom of God. Wisdom is seen in the Old Testament as one of the primary characteristics of God and is almost regarded as a separate person within the godhead, and wisdom in this respect is most definitely female. For example, Wisdom, chapter nine, states,

“With you is wisdom, she who knows your works and was present when you made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according to your commandments. Send her forth from the holy heavens, and from the throne of your glory send her, that she may labour at my side, and that I may learn what is pleasing to you. For she knows and understands all things, and she will guide me wisely in my actions and guard me with her glory.”

It is interesting to note that the Egyptian god of wisdom was the great goddess, Isis, herself. The people of the Middle East definitely believed that wisdom was very much a female characteristic. It is even more interesting to note that, within Christianity, the Wisdom of God becomes the Word of God, and the Word of God becomes the Son of God in his incarnation as Jesus Christ. We have a situation where the preexistence of Jesus within God is not of necessity male. This multi-gendered God became man. Genderwise, the Word was something else before becoming man. That is an important point for us to remember.

But what about Jesus, the man? What did he have to say about the nature of God?

Firstly, Jesus affirms the maleness of God, over and over again. Jesus refers to God as his father; he prays to God, his father. There is no doubt that the language Jesus uses indicates a masculine deity. However, the personality that Jesus attributes to God, God’s caring, forgiving nature, God’s physical and emotional closeness to God’s children is not archetypical male. Furthermore, I think this scares the male hierarchy of the church. So much so that they took all the female attributes Jesus said God the Father had and put them on Mary, the mother of Jesus. The cult of the Virgin Mary is in reality a displaced reverence for the feminine in God as revealed to us by Jesus Christ.

And, although Jesus was physically a man we must be very careful not to confuse this mere accidental with the real nature of the Word incarnate. When God became man in Jesus Christ he took on both the limitations of human language and the limitations of the human culture of the time. No human language can fully describe God, it can only give us a very limited view of our creator. Jesus had to use human language and so he had to give God a gender because the conventions of human language demanded it. That is why Jesus did not restrict his teaching to the spoken word alone. He preached the good news about God through action, through the things he did, and when he did speak about God it was often in parables that were meant to be understood within the heart rather than just within the mind. Within these parables, parables such as the one about the prodigal son, we see a God who is not restricted by the stereotypical ideas of maleness current at the time. God is loving of his children, he embraces them like a mother embraces her children, and we see this also in Jesus, in his gentleness, in the way he deals with people. Within Christ and within Christ’s understanding of God there is a balance between the male and the female. There is the necessary maleness of Jesus overturning the tables in the Temple, but there is also the gentle Jesus, calling the children to him….

Read the whole sermon here.

Toward a Gender-Inclusive Understanding of “One Flesh”


In the comments below my last post, Simon, a lay reader in the Church of England who describes himself as a conservative Christian, asks:

How do you feel the doctrine of ‘one flesh’ applies (or not) to gay marriage? Eve was taken out from Adam’s side and in heterosexual marriage the circle is closed as genders are reunited, but how does this work for gay couples? I have concluded that most apparently anti-gay proof texts have been wrongly translated and wrongly interpreted by sincere but mistaken homophobic cultures, but can’t get my head around a gay interpretation of ‘one flesh’. Can you help?

In addition to my response that you can read in the comments box, I put the question out to some Facebook friends. The poet Karen Braucher suggested, “I think the answer lies in the fact that we all have both masculine and feminine sides to our personality. So all those sides are joining, in gay and in hetero couples.”

Another poet and mutual friend, Carolyn Moore, observed, “I always have trouble with the line between the Biblical literal and the Biblical parable. We seem to know when we are in parable in the New Testament but are so rigid in the Old Testament about what is literal and what may not be. We never allow for something there functioning as a Fatherly parable to help us grasp a spiritual concept….[In the Garden of Eden] some knowledge was forbidden and we are to trust God to keep it to God’s self, right?…Well, isn’t it vain of us to assume we were told ALL of God’s plans? Why was he obligated to tell us if he was also trying out life on other planets? Why is he obligated to tell us why he created some people who are attracted to their own gender? Aren’t we to have faith that God knows best and we are here to help one another towards peace and light and not appropriate his power of final judgment?”

