This is an electronic reproduction of The Voice of Integrity, the quarterly publication of Integrity, Inc., the lesbian and gay justice ministry of the Episcopal Church. All materials except those reproduced from other sources are copyrighted by Integrity, Inc. You may reproduce all original material herein if you state "Reproduced from the Fall, 1993 issue of The Voice of Integrity, the quarterly publication of Integrity, Inc., the lesbian and gay justice ministry of the Episcopal Church."
Material may not appear exactly as published since some changes were made after the document was transferred to desk top publishing format.
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Fall 1993
*The Voice of Integrity*
Volume 3, Number 4
Published by Integrity, Inc.
P.O. Box 19561
Washington, D.C. 20036-0561
Telephone 718-720-3054
Bruce Garner, President
Edgar Kim Byham, Publisher
R. Scott Helsel, Editor
Contributing Editors:
Claudia Windal, Louie Crew
Paul Woodrum
Blair McFadden, Layout
Dorothy Gunn, Production
Editorial Office: 201-868-2485
PO Box 5202; NYC, NY 10185
Member Episcopal Communicators
Associate Member Gay & Lesbian Press Association
copyright 1993
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*TABLE OF CONTENTS*
*1993 Integrity Convention*
First Time Impressions
Convention is People
A Tribute to David Clark
Sermon by Bishop Theuner at the Convention Eucharist
Bishop Theuner Takes Us to Brooklyn and the Rotary Club
Pamela Chinnis' Convention Speech
Convention Awards
EURRR Attacks Chinnis
Claudia's Column
It's in the Prayer Book Already: Covenant Blessing Forms
On the Other Hand: A Call for New Blessing Forms
Pussycats in the Lions' Den: "Ex-Gay" Conference
Two New Integrity Regions
*1994*
Aelred, A Saint for Our Time
20 Years Ago: The Founding of Integrity
Celebrate! A 1994 Calendar
*Ecumenical News*
PRESBASH.93
Methodists Going to Denver
NY-VT Methodists Supportive
As Are West Coast Presbyterians
Homophobia and Misogyny Disrupt Christian Reformed Church
British Methodist Follow the Via Media
Anglican Fellowship of Prayer Wants Us
Operation Rescue Pickets Bishop Hunt
*cc'd*
To Bishop David Johnson of Massachusetts
To Bishop Anderson of General Seminary
To Bishops Browning and Rogers Harris
I Sing A Song...
Brooke Cleans Up!
Riding With a Bishop on Pride Day
God Wants Light & Sight: HIV/AIDS Healing
New Jersey -- New Bishop
Who Will Shape Our Future
Priest Killer Gets 8 Years
Who Will Mourn? *Opinion*
Deirdre Good Controversy Continues
RIP Denton Durland
Integrity in the "[Daily] News"
General Convention Volunteers Needed
President's Column
Chu at Church Center
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*FROM THE EDITOR*
This issue of "The Voice of Integrity" has several changes and new features. The type size has been increased by 25 percent. The margins have been increased and there is a change in the general format and style of the publication. Beginning with the Winter 1994 issue, I plan to begin using a newer, more flexible publishing program. I plan on further changes and enhancements. The increase in type size and margins will reduce the number of articles published and/or the level of coverage by about 30 percent. I would appreciate hearing your comments on the new format and particularly comments on the distinct possibility of having future issues of our quarterly newsletter contain approximately 30 percent less material.
A new feature in this issue is: *cc'd*, which contains letters on which we have been copied. We hope to be able to continue this feature and will need your help to be able to do so.
Finally, I strongly recommend that you read Pam Chinnis' Convention Address on page 8. It was and is one of the best addresses I have every heard.
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*LETTERS TO THE EDITOR*
Dear Scott:
It was great news to hear that "The Voice of Integrity" had won the Polly Bond awards and honorable mentions! Congratulations to all!
My mother was a fighter and knew well the wounds of her broken sisters and brothers. She counted among her staunch supporters -- and fellow fighters -- many, many gays and lesbians.
I came out to her in 1963, when I was 14 years old. It was not a cause for celebration in our family. Yet, through it all, we grew. By the time of her death from pancreatic cancer in 1979, she and I were able to share our love for God and for each other. Such grace...
I am glad to know that the name of Polly Bond and her ministry live on. The awards are well deserved. Keep up your/our ministry of truth telling and encouragement.
Rick Bond, n/TSSF
Easton, PA
Co-Convener, Integrity/Bethlehem
Dear Editor:
I am writing in response to the article "Should Integrity Change How It Addresses The Clergy?" There are a number of comments I would like to make.
First of all, I am disturbed that the use of proper, formal English grammar is now considered to reflect an "upper class bias." Of course, one should never be self-righteous because of one's grammar (or for any other reason). Nevertheless, while no one should denigrate another denomination for its usage, I do not agree that we should necessarily conform our usage to theirs. Diversity from denomination to denomination in the ways that clergy are addressed should not be considered intolerable.
Secondly, I find it odd that "the Committee [on the Status of Women] believes that 'Mother' is not an appropriate equivalent to 'Father' because of the very different values and roles assigned to male and female parents in our culture." One of the lessons of feminism is that people are more than the roles that culture assigns to them and that, indeed, mothers can be strong and fathers can be nurturing. The reasoning of the Committee is ironically similar here to the reasoning of those who scream "Blasphemy!" whenever anyone addresses God as "Mother" or "She." The presence of women in the priesthood should, in addition to meeting the demand of Divine Justice, help us to realize that God is appropriately imaged as "feminine" as well as "masculine." I realize that no priest should be defined by the gender expectations of society, and that no human priest should be confused with God. Nevertheless, if we are to have ordained priests at all, it is not inappropriate for us to experience through them the God who is manifest in both genders and limited to neither.
In addition, I find it naive of the committee to imply that the use of "Reverend" will avoid an inappropriate paternalism on the part of clergy. There are as many demagogues who call themselves "Reverend" as there are who call themselves "Father." An honorific is simply that -- an honorific. It can be either appropriate or inappropriate according to the quality of the relationship it symbolizes.
It is the privilege of each individual member of the clergy to delineate the form of address with which she or he is comfortable. I, myself, would prefer to address a woman priest as "Mother." Such a usage finds its source in the same monastic tradition as does the use of "Father," and even now the term "Reverend Mother" is not unknown when referring to the leader of an order of women. It has always been appropriate to use "The Rev. Jane (or John) Doe" as the full title of a priest. In formal salutation to a priest whose preferred form of address I did not know I would use "Reverend Madame:" or "Reverend Sir:" (This is modeled on the traditional form of salutation for a male bishop: "Right Reverend Sir:"). In conversation I would inquire as to how the priest preferred to be addressed and act accordingly.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this matter. As you will have gathered I do not think Integrity should adopt the proposals of the committee. One of the strengths of this Church is its dual heritage of catholic spirituality and reformed sensibility. I would want women priests to be included within the richness and flavor of that heritage, as is their right.
The Rev. Gerard F. Beritela
Syracuse, NY
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Editor's Note: We received several more responses to our article "Should Integrity Change How It Addresses The Clergy" after our printing deadline. These responses plus others we receive will be published in the Winter 1994 issue of "The Voice of Integrity."
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*1993 INTEGRITY CONVENTION*
A FIRST TIMER'S IMPRESSIONS
by Ann Carlson
I was impressed both by how small and how large Integrity is. The quality and dedication of the leadership was evident in hearing the accomplishments of Integrity in the past, the dynamite speakers they were able to attract to the convention, the mutual respect and service they maintain with other groups within the Episcopal Church, and the real faith and love of God they exhibit in their daily lives -- even under the strain of organizing and running a hectic meeting.
The workshop speakers were well chosen and well prepared. They each gave generously of themselves in their presentations and in their participation throughout the convention. San Diego chapter member Bob McClure spoke movingly on Friday morning about what it means to "sow love" and what are the images of a loving people. He made a particularly moving plea to hear the pain behind differences and to feel compassion for those who oppose us. Canon Linda Strohmier agreed that it was no coincidence she was invited to speak directly after lunch. Her boundless energy and joyful, playful embrace of her audience were a high point of the day. Bishop Theuner impressed me Saturday morning with his quick mind, strong stand for convictions, and his keen insights into some of the more troubling questions of our faith. He is the bishop in my husband's home state of New Hampshire. As I shared with him before leaving San Diego, home now feels like a much friendlier place.
On Friday, both for the opening of the convention and for the evening Eucharist, our presence was protested by a group from The Mustard Tree, a local Christian community. While it is always frustrating that anyone would want to protest our integration in the Body of Christ, frankly, protesters don't come any more benign than these. I arrived early Friday morning with another hardy soul who decided to walk the approximately 1.5 miles from the hotel. We saw a group of perhaps 8 - 10 people all dressed in blue uniforms and praying around a big cross in the courtyard of the cathedral. Not wanting to disturb, we tiptoed into the courtyard and sat on a bench to wait for the arrival of others with the convention. The people in blue stopped their praying, all came over to say hello, handed us bookmarks saying something about Christian community, and then returned to praying. I was not aware until several hours later that their intent was to protest our presence, although they surely knew who we were. I was wearing my pink triangled "Under Attack" t-shirt and we were both wearing convention name tags. In the evening they stood near the front doors of the cathedral with their cross while people were arriving for the Eucharist. Again they simply smiled and maintained a silent presence. I imagine they prayed for us as we inside the cathedral did for them during the service. Is there a lesson here somewhere?
The Eucharist Friday night was the high point of my weekend. When Bishop Theuner stepped down from his sermon I wanted to jump up and applaud, but managed to maintain my Episcopal dignity and only said a quiet Amen. At this service our founder, Louie Crew, was seated in a pew once occupied by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Rumor has it that he now will answer only when addressed as "Majesty."
A fitting closure to the convention was the address by Pam Chinnis, President of the Episcopal House of Deputies, during the dinner cruise Saturday night. Even though many were fighting to hear her through the overloud music filtering from the lower deck, she held the complete attention of each person. When she told, for the first time anywhere and with his express permission, of her gay son and his struggles, the outpouring of compassion and empathy in the room was palpable.
It was difficult to say goodbye. Workshop small groups were just beginning to bond. There were so many that I wanted to meet, to get to know. Plans were only just forming for the Integrity presence at the 1994 General Convention: Will I volunteer? Where will I fit in? I have much now to think about, new challenges and new visions, a new experience of love and a new commitment to sow love.
CONVENTION IS PEOPLE!
by Dan Wall
His name is Bill. I met him over coffee the first morning of the Integrity National Convention in San Diego. Bill is convener of the new chapter in Palm Springs, CA, but he seemed more interested in my name tag's Chicago label. It took about three minutes to discern a connection. Bill had grown up about six blocks from where I now live in Maywood. With that bond, a fast friendship was ignited.
I was regaled by a colorful character's stories about coming of age as a gay male in Chicago's conservative suburbs fifty-some years ago. We laughed and cried, sharing stories about the Nutbush, Chicago's police and politicians, and Episcopalians both lay and clergy. He was my tour guide, and I was his connection to the home remembered. We were blessed to share the sacredness of the story.
It was at convention that I experienced anew the liberating power in telling the story. When we meet as Integrity to pray and play, we tell our story as gay and lesbian Christians among ourselves, and with our friends who will celebrate. We are people of God set on the margin with a story to enliven the Church, to encourage those who dare to hope for insurrection. We bless each other with the story of a caring community called in witness to the Church on God's journey toward wholeness for Creation.
There are mountain top experiences that empower us on this journey, and they usually are connected to the intimacy of a shared story. Pam Chinnis' keynote address during the Convention's closing banquet was one such experience for me. Chinnis is president of the Episcopal Church General Convention's House of Deputies, and the first woman to hold that position. Earlier in the day, she had met with the first woman ever elected a deputy to General Convention, but denied seating by the males in power. Present at that same meeting was the last elected deputy denied seating before women were granted equal standing during the 1970's.
She is familiar with the Church's sometime obsession with the familiar, in defiance of God's insistence on continuing to reveal and make new. She told a story about a young man who was refused partnership in his law firm because he would not lie in discreet silence about his sexual orientation. That same young many was also ostracized by the gay community when he was clerking for a Supreme Court justice who was considered the swing vote in the Hardwick sodomy decision. That young may is Pam Chinnis' son, and we were blessed by the awe of the Holy in the loving story borne with pain.
Those of us who heard that story can never be the same. It is in sharing the story of our lives and loves that we will make a difference. We must risk the vulnerability of being identified emerging alive outside the familiar tomb of closets if we ever hope to be healthy and whole, integrated into the Body of the resurrected Christ. Those who are so threatened by our openness in making the community of Integrity visible on committees and commissions, on vestries and in conventions, cannot prevail in their deathly darkness of power restraint. It is the transforming power of God's love they resist, not us.
I heard stories at the convention that will always empower me. I hear stories at each Integrity gathering full of this same resurrection power. There is sometimes sadness in the story. I bade my new friend Bill to return home to Chicago, and offered to be his tour guide. He quietly said, "I'll never be back." Bill has both emphysema and AIDS. He cannot travel with his oxygenator. I may not ever again be able to ascend the mountain with this storyteller, but I will always remember, be blessed and empowered by the story -- and hope.
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This article by Dan Wall, Convener of Integrity/Chicago, appeared in the August/September 1993 issue of the chapter newsletter: "News Notes."
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*A TRIBUTE TO DAVID CLARK*
Against tremendous odds and often almost single-handedly, David Clark held together Integrity/San Antonio for the last decade. The Diocese of West Texas is among the least hospitable in the Church, and yet Integrity maintained a consistent and important presence. Although never large, the San Antonio chapter was a witness against oppression and celebrated the faith of lesbian and gay Episcopalians.
So too has the remarkable service of David Clark. Now approaching 70, David was one our most energetic and helpful and cheerful volunteers at General Convention in 1991. And he had similarly served in 1988.
David is now undergoing medical treatment for cancer and is hopeful of making a full recovery. David's health is in our prayers, as is our thankfulness for his tremendous service to Integrity.
A Statement by the Board of Integrity, Inc., read by E. Bruce Garner, National President, at the National Business Meeting of the 1993 Integrity National Convention, July 16, 1993.
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*SERMON BY BISHOP THEUNER AT THE CONVENTION EUCHARIST*
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. JOHN 3:16-18
When I was a young child someone gave me a little, gray book entitled "Halley's Pocket Bible Commentary" and in that book this passage was referred to as "the Gospel in a nutshell." It's probably the first piece of scripture that I learned and its certainly the first that I remember. Indeed, it is "the Gospel in a nutshell"! The context of this summary of the Good News of Jesus Christ in John's Gospel is the visit which the curious Pharisee Nicodemus made to Jesus by night. Timid Nicodemus who came out under the cover of darkness to see this radical new rabbi. Timid Nicodemus who later mounted a half-hearted defense of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Timid Nicodemus who had something to do behind the scenes with securing Joseph of Arimathea's tomb for the last resting place of our Lord, or so they thought. Nicodemus apparently sneaked out of the closet of the religious establishment to come by night. He was a timid man; he was afraid. We all live in closets; some of our own making and some made by the world in which we live. Some we can't come out of; others we choose not to. Nicodemus' action has nothing to do specifically with gay and lesbian Christians, but it has everything to do with all Christians.
