First Los Angeles, then the world...

The Independent reports today that Episcopal Bishop John Chane of Washington D.C. has performed a same-sex blessing in his diocese:

More than 100 people witnessed the Bishop of Washington DC, the Reverend John Chane, bless the union of Father Michael Hopkins, 43, and his partner, John Clinton Bradley, 44, at a service at Father Hopkins's church in Maryland on June 12.

(I've met Michael Hopkins (past president of Integrity USA, the leading Anglican gay rights group) a couple of times. He definitely goes by "Michael", not "Father Hopkins". But the English are still the English.)

Bishop Chane is only the second Episcopal bishop to bless a same-sex union; I was proud last month of my friend Jon Bruno, bishop of Los Angeles, who became the first Anglican bishop to bless such a union on May 15.

Conservatives in the church are irate, liberals are happy, and schism seems to become more and more inevitable. It is noteworthy that even the relatively progressive Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is unhappy with Chane and Bruno:

The blessing service went ahead despite a request from Dr Rowan Williams to liberal Anglican provinces to refrain from gay blessings and ordinations until the Lambeth Commission, set up last October, reports on homosexuality and the church later this year.

Here is a pastoral letter from Chane to his diocese setting out his reasons for peforming the Hopkins/Bradley blessing. And here is Integrity's current president (and fellow Pasadenan) Susan Russell's sermon at that same event. Here are some excerpts from Susan's sermon:

What we (those who support gay blessings in the church) have to offer is a unique and God-given opportunity to provide a different vision of what the Christian life and faith are all about. We have the chance to witness to our experience of a God who is about justice rather than judgment and whose inclusive love is available to all people, to a community of faith that asks not “who do you love” but “DO you love?” Yes, there is some controversy around our actions here at St. George’s today – but there is also much joy, support and excitement … and an extraordinary opportunity to tell that old, old story. It is, my brothers and sisters, an opportunity for evangelism!

Far from undermining the sacrament of marriage, I believe what Michael and John Clinton intend here today builds up ALL relationships. How it must grieve the heart of God that the Body of Christ has gotten so caught up in whether or not it should be acting as an agent of the state it has neglected its high calling to be an agent of blessing. So I take heart that while the church and culture continue to wrestle through questions about marriage and unions and sacraments and sanctity, the blessing Michael and John Clinton are claiming today enriches not just their lives but all of ours. (The bold emphasis is mine).

I hate the phrase "culture war". I have too many good conservative friends, men and women of loving hearts and sound minds, to ever speak of being at "war" with them. But when I read Susan's sermon, my heart leaps with joy -- and I know that there are others out there who read the same words and are angry or bitter or disgusted or just plain saddened. I am not a bleeding-heart simpleton because I rejoice in what Michael and John have done, but I know that my traditionalist friends are not bigots and homophobes because their reading of scripture and understanding of scripture does not permit them to rejoice alongside me.

Schism is coming, most people seem to think, and it is coming over the issue of sexuality. What I am most concerned with is not preventing the inevitable, but with ensuring that the parting is warm and amicable on both sides, done with considerable regret but also great respect for the integrity and decency of those with whom we can no longer consider ourselves in communion. I think divorces can be done with grace and good humor as well as sadness -- may it be so for the Anglican Communion, and may we all ask for and freely give forgiveness to and from one another.

Comments

[John]

There is much bitterness on both sides, and you are right that this should be amicable, and grounded in forgiveness. I don't see that happening, frankly. I'd like it to happen, but I don't think it will. ECUSA's fundamentalist approach to the Canons (and mushy approach to doctrine) make it very unlikely that conservatives will be able to go peacably. If the likes of '+' Bennison can't even organise alternative pastoral oversight, they won't let the conservatives leave, or at least not with the buildings that we have built. On the other hand, if the Eames Commission attempts to reign in ECUSA, it may be the liberals who leave. In that case, I think we'd be happy to let them go with property and pension. We who have been hit hardest by the Dennis Canon are unlikely to insist on it. But then, I could be wrong. We have much bitterness too-Comes of shouting at a brick wall for too long. It is a shame that the liberal bishops can't show a little restraint, but we have come to expect that. "Prophetic disobedience" seems to be the fashion. Oh, of course it's different when Evangelicals or Anglo-Catholics do it. We have narrow and bigoted consciences that don't have to be respected. Prophetic disobedience in Massachussets is a rebuke to a deaf church. In Virginia or Ohio, it's schismatic.