I also sought advice from Pastor Romell Weekly, an evangelical minister who runs the Gay Christian Fellowship website. He’s given me permission to reprint his thorough and Bible-based analysis below.

Pastor Weekly writes:

“What you’re ultimately referring to is called Complementarity. It’s a theory that male and female complement one another in a way that two people of the same sex cannot. As you have indicated, the primary basis for this theory is the Creation narrative. However, there are a few major problems with this theory.

“1) The theory is not in Scripture. It’s derived from conclusions based off of the biblical narrative; but nowhere does Scripture actually teach this theory as a principle.

“2) The theory REQUIRES all humans to get married, lest they live a lifetime incomplete. If the male is incomplete until his missing rib returns in the person of his wife, then no man without a wife is complete… and it would CERTAINLY mean that no woman is complete without a husband, as she only represents the rib, while he represents the rest of the body.

“3) The theory indicts all single people as not being whole, including Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, John the apostle, Paul, and, dare I say, Jesus Himself. All of these mighty men of God were single. Can we say that they were incomplete because they were not married, especially considering point #1–that Scripture doesn’t actually teach this theory?

“4) We have to ask what the point of the Genesis narrative is in relation to marriage. Is it that woman completes man, or is it that marriage provides a means for two people to become as one? I think the latter.

“I believe that the creation narrative shows a beautiful picture of two distinct people coming together in both body and soul and becoming as one through the joining of the heart and of the body. This principle certainly does not contain a mechanism that prevents it from being applied to people of the same sex in precisely the way that it’s applied to people of the opposite sex. They can, indeed, unite in soul (through emotional intercourse). They can, indeed, unite in body (through sexual intercourse).

“I think about David and Jonathan. God told Eve that she would “cling” to her husband. The Bible tells us that Jonathan’s soul was “knit” to David. There was, indeed, a clinging involved. In fact, the two Hebrew words used in both passages are synonyms of one another. Did the fact that Jonathan was a man prevent his soul from clinging or being knit to David? And, even more important, does it matter to God?

“When God created Adam and realized that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, what did He do? Most people immediately state that He created Eve; but this isn’t true. He first brought every animal He’d already created and presented it before Adam in order for Adam to do to things: 1) name the animal, and 2) determine whether the animal was a suitable companion for him. After going through every animal life, “there was not found a companion suitable for him” (Gen. 2:20).

“This doesn’t mean that God would have been perfectly fine if Adam wanted a giraffe. But, God went through this process to demonstrate a principle to us. The point is that He allowed Adam to determine suitability. It wasn’t determined by the Divine, but my the human perspective. It was only after Adam found nothing suitable that God put him to sleep and took his rib to create Eve.

“But, even then, God brought Eve and presented her to Adam, much as He did with the other animal lifeforms. God didn’t pronounce her suitable. It was ADAM who said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh…” It was Adam who basically said, “Alright now, God. THIS one works!”

“The suitable companion for Adam was Eve. But, the suitable companion for Doug might be Jason, while the suitable companion for Danielle might be Elise. We each determine suitability. We each determine the person that complements us, and allows our soul to join together in the way that Eve’s joined Adam’s, and Jonathan’s joined David’s. This is not determined in Heaven. It’s very much determined in the heart of each human being.

“So, I don’t think the doctrine of “one flesh” precludes same-sex couples at all. It’s not at all about whether the one has a penis and the other has a vagina. It’s much more about whether the soul is knit together in love. This certainly can be the case with same-sex homosexual couples, exactly as it can be with opposite-sex heterosexual couples. Contrarily, it CANNOT take place with opposite-sex homosexual or mixed-orientation couples.