Jesus says in this passage that those who believe in Him are not condemned! Let's try a little interactive homilizing here. How many of us believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Raise your right hands. If we take John's reporting of Jesus' words here seriously, consistent as they are with the rest of his gospel, then we are not condemned, simply because we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And, if we are not condemned, we are blessed. We *are* blessed. Not we *will* be blessed, or we *may be* blessed, but we *are* blessed. For the blessing of God is not something that we effect - not even we bishops. The blessing of God is something which God effects and that we accept and to which we bear witness. We are witnesses. We do nothing ourselves to be blessed of God, except to accept God's blessing and all that that implies. We only call attention to what God does including what we believe God has done and what God will do. It is only by refusing to accept God's blessing in our lives, on our lives, through our lives, that we are condemned.
It is as Paul says in this evening's reading from the Second Letter to the Corinthians: "Therefore, if any one is in Christ, there *is* a new creation." Not *there will be* a new creation, but there *is* a new creation! " ... the old *has Passed* away, behold, the new *has come*." We are blessed by our life in Christ and we need to recognize, accept and *be* that blessing in the world. Believing, as we Christians do, that it is God who acts in creation, we need to focus more on being rather than on doing. As we are, so we do. Quite frankly, that's the fault in affirming someone's "orientation" while forbidding them to "practice" it. It's like telling people to be Christians but not to let it show in their behavior. "Don't ask; don't tell" is incompatible with Christian witness, honestly. That's been done many times in history. Someone recently advised me: "Don't just do something, stand there." It's by standing there in the Church in the world that *Integrity* and its membership do best what we do. We be who we are. But I know it's not easy.
As an educated, tall, middle-aged, heterosexual, white male Protestant whose roots in this country on my mother's side go back before the Revolution, I don't know a great deal about societal rejection. Generally speaking almost every even marginally risky thing I have done in my life I have done either because I am a Christian or because I am a sinner. And, quite frankly, it's essentially only as a Christian that I have experienced rejection. It's only as my faith has led me to identify with that which is different and, therefore considered to be inferior or - at best - marginal, that I myself have experienced societal rejection. And because I live so much in the church, it is there that I have experienced the most rejection. But I don't despair. It was over two centuries ago that the acerbic Anglican Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift, noted that: "If Christianity were to disappear entirely from the earth, in time even the Church would suffer." It is, of course, also in the Church that I have experienced the most acceptance, since it is here that I have heard the message that God loves and cares for me without condition because I am God's child, created in God's Image, and God's own Son has given His Life for me, and for us all. And, that's what this convention is all about. "Where there is hatred, let us sow love." We have been given three goals:
"First, a personal and spiritual awakening for each member, renewing within him or her the love of God for themselves, getting rid of self hate, and replacing that hate with the profound knowledge that God loves all of us as we are and that we are worthy of that love through grace. [That is "the Gospel in a nutshell."]
Second, a movement toward unity *within Integrity* as we carry the love of God to each other, regardless of gender, ridding ourselves of our own prejudices, so that we can move as a serviceable organization, united in our mission to further the work of the Church.
Third, a movement toward integration within the Church, offering practical ways of helping our respective parishes and dioceses with the great work of God, specifically with regard to AIDS outreach." ["Where there is hatred, let us sow love."]
"The Voice of Integrity" has often carried on its masthead a quotation from me which states: "Unity without justice is hardly worth preserving." That quotation, as I wrote it, is quite incomplete. It says nothing of the love of God which this convention seeks to sow. As there cannot truly be any unity without justice, so there cannot be true justice without love. The justice of God is rooted in the love of God, as articulated in this evening's Gospel. If we are judged to be condemned, it is because we have not accepted the love of God. It is among the easiest things in the world to tell people to love. It is among the hardest to let them do it. Because the love of which we speak is from God it is therefore by nature free; boundless and unbounded. It cannot be controlled. It cannot be meted out or withheld by us for whom it is derivative. Love leads to commitment. It leads to transformation. It leads to the false imprisonment of the Cross ... and to the real liberation of the empty tomb. It leads to God from Whom it comes. Are we ready for that kind of love? Is the Church ready for that kind of love? I recently heard retired Bishop Bennett Sims of Atlanta say that two thirds of all the people killed since Christianity emerged have been the result of Christians killing Christians. He went on to quote Ghandi who said: "Everybody knows that Christianity is a non-violent religion, except the Christians!"
Why does this anomaly exist? I suspect that it is because Christians have sought "community" in the church instead of seeking "the Communion of Saints." The Very Reverend Philip Turner, Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale - a man with whom I have been inclined to disagree on matters sexual - has recently written:
"What I have come to believe is that if Christians look to the church in any of its manifestations or institutional forms to provide them with a community, they distort the nature of the church and, more seriously, construct an idol that, like all idols, is the reverse image of themselves. If, however, they learn, in coming to God through Christ, to long for and rejoice in the communion of the saints, they will find union with God and with the saints of God that both transcends and transfigures any community they have ever known or ever will know."
"The problem is this:" says Turner, "the only way in which a community of the sort we would prefer can come about is for everyone to behave like everyone else, and the only way this can happen is for one community within 'the community' to impose its identifying features upon others. Thus the cry for Christian community becomes a veiled struggle for power that goes on between the differing groups that make up the population as a whole."
The existence of a lesgay community within the church, claiming full participation in the church, is a challenge to the church which has at this time, I believe, almost the nature of a divine imperative. It is a challenge to each member of that community to be who she or he can be in Christ. It is a challenge to the church to be what it claims to be - not a community which has achieved "unity" through uniformity and conformity, which is the failed way of the world, but to be a communion of saints which finds its unity in the only true unity there is; the unity of God in Whose Image we have all been created and which each of us reflects uniquely.
As we are all one in Christ, so is each of us unique, as He was in His Human Form. That is what the Incarnation is all about: the realization of the general - the Creator and the creation - in the particular; God's Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. As it is only in the particular that the universal can be experienced, so the particular points back to the universal - to God. Each one of us is different, and each one of us is an image of God. Never forget that. And, if you believe that through the manifestation of God in Christ, then you are not condemned; you are blessed! "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free"...nor any other distinction which would separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not believe it?", says God through Isaiah's words in this evening's lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. To this point I have preached to you what I believe to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, allow me to draw some conclusions of my own, which I believe are directly related to that Gospel as it makes itself known to the world in this time and place.
There is a great revolution sweeping the world today; perhaps the greatest revolution in the history of humankind. It is a sexual revolution and I say that it is perhaps the greatest in human history because it has the potential of affecting every human being because we are all sexual beings and we live in a world in which we are without precedent aware of one another's lives and the impact they all have on one another.
From the concerns of family planning in China to the issue of women driving cars in Saudi Arabia to the right of homosexual people and women to take Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church, this revolution crosses geographical, cultural, social and religious boundaries. Virtually every controversial issue before the Episcopal Church today: marriage and divorce, abortion, same sex unions, homosexuality, ordination, inclusive language liturgy; sexual harassment, abuse and misconduct is essentially a sexual issue.
Can it be that God is doing a new thing in this revolution? And who shall answer that question? Gay men and lesbians are in the forefront of that revolution in our culture and our church and we must all seek together to answer that question.
It is no small thing to question whether or not what we do is of God. But we must never fail to ask that question. We must never fail to seek that answer. In so doing we are helping all of our sisters and brothers, as well as ourselves, to find not community but something far greater; the communion of saints.
And, always remember, if we believe in Him we are not
condemned. We are blessed!
God bless you! AMEN!
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The Rt. Rev. Douglas Theuner is Bishop of New Hampshire. Bishop Theuner was both celebrant and preacher for the Integrity National Convention Eucharist, July 17, 1993, in San Diego.
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*BISHOP THEUNER TAKES US TO BROOKLYN AND THE ROTARY CLUB*
by Louie Crew
At the Convention Eucharist on Friday evening, July 16, the Rt. Rev. Douglas Theuner, Bishop of New Hampshire, preached on the text "No one is condemned who has believed." At a workshop on Saturday morning, a questioner asked Bishop Theuner to speak on the fate of those who do not profess faith in Jesus. Bishop Theuner spoke first of the enormous salvation he has experienced in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. "It is not something that happened just in one magical moment of insight, but is an on-going experience over all the decades of my life," he elaborated. "And in terms of this life, truly for me not to know this experience would be for me to be condemned."
"On the other hand," Bishop Theuner continued, "nothing that I know of God suggests that anyone will finally be condemned. God is not running a massive data base to assure that those are punished who do not know God or profess God's name."
Bishop Theuner explained that for him it's a bit like the magnificent engineering marvel of the Brooklyn Bridge. He named the father and son team who engineered it and brought it to fruition. Without the Roeblings, there would be no Brooklyn Bridge. On the other hand, most people who benefit from the bridge cannot even name those who created it. You don't get to Brooklyn by knowing their name; you get to Brooklyn by using their bridge. You don't really even have to know the bridge's name.
In another part of his address, Bishop Theuner recalled meeting with a brother bishop shortly after Bishop Spong had ordained Robert Williams as an openly gay priest in 1989, with the attendant media blitz. The host bishop vociferously insisted that the rest of the House of Bishops ought to demand Jack Spong's resignation.
"Scripture absolutely condemns homosexuality!" the host bishop repeated each time that Bishop Theuner suggested alternative ways of responding to the ordination. Exasperated, the host bishop said to Theuner, "You don't know what it is like to walk into the Rotary Club and have everyone in the room look at you with puzzlement or even contempt because you're a bishop in a church that would do something like that and not stop the bishop who did it! And you can't know what it's like to have some of your major donors call you up over the phone and withdraw their pledges because your church ordains queers!"
"See," Bishop Theuner said gently with great pain, "he thought it was about Scripture, but it really was not. He was running scared because of what people might think about him personally, and he was running scared about the bank account."
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*PAMELA CHINNIS' CONVENTION SPEECH*
I've made a lot of speeches in my time, but never like this. I want you to know how delighted I am to be with you this evening on this beautiful harbor cruise. I've taken my Dramamine so I shouldn't get seasick, and when I asked Robert Heylmun how long I should speak, he said, "It doesn't matter. They can't go anywhere." He didn't tell me, though, that we have to be off at 9:30. Now I know what a "captive audience" is, and when I see people heading for the railing to jump over, I'll know I've talked too long.
This is my first visit to San Diego (we are inclined to be so provincial on the East Coast). I think Robert referred to San Diego as "America's Finest City." And the warmth of the welcome by Mary Eunice Oliver is incredible. If you don't know Mary Eunice, I hope you'll get to know her; and, if you're lucky, you might get on her mailing list.
Mary Eunice is one of the pioneers for women's participation in the life and councils of the Episcopal Church. Were it not for her and women like her, I would not be standing before you tonight as the first woman president of the House of Deputies.
A serendipity of this visit happened today when Mary Eunice took me to call on Dr. Ruth Jenkins, who lives in La Jolla. Ruth was the first [elected] woman [deputy], who was denied a seat at the General Convention in 1949. Mary Eunice was the last woman to be denied a seat, in 1969. We had a photographer there taking pictures of the first, the last, and the middle.
The theme of your convention ‑‑ "Where There Is Hatred, Let Us Sow Love" ‑‑ is very moving and might well be the theme for every group meeting as we head into Indianapolis slightly more than a year from now for the 71st General Convention. As I understand it, you had three foci for this convention: Let us sow love for ourselves. Let us sow love for one another within this organization and outside. Let us sow love for one another in our Church and our larger community. If all of us could do that, we would be much healthier people, moving a much healthier church along to a much better place.
As you may well imagine, I have done a great deal of reading and studying as I thought about what I would say to you this evening. Some of what I want to share with you has resulted from the draft of the Pastoral Teaching on Human Sexuality which was mandated by the 1991 General Convention in Phoenix. Pastoral Teachings are traditionally issued by the House of Bishops, but someone had the good sense to amend Resolution A-l04s to include the addition of three clergy and three lay members of the House of Deputies. It was my privilege to make those appointments.
Let me tell you who those Deputies are: the Rev. Jane Garrett, who came out on the floor of the 1991 Convention; the Rev. Barnum McCarty; the Rev. Warner Traynham, who was your speaker last year; Mrs. Kit Caffey, John Paul Causey, and Mary Meader. My spies tell me that those six Deputies have had a tremendous influence on the work of the committee. I am very proud of them and they all feel very positive about the work of the committee thus far. The first draft of that pastoral teaching will go to the House of Bishops in Panama in September and to the General Convention next summer.
Let Us Sow Love For Ourselves: We hear a lot these days about the origins of homosexuality. And since I have been here the last couple of days, I ‑‑ as you have, as well ‑‑ have heard about new studies which indicate that homosexuality is inherited ‑‑ from the mother.
I must tell you about a play that I saw in Washington not too long ago, called "The Twilight of the Golds." The young man (who is homosexual) goes to his Jewish mama and tells her that he's gay. And she says, "I knew I shouldn't have taken your temperature that way!"
Are homosexuals born "that way," or are they the product of their environment, or some combination of these factors? There seem to be no conclusive answers at this point, and in my opinion, it really doesn't make much difference. Quoting from the draft of the pastoral teaching, it says this:
Many gays and lesbians report wanting desperately to understand 'Why me?' at some stage of their coming to terms with the reality of their sexual orientation. Later in their journey, they frequently cease to care very much about how they got that way and focus instead on leading a happy, well-adjusted life; and for Christians, a life focused on relationships with God, partner, family, and the community at large. Too often, members of the Church community, in seeking the 'cause,' are really wanting 'a cure'.
The Church's energy needs, instead, to be focused on persons who need to be loved, nurtured, cherished, accepted, and supported, including gays, lesbians and their families, as well as the rest of us. If we really mean that we are *all* made in the image of God and we are *all* children of God, that means everyone ‑‑ not just whites, or males, or straights ‑‑ but *everyone*. You can be happy and I can be happy because God has redeemed us through God's grace and not because of anything *we* have done to earn that. Therefore, if we do not love what God has made ‑‑ you and me ‑‑ there is not much hope for us; and that is sin.
We absolutely have to believe and work toward the idea that we are *all* children of God and equally loved in God's sight.
My anger was raised to the boiling point not long ago when a wonderful young man I have known since childhood came to me in deep distress. He comes from a good family, received a superior education in church schools and Ivy League colleges, attending one as an undergraduate and graduating from the law school of the second. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and has had a brilliant career path. He is a member of a prestigious law firm and was on the track to partner. His integrity ‑‑ and I use that word advisedly ‑‑ is without question. He is kind, good, the soul of honor, has never been involved in any untoward event, *he is gay*.
Although he was a regular member of a church growing up, he has stopped attending a church now. He was recently told by the review committee of his law firm that they were having second thoughts about making him partner because the question was being asked, "Can we trust him around the clients?" Translate: Will he try to put the make on a male CEO? ‑‑ although there has never been one instance where he did not behave with the utmost propriety.
When we as a Church give such mixed signals to people in society, who give mixed signals to people like this young man, do we find it surprising that they drop away from the Church? At least you are still here, and I vow to do everything in my power to see that you want to stay. I want to pledge to you tonight that I am committed to this endeavor.
If we can love ourselves, then we can begin to love one another.
It has been said that we are living in a time of violence, and even the network producers have finally admitted that violence on the television screen is having a harmful effect. I recently heard it said that love is not an emotion but a *disciplined act of will*. We *choose* to love, and, as John tells us in his letter, "For love must not be a matter of words or talk. Love must be genuine and show itself in action" (I John 3:18-19). There are many forms of violence; only one is physical. But also we must recognize that hatred *is* a form of violence. When one hates, one is engaging in violence.
I recently read a quote from a professor of humanities at Harvard. He said, "There isn't one way to be ‑‑ white or black, straight or gay, Hispanic or Asian, liberal or conservative, male or female. And the stronger a sense you nurture of the contingent nature of all such identities, the less likely it is that you will be harmed by them, or ‑‑ in their name ‑‑ inflict harm upon others."
