This clip on you tube aired on McNeil Lehrer last night. This is interesting, because the two people interviewed represent for me the disconnect between the extremes and the middle of the church. If you've followed this blog, you remember my despair at General Convention when it seemed almost as if the left and right had joined together to defeat any sort of qualitative response to the Windsor Report. Susan and Kendall's debate seems to me to epitomize the problem. Their vision of the perfected church is more important to them than the actual church, which is made up of fallen sinners. I have a lot more sympathy with Susan's position - I still can't figure out how the election of a bishop in New Hampshire can "oppress" a person in a conservative diocese in South Carolina. However, her veiled comment about possibly leaving the church if the bishops acquiesce to the Primates' requests left me saying, "And how is she on any higher moral ground than Kendall?" I think most of us in the middle hold a view of the church that could include both Susan and Kendall - it is too bad that both seem that they would "take their ball and go home" if the game is not going their way.
David+
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Susan is on a higher moral ground. Kendall loses nothing if he doesn't get his "way." Not so with Susan. Is Kendall's dignity as a human being denied or questioned? Is Kendall's place in the Body of Christ being denied or questioned? Is Kendall somehow being disadvantaged? No. Not in any conceivable way. Not so with Susan and the legion of us just like her.
They are not equivalent arguments. The consequences are not equivalent. In fact, Kendall faces no consequences other than conscience.
It's not about whether or not you agree with me. It's about my person.
At root isn't this about our baptismal ecclesiology?
Posted by: Rodney | February 21, 2007 at 10:23 PM
I agree - the arguments are not equivalent. You've got me at 100% agreement. But the attitude of "My way is the authentic way to read the Gospel" is.
When we are baptized, we are baptized into a community of diverse opinion and belief. Unfortunately what I hear from the left a lot is "Toleration of everyone, unless you are intolerant." The right says, "You can believe anything you want, as long as it's the same thing I believe."
What I believe is that we are baptized into a divinely-established but deeply human institution. My idea of "being church" is finding ways to live with our differences. I don't think we're always called to "celebrate" them, as that is sometimes a codeword for never exercising any critical discernment.
The Bible holds both inclusion and discernment up as models. For forty or so years, the issue of same-sex relationships has been moving from its traditional position (discernment - no!) to a position of inclusion based on scientific evidence and a reappraisal of scripture in the light of the Civil Rights movement and liberation theology.
To me, this is a natural process - the same one that has worked in the church since the time of Jesus. But we have to realize that it IS a radical departure from the traditional teaching of the church. This will take time.
Those that call saying "We need this NOW" are, IMHO, working more out of an American Civil Rights model than a Christian discernment model. No one has a "right" to a blessing of the church. Blessings are gifts of the spirit discerned and pronounced by the church. No one can come to me and demand that I bless their animal, or their battleship, or their marriage. And my decision whether to bless or not does not actually determine whether God has blessed it. The blessing exists because of God's grace, not because I say some words and make the sign of the cross.
I happen to believe that same-sex relationships can bear the fruit of the spirit due to personal experience. However, it is also apparent to me from personal experience that for many, this is a paradigm shift that is extremely hard to make.
Therefore, we need to be patient, not giving up what has been gained, but not despairing temporary setbacks. Eyes on the prize! Watch on the strategic level, not the tactical one.
A schism at this point, no matter who initiates it, would be a strategic victory for the extreme right. The goal of the Institute for Religion and Democracy and other allied PACs has been to split the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal churches in order to diminish their leftward-leaning political influence. If they are successful, any possibility we might be able to speak to civil legislation on any number of social justice issues will be radically diminished.
It's a tricky and somewhat distasteful game we are now playing, but for the moment, I think its important we continue to stay in it.
David+
Posted by: FrDavid | February 22, 2007 at 12:51 PM
Greetings David
I've been looking around different Episcopalian blogs & I'm delighted to have found this one.
I so appreciated this video clip
and also your comment on it.
I hope you will visit my site
www.liturgy.co.nz
Possibly you might place a link to it.
Let me know.
I'll link back.
God bless & Blessed Lent
Bosco+
Posted by: Bosco Peters | March 19, 2007 at 09:20 PM