In the week and a half or so since I’ve been singing at All Saints’ it seems like a lot of controversy has erupted among some at the Cathedral. There was a lot of news coming out of the national church regarding a communiqué issued by the leaders of Anglican provinces around the world, and the response by our Presiding Bishop and our Diocesan Bishop has some people hopping mad about the situation.
And that kind of reaction is reasonable. A lot of us have been through this before in other denominations. But, at the same time, I’ve really been caught off-guard by a lot of what’s going on.
Some of this could be because I’m a lot more out of the loop since I wasn’t at the Cathedral on Sunday to talk to people and listen to what they had to say, but mostly I’ve been surprised at how controversial this may be turning out to be.
After spending some time thinking this afternoon about what’s so controversial, I think it’s because we now have leaders who are talking to the people in the pews through electronic media about what’s going on at the national and international levels of the Episcopal Church.
In other words, improved communication leads people out of blissful ignorance.
Up until recently, it had been my experience that only die-hard church geeks paid much attention to all of the pronouncements, reports, discussions, and arguments that fly around in the Anglican/Episcopal world. The only time anybody gets concerned about things is when some very significant decision is made and then the church appears on the 6 o’clock news or gets a mention in the first few pages of the newspaper.
Back in my college days, and before I started working for the Cathedral, I paid a lot of attention to this type of news. I had E-mail subscriptions to both the Episcopal News Service and the Anglican Communion News Service. I was on E-mail lists for Episcopal/Anglican Church Musicians, Gay & Lesbian Episcopalians, and another huge catchall list called St. Sam’s Cyberparish. I would also regularly visit and participate in other online forums like the website and chat areas for the conservative Episcopal Synod of America and had online interactions with others in “Not-in-communion” groups like the Charistmatic Episcopal Church and gay-friendly Anglo-Catholic groups.
But what I remember most about these were continuous arguments on all lists about gays in the church, and these would often develop into flame wars with lots of anger and threats coming from both sides of the fence. More than just ruffled feathers, people seemed to be deeply offended and personally engaged in all of this every time anybody said anything that could be interpreted as even slightly offensive.
Because of all of this, it could be that I’m just desensitized to controversy. But since I also grew up in the Christian Church and spent some of my high school and early college years in the Southern Baptist church, I know where opinions fall over the whole spectrum of thinking in the whole of the church. Being a pan-denominational person who is a member of the Episcopal Church, I’m used to lots of disagreement.
Besides this, I’ve seen this kind of thing before. My observation about the Anglican/Episcopal church is that whenever there is some type of major development, there’s always a big hoo-raw among the church geeks about what’s going on. Inevitably, either “conservatives” or “liberals” will panic about the direction things are moving in, everyone will be frightened and/or agitated, and then there will be some type of meeting of representatives where resolutions are passed that are full of very fuzzy and highly nuanced language that could be interpreted in such a way that anybody on either side could declare victory.
Nobody is completely pleased with this, but the halfway measures keep the angry thoughts at bay a while longer. But eventually, depending on the interpretation of the reaction to the outcome of the last meeting, people get their feathers ruffled again and can’t wait until the next set of meetings when more vague proclamations are released. And on and on it goes.
So, I find myself not indifferent, but certainly not concerned about what’s going on. I’m not frightened of a witch-hunt against gay and lesbian laypeople or clergy in the church, and I don’t think that I’m going to be excommunicated because of my sexual orientation. Most importantly, I don’t feel that the Cathedral would be any less of a welcoming place because of decisions that have been made on a national or international level.
Being a Southern Baptist at the time of the height of the ridiculous furor over Disneyland’s gay friendly policies, I’m used to religious organizations doing this type of thing. But I clearly remember when this happens that the church isn’t just a place for saints – it’s also a place for sinners. If it weren’t, I certainly wouldn’t be able to make it in.
We all have a long way to go, and even if the battle is won in one denomination, it’s still a very long way from being won over the whole spectrum of Christianity. Those who equate homosexuality with murder, rape, and bestiality aren’t going to have their minds changed, and we can’t fool ourselves into thinking that this is going to happen. Some people simply won’t be converted to a different way of thinking (although they may become somewhat more tolerant as they have a greater variety of experiences), so the attention needs to be focused instead on interacting with people whose minds and hearts are more receptive to a new message.
There are even more important things to remember. The Episcopal Church, like the every denomination is one part of God’s church. The ship is not going to sink. We know who is going to win in the end – and it will not be the forces of ignorance, hatred, malice, dissention, and wickedness. We are an imperfect people on a journey to ever-greater levels of understanding, and there aren’t really any endings to this road.
For those of us who are gay and lesbian, we will still have some type of calling – some type of work we will need to do no matter what the outcome of any one disagreement. Even in the worst of cases for the Episcopal/Anglican church, people who continue to faithfully believe in and live out the Gospel message will still accomplish God’s work, no matter what the formal structure (or lack thereof) is in place.
Our focus is on the Gospel message and on preaching Christ crucified and risen. If we lose sight of what we as Christians are all about, ironically, we will have become the ones who are truly looking backward to the past instead of ahead to God’s coming Kingdom.