It is a lesson that was perhaps best expressed by James Baldwin, who represented a melange of identities too complex for labels. "Each of us," he wrote, "helplessly and forever, contains the other ‑‑ male in female, female in male, white in black, and black in white. We are part of each other."
He goes on to say, "Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it."
If we are sowing love where there is hatred, we are turning upside down the violence that is in our church and our society because violence is ultimately a form of hatred. I recently read something which I thought was too true of our modern-day society, "Violence begins in the context of having contact with another person, but no real fellowship, and when we become intolerant of those who are different and project onto them our images of fear and evil, they become our scapegoats, our means of avoiding thinking and acting in a more socially and morally responsible way."
Now let me tell you another story. It is about the same young man who failed to make partner in a prestigious law firm because he was gay. Before going to the law firm he clerked for a Supreme Court Justice who was considered to be the swing vote in the Court's consideration of Bowers vs. Hardwick, the Georgia case challenging the sodomy laws in that state. Justices normally assign research on pending cases to any one of their several law clerks.
In this case, research was *not* assigned to this young man, and he had no influence on the Justice's decision in the case. However, the gay community in Washington held the young man personally responsible for the Justice's decision not to overturn the Georgia statute, and the young man has been told that he is a "pariah" in the gay community. This young man has no home either in the straight community nor the gay community. Seeds of love, I am reminded from the Gospel lesson last Sunday, fell on extremely rocky soil. I know because that young man is my son, and I grieve for his exclusion by both straights and gays. I have not before said publicly anything about my son's sexual orientation but I do so to you tonight with his permission.
It is easy for those who have been persecuted and oppressed to be seduced into replying in kind, but as we heard so eloquently from Bishop Theuner, we must avoid triangulation. We must avoid retribution, and we must remember that people don't inflict pain unless they are in pain themselves.
The essence of our ministries is found in our relationship with people, so we must train ourselves to see the subtle ways in which violence is promoted and lived out in our communities. This applies to ethnic minorities, women, gays, lesbians, whatever. In a recent article in the Alban Institute magazine, Nancy Hopkins wrote, "... for many there continues an implicit belief of women as embodiment of evil, a belief that may support the practice of celibacy if it is felt that a holy man must not lie with a woman, and that may contribute to continuing resistance in some quarters against the ordination of women. Unfortunately, fear and repression of the feminine are alive and well in our culture." The same could be said for any oppressed group.
It is not going to be easy to sow love where there is hatred. I hardly need tell you that. It is going to be hard as hell. In a review I read recently about a book by William Safire on Job, the person being interviewed says that "quid pro quo justice" does not apply in relationships. In other words, "If I do this, will you do that?"
"What is left?" he is asked.
"Simply relationship without any expectations. I tell my students that the most powerful analogy here is *love*. You don't love a person because you expect something from him or her. If it is a real relationship of love, you don't love in the expectation that you are going to get *something*. You hope that the love will be reciprocated, but the very act of love is its own reward."
How do we sow love in the wider Church?
As President of the House of Deputies, I try to make a point of reading as many church publications as I possibly can. I have seen some of what I consider scurrilous reporting and accusations against Integrity. That is wrong. At the most recent meeting of the Executive Council, the Presiding Bishop's address from the chair was, in my opinion, one of the best I've ever heard, and I've been attending Executive Council meetings since 1979.
He said, and I quote, "We are under the sway of the politics of 'gotcha' when those holding differing points of view take on as their main work the dubious activity of making the other side look bad. When this happens there is a risk of losing sight of what our efforts are meant to point toward. Those in political life, and I might add parenthetically, church life, risk forgetting that what they are meant to care about is the common good and the general welfare. In the case of the church, those preoccupied with discrediting other points of view risk forgetting that we are meant to advance the mission of the church, bring souls to Christ and usher in the reign of God.
The Presiding Bishop went on to say, "The real tragedy of such tactics is that both accuser and accused are diverted from what they are truly called to be. Everyone becomes less than they are called to be. And our mission suffers. In times of 'gotcha,' appearance has more substance than reality. Looking good gets the prize, and leadership means telling people what to do as if you had *no doubt* about it rather than allowing for ambiguity and waiting on the Lord rather than listening to the various voices and weaving the rich and varied strands together."
I'm sure it seems slow to you, but I do believe we are moving. After my election as President of the House of Deputies, both the Presiding Bishop and I intentionally appointed more Integrity members to Interim Bodies ‑‑ Jane Garrett, Bruce Garner, David Norgard, Patrick Waddell and many others. Their leadership has been superb, and they have made an enormous contribution to the Church. More members of Integrity have been elected as Deputies to the next General Convention, and I shall certainly appoint them to legislative committees of the 1994 Convention. But I need your help in this. I need you to tell me about the persons I don't know.
I am pleased by the theme of your Convention. It seems to me that you have taken the "high road." We need Integrity to sow love, to exert influence by virtue of your ability to create an atmosphere of tolerance and a common ground agenda for all people, and especially those marginalized by basic principles of love, justice and mercy.
I am deeply indebted to you for asking me to be the speaker at your Convention. Let me tell you why. Most obviously I am pleased that you would want to hear what I had to say. If love, in fact, is reaching out, I have had more evidence of love from members of Integrity than most other groups I've addressed. Any number of members of Integrity called before I came here to welcome me and to say they were looking forward to seeing me. That is an act of hospitality and love and grace that I deeply treasure.
But let me tell you another reason I am grateful. Whether it is coincidence or because I have been thinking so hard about what I wanted to say to you tonight, my ears and eyes have been opened in new ways to the whole issue of gay and lesbian rights and homophobia; and almost everywhere I turn, there is something new. I referred earlier to the play, "The Twilight of the Golds," a new play by Jonathan Tolins.
Essentially, the theme is about a liberal Jewish family of four. The adult son is gay. The adult daughter is married and pregnant. Through advanced amniocentesis, the fetus is discovered to be gay, and the struggle becomes whether to have an abortion, which the rest of the family urges, or to have the baby, which the brother urges. As the mother of a gay son, I could hardly restrain myself from standing up and screaming at the stage, "Don't have an abortion. You will be losing a wonderful treasure."
Then last Sunday, Ellen Goodman had an op-ed piece in "The Washington Post" entitled, "The Barracks and the Closet" about the military policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." She says the "primary symbol of gay repression hasn't been a ghetto or a list of segregation laws. It's been the much more psychologically complex issue of the closet: the dark place where cultural hate meets, and makes, self-hate." She goes on to say that because of the closet, the gay rights movement has not just been about breaking the barriers. It's been about breaking silence. For a generation, the most important gay march has been a long line of men and women coming out, one at a time.
Just last Sunday I read in "The Washington Post" a review of "Queer in America" by Michelangelo Signorile. I must admit that I had some concerns about "outing" for the same reason the reviewer had. The reviewer said, "I was raised to believe in the immorality of McCarthyite tactics, so I balk at any book with a preface titled 'On Naming Names.' I embrace the liberal belief," the review goes on, "in the right to privacy and self-definition and outing certainly runs counter to that belief. Most of all I worry about what happens if the tool of outing falls into the wrong hands."
The reviewer goes on to say that while he is not totally convinced of the argument for outing as a political tactic, he is compelled by the large social analysis that underlies the argument, and he says, "The invisibility of lesbians and gay men reinforces their marginality. Straight people won't be able to learn how normal, numerous, or productive homosexuals are until they discover them among their friends, their families, their colleagues, their leaders and their heroes."
Yes, I am grateful to you because you have hung in there. You have lived with the ambiguity of the good news and the bad news. You have wrestled with the dilemma of choosing to love in a church and society that often choose to reject that love. You have confronted us straights with the injustice, yes the sin, of judging other human beings by artificial standards. I want my son ‑‑ and you ‑‑ to have the same right to happiness ‑‑ or unhappiness ‑‑ as any straight person. He doesn't have that now, because he is judged differently. That is not just.
But those of us who are oppressed, and I say "us" because I am a woman, must not fall into the trap of oppressing one another. Let us not become single-issue persons. We need to seek out others who are suffering discrimination, too. We need to be concerned with the common good.
In the very early '70s I discovered the whole issue of the ordination of women. I did not want to be ordained, but I saw the injustice of denying that to women who did. I fought, bled, and almost died over it. Now, 20 years later, I am ready to join with you in sowing love where there is hate, if you want what I am able to give. I doubt that I'll be around another 20 years for the next battle, so this may be my last hurrah.
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*CONVENTION AWARDS*
The "Louie Crew Award" for outstanding service to Integrity was presented to Sister Brooke Bushong, C.A., a long-time Integrity member, twice president of Integrity/New York and founder of the National AIDS Memorial sponsored by Integrity and located at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.
The Award for Outstanding Small Chapter Newsletter of 1992 was given to "Integrity News" of Integrity/El Camino Real. The Award for Outstanding Large Chapter Newsletter of 1992 went to "Walking With Integrity" of Integrity/Baltimore.
An anonymous donor made possible the presentation of a Life Membership in Integrity to the youngest person registered at the convention: Lonnie Thrasher, Secretary of Integrity/Middle Tennessee, who is 24.
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*EURRR ATTACKS CHINNIS*
by Kim Byham
In a stunning replay of last year, the 1993 Integrity National Convention has generated charges of bias by the church's largest right-wing organization against one of the church's two top leaders.
The principal speaker at the convention was Mrs. Pamela Chinnis, elected in 1991 as the first female president of the House of Deputies. Chinnis has long been known as an advocate of greater inclusiveness in the church and her speech continued that tradition.
Episcopalians United for Revelation, Renewal and Reformation (EURRR), based in Solon, Ohio, issued a press release on July 20 attacking Chinnis for her remarks and accusing her of "stacking committees with members who are so clearly biased."
Although all deputies are not yet known, it appears that approximately 12 openly lesgay Integrity members have been elected by their dioceses to serve at the 1994 General Convention. About one third of the 850 deputies will be appointed to the 26 legislative committees so it is inconceivable that committees can be "stacked" with Integrity members. What Mrs. Chinnis was saying is that, for the first time, lesbian and gay voices will be heard on convention committees.
The Integrity convention's theme was "Where there is hatred, let us sow love," a quote from a prayer by St. Francis. Integrity's National President, Bruce Garner, an Alternate Deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Atlanta, said, "Apparently the EURRR representative at our convention just didn't get it." The convention's focus was on enhancing personal spirituality and strengthening Integrity chapters to minister to the lesbian and gay community in Christ's name.
EURRR's Executive Director, the Rev. Tod Wetzel, said: "I sense no concern for balance, much less diversity, in President Chinnis' remarks regarding committee appointments. I hear only a concern for winning the battle. Showing a bias is understandable and appropriate for an advocacy organization such as Episcopalians United or Integrity. It is inappropriate for the President of the House of Deputies to show such a clear bias and to act upon it."
What EURRR just doesn't get is that Integrity is not primarily an advocacy group. In over 65 chapters in the United States (plus unaffiliated chapters in Australia and Canada) the primary focuses are worship in a supportive environment, emotional support and counseling, spiritual nourishment and Christian education, and service to the Church and the lesgay community. Through Integrity's evangelism, thousands of lesbians and gay men, estranged from the Episcopal and other churches, have returned to worship and fellowship. EURRR, in contrast, is solely a lobbying organization.
What EURRR also just doesn't get is that Mrs. Chinnis is merely opening up the committee structure to lesbians and gay men who have heretofore been excluded. Dr. Louie Crew, Integrity's founder and a Deputy from the Diocese of Newark, observed, "During the tenure of her predecessor as president of the House of Deputies, the Very Rev. David Collins, openly lesbian and gay Integrity members were blatantly excluded from all committees and commissions of the church, even the Joint Commission on AIDS and the committees whose primary focus was on lesbigay issues." Collins was and remains an active EURRR member and is on the steering committee to plan EURRR's first national convention to be held in June 1994.
The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, was the principal celebrant and preacher at last year's Integrity convention held in Houston. He also was attacked by EURRR after his appearance at the Integrity convention.
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*CLAUDIA'S COLUMN*
Flee...
To run in terror
From some real or imagined danger
This is never an act of faith,
But of fear.
When we're running
From something,
We're not going anywhere,
We're in retreat,
Regressing,
Reducing our grasp on life.
Only when we're running
Toward some goal, some objective,
Are our motions the actions of faith.
The steps are the same,
But what a difference
In running from
And running toward.
"Faces of God," pg. 25
Although most of us have never experienced danger simply because we're lesbigay Episcopalians, many of us have experienced a desire to run: from parishes where we're welcome provided we never reveal our sexual identities; from dioceses that refuse to blessing of our relationships; from parish clergy who "encourage" us to not teach Sunday school and prohibit us from serving as lay readers and lectors; and from bishops who refuse to ordain us. The isolation and rejection experienced by some has led to their fleeing the Episcopal Church for the welcome of lesbigay friendly and supportive denominations and parishes, while others have simply fled any form of organized religion.
Until the advent of Integrity, running was the expected and norm for lesbigay Episcopalians tired of trying to cope with the stress of a close-minded and sometimes hostile church. All the while we were running however, "we weren't going anywhere. We were in retreat, regressing." The pure and simple fact is, that running required all of our energy so that we weren't able to call the church to task or demand that someone, anyone in the church, listen to us, and realize that we are sister and brother journeyers on this earth sharing similar goals, questions, concerns, and aspirations.
During the last nineteen years, Integrity has brought together those of us who are lesbigay Episcopalians and helped us "run toward a goal, an objective, and our motions have become the actions of faith." The strength we have gained as a supportive and cohesive body, has diminished both real and imagined dangers and given us a voice to challenge the church to welcome all persons to our place within the Body of Christ.
The presence of openly lesbigay persons elected to parish and diocesan commissions as well as called to serve as deputies to the next General Convention, evidence the change of attitude taking place within our church. This change of attitude was further evidenced by the possibility of many of us lesbigay clergy to introduce our "partners" to Bishop Theuner and Pamela Chinnis at the recent Integrity convention without fear of deposition as well as in the messages of encouragement and acceptance brought to us at our community Eucharist and dinner cruise. Each of these experiences is directly attributable to the ongoing work of Integrity.
As I reflect on the mission and ministry of Integrity these last nineteen years and the work ahead, I'm reminded of one of Dag Hammorskjold's quotations:
For all that has been,
THANKS.
For all that will be,
YES.
Recalling, celebrating, and giving thanks for our groundbreaking work and our accomplishments are as essential as they are natural as we look forward to the third decade of our work as Integrity. The caution I offer, my sisters and brothers, is that we not become static as we give thanks, but that we remember also to look forward to "all that will be" and respond "yes."
The New Testament is filled with stories of the disciples who readily responded "Yes" when called by Jesus to follow him. During the early part of Jesus' public ministry, those same disciples often gave thanks for all that had been: the opportunity to spend hours with a great teacher, to experience events beyond their comprehension, and to be welcomed into a fellowship shared by few others. When times became uncertain, however, and the religious leaders began to pursue Jesus to stop his teachings, few of the disciples responded "yes" to what would be ahead.
Jesus was followed by Simon Peter and another disciple. The disciple who was acquainted with the High Priest went with Jesus into the High Priest's courtyard, but Peter halted at the door outside. ... The maid on duty at the door said to Peter, 'Are you another of this man's disciples?' 'I am not,' he said.