“So, if love truly is what God is after, and if He truly looks upon the heart, while man looks at the outward appearance (1Sa. 16:7)–e.g. whether one has a penis and the other has a vagina–then gay couples absolutely fit into the paradigm of one flesh.”

Book Notes: Sara Miles, “Jesus Freak”


Who is Jesus? For liberals, a political role model; for conservatives, the heavenly gatekeeper. But for Sara Miles, author of the new book Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), he’s “the Boyfriend”, a tangible and loving presence who empowers her–and potentially all of us–to embody God’s love through fellowship and service to one another.

Formerly a secular political journalist and restaurant worker, Miles underwent an unexpected conversion at the age of 46, when she took communion at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco and suddenly experienced a mystical awareness that the wafer was really and truly the bread of life, the body of God. She went on to become Director of Ministry at St. Gregory’s and start a food pantry that now serves up to 800 people each week. This story is told in her previous book, Take This Bread. (I would have liked a little more background in Jesus Freak for readers like myself who haven’t read her first book.)

Jesus Freak begins with the radical claim that Jesus empowers us to be Jesus. We have the authority to bring meaning, healing, nourishment and forgiveness to God’s people. The rest of the book shares anecdotes from her ministry: funny, poignant, madcap, heartbreaking stories about what it looks like “to live as if you–and everyone else around you–were Jesus, and filled with his power”.

In Miles’ telling, the Jesus-inspired community looks unconditionally inclusive and egalitarian. People of widely varying beliefs, abilities, and social classes find themselves bound together not merely by mutual tolerance, but by love and cooperation.

In her chapter on “Feeding”, for instance, she questions the divide between churches’ worship space and their community service programs. Why do the soup kitchen and the worship service take place in different locations, at different times, and serve non-overlapping groups of people? I’ve often wondered the same thing. Unlike me, Miles actually did something about it. The weekly food giveaway at St. Gregory’s takes place at the altar and becomes a ritual of sharing that harks back to the communal meals of the first-century church.

When Miles talks about “Healing” and “Raising the Dead”, she isn’t promising medical miracles, though she won’t rule those out, either. We may not always be able to cure physical ills, but we can offer something even more important. We can surround suffering people with an environment that gives their lives dignity, meaning and love.

For instance, toward the end of the book, Miles tells the story of Laura, a middle-aged woman who sought her counsel when dying of lung cancer. Over the last months of her life, Miles helped Laura’s family begin the process of grieving and taking care of one another. In a scene reminiscent of Jesus’ words from the cross in John 19:26-27, Laura arranged for her female companion to become her teenage son’s new mother. Miles was on hand not only to assist with the paperwork but, more crucially, to provide a spiritually meaningful context for the event, so that a sad occasion became in some way a celebration.

Finally, when Laura died, Miles had to help the paramedics hoist her stiffening, obese body onto the gurney from the floor where she’d fallen out of bed. Many another writer might approach this scene with disgust, despair, or pathos. Miles handles Laura’s body, in life and on the page, with tenderness and joy at being able to perform a last service for her. And if there’s a touch of humor, it seems like a joke that the dead woman shares. What is grace, after all, if not the erasing of shame, right here in the flesh from which we’ve been alienated since Adam and Eve first put on their legendary fig leaves?

I found this book to be a balm for the headache that theology often leaves me with nowadays. When doctrinal arguments become political weapons, the social gospel begins to look attractively simple. Visit the prisoners, give a cup of water to the thirsty–surely this is more straightforward, and better for my character, than reviewing yet another book on the “real” meaning of Romans 1:26-27. There’s something about theologizing, one could even say, that is intertwined with class privilege. It can be a diversion of energy away from the more urgent needs of people who don’t have a voice in the conversation.

