After Columbus

“Columbus.”

People have begun to speak about it the way they speak about a natural disaster or war.

Say, “Tsunami,” and a vision of orphaned Shri Lankan children immediately comes to mind.

Say, “Katrina,” and you can instantly picture the devastation in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

Say, “Hezbollah” or “Hammas” and horrifying images of the insanity of the religious and political war in the Middle East unfold right before your eyes.

Columbus, for many of us, was like that. Like war or a natural disaster, the ripple effects continue. The rescue efforts have ceased and the recovery efforts have begun. The collateral damage continues to be assessed. And, like the healing process after such events, there is a cycle of progression and regression; remission and exacerbation.

The August newsletter from a very large, local, affluent suburban congregation came in the mail yesterday. The rector there, who professes to be an ally, wrote this: “My own view is that our response to Windsor was just right . . . in other words, we didn’t tell the rest of the Anglican Communion to drop dead, but neither did we abandon our own ecclesiastical integrity. We took the true via media option.” He then talked about a “kinder, gentler Christianity,” saying, “. . . at best we are a pastoral church.”

I don’t think I was able to draw a full breath for five minutes after that.

Excuse me if I don’t feel that I’m in the same ‘pastoral church’ in which he happens to live – at least not one that is at its best. Indeed, it feels decidedly unkind and fairly violent right now.

You will pardon me if I wince when told there is room on the Via Media because it means that people like me – and many of you – were kicked off the traditional Anglican high ground to make room for injustice and prejudice. Besides, Via Media – the middle ground – is not an ‘option’; it IS the Anglican Way.

I beg your forgiveness if I take exception with my brother’s claim that we did not “abandon our own ecclesiastical integrity.” Well, perhaps we didn’t abandon it completely; we just compromised it a bit, along with our commitment to our baptismal vows. You know – the one about “respecting the dignity of every human being.” Oh, yeah. That one.

I’m reminded of some of the deputies at General Convention – some of our best straight allies, including one sincere, well-intentioned deputy from my diocese – who said to me and anyone else who might listen, over and over until I thought I might go mad, “I voted for (resolution) B033 with tears in my eyes.”

I suppose I’m to infer that those tears are meant for me. I suppose I’m to take some comfort in those tears. Well, I didn’t. Still don’t. I want to say this as loudly and as clearly as I possibly can to every last one of you who said that to me: Some of you voted like a delegate, not a deputy. Whether you care to admit it or not, you voted your constituency rather than your conscious which is what you were elected to do.

Others of you voted with your heart, not your head. What ever possessed you to vote for a woman you thought competent and strong enough to be Presiding Bishop, but suddenly felt she needed resolution B033, which she herself found, “exceedingly challenging” to be accepted at Lambeth and in the rest of the Anglican Communion?

If you are honest, these are the real reason for your tears. At the very least, please have the decency to admit that you were not crying for me. You were crying because it always hurts when you sacrifice your own integrity and intelligence on the altar of good intentions.

In some ways, our church is a reflection of what is happening in our country. My friend, Lane Denson, recently wrote in his online reflections Out of Nowhere: "The newscasters say we're sending bombs to Israel and medical aid to Lebanon. The president says that stem cell research is taking human life, and that killing 40,000 Iraqi citizens is promoting democracy. What are we supposed to do, smile, take up ironyng, and sing God Bless America?"

There’s a lot of talk in many circles of The Episcopal Church as a ‘constituent member’ of the Anglican Communion in the aftermath of Columbus which uses the sports metaphor of ‘team’. In our country, the preferred metaphor is ‘patriot.’ If you do not cave into the demands for conformity, you are not a ‘team player’ and therefore, not a good Christian, much less a good Episcopalian or (talk of irony) classical Anglican. If you do not mindlessly rubber stamp the present administration’s policy, you are not a good patriot and therefore, not a good American.

It continues to amaze me that the growing analysis of what happened in “Columbus” is that “the diverse center held.” What absolute nonsense! What happened is that most of the Left and the Right, as well as the Middle, caved into strong-arming and emotional manipulation from ‘above’ – as well as ‘across the pond.’

After Columbus and the intellectually insulting, ethically bankrupt, and ultimately cowardly language of “manner of life” in B033, after the announcement from Lambeth about a Covenant Process which assures Episcopalians of the status of ‘downstairs maid,’ after the pronouncement from Nigeria that The Episcopal Church is ‘a cancerous lump in the Body’, the question begs to be answered:

Were we so blinded by our earnest desire to give our newly elected Presiding Bishop what she, after only 72 hours, thought she needed, our determined optimism as Christians who are Americans, our confused tears about the intent of our choices, our desperate longing to belong to something bigger than ourselves, that we missed the trees of justice for the forest of uniformity?

There remains a great deal of work to be done, after Columbus. There are many lessons still to be learned, after Columbus. There remains the reconstruction and the rebuilding.

But first, you cry – for the ways in which we betrayed ourselves and each other – and God.

You bury the dead – the hopes and the dreams and ideals of this church, secure in the promises of new life in the resurrection of Jesus.

You allow yourself to mourn – to enter into the myriad of emotions known to the grieving process, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance trusting the Holy Spirit to carry you through.

And then, you wipe your tears, blow your nose, pick up your socks, and get on with the work of mission and ministry.

The Gospel promise calls us to do no less. And, even after Columbus – no, especially after Columbus, as at any other time of devastation – the call of the Gospel, the imperatives of the Gospel have never been more important.