The Gospel According to John
As many of us gather together in Indianapolis next summer for the General Convention, we will also celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Integrity. Undoubtedly there will be much thanks giving for all that has been accomplished; and those accomplishments have been many. I pray, my friends, that we will also be prepared to respond "Yes" for all that will be; for our work in the church has really just begun. The continued successful work of Integrity is dependent upon each of us who respond "yes" not only when the outlook for full inclusion of lesbigay persons in the church looks promising, but when the road to that goal is difficult and demands risk-taking and personal commitment from each of us to forge ahead. Are we willing to respond "Yes," we are lesbigay persons, when asked by bishops, members of screening committees, and commissions on ministry? Are we willing to respond "Yes" by our chapter presence at diocesan conventions and gatherings? Are we willing to respond "Yes" by preaching sermons that address the concerns of lesbigay persons? Are we willing to respond "Yes" even if and when we're denied ordination or a place on a diocesan committee, or parish deployment, or a position as youth director or Sunday School teacher? These are the times, my friends, when our "Yes" for all that will be, will be both the most difficult and the most essential to the continuation of the work and ministry of Integrity.
Come, labor on.
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain,
While all around us waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the sovereign say,
"Go work today."
Come, labor on.
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
Till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie
And glad sound comes with the setting sun,
"My friends, well done."
"Come Labor On," the 1982 Hymnal
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*IT'S IN THE PRAYER BOOK ALREADY!*
Forms for Covenant Blessing
by Kathryn Piccard
It is possible to strictly adhere to the canons and rubrics while applying the flexibility of the Book of Common Prayer to meet the needs of parishes and the wider Church in recognizing and affirming the presence of God's grace in the lives of committed couples. There are at least two ways the Book of Common Prayer can be used to develop a liturgical service for blessing a lesbian or gay couple's covenant. One way is to use the Order for Eucharist (p. 400) and the other is to use A Form of Commitment to Christian Service (p. 420). The resulting liturgies might not be the ideal liturgical forms for every couple, but it is possible to prepare quite adequate liturgies. *We do not have to wait until the General Convention or the Standing Liturgical Commission authorize special liturgical texts*.
Many people feel that marriage is not a good model for lesbian or gay couples, and for different reasons the House of Bishops has tried to prohibit marriages for same-sex couples although it is debatable whether or not that, by itself, constitutes Church teaching or proper exercise of authority, most priests carefully avoid using wedding liturgies for same-sex couples. There are three Book of Common Prayer services earmarked for weddings on pages 422-38, but no authorized text earmarked for covenant blessings. Many priests and bishops know that making up a new service is canonically risky: although it may fulfill a rector's pastoral responsibility, which has canonical standing*, it might also be claimed that it constitutes a violation of canon law by breaking the rubrics, and this is an offense for which a priest could be tried and even deposed. Sometimes rectors have been talked out of officiating at public covenant blessings by threat of a trial on this charge. Sometimes they substitute the blessing of a home from the "Book of Occasional Services." Although I think the Church ought to be in the blessing business, rarely does anyone who has heard of pet or car or boat blessings stop to consider that the Book of Common Prayer can be used with equal suitability to bless couples, *people* for whom Christ died & rose to new life, sending the Spirit to do new and wonderful things.
Few Episcopalians know that under the last sentence of Article X of the Constitution a bishop can authorize special liturgical texts. A few bishops have given tacit or explicit permission for various covenant blessing forms to be used in certain parishes or on certain occasions. But many priests know they would not get their bishop's consent, and instead could expect opposition, placing their jobs and orders in jeopardy.
Use of the Book of Common Prayer as detailed below means that officiating clergy are not susceptible to Church trial under Canon IV.l sec. 1 (3) for violating the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer by using unauthorized texts. Furthermore, because the use of the Book of Common Prayer has already been authorized by the General Convention (1979), the bishop's permission is not needed. *In fact, nowhere in canon law does it say that the bishop has the right to restrict the use of the Book of Common Prayer in parishes under any circumstances*. You might, however, wish to keep your bishop informed of your plans.
Now, a bishop might object to a covenant blessing and try to stop it by claiming that in *this* case or under *these* circumstances it would constitute some other offense listed in canon IV.l sec.l. Then the priest should certainly review the canon sections 1 & 2, pray, and consult the wardens and a lawyer and the couple. A trial would resolve any question in a particular case. There has never been such a trial, but it is no secret that covenant blessings have been done using the Book of Common Prayer this way. I myself have done this.
FORM OF COMMITMENT
Several years ago I used the "Form of Commitment to Christian Service" for a lesbian couple with the theme "Bless all whose lives are closely linked to ours and grant that we may serve Christ in them, and love one another as Christ loves us" (Book of Common Prayer p. 388). This theme appeared on the invitations, the service leaflet, and was used in the intercessions and sermon. It could also be quoted in the actual prayer of blessing. It does not define the nature of the "close link," but does unite blessing with "close links" and with serving Christ in others.
Turn to Book of Common Prayer p. 420-1. This form can be used with Rite I or II or with the Order for Eucharist. In place of the prayer on p. 421 substitute or adapt it to include an appropriate prayer of blessing. The simplest way would be by inserting the phrase, "Bless them and" at the beginning of the second sentence. Readings may be selected from the suggestions below.
ORDER FOR EUCHARIST
Turn to Book of Common Prayer p 400-1. The section to develop is "Proclaim and Respond to the Word of God". For a male couple you may wish to use 1 Samuel 17:58-18:5. For a female couple I suggest Ruth 1:1-18 and/or Ecclesiastes 9:9 JB. Be sure to include the throat cutting gesture in the reading of Ruth 1:17, for it to make sense. John 15:9-12 would be a suitable Gospel passage. Perhaps you will have introductions to the readings. Or, after the readings and sermon the couple or officiant might say, "In *response* to this description of the holy vow of lifelong commitment and love Ruth made to Naomi, and to the way God has blessed and graced N and N with love and joy, we will now hear their holy vows of lifelong commitment, and respond with prayers of blessing." Or, for men, "In *response* to this description of the lifelong holy covenant Jonathan and David made and to the way God has graced N and N..." Vows and blessing would follow. The formal prayer of blessing might be part of the response section or part of the prayer section. In the sermon or elsewhere you could mention the historic ecclesiastical precedents researched by Yale Professor John Boswell.
It might be judicious to formally ask the congregation, "Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support this couple in their life in Christ?"
In either service format those in attendance may be given the opportunity to sign a certificate as witnesses. The officiant can make a note in the service register of the special occasion. Also, while the two individuals do not have to make identical vows (unlike weddings), they do have to prepare their vows carefully. Finally, it may be wise to include in the service leaflet the headings from the Book of Common Prayer, to show more readily that this service conforms to the Book of Common Prayer rubrics. A statement to this effect can even be included. This is part of how the congregation is carefully prepared for the service. Attention to inclusive language is another appropriate part of the preparation. Such things as choir anthems, incense, holy water sprinkling, blessing of rings or a chalice or a Ruth icon, etc. can be arranged according to local custom.
IMPLICATIONS
The fact that there are at least two ways the Book of Common Prayer can be used for covenant blessings means that the debate can shift in many dioceses. Now the debate can move from breaking rubrics to what makes good liturgy better, or to whether or not God's blessing of a couple (and of their parish through them) warrants liturgical expression, or even to whether or not homosexual love is sinful.
Some bishops may welcome this information. This lets them off the hook of rubrics. Also, this is a way for the Church to gain experience, to be reflected upon later, without the legality of the liturgical forms being at issue. This allows the Church to address more directly the more central issues of sexuality and blessing. Thank God we have a flexible Book of Common Prayer!
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The Rev. Kathryn Piccard, M.Div., Th.M., lives in Boston.
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*AND ON THE OTHER HAND -- A CALL FOR NEW BLESSING FORMS*
A consultation on the Episcopal Church's celebration of the commitment to life together of gay and lesbian baptized members took place on the campus of the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass., July 8-10. Information on the consultation was embargoed until just after the Integrity Convention in San Diego.
Participating in the three-day discussion were four bishops, fourteen priests, two lay seminary faculty members, and Bruce Garner, Integrity's president. It was emphasized that Garner and all other participants were representing only themselves and not any organizations.
The participating bishops were the Rt. Revs. E. Otis Charles (recently retired EDS Dean), Richard Shimpfky (El Camino Real), Douglas Theuner (New Hampshire), and R. Stewart Wood (Michigan). The group was convened by the Rev. Charles Bennison, Jr., an EDS faculty member, as were almost half the group. Two of the participants are General Convention deputies.
The consultation focused on four different areas regarding commitment celebrations: the theological dimensions, liturgical rites and ceremonies, pastoral and ethical considerations, and the canonical and legal questions. Work in these areas is continuing in four sub-committees, the results to be published in a pamphlet to be edited by Bennison and the Rev. Jane Garrett by the end of this year.
The consultation agreed on a proposed resolution to be presented to the 1994 General Convention:
RESOLUTION ON THE PREPARATION OF LITURGICAL FORMS FOR THE CELEBRATION OF A COMMITMENT TO LIFE TOGETHER
Be it resolved that the 71st General Convention direct the Standing Liturgical Commission to prepare and present to the 72nd General Convention proposed supplementary rites and ceremonies, to be used under the direction of the diocesan bishop by clergy and congregations celebrating the commitment of gay and lesbian members of this church to life together.
EXPLANATION
Although the Book of Common Prayer authorizes bishops to set forth such forms as are fitting to the occasions "when no service or prayer has been provided in this Book" (Prayer Book Page 13), if such events become more than occasional the church customarily acknowledges a pastoral need and seeks to regularize its worship by providing appropriate supplementary forms of worship. The occurrence of services celebrating the commitment to life together on the part of baptized members of our church who are gay men or lesbians is such that the entire church would benefit from the availability of appropriate forms for such services.
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*PUSSYCATS IN THE LIONS' DEN*
Integrity Members Attend "Ex-Gay" Conference
Louie Crew and Ann Carlson attended the first conference in the 14 year history of Regeneration, the Baltimore-based affiliate of Exodus International headed by the Episcopal Church's "ex-gay," Alan Medinger.
_________________________________________________________________
by Ann Carlson
We started with a charismatic worship service with the approximately 120 people who attended the conference. The opening lecture was given by Joe Dallas, the president of Exodus International. It started out with a big emotional negative for me. Joe introduced the subject by talking about how homosexuality is of so much interest to the general public right now. He referred to a recent Oprah Winfrey show on the subject and said that there are three ways that people view attempts to cure homosexuality. There are:
1) Those who see the suggestion that homosexuality is unnatural as an interference to their agenda.
2) Those who can change and do so completely.
3) Those who try to change their orientation but have difficulties overcoming their same sex attractive feelings.
He then said that these people have two differing views of the Gospel:
1) Those who believe the Gospel
2) Those who oppose the Gospel because it is an inconvenience to them.
After this brief introduction, with what I believe are serious "fighting words" and disrespect for our opinion, I was almost ready to walk out. I didn't see how I could emotionally stand a full day of this. (On the other hand, we did joke about attending the "Homophobia conference" at the Integrity/Baltimore meeting the night before. I suppose our words would have seemed just as cruel and lacking in understanding if one of their members had been sitting in on our meeting.)
The good news is that the above is by far the worst that I experienced that day. I don't even think that Joe realized how his words would sound to a seriously Christian pro-gay person. I confronted him about what he said at the end of the day, and he came near to denying that he ever said such things.
The tone of his talk was much warmer when he began discussing how to bring about change. In fact, if we could agree on the need for change, I would agree with the rest of what he said. The teaching on dealing with sin, on putting God first, on what to expect from ourselves during the process of change, was all very sound. He taught that the thing which defines people ultimately is their relationship to God, not their sexuality or any other isolated aspect of their personalities. He taught self-love and love for others as the first priority, and obedience to God as the primary motivator for what we do -- not our desire to change into something that *we* want to be.
Not only at this time, but throughout the day, I thought that the main and perhaps the only departure from what they teach and what I believe is the definition of what is sin (and something which turns out to be the same thing, how we read and interpret the Bible).
After the initial talk, we broke up into workshop groups. There were 6 workshops offered and between the three Integrity members present we covered 5 of them.
The first workshop I attended was entitled "Help for Family and Friends" and was lead by Alan Medinger, the director of Regeneration in Baltimore. The workshop was for straight family and friends of gays, how to help the gay person and also how to deal with one's own struggles. I thought most of the workshop was excellent. He played down any attempts to persuade gays to change, saying that a person will not change unless they *want* to. He emphasized love and unconditional acceptance, prayer, and self-examination (the old "you can't change someone else, but you can change YOU.") It would have been great, except that he got into some reasons why you might want to *try* to convince or at least help your gay relatives to change. He said that "gay males are 10‑20 times more promiscuous than their straight male counterparts," "lesbian relationships are typically unhealthy power struggles," and "it's the rarest thing in the world for a gay male couple to have any commitment to each other before having sex."
Alan also mentioned that loving is not giving in or avoiding conflict. He said that it's important to speak the truth when it needs to be said, because you may be the only one to speak it. I thought about that statement and knew that I needed to say that I felt it was *not* truth to say those things about typical gay people -- particularly in the context of comparing Christian gays with Christian "ex-gays."
After I made my remarks to Alan in the workshop, one of the ladies of the group came up to me to talk. She said she was glad that I felt free to comment. I said "thank-you." She didn't walk away so I waited for what was coming next: "But I can't accept your belief that your orientation is a gift from God." I am straight, but I couldn't see a way to explain that to this poor woman without confusing her to death. As she walked away, I chuckled and thought "well, if you really want me to change..."
I had a hard time figuring out what to think of Alan. He seemed to be very sincere and loving, even open minded. If he were really only doing in his ministry what he claims to be doing, I would have many fewer problems with Regeneration. But I stayed with Cheryl Johnson, a former ex-gay (ex-ex-gay?) from his group. Her testimony of her experiences with Alan and Regeneration did not mesh with what he said of himself and his ministry. While I believe Cheryl, I think Alan believes what he says of himself. I think he just doesn't realize how much what they do is, in effect, coercion rather than assistance to people who have been allowed to decide for themselves.
by Louie Crew
I went expecting lesbigays like me to be attacked. I did not find that. I had no need of the Abednego asbestos vest and Shedrek shoes that I had carefully packed. I rejoice.
This conference contrasted radically with the regional meeting of EURRR in Cranford, NJ a couple of years ago, where the attack level was extremely high. I am glad that I went to both, glad that I clarified for myself some of the differences.
Judge for yourself whether I have been scorched unawares. One thing that my perspective lacks is the influence of those who have been through such "therapies" and now resent having been tricked by them.
One major difference between EURRR and Regeneration was the audience: the EURRR audience was mainly a group of hetero malcontents assembled in a huff to protect the Church. EURRR's exegesis had nothing at stake for them personally, except reassurance that they were right and everyone else was wrong. Leaders of EURRR explored 6 antigay passages in minute detail, but since these passages do not address hetero-salvation, when the group finally broke for discussion, not surprisingly the smaller groups dealt far more with other complaints than with a discussion of lesbigay persons. Those at my EURRR table seemed to think that they knew few if any lesbians or gays personally. Nor, I felt, would they want to.
At Catonsville, however, the audience itself seemed as lesbigay as any other lesbigay assembly I have ever attended. Much body language was lesbigay -- no less so than when I attended the Christmas concert of the Gay Men's Chorus of NYC. A smattering of straits stood out by a clunkiness that not even the most ardent lesbigay "passer" could carry off, especially when he or she perceived eternal life to be at stake. The Regeneration conference seemed to achieve a space where it was safe to manifest a wide range of lesbigay mannerisms. (No flaming queans except me, I admit, nor any dykes on bikes; so I admit, not a "full" range, but full enough for a serious conference.)