At the same time, good works become a dry duty, another kind of works-righteousness, without a live connection to God’s love. I’ve bounced back and forth between Episcopal and evangelical churches in search of that encounter with the mysterium tremendum. Philosopher of religion and progressive God-blogger Eric Reitan recently noted that the common liberal dichotomy between Christian belief (bad, fundamentalist, divisive) and Christ-like action (good, crunchy, progressive) doesn’t hold up:

…I suspect that most Christians will agree that “having faith in Jesus” is much more than just believing in a set of propositions. It’s a way of leading one’s life. (Agreement among Christians is likely to break down as soon as we ask what way of life is implied by faith in Jesus.)

But even if faith in Jesus is much more than belief in a set of propositions, the way of life implied by such faith will certainly presuppose a set of beliefs. To have faith is, in part, to live one’s life as if certain things are true. In the broadest terms, having faith in Jesus means living as if Jesus’ life and ministry express the ultimate reality, the divine, in some unique and profound way. And having faith in Jesus as savior means living as if Jesus has secured the redemption of the world; as if the evils that shatter human lives and infect human hearts are never the final word; as if somehow, because of Christ, even the most devastating horrors and malignancies have been stripped of the power to deprive our lives of meaning and value….

Jesus is so real and immediate for Miles that she makes an end-run around theological debates. Perhaps because she wasn’t raised Christian, she doesn’t seem to carry around the baggage of guilt and fear, the need to defend her interpretive authority, or to tear down other interpretations of the Bible. She just goes out and feeds the hungry, and gives the glory to God.
 

Saturday Advent Song: “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns”


Another gorgeous tune for the season. The end of days seems like a scary concept, but this hymn reminds us that what we’re really praying for is the beginning of the new age when God’s love and justice will be extended to all people.

The King shall come when morning dawns,
and light triumphant breaks;
when beauty gilds the eastern hills
and life to joy awakes.

Not, as of old, a little child,
to bear, and fight, and die,
but crowned with glory like the sun
that lights the morning sky.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and earth’s dark night is past;
O haste the rising of that morn,
the day that e’er shall last;

and let the endless bliss begin,
by weary saints foretold,
when right shall triumph over wrong,
and truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and light and beauty brings:
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people come,
come quickly, King of kings.

Music: St. Stephen Wiliam Jones (18th C)
Words: Greek hymn, trans. John Brownlie (20thC)

Sing along at The Daily Office.

Too Little from Lambeth


Last week I encouraged readers of this blog to send a message to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, urging him to speak out publicly and forcefully against the genocidal “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009” pending in Uganda. This week I received an elegantly worded email reply from Lambeth Palace press secretary Marie Papworth, which impressed me till I discovered it was a form letter.

Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest in Pasadena who blogs at An Inch at a Time, posted this statement to members of the Facebook group “Anglicans who want THIS statement from Canterbury”. It includes Ms. Papworth’s message, below.

“Do you hear what I hear?” isn’t just one of the Christmas carols echoing in the airwaves this week-before-Christmas. It is also the question I’m asking about the responses we’ve gotten from Lambeth Palace regarding the “disconnect” between the Archbishop of Canterbury’s readiness to issue a formal statement on the election of a bishop suffragan in Los Angeles and his reticence to “go and do likewise” on the draconian anti-gay legislation pending in Uganda.

Like many of you, I received a “boilerplate” response in an email from Marie Papworth in the Lambeth Palace office. (text posted below) If you “heard what I heard” in that response, you heard words like “unacceptable” and “deep concern.”

My question is: how deep does concern have to be before the Archbishop of Canterbury uses his moral authority to speak out on behalf of gay and lesbian Ugandans who cannot speak for themselves? How unacceptable does it have to get before he says so?

And to be clear: a comment in response to a question from a journalist does NOT an “official statement” make.

Do you hear what I hear? In the email from Lambeth Palace and in the deafening silence on this pressing human rights issue I hear that speaking out to protect gay and lesbian lives in Uganda is less important than speaking out to protect the Anglican Communion from a lesbian bishop.

If you hear what I hear, you hear that the leader of the Anglican Communion is more concerned about preserving institutional unity than he is protecting innocent Ugandans.

