Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of season of Lent. It was three years ago on Ash Wednesday that I was received into the Episcopal church. I could easily have continued to attend, and be considered a member of St. Stephen’s without making it official. But, as I’ve explained in the past, this was on the heels of John Kerry becoming the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party. I was very disappointed, to put it mildly, that instead of being able to enthusiastically cast a vote for Howard Dean for president, I had to settle for voting against George Bush.
So, while that’s not the whole story, a significant part of my decision to officially join the Episcopal Church was some sort of psychological need to say “yes” to something. And since the church had said “Yes” to Bishop Gene Robinson, it felt right to say “Yes” right back to that church. And I’m telling you this to explain why reading this story today was of special significance to me:
U.S. Episcopalians react to church ruling
Here is an excerpt from the article:
With pain, joy, anger and in some cases, relief, Episcopalians across the nation reacted Tuesday to a stern directive from Anglican leaders that the American wing of the church refrain from sanctioning blessings for same-sex unions and take other steps to heal tensions that may yet splinter the global Anglican Communion.
Going back to the primary season of the 2004 election, I don’t want to reopen old wounds, but I think I do need to backtrack just a bit to clarify why I was so unhappy with the Democratic party at that time. It was not simply that the candidate I liked had failed to secure the nomination. The experience of watching Howard’s fellow Democrats gang up on him for all those months, but then insist that it was time to “fall in line” behind the nominee, while I still had some huge, unaddressed issues with John Kerry, was pretty galling to me. I mean, even being told by some that I should not publicly voice any criticism of ol’ Treebeard as soon as he appeared to have the nomination sewn up.
Let me tell you, I was ticked! So much so that I was wishing there was some sort of official, formal way I could say “Screw you!” to the whole Democratic party. That the party had no “claim” on me. But I didn’t have that option, because in Ohio you only register with a party by voting in that party’s primary.
So, when I first heard talk of potential schism in the Anglican Communion, part of me thought, “Fine. Good riddance to intolerant bishops who want to be the boss of us!” But I later learned through this article in the New Yorker that the Anglican Communion was designed from the very beginning to be a “big tent”…
The vehicle for this “middle way,” as Anglicanism came to be known, was the Book of Common Prayer, which gracefully blended Roman Catholic liturgy with Protestant principles. The prayer book allowed for the coexistence within one institution of distinctly different interpretations of Christianity, with the unofficial designations of High Church (those parishes inclined toward a more Roman Catholic orientation), Low Church (evangelicals), and Broad Church (those Anglicans tolerant of wide doctrinal interpretations). The Anglican way proved remarkably resilient, absorbing the shocks of the English civil war and the Enlightenment, and ultimately planting itself worldwide in the footsteps of the British Empire. In the United States, the Church of England became the Episcopal Church.
And I watched the tension that played out throughout the General Convention last summer, I learned a bit more about this idea, and how much people valued remaining “in communion” in spite of differences. I have been impressed with the way some Episcopalians seriously, prayerfully consider that issue. And, for me it really is an increasingly important theme–there is a real need to learn how to live together with our differences. Sometimes I think about my interracial, interfaith family as a microcosm of that. We really do need to learn to live together–all of us–as family.
But at the same time, it is important to recognize that there are people who do not share that vision. There are some who have been pushing for schism ever since the Episcopal church started ordaining women. Rev. Susan Russell summed it up pretty well:
…From my perspective, the American Episcopal Church has now been very strategically and very intentionally painted into a corner by those in the American church who have been advocating for a schism for many years.
And we’re now faced with what I would call a Sophie’s choice of having to choose our vision of the inclusive gospel over our inclusion in the communion. It’s a profoundly un-Anglican way to make decisions, given that historically we have been a people of God who have not required common belief in order to be in communion with each other.
So I think the greater challenge we face has much less to do with gay and lesbian people or bishops or blessings, but how we’re going to be church together. I think that is really under attack by the radical religious right, who is willing to split this church if they can’t recreate it in their own image…
And these words from Bishop Marc Handley Andrus resonate for me as well:
The inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the full life of the Church is a matter of justice: as we are all part of the world, and the kindom of God is like a net laid over that same world. All on the earth are connected by this net, whether perceived or not. Actions of justice and injustice reverberate throughout the whole, promoting either integrity, remembering, and shalom, or diabolic isolation.
Maybe that’s where I’m seeing a connection between the issues in the Anglican Communion and in the liberal/progressive blogosphere. Bishop Marc said it better than I could, but it’s about justice, dammit! GLBT Democrats face similar issues–as do other groups that are derided by some as “special interest groups” in the party. Sometimes so-called special interest groups are people who just want to enjoy the same basic civil/human rights as the rest of Americans.