I rejoiced to be among a flock of my own people. I rejoiced to listen to their candor with struggle, struggle which I know intimately from my own experience, having waited until I was 28 to accept my own homosexuality and having waited until I was 36 [now I am 56] to embrace it as integral, not just a sinful thorn in my flesh. That last step they have not taken, or at least, not in the same way. I was nurtured by their honesty about anguish in their spiritual choices. I have not chosen glibly, nor it appeared to me, have most of the persons I heard.
I rejoiced to hear my sisters and brother longing to be faithful to God and to be faithful to what God wants from their them. We differ mainly in what we discern God wants from each of us.
Too many times we want to defend ourselves against the onslaught of every possible misinterpretation by wiping out for everyone else what we consider to be, or to have been, false choices for ourselves. People on each side of the Regeneration/Integrity model too easily reduce the faith choices of others to either Sin or Stupidity. With eternal life the stake, that polarization should surprise no one. But when I imagine God brooding as She does over all creation, I do not find her throwing definitive lightning bolts in either direction. She never promised that our choices would be easy nor that what is right for me would be right for someone else. She does promise that God's name is Love and that God's love is indiscriminately and unconditionally available to absolutely everyone.
Winners?
God's greater, more certain prophecy:
All God's children win finally and just as soon as each can connect to that promise.
My lesser, more vulnerable prophecy:
Regeneration's entire modus vivendi depends on the inerrancy of its reading of the Big Six. Reading those the way they do, they live as faithfully to their vision as they can. I pray that I may live as faithfully to my understanding of God's call to my own life.
I doubt Regeneration's reading of those passages will hold fast in Christendom. Regeneration inherited those readings. Those readings in others' hands have underwritten enormous injustice and cruelty, as Joe Dallas acknowledged, cruelty which the God of Love has no part of.
Workshops & leaders:
1st Plenary Session: Joe Dallas, "The Change Process"
2nd Plenary Session: Joe Dallas, "The Church and the Homosexual"
3rd Plenary Session: Questions and Answers
Bob Ragan, Fairfax Regeneration leader: "Fantasy & Masturbation: Destruction of the True Self"
Willa Medinger: "Healing of the Feminine Soul"
Alan Medinger: "Help for Families and Friends"
Dave Winters, leader of New Directions in Northern Virginia: "Pornography -- Harmless? Helpless? Healing?"
Dr. Doris Morgan, Baltimore leader and co-sponsor: "Sexual Addiction"
You may order audio tapes of all sessions at $3.50 per session or $25 for all sessions and workshops from Regeneration, P. O. Box 9830, Baltimore, MD 21284.
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TWO NEW INTEGRITY REGIONS!
Effective October 1, 1994
[outline map of United States with titles appropriately placed]
MIDWEST REGION
NORTHEAST REGION
WESTERN REGION
SOUTH CENTRAL REGION
SOUTHEAST REGION
At its meeting in San Diego immediately before the National Convention, the Board approved the division of the Southern Region into two new regions as of October 1, 1994: the Southeast and South Central Regions. The South Central Region includes four states from the current Southern Region (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma), two from the Midwest Region (Missouri and Kansas), and two from the Western Region (Colorado and New Mexico). In addition, West Virginia was transferred to the Midwest Region. Kansas City is the only affected chapter outside the current Southern Region. It was felt that the current Southern Region is overly large and that the area of the new South Central Region has tremendous opportunity for growth of new chapters.
Although the new regions will not become effective until October 1, 1994, when the new Board takes office, Regional Vice Presidents will be elected in each new region in the spring, 1994 election.
In other action on chapters, the Board certified Integrity/Bethlehem, Integrity/East Tennessee, and Integrity/Waterbury Area. Declared no longer active were Integrity/Charlotte, Integrity/Colorado, Integrity/San Antonio, Integrity/San Francisco Bay Area and Integrity/Triangle. Declared no longer chapters in formation were Dignity-Integrity/Charlottesville and Integrity/Berkshire.
A new chapter-in-formation has been established: Integrity/Mid-Michigan, All Saints' Church, 800 Abbott Rd., East Lansing MI 48823.
On April 16, the Board appointed James E. Mackay as the Midwest Regional Vice President to fill the unexpired term of Jeff Dey, who resigned. James may be reached at P.O. Box 287, Mayville, ND 58257-0287. Western Regional Vice President Don Stouder has announced his intention to resign from the Board since he is seeking ordination outside the Episcopal Church. The Board will act to fill that position prior to its November 5, 1993 meeting.
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AELRED, A SAINT FOR OUR TIME
by Steven C. Schaber
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, whose concept of spiritual friendship is expressed in such powerful and poetic language, is seen by us in Integrity as validating the possibility of a truly spiritual and sacred love between same-sex persons. He has become our patron saint, a figure who, we like to think, might have understood our quest for a Christian vision that would include the blessing of the relationships which give our lives meaning. His use of physical images to express spiritual experiences reminds us of the poetry of the Song of Songs, sensuous language that celebrates the beauty of the body and the spiritual wonder of physical love. What happened, we wonder, to that profound sense of the sacredness of the body?
This celebratory side of Aelred is not really the whole picture. Would this twelfth century Cistercian monk be flattered to be chosen our patron? I'm afraid he probably would not. He certainly would be horrified by our often ephemeral romances, devoid of commitment or any real focus on the spirit. In the context of gay sexuality, Aelred's hand-holding monks are almost quaint. And Aelred was not urging his monks to hold hands as a prelude to sexual intimacy. When he said spiritual friendship, he meant exactly that. Aelred might be moved by our committed, enduring relationships at their best, but along with all the positive language of love, he has a genuine dread of the body and the power of its desires. He, too, lived in that arena of conflict that most of us know within ourselves, where the claims of body and spirit are often seen as being at war with each other. Not just as a monk, but even as he looks back upon his previous secular life he distinguishes spiritual friendship from carnal love, and insists that the flesh must be kept under strictest discipline lest it corrupt and defile the ascent of the spirit. "The real beginning of carnal friendship proceeds from an affection which like a harlot directs its step after every passer-by, following its own lustful ears and eyes in every direction. By means of the avenues of these senses it brings into the mind itself images of beautiful bodies or voluptuous objects. To enjoy these as he pleases the carnal man thinks is blessedness." Sounds alarmingly like Hillcrest on a Saturday night! "The perverse and lustful strive to give a relish to their shameful acts, ...defiling this very kiss with such shame that thus to be kissed is nothing else than to be corrupted. How much such a kiss ought to be detested, abominated, shunned, resisted, every honorable person knows." There we have it -- the language of reproach that we are so familiar with, not only from the homophobes out there, but often from our own inner voices, the internalized homophobia that we have all learned from society, from the church, telling us that we are not worthy, that our very lives are, as the Roman Church so delicately puts it, morally disordered.
It seems to me that Saint Aelred may really be even more appropriate a patron for us than we at first realized, because of this very human conflict. And he may be an appropriate figure for us to contemplate when we get a bit ahead of ourselves with our demands upon the Episcopal Church. If our patron saint is so conflicted, perhaps we should remember that every individual, saint, bishop, dean, and convener, is also at a certain point on his or her journey, conditioned by his generation, his experience, his own needs, values, desires and fears. We in Integrity do not speak with a single voice; each of us wrestles with those internal demons, our fears and anxieties, in our own way, and within each individual there is often that same divided heart that we see in Aelred. Aelred had a successful life at court in his youth, and at least one intimate friendship which he describes in "The Mirror of Charity," but he was at the same time in great spiritual distress. "They did not know that there was evil in me... Terrible was the distress I felt within myself, tormenting me, corrupting my soul with intolerable stench." Saint Aelred clearly was drawn to the company of men with whom he shared intense emotional friendship, expressed in strikingly physical language. He also feared this in himself, and sought out the disciplined life of a monk, renouncing the possibility of that sort of relationship for which most of us hope. As I wrestle with my own demons, my spiritual aspirations, my body's longings, my joys and my bitter disappointments, I turn to Saint Aelred, patron of the struggle within the Church, and within myself. He does not have an easy answer.
-----
Steven Schaber wrote this article shortly before his death. It appeared in "Integrity News," the publication of Integrity/San Diego, February, 1993.
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TWENTY YEARS AGO THE FOUNDING OF INTEGRITY
by Louie Crew
I first glimpsed how huge are the forces which conspire to violate my wholeness in a strange epiphany back in 1974. In February of that year another man and I had united our lives. Never before had anyone loved me who did not, at least in some measure, have to. All at once Ernest showed me how Jesus' similar claim could be true. I could begin to become whole.
Newly baptized in God's and Ernest's love, I arrived in Berkeley as an NEH fellow for the summer. I called Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to inquire, "Where can my gay spouse and I meet other gay Episcopalians while here?"
For a moment the full switchboard seemed to short-circuit. Giving one inane excuse after another, each secretary transferred the call to another, so that every one could relish the occasion.
I expected such silly run-arounds in rural Georgia where we had lived openly as a gay and racially integrated couple, but not in the city most famous for its large gay population, and not in the most liberal of all Anglican houses, and not five years after the purported beginning of gay liberation, and not....
Thus I ran head-on into the real world, where, unlike the world of comic books, evil and righteousness maintain no specific address, except yours and mine.
The Holy Spirit used their highly placed tittering to prompt me into taking responsibility. I knew that God promiscuously loves everybody! All lucky enough to know that share an obligation to tell the good news. When I returned to rural Georgia, I took out ads in church and gay papers announcing a new publication, called Integrity.
Others have taken that small beginning and have built a ministry that has acted within and beyond the Episcopal Church over the past decade, influencing every General Convention. Over [65] chapters now worship and function as healing communities. Thousands have entered or re-entered the Church, many into priestly vocation.
-----
Dr. Louie Crew is Contributing Editor of this journal. This article, entitled "Compulsions & Affirmations," first appeared in "Christianity and Crisis," March 17, 1986.
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CELEBRATE 1994:
INTEGRITY 20/STONEWALL 25
Wednesday, January 12: Feast of St. Aelred, Patron of Integrity
Wednesday, February 2: Louie Crew and Ernest Clay's 20th Anniversary (If they hadn't gotten together in 1974, there would be no Integrity!) This event will be the centerpiece of a fundraiser in New York
Saturday, June 18 - Saturday, June 25: Gay Games 4 (New York City) Contact Integrity/New York for possible accommodations.
Saturday, June 25: Ecumenical Worship Service for Stonewall 25 (New York City)
Sunday, June 26: March on the United Nations to Affirm Human Rights of Lesbian and Gay People
Thursday, August 25 - Saturday, September 3: The General Convention of the Episcopal Church (Indianapolis)
Friday, August 26: Festival Eucharist Celebrating 20 Years of Integrity, Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis
Saturday, October 8: Integrity's Actual 20th Anniversary (the date of the first subscription to "The Integrity Forum")
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INTEGRITY/NORTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA PROUDLY ANNOUNCES ITS
3RD ANNUAL RETREAT
Gays, Lesbians and the Liberation of Jesus
October 15 - October 17
Erie, PA
Retreat Leader:
The Rev. Brian McHugh
openly gay priest in the Diocese
of Rhode Island
Tetreat Fee: $42 (includes meals and lodging)
For more information contact
Dorothy Konyha: 814-774-0903
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*Our Ecumenical Partners on Lesgay Justice Issues*
OUR FILE IS CALLED "PRESBASH.93"
by Kim Byham
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took a strong anti-gay position with respect to equal access to leadership positions at its June 2 - 9 national convention in Orlando, but it attempted to slightly soften the blow by a familiar ploy: calling for a three-year study of the issue.
Although the Presbyterian Church in 1978 had denied ordination to lesbians and gay men, leaders of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PLGC) contended that that resolution did not have "constitutional authority" (the equivalent of our canon law) and, in any case, that it did not apply to those ordained before 1978.
Commissioners (deputies) to the denomination's 205th General Assembly refuted that contention by stating that "the 'authoritative interpretation' of the church's constitution is that self-affirming practicing homosexual persons may not be ordained as ministers of the Word and Sacrament, elders or deacons." Since "elders" and "deacons" in the Presbyterian Church are the equivalent of lay leaders in the Episcopal Church, the impact is to preclude lesbians and gay men from all positions of visible leadership in the Presbyterian Church.
At midnight on June 7, by a vote of 396‑155 with seven abstentions, commissioners approved a resolution developed by the Assembly's Commission on Human Sexuality. The report came to the floor at 2:00 p.m. and was the target of numerous amendments which slowed the process. In one hour, seven amendments were offered and referred to the Advisory Committee on the Constitution because of their possible constitutional implications. At that time, the Moderator, a 43-year old Alaskan minister, David Lee Dobler, halted further action on the resolution.
Earlier an amendment asking that ten lesbians and gay men be allowed to speak to the Assembly had been defeated, but prior to the dinner break, the Moderator, who had stated his opposition to lesgay ordinations, took personal privilege so that "we might act as a family of Christ" and gave 12 minutes of time for about 100 gays and lesbians and their supporters to come to the stage and address the Assembly. About 30 spoke, offering their "gifts to the church." One man, George Smith, an ordained elder who is gay, of Lafayette, La., said, "I have met many warm and loving Christian people here in the last few days, struggling to do what I believe is God's will. Still, there is no place at your table where I feel comfortable. I quit the church."
At the end, many commissioners stood and applauded the group.
During the earlier debate, Elder Commissioner (lay deputy) Joanne Drake of Western Colorado Presbytery underscored her plea for dialogue by telling of the feud between her lesbian daughter and her fundamentalist daughter. "My overwhelming pain," she said, "must be something like the pain that God is feeling. We need to talk to each other ... my daughters are finally beginning to talk to each other again."
Others disagreed about the benefits of further dialogue. "Ridiculous," the Rev. Julian Walthall, an Alabama delegate opposed to equal ordination opportunities, said during the debate. "This church has been studying this issue 15 years. It's time to have the courage to say ... what the Presbyterian Church stands for."
The Assembly concurred with the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on the Constitution that each presbytery (diocese) be "strongly urged" to develop a plan for congregational and presbyterywide study as the church is engaged in "open, diligent, prayerful" study and dialogue on the issues of human sexual behavior and orientation as they relate to membership, ministry and ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with results to be reported to the 208th General Assembly (1996). Sessions (vestries), presbyteries and synods are to determine how to assure an "open and non-incriminating" environment for lesgay persons to be engaged in the process without jeopardizing their reputation or standing in the church.
"This was as close as they could come to doing nothing," said the Rev. Douglas Ensminger of Houston, who remains a Presbyterian but pastors the independent Church of the Reconciling Servant. "Both sides were hoping for something to close the issue, but we may have not done anything more than picked the scab off." Ensminger doubts if the study will change any minds. He predicts the local studies "will get mean and nasty. There will be people hurt." The positions are irreconcilable and "there doesn't seem to be a willingness to live with folks who disagree."
The decision for a churchwide study comes just two years after a denominational task force presented a controversial report on sexuality that, among other things, recommended the ordination of openly lesgay persons. That study, presented at the 1991 General Assembly in Baltimore, was rejected and commissioners instead passed by an 80% margin a resolution that said homosexuality "is not God's wish for humanity" and that "present understanding of God's will precludes the ordination of persons who do not repent of homosexual practice." Surveys of church members have found that 80 percent support the ban.