If you hear what I hear, then I invite you to do what I’m going to do:

Send another email.
Write another letter.
Post another blog.

This Facebook group has grown to ALMOST 5000 members — a truly awesome accomplishment. Let’s use the power of our collective voice to keep urging the Archbishop to use the power HE has as the moral leader of this worldwide Anglican family of ours to speak the truth of God’s inclusive and abundant love for ALL people.

Let us urge him to send a word of hope to LGBT Ugandans who “mourn in lonely exile” that the Emmanuel whose coming we prepare to celebrate in a few short days came not just for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his Lambeth Palace warm … but for those who shiver in the cold of dehumanizing homophobia.

O come, O come, Emmanuel!

=====

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 4:50 AM

Dear Canon Russell,

Thank you for your message and for taking the trouble to write about this deeply painful issue.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is very clear that the Private Member’s Bill being discussed in Uganda as drafted is entirely unacceptable from a pastoral, moral and legal point of view. It is a cause of deep concern, fear and, to many, outrage. The Archbishop has publicly stated that “the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it can be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades”.

For its part the Church of Uganda has clearly restated its opposition to the death penalty. As the Ugandan Church continues to formulate its position on the bill as a whole, the Archbishop has been working intensively behind the scenes (over the past weeks) to ensure that there is clarity on how the proposed bill is contrary to Anglican teaching.

Marie Papworth
Press Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace, London, SE1 7JU

****

So, what more would we like the ABC to say? Not to be nit-picky here, but to me, the word “severity” implies a legitimate spectrum of punishments for homosexuality. Rather than challenging the whole concept of persecuting people for their sexual orientation, the ABC appears to limit himself to guiding Ugandans toward the moderate end of that spectrum. And we’re supposed to be grateful that the Church of Uganda is opposed to the death penalty? Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table (Matthew 15:27) but apparently now it’s enough that he doesn’t shoot the dog.

One could argue that ++Rowan is trying to be discreet in order to work diplomatically behind the scenes. If he openly allies himself with the inclusive wing of the church, the Ugandans will write him off as a homo-lovin’ liberal and he’ll lose the power to influence this legislation. (That day Herod and Pilate became friends…)

Problem is, I haven’t seen this approach accomplishing very much. Meanwhile, the ABC is failing in his primary responsibility to his own flock. GLBT Christians in the UK, when faced with gay-bashing, familial homophobia, and economic discrimination, hear the silence from Lambeth as a sign that their dignity and safety aren’t important to the church–and maybe not to God, either. Dr. Williams, your millstone is ready.

Email Comes for the Archbishop


As of this writing, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has not spoken out against the anti-gay genocide that’s about to be approved by the Ugandan legislature. US-based conservative Christian groups have been instrumental in bringing this legislation to the floor. Use this web form to send him a message. Here’s my letter:

Your Grace,

I am writing to ask you to speak out against the anti-gay genocidal legislation pending in Uganda. People of good faith can disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality, but persecution is clearly not the gospel way. Jesus invited people to transform their lives by offering them love, not violence. Nothing could be further from “family values” than coercing family members to turn in their gay relatives to the police. Nothing could be less in keeping with the spirit of Jesus, the great healer, than interfering with HIV/AIDS care and education. The world is looking to us to show that Christianity is about love, not hate. For every misled Christian we appease in Uganda, we lose thousands in the West who see the church keeping silent before another holocaust. I pray that you will do the right thing.

Sincerely,
Jendi Reiter
Member of the Episcopal Church USA


The word is that the ABC pays more attention to snail-mail than email, so consider following up with a letter. First-class mail from the US to the UK is 98 cents. The address:

Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace Road
London
SE1 7JU
UK


Meanwhile, evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren has issued a statement condemning the legislation. Watch it on YouTube. It’s somewhat self-justifying and not exactly gay-friendly, but hopefully it will influence the right people.