Can we stay together?

Note: I think the way I'm handling my grief, at least at this point, is to stay up in my head. If I get too near my heart, I simply dissolve into a puddle of tears. There will be time soon enough for that. Right now, I still have pastoral work to do. So, when this and the question which follows in the next post came up on HOB/D (House of Bishops and Deputies listserv), I found that I simply had to respond. I hope this is helpful to some of you.)

The Question on HOB/D was: "Can we hold these disparate views and still respect each other and stay together? Or do we need to go separate ways?"


One of the reasons I became an Episcopalian/Anglican is for the very reason you state: that we can hold disparate views and still respect each other and stay together. If we can't, then we should leave Canterbury and go either to Rome or Geneva. Or, perhaps, Constantinople.

The WWAC seems to have caught a "nasty virus" in the last decade or so, which has challenged this very foundational concept of what it means to be in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. Already, those who want us all to "talk alike and walk alike and think alike and speak alike and pray alike" have said that Canterbury is not the center of Anglicanism.

I read that as having such disparate views and not respecting the other that they have gone a separate way. That makes me sad, but I wish them Godspeed and a closer walk with the Jesus they know.

Ah, you are asking, but how is it that we can live together when our disagreements lead us to the point were, for example, what some believe as "insufficient matter" in terms of gender or "sinful" in terms of 'lifestyle' is being blessed, ordained or consecrated to the episcopacy?

My response is one I learned from Ted Mellor who once said, "You have the absolute right to swing your arms as wildly as you wish, but your right ends at the tip of my nose."

You can believe whatever you wish about my sexual orientation and who I call 'family' or who and how I love. However, that right ends when it comes to the pursuit and fulfillment of my vocation, raised up and tested by the community of faith and in accordance with the doctrine, discipline and canons of The Episcopal Church.

On reflection of my experience of Lambeth, I think we got two things wrong:

Inclusion and Unity. I'm in the process of organizing my fuller thoughts on this but I'll say this much in sum.

Inclusion is a crock. You can not include me. I can not include you. We are both already included by reason of our baptism. The household of God does not belong to you or me. It's God's house and either our membership begins with baptism or St. Paul is a liar and we are both apostate and heretical to exclude any of the baptized from any of the sacraments solely on the basis of their God-given attributes of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.

You want orthodoxy? I got your orthodoxy right there.

Likewise, unity is a crock. I used to hear the high priestly pray of Jesus "that you may be one" as a call to institutional unity. From everything I read in scripture, Jesus didn't give two figs about institutional unity. Never had a temple of his own - never even attended services regularly. As one of my Confirmation Class kids once pointed out, where in scripture did Jesus even tithe? (Ya gotta love 'em, right?) What I hear Jesus asking is that we all be one "as God and I are one:. That speaks to me more of an intimacy in relationship than institutional unity.

The Lambeth Conference purported to be about institutional unity but, in fact, its design promoted intimacy in relationships. The bishops and their wives were set into small intimate groups in order to share the details of their lives of faith. Whatever institutional unity we will have been able to achieve because of Lambeth 2008 will be due to the fact that it was built on the foundation of intimate relationships where we know one another in our uniqueness and understand that "I am because you are."

This is the genius of classic Anglicanism which is radically orthodox, in my estimation. It's messy and difficult because it's emphasis is more on 'mutual bonds of affection' as opposed to rules and regulations.

If there is to be the truly modern innovation of something called an Anglican Covenant, it will come about because of our relationships in community which will name our reality - not list rules to follow and proscribe punitive measures carried out by a curia called The Faith and Order Commission if the rules are broken.

"That you all may be one" will only lead to institutional unity if we develop intimacy in our relationships as The Body of Christ.

And yes, there are some (I said some, not all) who want to punish, shame and blame those who disagree with this position. I didn't name them because I didn't think I had to, their positions being so blatant and obvious. They are convicted not by my words but by their own.

And yes,, my position of moral neutrality in terms of sexual orientation and moral behavior may be a "radical departure" from traditional teaching, but so is our current teaching on divorce and remarriage (the early 1970s), reproductive rights (the mid 1960s), the ordination of women (1977), our understanding of the immorality of slavery (for which only apologized in 2006), the shape of the world (for which the RC church apologized only in the last 20 years), a person's left-handedness (some on this list remember being shamed and retrained in elementary school), the origins of disease . . . do I really need to continue?

I said all of that to say this: Can we hold radically different beliefs and still stay together and respect each other? If we are traditional, radically orthodox Anglicans, the answer is a resounding, "Yes."