The issue was resurrected late in 1991 when the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr, who is openly lesbian, was selected as co-pastor of the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester, N.Y. The action was appealed to the denomination's highest court, the Permanent Judicial Council, which, in November, 1992, ruled Spahr's appointment was invalid, claiming the 1978 policy banning lesgay ordination was binding and that it applied to appointments, not simply to ordinations. PLGC took the position that only General Assembly could make such determinations and it now has, stating that the interpretations of the 1978 ordination ban as "considered by the judicial commissions of the church currently carry the weight of 'authoritative interpretations.'"
LESGAY DEMONSTRATION
After commissioners approved the anti-gay measure about 70 gays, lesbians, and supporters came onto the convention floor carrying a wooden cross and singing "Jesus Loves Me" and "I Shall Not Be Moved." Slogans such as "How long, O Church?" "Love without justice is no love at all" "The Church is God's: You cannot shut us out," and "You want to study us to death" rang out through the hall.
Others shouted, "Stop using the Bible as a weapon," and "It is not gay and lesbian people who will divide the church - it is bigotry."
At 12:15 a.m. Moderator Dobler began a prayer over the protests and recessed the Assembly.
Dobler, elected moderator of the 2.9 million-member denomination at the beginning of the Assembly, said, "I believe that the middle will hold on this. There are voices on the edges that our Lord and we need to hear, but we don't have to be driven by them."
The following day, the Rev. Jane Spahr said: "This is a very painful time for us again." The church has studied the ordination issue "over and over again since 1976," she said. "How can we be equal in dialogue if we can't be fully at the table?"
"We feel we are being sold down the drain again," said the self styled Wrong Rev. Howard Warren of Indianapolis, founder of Presbyterian ActUp.
In Rochester, the Revs. Anthony and Gail Ricciuti, co-pastors of Downtown Church, issued a statement calling the Assembly decision "a travesty... . The action, in our view, puts the gospel on hold and puts decent people of faith on ice. For justice delayed is justice denied. Further study now only continues the assault on the dignity and humanity of gay and lesbian people by treating them as so many laboratory rats whose tolerance of our ecclesiastical toxicity we are determined to test."
SOUND FAMILIAR?
Following a statement that "the ordination of self-affirming practicing homosexual persons" is inappropriate, the Assembly resolution continued, "Whereas, the above statement not withstanding, there is confusion and serious division in the church which points us to the urgent need of the reconciling spirit of Christ..." To some this seemed highly reminiscent of the second paragraph of the Episcopal Church's 1991 A-104sa resolution: "That this church continue to work to reconcile the discontinuity between this teaching [of the appropriateness of sex only within heterosexual marriage] and the experience of many members of this body"?
Prior to the Assembly, PLGC was tragically optimistic about the chances of a resolution from the New Brunswick Presbytery in New Jersey. The resolution would have permitted presbyteries and sessions to ordain whomever they choose. In that sense it was similar to the original A-104 at the 1991 General Convention as proposed by the Commission on Human Affairs leaving ordination decisions to the dioceses. The New Brunswick resolution never made it out of committee.
PRINCETON SEMINARY DEAN LEADS ANTI-GAYS
One example of the importance of the issue this year in the Presbyterian Church was the so-called "Princeton Declaration," written by some faculty members of the country's leading Presbyterian seminary, stating the Bible is unambiguous in the condemnation of homosexual practice.
The Rev. Thomas Gillespie, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, said after the June 7 vote, "It is clear where the church now stands - it stands by the statements it has made in the past." Many Presbyterians want to deal with the homosexuality issue on the basis of human experience, Gillespie said in a news conference. "Human experience should not be denied its place, but it is a subordinate place" to scripture and the confessions of the church, he said.
CONSERVATIVES CLAIM VICTORY
In the July issue of his publication, "Regeneration News," "ex-gay" Episcopalian Alan Medinger expressed his view of the Presbyterian Assembly which he attended at the request of a charismatic group:
"There was a dramatic victory for historic Christian truth. Although there was an agreement to have further study, the critical gay ordination issue was defeated - 72% to 28%. The defeat was seen as so devastating that the homosexual forces literally rioted. They took over the convention hall, took to the microphones, cursed and proceeded to destroy whatever sympathy they had gained. They alienated the moderates to the extent that many believe their cause received a major setback. The enemy's work among them was exposed."
Charles S. Collins, a member of Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester also attended the convention and had a very different view:
"We staged a 'witness' to our outrage immediately following the vote of the Assembly. We chanted and sang as we carried a large patchwork triangle and cross around the Assembly hall. We shouted our anger for about 15 minutes, but the exhausted commissioners showed little emotion. The Moderator recited a prayer of adjournment over *We are a Gentle, Angry People*, and the hall emptied like a fire drill.
"We worked very hard at this Assembly, and we will work hard again. The talent and commitment of our leaders was inspiring. And we have amazingly devoted straight allies who will not let me retire from the battle for justice."
OTHER ACTIONS
The following evening, amid similar but less protracted debate, commissioners rejected by a vote of 302‑192 a resolution challenging the Boy Scouts' exclusion of gay leaders and scouts. But they voted 268‑226 to urge an "end [to] all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the U.S. military." And they condemned Colorado for passing Amendment 2. Wendy A. McAnich-Ruenzi of the Presbytery of the Cascades in Portland, Ore., urged the delegates "to consider our hypocrisy" in opposing discrimination against homosexuals except in the church itself.
Commissioners reaffirmed support of legal abortion, including denominational membership in the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights and resolutions supporting the Freedom of Choice Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
ECUMENICAL TIES APPROVED
After heated debate commissioners voted 334‑166 to join a plan that would create a "Church of Christ Uniting" proposed by the Consultation on Church Union. Under the plan, each participating denomination would keep its internal governing structure and ordination process, but form "covenanting" councils. The councils would allow ministers in the member denominations to be mutually recognized so the churches could conduct common worship services.
The Consultation on Church Union is made up of the Presbyterian (USA), African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Methodist Episcopal, Episcopal, International Council of Community Churches, United Church of Christ and United Methodist denominations. Since the UCC permits the ordination of sexually active lesbians and gay men, as do some dioceses of the Episcopal Church, it should be interesting to see what the mutual recognition of orders will lead to. All participating churches are scheduled to vote on the plan by 1998. Besides the Presbyterians, only the African Methodist Episcopal and International Council of Community Churches have approved it to date.
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*From "The Anglican Digest"*:
Some people may have been misled in thinking that the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer wishes to direct General Convention positions. AFP does not take positions on issues. As Archbishop Hollis has stated: "Our hope is not for an AFP vigil, but for an effort from all people in the Church who pray. We depend on the support of the Daughters [of the King], ECW, Cursillo, ERM [Episcopal Renewal Ministries], Integrity, Episcopalians United, the religious orders, and others to make the vigil in the dioceses a reality." [Editor's Note: Hopefully this is true, but AFP is a member of Pewsaction which took a strongly anti-gay position at the 1991 General Convention.]
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*METHODISTS GOING TO DENVER DESPITE AMENDMENT 2*
by Kim Byham
Unlike the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church will hold its 1996 General Conference in Denver despite Colorado voters' approval of the anti-gay Amendment 2.
The Commission on the General Conference, meeting in Denver June 4‑5, voted unanimously to hold the convention in Denver despite pleas by some Methodist leaders and agencies to boycott the state.
In a statement accompanying their reaffirmation of Denver as the Conference site, members of the commission said they stood with those "working in behalf of the civil rights of all persons." They also set in motion plans for a "witness in support of civil and human rights for all persons" during the time the delegates are in Denver. The United Methodist Church teaches that while homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching," it also insists that "all persons, regardless of age, gender, marital status or sexual orientation, are entitled to have their human civil rights ensured. The United Methodist Church can make the strongest possible witness in behalf of the civil rights of all persons by holding the 1996 General Conference in Denver."
The denomination picked Denver as the site for the 1996 meeting in 1991, about a year before Colorado voters approved Amendment 2. The General Conference, held every four years, is the church's highest legislative body.
Unlike the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado, local Methodists have actively worked against the anti-gay law. At its June meeting, the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference (diocese) committed to a letter-writing campaign and will seek funds for television commercials in an effort to repeal Amendment 2.
"The church clearly states we affirm civil rights regardless of race, ethnic background, gender, or sexual orientation," said Janet Forbes, program director for the Conference. "The issue was approved by a good majority."
Petitions asking the church to move the Conference, distributed by Colorado United Methodists Against Discrimination, were signed by more than 2,500 United Methodists.
Methodists urging support for the boycott and a new location for the General Conference included the program coordinating body for the California-Nevada Annual Conference (diocese); a group of leaders from the North Central Jurisdiction; and the Methodist Federation for Social Action, a liberal activist group. The latter group had contended that "the moral integrity of the United Methodist Church would be seriously compromised if it scheduled its most highly visible and most prestigious gathering in a place which espouses an official policy in such blatant opposition to the protection of human rights and our church's clearly-stated and widely-supported position."
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*NY-VT METHODISTS SUPPORTIVE*
A conference (diocese) of the United Methodist Church in June voted to support the right of clergy to officiate at same-sex "covenant unions." The resolution approved by the Troy Annual Conference was referred to the denomination's Judicial Council to determine whether the action is contrary to church law.
The Troy conference, representing 67,000 United Methodists in upstate New York and Vermont, also expressed opposition to the church's ban on gay clergy and the denomination's stand that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching."
*AS ARE WEST COAST PRESBYTERIANS*
A synod of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) defied a national church policy and upheld the ordination of a gay man and a lesbian as deacons.
The Synod of the Pacific's judicial commission ruled 6‑1 on April 5 that Heather Boonstra and George Link should be allowed to serve as deacons at Central Presbyterian Church in Eugene, OR.
The decision was challenged and was ultimately annulled by the action of the General Synod in June.
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*BRITISH METHODISTS FOLLOW THE "VIA MEDIA"*
British Methodists decided June 29 not to bar gay men and lesbians from the ministry, but also not to authorize their ordination. In apparently contradictory motions they first voted by 293 votes to 250 to reaffirm church teaching on "chastity for all outside marriage and fidelity within it." Then a motion which "recognises, affirms and celebrates the participation and ministry of lesbians and gay men in the Church" was carried by 313 votes to 217.
The compromise was designed to prevent resignations from the Church on both sides of the debate. The first resolution said the affirmation on chastity "must be made clear to all candidates for ministry, office and membership, and, having established this, affirms that the existing procedures of our Church are adequate to deal with all such cases".
The result was receive in silence at the Methodist Conference, after traditionalist demands for a ban on lesgays from office and even membership were soundly rejected.
The Rev. Neil Whitehouse, leader of the Methodist group in the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, said the result was a victory, "but we are confused and frustrated as well as elated."
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*HOMOPHOBIA AND MISOGYNY LEADS TO SCHISM AND CONDEMNATION*
At its June meeting in Grand Rapids, Mich., the conservative Christian Reformed Church voted to the ordination of women. That vote must be affirmed by next year's synod and there is mounting pressure against it. Interestingly, although the CRC, which officially opposes teaching evolution, has never voted on ordination of lesgay persons, opponents of women's ordination are apparently using the specter that opening the door to women will inevitably lead to letting in gays.
The CRC is a Dutch immigrant church, the counterpart of the *Gereformeerde Kerken*, the dissenting Reformed Church in the Netherlands. The church has 311,000 members in 979 congregations, about a quarter of them in Canada. The other major Reformed denomination in North America is the Reformed Church in America which is somewhat more liberal.
In an unusual ecumenical gesture, the CRC has been asked to repent by an even smaller and more conservative church, the Presbyterian Church in America. Representatives to the Presbyterian Church in America's highest policy-making body voted June 8 to call the CRC to repent over its "departure from the Scriptures." The charges are "letting women preach and teach, admitting homosexuality in the ministerial ranks, teaching evolutionary theories at a church college and harassing faithful ministers of the gospel."
Several Korean-American churches in Southern California are thinking about pulling out of the CRC. The Rev. Young J. Kim told "The Los Angeles Times" that about 30 Korean church leaders called for a new denomination to be formed October 18 in Los Angeles. He cited the long-simmering women's ordination issue and a perceived "open attitude toward homosexuality" as the primary causes of dissatisfaction by Korean-heritage pastors in the denomination. "The Korean pastors are concerned that the denomination is disloyal to the word of God, which doesn't allow women in the ministry or homosexual behavior," he said.
John Choi, the denomination's Korean ministries coordinator, said the charge that the denomination has an open attitude toward homosexuality is inaccurate. "We have some sympathy or openness to those people who are homosexual, just as we would to an alcoholic or someone with a physical or mental disability, but our church does not allow homosexuals to preach or lead a church," Choi said.
The all-male delegates to the CRC's annual synod voted 95‑88, to open the positions of elder, minister and evangelist to women. The 1990 synod passed the same resolution, but the 1992 synod weakened it to allow women only to "teach, expound the Word of God and provide pastoral care, under the supervision of elders."
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*THE FOURTH NATIONAL EPISCOPAL AIDS CONFERENCE*
HOPE AND HEALING:
THE CHURCH IN THE SECOND DECADE OF AIDS
February 3 - 6, 1994
Los Angeles/Santa Monica, California
For Information/Registration
write to:
NEAC
1254 WEST 6TH STREET
SUITE 305
LOS ANGELES, CA 90017
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*OPERATION RESCUE PICKETS BISHOP*
Operation Rescue, the militant anti-abortion and anti-gay group, came to Rhode Island in the spring. When other targets obtained restraining orders against the group, they made the Bishop of Rhode Island, the Rt. Rev. George Hunt, their chief subject of harassment. Holding signs saying "Homosexuality is Immoral and Evil!!! Tell Bishop Hunt!" and other epithets, they picketed for several days in front of Diocesan House, at the institution of a new rector in Pawtucket and outside the Capitol Building when the bishop was testifying before a legislative committee.
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*cc'd*
With this issue we inaugurate a new feature called cc'd. We have always reprinted copies of important letters which were sent to us, but we want to put this in a more organized way to encourage even more of you to send copies of your correspondence. Send it even if you don't want it published, but be sure to clearly indicate that! This issue contains three letters from clergy to bishops. Two concern deployment. There are now perhaps four hundred "out" lesbian and gay clergy in the Episcopal Church and employing them in any but the friendliest dioceses remains problematic. The other letter is a powerful one to General Seminary Dean Craig Anderson protesting his action removing Professor Deirdre Good and her companion from seminary housing.
June 18, 1993
The Rt. Rev. David E. Johnson
Bishop of Massachusetts
Dear Bishop Johnson,
I learned recently that you are responsible for withdrawing my name from the list of four finalists for the position of rector of St. Paul's, Nantucket. After two weeks of inquiry, I was informed by your diocese that although my diocese supported my candidacy, you were uncomfortable with the prospect of a self-affirming gay priest in that particular resort island community. I was also told that you would consider my candidacy at "more suitable" parishes in your diocese, and I hope you will let me know when such openings arise. Your deployment officer described St. Paul's as a parish that has a reputation of "eating its clergy alive" and Nantucket as a community that would have a potentially volatile reaction "should you decide to practice your sexuality, which would reflect poorly on the diocese."
I'm approaching my tenth year of ordained ministry. I have served parishes in North Carolina, New Mexico and Michigan. For three years I've lived on a northern Lake Michigan island with three hundred Irish Catholic Americans who are generally not known for their tolerance. I currently work as a chaplain at a Level VI maximum-security state prison, where the inmates routinely attempt to eat custody and treatment staff alive.
As a gay priest, I tend not to fare well in the Church deployment process. On three occasions, however, I have been a finalist -- always a bridesmaid, never the bride -- for a rector's position. Each search process was long, involved, challenging and thoughtful until a bishop, such as yourself, intervened, objected to my participation, subverted the process and dashed my hopes of responding to a call.