[Chip]

Hugo,

I am one of those who cannot rejoice in Rev. Susan's comments, and I want to particularly note two troubling portions of the quote you pointed in bold:

*"We have a chance to witness to our experience of a God who is about justice rather than judgment" could be taken to imply, "If you're on the other side of the fence, you believe in a God who's about judgment, not justice." Nothing could be further from the truth. And to set "justice" and "judgment" as antithetical to one another goes against the revelation of God given to us in the Scriptures, who is just and will judge us all.

*To say that Christians are to ask "not 'who do you love,' but 'DO you love?'" is an unfortunate generalization. As Christians, we are commanded in the Scriptures not to love certain things (e.g., the world, the flesh, and the devil, as in John's first epistle), and to grow in our love for God. We are to be concerned with who or what we love, and the task of discipleship involves teaching others to love God in accordance with the Scriptures. While I've clearly moved beyond the context that Rev. Susan was addressing, still the thought that Christians are not to be concerned with the object of someone's love is troubling.

Rev. Susan is an able, and, indeed, gracious communicator, and I respect her very much. But such comments do sadden me (even if the implications that I've drawn out weren't intended), for they reveal, to me, not just a chasm in what conservatives and progressives believe regarding blessings, but more fundamentally, on the issue of what constitutes the "old, old story."

Peace of Christ,
Chip

[Hugo]

I appreciate both of your comments, Chip and John. Chip, I am certain that Susan would not advocate "loving the world" or "loving sin" -- in context, she is talking about commitment to another human being. We do have cause to be concerned with the object of our loves, but perhaps not with the gender.

[Chip]

Hugo, I'm certain you're right in terms of the context, and that's why I added the qualifiers that I did. The point that I was trying to make was a difficult one, and I didn't explain it very well. I may not do much better this time, but I'm going to give it a try.

I saw the comment about "God's inclusive love" and the statement that "we ... have ... a different vision of what the Christian life and faith are all about" as illuminating not only differences regarding blessings, but also differences concerning what progressives have termed the "inclusive gospel." This proves a far more serious cause of divisions within ECUSA than blessings per se. We use the same terminology (e.g., sin, salvation) much of the time, but what we mean when we use the terminology is often quite different. And it's those differences that have led Every Voice to push their Via Media project as an alternative to Alpha.

Again, I'm not saying that all of this was in Rev. Susan's mind; I'm sure that she was speaking to the far more limited context. But this concerns me: we might all agree on "telling the old, old story" and be able to add, "of Jesus and his love," but what we, with our divisions within ECUSA, meant by that phrase would be quite different. One writer for The Living Church summed it up this way: progressives focus on Christ's incarnation and love for everyone, while conservatives focus on Christ's atonement and call for repentance.

Now, personally, I don't think that the division can be made so neatly as The Living Church writer cut it. (Most of us, whether conservative or progressive, will claim both the incarnation and the atonement.) Still, there are considerably different views as to what constitutes the gospel, and they are more of the root cause of the conservative/progressive divide than anything that happened at General Convention 2003. And even our differences on one issue -- same-sex blessings -- are sympomatic of a "different vision of what the Christian life and faith are all about," as Rev. Susan said.

I don't know if I've cleared up anything, but I hope I have. Quite honestly, being an INFP myself, the language differences (i.e., using the same terms but having different meanings poured into them) are frustrating at times in that I like to look for what conservatives and progressives have in common and pinpoint exactly where we divide!

Peace of Christ,
Chip

[Jay Vos]

I am a gay Episcopalian, member of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Burlington, Vermont. Many of you may have read the recent news reports about the same-sex holy union liturgy offered by the Diocese of Vermont.

The full report from the Task Force on the Blessing of Persons Living in
Same-Gender Relationships is now available on the Diocese of Vermont site

A PDF file can be downloaded from the diocesan website,
http://www.dioceseofvermont.org/
The link is on the home page under the Task Force on the Blessing...

[Jake]

Thanks for the link, Jay.

I found Part IV, Theological Considerations, to be the best summary I've read yet.