In the majority of dioceses, my resume is never even considered beyond the initial stage of a search. Your office had the opportunity to reject my application at the beginning of the process. Why wasn't this done? It is so new, almost a miracle, when a parish demonstrates the risk and grace in considering my candidacy. It becomes a process of leaning back and trusting that God is somehow right smack in the middle of all this and has done all kinds of things to pull us together, against incredible odds, for the purpose of ministry.
Bishop Johnson, I am accusing you and your Episcopal cohorts of vocational rape. You have, without any hint of professional courtesy or pastoral sensitivity, stolen the dream I had of serving the Nantucket parish. What have I done that is so wrong? What is it about me that generates so much hatred? How could I possibly pose a threat to your Episcopate?
People frequently tell me how they think I'm a more sensitive, compassionate priest because of the discrimination I've experienced. That's ridiculous. There is nothing beneficial, nothing ennobling about a lifetime struggle against discrimination. Just ask my prisoners, the most outcaste members of society, throwaway people, the forgotten ones who know painfully well how cruel, debilitating, humiliating and infuriating prejudice and bigotry can be. Their crimes, their vandalism, their murders, their rapes may be seen as a violent rejection of society by people who find that society no longer offers them any fulfillment of their hopes, or even anything to hope for, except its destruction.
This letter is not so much another bitter lamentation about the lack of employment opportunities for women, queers and people of color (Nantucket, a parish that bills itself as a "welcoming and caring church family, open to all," had provided me with the opportunity), as it is my soulful regret that you do not know me. You hear plenty about me from others, but you do not know me. You know nothing about my life. And until you do, please refrain from making decisions that violate my priesthood and cheat me of life.
Respectfully submitted,
The Rev. Zalmon O. Sherwood
Ionia, MI 48846
29 July 1993
The Rt. Rev. Craig B. Anderson, Dean
The General Theological Seminary
Dear Bishop Anderson:
We are writing to you to offer our support for Dr. Deirdre J. Good, in regards to her current status at The General Theological Seminary. As alumni (Class of 1988) we would like to express our sympathy for Dr. Good and our concern for the decision made by your office in conjunction with the Board of Trustees and its Executive Committee.
As former seminarians at General, we lived together for three of our four years in residence, which included for both of us an intern year while working in the New York City metropolitan area. We lived as a couple -- gay men, in relationship. During this time, we not only lived together but offered our lives to one another and to members of the community. We entered into our relationship almost simultaneously with our matriculation as students, and that relationship continued past the time of our graduation and subsequent ordination. During the three-year period of sharing an apartment at General, we entertained faculty members who still currently hold tenure, current members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, as well as numerous students and residents. While we shared our lives, as a couple, with various members of the community, we continued throughout our time at General to be circumspect regarding our relationship given the proclivity of the ordination process towards condemnation of homosexuality. In addition, we know in fact that we were not the first gay couple to live together at General and have not been the last.
It is our hope that at this time in the life of the church and the greater community that the focus of this particular institution will be towards the support of any and all relationships that lend themselves towards mutual respect, dignity, and positive contribution to society and to the Church. The limitations to the freedom of expression of our relationship during our seminary life hampered the wider support we might have received from the greater community. Those limitations also prevented the full celebration of an important part of our lives at General -- our participation in the community. It is our hope that the support offered to "traditional families" may be extended to faculty and students who have forged significant bonds that are equally life-giving. It is also our hope that no present or future policy of the General Seminary will attempt to Hinder its faculty, staff or students from co-habitating and maintaining such relationships.
Finally, it should be said that we are grateful, overall, for the community experience we did have at General, and how it helped to enhance our understanding of our unique identities which we use in our ministries. While it had been our intention to have a life-long, committed relationship, our own individual growth and journeys have led us to new places. We are no longer in the relationship we had while at General, but it is that experience which we believe has helped enable us to mature into individuals who have relationships which are life-long, committed, and holy in the sense that they are integrally part of our own understanding of what it means to be a child of God and a priest of God's church. We are thankful to the witness of General as an evolving community, that attempts to be catholic in its witness of our faith, and hope and pray that it can once again lead the way as a bearer of the light within the Church.
Faithfully yours,
The Rev. Anthony G. Miller
Merrick, New York
The Rev. Douglas F. Nissing
East Norwalk, Connecticut
June 10, 1993
The Most Rev. Edmond Browning, Presiding Bishop
Dear Bishop Browning:
The June issue of "Episcopal Life" brought me news of your action, in conjunction with other church leaders, calling for an end to the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military. I also read that you wrote President Clinton in support of lifting the ban, as well as the Armed Forces Chaplains asking them "to be at the forefront in alleviating all discriminatory practices ... and to continue to be pastorally sensitive in the care of your people ..."
It occurs to me, however, that your stance with other church leaders and your letters would be taken more seriously if the Church you head did not practice precisely the same kind of discrimination against its own people -- and particularly its clergy.
I am just one of many clergy in the Church, with unique and special gifts to offer, unjustly banned from serving in it. In my case, I am *defacto* "deposed" since I have been forbidden to act as a priest in the Diocese of Southwest Florida, where I now live. The Bishop's apparent homophobia is so intense that he could not even say why he cannot allow me to function in his diocese. In his only letter to me, he wanted me to know that "they" (presumably he and his diocese) "love me." This "love" has been acted out by not responding to my letter or by being willing to meet with me. What remedy is there for such unbecoming behavior on the part of a leader in our Church?
I am enclosing the pertinent correspondence to document my own particular situation, and I ask you on behalf of all gay and lesbian clergy to consider what you might do about the "ban" in this Church, which is the very place where you have primary leadership responsibility for action and for change. Perhaps you will be moved to inquire about this particular matter with Bishops Swing, Swenson (now retired), and Harris in order that you might better understand the struggle we all face.
I shall be most interested in your response, particularly whether it is helpful in any way. Love, concern and sympathy are caring "emotions," but what is needed is action, not emotion. Perhaps you can identify with my anger and frustration, by the lack of response, concern, or action on the part of those you have written in the past about issues which deeply concern you?
Faithfully in Christ,
The Rev. Scott W. Baldwin
THE DIOCESE OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA
March 4, 1993
The Reverend Scott W. Baldwin
Dear Father Baldwin:
Thank you for your note. I welcome you pastorally to the communion and fellowship of the Church is this diocese.
For reasons which I think you will understand, I cannot license you to function as a priest in Southwest Florida. That is why you were not on the Archdeacon's list for supply ministry here.
I know that this will probably bring some pain to you to know this, and I deeply regret it. Please know that we do love you. You will be in my prayers. May the peace of our Lord be with you always.
In Christ's Love
The Right Reverend Rogers S. Harris
Bishop of Southwest Florida
THE REV. SCOTT W. BALDWIN
March 6, 1993
The Rt. Rev. Rogers S. Harris
Dear Bishop Harris:
I appreciate your prompt response to my note requesting that I continue to be included on the clergy supply list in this Diocese. However I was quite shocked by your response.
Quite honestly, Bishop Harris, I do not understand and I cannot imagine why you feel you cannot license me to function is this Diocese. I am a priest in good standing in my Canonical Diocese of California and in my original Diocese of Vermont. You have received a letter of introduction and recommendation from the Diocese of California which should be on file in your office. Further, when I met with the Archdeacon and yourself soon after my arrival here, I was not given any indication that I would not be welcome to function here as a priest. My conversations with you and the Archdeacon were focused specifically on the possibility of supply work and possible interim ministry. Your office, did in fact, give my name to Good Samaritan Episcopal Church in Clearwater, and I did supply work for them with your knowledge. I believe that you received very positive feedback about me from them. I also know that they seriously approached you about the possibility of asking me to be their interim priest. At the time, I had other work commitments which I did not want to break and, therefore, was not disappointed when they stopped pursuing me. I assumed at the time that you did not consider me for that ministry either because you did not know me well, or because you had "resident" clergy you need to employ. Now, I wonder what the real reason was.
What has precipitated this decision and what is the reason you will not permit me to function? I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss my status. Port Richey is my permanent residence, and in light of that, you must understand that your current action cannot be taken lightly. I encourage you to contact my Bishops, if you have not already done so, to broaden your perception(s) about my ability and integrity as a capable and faithful priest of this Church.
I look forward to a timely and productive meeting with you.
Faithfully,
Scott W. Baldwin
SCOTT'S FORMER DIOCESE
The Rev. Scott W. Baldwin
Dear Scott,
Thank you for your correspondence around the matter dealing with Bishop Harris. I'm so sorry about what is happening because I do know you to be a very good man and Bishop Harris to be a very good man. I just don't know what has gone on and I think you deserve much more of an answer than you've got so far. I certainly know that you were a great priest in the diocese and I think that Florida is missing on a good thing by not taking advantage of your rich gifts and your presence in their midst. I am happy that the weather and climate are good for your health but I just wish everything else were in order.
Faithfully in Christ,
Bishop of ...
P.S. If Bishop Harris does not license you, there is no appeal process. In his diocese, he is at liberty to do what he wants with licensing people from outside.
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*I SING A SONG ...*
by Chris Ambidge
This story MAY be apocryphal:
There was a person with AIDS who was close to death and he wanted to arrange his own funeral, which he did in consultation with his priest. They had a printed order-of-service with all the words of everything in it.
In the fullness of God's time, the PWA indeed returned to the Creator, and his friends and loved ones gathered at the Resurrection Mass for him. One of the departed one's favorite hymns was "I sing a song of the Saints of God", and this was the final hymn. Everyone was singing along the first verse, and found that the words of the first chorus had been changed [by the hand of the deceased] to:
and one was a doctor
and one was a queen
and one a transvestite named Irene
they were all of them saints of God
and I mean, God willing, to be one too.
Everyone burst into laughter at the substitution of the "shepherdess on the green" line. Then they sang it again, all through, with joy. It isn't everyone that manages to get a laugh at their own funeral, but this Christian managed -- and with excellent theology, too; for transvestites named Irene are also beloved of God.
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*BROOKE CLEANS UP!*
What does the winner of Integrity Inc.'s 1993 Louie Crew Award do on her free time? While vacationing in Santa Rosa with her lover Patti (Northeast Regional VP), days before the award was announced, Brooke Bushong joined a local Women's organization, Bay Area Career Women, who had planned their quarterly Adopt-a-Highway clean-up event. Together with their friend, Dorothy Beattie (Integrity board member and member of this Bay Area group) and her lover, Louise they poked at highway trash with metal poles and beautified a section of the California highway. Brooke (right) and company pose with a Highway Patrol Officer who provided moral support.
The Adopt-a-Highway program is something Integrity chapters should consider as it's fun, easy and offers a real service to the community. A group is able to adopt a small section of highway (a little over a mile) which they are responsible for clearing of simple debris. The group's name is then posted on a sign along the roadway designating their contribution and patch of highway.
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*RIDING WITH A BISHOP ON PRIDE DAY*
by Louie Crew
"It's a `march,' not a `parade'!" Kim Byham, always a lawyer when it comes to facts, kept reminding me as I huddled in the heat of the rented chariot for NYC's event in June.
Religious groups were all lined up on 51st street, and at least an hour and a half of the parade/oops march had moved down Fifth Avenue before our turn arrived. We knew from the cellular phone that the Spongs were en route from their episcopal visit to Morris Plains, but they had not shown up when the white chariot, bedecked with red ribbons and purple ribbons was marshaled to the taxiing area for entrance to the `march.'
Not wanting an empty vehicle marked "Bishop John S. Spong and Christine Spong" persons insisted that the Rev. Tracy Lind be Bishop Spong and that Luti of the Alabama Belles be 'Christine Spong.' "They won't know the difference!" several shouted. Jack and Christine arrived to this spectacle just as the chariot began gaily forward down Fifth Avenue. Tracy jumped out of sight but I could not waddle fast enough and was caught in the act.
One of the most moving parts of the NYC `march' always comes quickly as the marchers move past St. Patrick's, closed on Pride Sunday, surrounded by well over 100 policemen and barricades two and three deep to prevent any one from getting anywhere near the cathedral. Opposite, on our right, are always the small crowd of the major nay-sayers to the parade. "Buchanan for President" Christine read aloud from a smaller sign in their midst. "AIDS is the wages of sin" read a bigger banner, and upstaging them all were several posters the size and shape of coffin lids, each saying "Here lies a queer who marched last year."
Yes, a march, not a parade.
"Should I bless it, Louie?" Jack said quietly from their perch at the back of the chariot while Scott Helsel drove and I huddled in the right front seat as he stared at the grim, guarded St. Patrick's.
"No," Christine said.
The silence was eerie as we slowly moved past.
"What a comment on the church," Jack said, over and over.
All down Fifth Avenue people applauded in ripples then with shouts as our chariot approached. Dozens called out, "I read your book and it brought me here to support my daughter!," "Can we find a way to clone you?," "Thank you, bishop, I have come back to my church because of you!"
At 42nd Street a man dressed as a fairy, complete with wings that shimmered when he stood tall in his ballet shoes, flitted over to Jack, glitter all over his face, completely in character, tears pouring out of his eyes and said, "We made big posters quoting your book in the Rochester parade and you moved thousands. Thank you, Bishop, thank you, thank you."
Jack usually seems quite at ease with media, and I have sat with him and Christine in scores of other lesbigay venues, at times when no lesbigay Christians are about, and they have never lost their cool, have always been gracious and welcoming.
"Louie, I have never been in a parade before. I don't know how to act."
"Louie can teach you," Kim responded, with his camcorder aloft. "He really milks the crowd."
Jack remained clumsy, but the crowd did not hold back. They loved the two of them. NYC's policemen occasionally could not stifle their own surprise, but probably, I reminded Christine, more because she was with a bishop than because a bishop was with us.
At the reviewing stand by the Public Library, every year the Integrity/Oasis clergy in the march join arms and shoulders and do a high step dance. "Join us," Tracy Lind beckoned, as did numerous other clergy. "Join us, Jack!" He smiled but replied, "I learned a long time ago the difference between being a 'fool for Christ's sake' and simply being 'a fool.'" He enjoyed their performance just ahead of us.
The crowds stagger the imagination! So many people. So many lesbigay people. Hundreds of thousands and only one bishop.
"This is the scene Bill Frey is so afraid of, Jack, and he can't even see it as a mission field," I said.
"And all the hate the church has heaped on the persons for generation after generation, I'm astounded, here as in all my other visits to the gay community, at the warm reception I receive," Jack said.
"I reckon we'll have won when we have 12 bishops to march with us," I speculated. Dick Shimpky [El Camino Real] was the first ever, last summer, followed by Chet Talton, Suffragan of Los Angeles, also last summer. Jack was the third.
"If anyone had told me twenty years ago that today I would be riding in a gay pride parade, I would have told him `You're madder than hell.'" Jack muttered, still in utter amazement at the crowd.
"Bishop, I'm XXXX XXXXXXX [a prominent theologian] and I want to thank you for being with us today!" the bare-chested brother said out of breath, as he jogged to catch up with us in this pilgrimage.
"Bishop Spong, I'm rector at _____." At least 50 others came over the sideline to speak to him and thank him for being there.
One rector had never missed a gay pride parade in all the history of them, but this was his first time ever to confirm his identity for the bishop and the rector was obviously moved. Once he held my hand as we rode along. He remembers the Jack Spong of years ago, the Saul who persecuted many gay men and threw them out of the diocese and had many others living in terror of exposure. And here he was, the Tarsus character with a new name riding down Fifth Avenue.
At the Church of the Ascension, the parishioners set up a great peal of bells as they are always wont to do when Integrity and Oasis pass. They also set up great rounds of cheers when our chariot rode by them.
Not once in the entire parade did anyone shout profanely or abuse the Church. At the site of the Stonewall Inn (the bar where 24 years ago the Resistance, this March, actually began, a black male, much like some of the original drag-queens, was wildly drunk and read out loudly, "Bishop John S. Spong and Christine Spong" Someone else shouted out, "I'm glad you're here, Bishop," and the drunk shouted, not in mockery but in celebration, "I'm a bishop too!"
"I'm glad you're here too," Jack said.
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*GOD WANTS LIGHT AND SIGHT*
STINA POPE'S SERMON AT AN HIV/AIDS HEALING SERVICE
God has an uncanny way of speaking through the Bible to us. There is always a message, something for us to receive when we read the Bible, but sometimes it seems especially personal and pointed. Today's lessons are like that. Let me pull out the sentences that jump out.
In Isaiah: "I have given you as a covenant to the peoples, a light to the nations to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, ... See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare;"
In Acts: Peter says, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God."
In Luke: "One is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
In the Isaiah passage, God is speaking to David, but listen as though we are David. We are to be a covenant to the people; what does that mean? We are to be a light to the nations; how can that be? We are to open the eyes of the blind; surely the eyes of those who are blind to people living with AIDS need to be open, by why is it always our responsibility? We are to bring the prisoners out from the dungeons. There certainly are a lot of people in many different kinds of prisons when it comes to the subject of AIDS; people who live in fear of being found out, people who have tested positive and are too afraid to deal with the issue, people who are afraid to get tested at all, people who have no resources, and people who are in the prisons of ignorance, who keep themselves at a distance from their children for fear of "catching" AIDS from them, and the children who suffer from the loss of family. There are lots of people in lots of prisons, Lord. But God goes on, saying: See, the former things have come to an end; now there are new things. And one of those new things is that you are a covenant to the people, you are my light to the nations, and yes -- it is your job to open the eyes of the blind and to unlock the prisons. And God says, you are not alone. You are not alone, I am with you. The Holy Spirit is my gift of myself. You only have to ask.
And we, being who we are, say "Who, me?" We say, but God, I don't exactly have "most favored nation" status in the eyes of those who call themselves your elect. I am not listed as "most likely to succeed." I am one of those who "they" don't want to hear about, much less hear from. And Peter answers from the inside of the synagogue, from the inside of the church, telling his fellow members and telling us, "God shows no partiality. If we claim God as Lord of our lives and if we do what is right, then we are acceptable." We do well to study this passage. Peter was trying to figure out how non-Jews who called Christ Lord could be acceptable to Jews. For Peter to sit down to table with a non-Jew was as radical as for Jerry Falwell to invite me to preach. The answer came to Peter, loud and clear. God has made us acceptable. God shows no partiality. If we claim God as God and do what is right, then male, female, black, white, lavender and HIV+, we are acceptable to God, and if God accepts us, then it is up to us to act on that acceptance.
Now, if we can accept that much, if we begin to believe that we are acceptable, and we start acting on that new status in God's eyes, then we are prone to say: But God, How can I do these things. Or else we say, how can I do these things? I am tired and weak. I have no money, no name, no influence. How can I do these things you are commanding? And the voice of John the Baptist comes thundering down through the ages, "if you will accept him, there is one who comes who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." He will fill you with the power of the Holy Spirit, and you will do incredible things in his name. That promise is true today.
At every point along the way, we are free to turn away. We are free to say "I don't believe it." We can start right at the beginning by not accepting that we are in covenant with God and that we are the covenant. We can say, it's not my problem that there are those who are blind, those who are in prison. Surely they did something to get themselves there. You'll notice that there is no differentiation for God as to the worthy and unworthy in prison. God doesn't want any of us in prison. God wants light in all the world, and sight so all may see it. Or we may get that far, but there may be some place where we stand and say, this far and no further. I won't have them in my house, my church, my whatever. I may work with them, but I won't come out to them, I won't share my faith with them, I refuse to see them as a real person, child of God and, therefore, my sister, my brother. Or, we hear the words of God saying there is no one that is unacceptable to me, but we fail to carry that out in our lives. We do not really believe God, and we do not want to change.
And finally, we refuse to ask for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit so that we will have the power to change. We don't want to change ourselves, much less the world.
So, I invite you to look at your life. Are you a covenant, are you a light to those around you? Do you help get folks out of their prisons? Are you willing to have things change? Do you draw the line when it comes to certain people? Now hear me right -- I am not in favor of abuse. It may not be healthy for some of us to be in the same room with particular people. But do we pray for them, are we genuinely concerned for their welfare, or do we write them off? And then there's the whole question of the Holy Spirit and fire. Are you ready for the Holy Spirit's fire? Fire gets you up and moving. Fire can heal, and it can change the landscape in a big way.
We are here at this healing service because we need healing. We need help. Our bodies are hurting, our minds are confused, and our spirits are exhausted. Jesus told us that when two or three of us are gathered in his name, his spirit would be with us. And when we accept that spirit, we do what he did and more. One of the things he did was heal. So here we are, gathered in his name, getting ready to lay hands on each other, asking for the Holy Spirit to come to us and heal us. We come, as part of the covenant. We come, totally acceptable to God. We come, asking for the power of the Holy Spirit. We come, asking for healing.
Are you ready?
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The Rev. Stina Pope is a Pastoral Associate at St. Bartholomew's, Atlanta, and is the life partner of Sue Thompson, Integrity's National Secretary.
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*NEW JERSEY -- NEW BISHOP*
by Monica Maske
[The Rev. Joe Morris Doss, Rector of St. Mark's Church in Palo Alto, Calif., was elected Bishop Coadjutor of New Jersey on June 17. This is an excerpt from an article about the candidate which appeared in "The Sunday Star-Ledger," June 13, 1993.]
Doss, 50, a native of Mobile, Ala., who was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, said he left the denomination because of its "racism." After graduating from Louisiana State University, he earned a doctor of law degree from LSU Law School in 1968. A member of the bar in Louisiana, Doss is a national expert in death penalty appeal law and has written a book on law and morality.
He entered General Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1971, because "I just felt called by God to be a priest," he told the New Brunswick gathering.
He served as rector of a church in New Orleans, starting a ministry to Spanish-speaking people after taking a two-week crash course in the language and working briefly at a pottery factory in Mexico. Since 1985, he has been rector in Palo Alto, where he oversees a church offering a regular "Friday-Nite-Live" program for 300 young teenagers, a speakers program on sexual abuse of African American boys and a good pantry.
Asked if he would ordain a practicing homosexual to the priesthood, Doss said, "To me, this is a question of baptism. If we baptize someone, then they have a right to all the sacraments."
He noted the policy in the Diocese of New Jersey was to "not ask the question" of a candidate for holy orders, adding that approach fits with the position of the House of Bishops to "agree to disagree" on the question of ordaining publicly acknowledged gays and lesbians.
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*WHO WILL SHAPE OUR FUTURE?*
by Louie Crew
The promotional brochure beckoned: "Learn what God is saying to the Church." Approximately a thousand Episcopalians from 96 dioceses responded, coming to the St. Louis Convention Center for a conference billed as "A Grassroots Forum on Episcopal Structures." Hearing alarm over the decline of the Episcopal Church's membership in the past 25 years, planners of the July 12‑15 conference, sponsored by the Diocese of East Tennessee, argued that the church needed to consider significant changes in its institutional life ‑‑ and that it would benefit from "a gathering of the family where the concerns of the legislative process do not hinder the dialogue."
ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS
In the opening plenary presentation, the Rev. Loren Mead, founder of Washington's Alban Institute, described the Episcopal Church as a ship tossed on a stormy sea. The storm, he said, is the quickening pace of change loose in the world. "Structural problems are bigger than we are," he said. "They are related to something about what God is doing in the world. Structure flows from what we understand our mission to be," he said.
Also taking issue with the concept that restructuring would solve the church's problems was the Rev. Nan Peete, Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Atlanta. She was the only plenary speaker to name justice as an issue facing the church. "From my perspective," Peete said, "we are asking the wrong questions, or rather the questions may be premature. We should ask not what the structures should be, but rather what the mission should be. Structure should follow mission, not other way round."
Canon Peete, one of three African Americans speakers, sounded a warning: "'A grassroots forum'? Grassroots are people who are without power. Among those attending this conference are many who are in decision‑making positions ‑‑ bishops, deans, General Convention deputies...... If we are the grassroots, who are the leaders?"
Rabbi Edwin Friedman, author and family therapist, asserted that institutions spend too much time tinkering with ways to change old structures when they should instead risk "a sense of adventure" and rethink basic assumptions in the light of mission. Friedman added that, as society becomes more anxious, people will seek groups "that provide an easy certitude." The best advice he could give, Friedman said, was that religious leaders continue to keep their eyes fixed on the vision and not get caught up in the anxiety of losing members. "Don't worry about the future," he charged, "God will take care of it."
Bishop Robert Tharp of East Tennessee echoed additional concerns about the theme of the conference. In a press conference he said, "'Turning this church around' is not my phrase. That is Jon Shuler's phrase, and for months it has been forbidden in my office. We disagree on that one!" The Rev. Jon Shuler is executive director of the East Tennessee Initiative ‑‑ the organization that planned the conference.
FORUMS AND WORKSHOPS
For much of the conference, specific agendas for restructuring the church stayed primarily in workshops and other smaller groups. They were never discussed by the participants as a whole.
In nearly two dozen such groups, participants were challenged to think about the church's ministry and to identify where the structures support or hinder those ministries. In addition, participants were given an opportunity to lead sessions on subjects about which they were passionate; 36 such separate meetings were convened.
In a session on "How to make the General Convention more representative," about 40 participants wrangled over ideas to alter the process of presenting resolutions to the convention and the possibility of decreasing the size of the House of Deputies. Bishop Gethin Hughes of San Diego, one of the 33 bishops or bishops‑elect who attended the conference, said that his concern was General Convention's "lack of focus on the mission of the church and its overemphasis on nonessential issues."
Some persons insisted, however, that the real problem with the church was that the General Convention adopted resolutions at odds "with the majority of people in the pews. If the convention were truly representative, that would not happen," one person said. "Yes, we should set policy in a convention like this," said one participant; "We're much more democratic." "Yes," another echoed, "General Convention is driving *our* people away." When asked, few of the critics in this session said they were deputies, though many others who were deputies listened wide‑eyed. No one elected anyone who came to St. Louis. They represented no one but themselves. Very few were black; fewer still were Hispanic or Asian ‑‑ yet Canon Peete reminded us that African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians are the groups with greatest population growth in the U.S.A.
The same person who complained that General Convention is driving people away noted that General Convention can neither change God's word nor grant people salvation. He complained that the President of the House of Deputies had guaranteed appointments to Integrity members but had not reserved him an appointment as a British immigrant to the United States.
I identified myself as the founder of Integrity and pointed out that President Chinnis did not suggest she would stack committees, but said instead that the structure will be open to lesbigays, who have been heretofore excluded. I noted that I would never ask General Convention to grant me salvation, that I have it already, from Calvary. "No, you don't!" he shouted. "You have to repent first!"
HIDDEN AGENDAS
In another forum, Jon Shuler called for a constitutional convention to restructure the church. Next year he will serve for the first time as a deputy to General Convention. Shuler proposes seven constitutional changes including limiting General Convention to meeting once every five years, instead of three, with representatives elected from provinces, not dioceses. He wants to require each bishop to be located in a specific local congregation and to make the Presiding Bishop president of a province and a diocesan bishop. He wants to alter the diocesan and provincial structure of the church to reflect Metropolitan Statistical Areas rather than state boundaries.
Although Shuler's small group was attended by only 117 persons (about 10% of those at the conference, with 11 other forums scheduled for the same time) it rated one of the few official press releases of the weekend. The headline announced "CALL FOR CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION IS SOUNDED AT EPISCOPAL SYMPOSIUM," even though it was never discussed outside the small group.
Shuler's call for the Constitutional Convention centers on three questions: Is Jesus Lord of this Church? Does Holy Scripture have authority among us? What do we believe?
"Are you calling for a return to biblical authority about divorce and remarriage or a literal reading of the biblical strictures against polyester....?" I asked Jon Shuler. "I am not a fundamentalist!" he exclaimed. I cannot determine which scriptures Father Shuler wants to give authority over our lives, but anyone can see which crowd is pleased with calls for scriptural authority. Shuler will speak at the first national convention of EURRR next summer.
"Why did you not choose a single out-lesbigay Christian to conduct one the more than 30 planned sessions of the conference?" I asked. Shuler replied: "I don't know the sexuality of any of the speakers! We chose no one to fit categories of race or gender.... If a gay person had written a book on church structure, the person's sexual orientation would not have been a bar to an invitation." In fact, very few of the speakers at the conference have written books on church structure. And while throughout the conference leaders touted the diversity of presenters and participants, initially conference planners had announced exclusively white men as speakers.
The conference also set in motion a series of special task forces, for which 280 persons signed up, titled "Communications," "Governing," "The Episcopate," "Leadership Training," "Lay Ministry," and "Funding." A week after the conference, leaders still had no idea how these groups would function. If persons feel the Episcopal Church is injured by resolutions passed by General Convention, imagine the possible consternation if these task forces, responsible to no one, publish documents billed as official statements growing out of the conference.
A COMPASSIONATE NUDGE
In the closing plenary, Bishop Tharp said that the conference was not about "giving a shove to the church, but a loving and compassionate nudge." Tharp was not the only person who challenged the church to remain calm amid the storms. In a closing sermon, Bishop Edward Salmon of South Carolina suggested that God has provided a storm as a means to a more genuine community. The storm, he observed, might be "God's way of getting us to think again."
ACCOUNTABILITY
A shortfall of about $250,000 remains in the $725,000 budget for the conference. Leaders had hoped for twice the thousand who came, which meant they fell short of the 1,500 persons needed for free use of the Convention Center. Those who proposed the conference had complained about the fiscal irresponsibility of current Episcopal structures. Some even suggested that General Convention ought to meet on a college campus. The conference would have been much less in debt had planners heeded their own advice.
WAITING FOR THE HARVEST
Those gathered in St. Louis did not manifest much diversity. Few wore the faces of groups systematically ignored or bashed by the church. Is the bid for a less confrontational approach genuine? We will know by its fruits. If the bid yields more of the love and affirmation some speakers called for, it will also need to yield more of the hard justice that Canon Peete talked about.
"I came here with circumspect hope, edged with fear," I told Bishop Tharp. "But I will go home with less dis‑ease." Bishop Tharp quoted my last sentence with thanks at the last plenary of the conference. Back home in Knoxville, he stressed: "The Church needs to stop arguing issues and start loving the world!"
Hallelujah if but a tenth of us in St. Louis go home to live into this mission.
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This article relies heavily on an Episcopal News Service release by Jeffrey Penn.
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*PRIEST KILLER GETS 8 YEARS*
by Kim Byham
In the Spring 1993 issue, we reprinted a story, dated October 1, 1992 from Yakima, Washington concerning the brutal murder of a closeted priest who was the leader of the Episcopal Synod of America chapter in the Diocese of Spokane. Strongly anti-gay from the pulpit, the Rev. Thomas J. Davidson had been diagnosed five years before his death as a sexual addict by a therapist hired by the diocese where he was ordained.
This and more was revealed at the week-long sentencing hearing in March of his murderer, 20-year old drifter Marco Armenta. Armenta plead guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder in the June, 1992 stabbing of Davidson at the priest's home in Yakima. Armenta claims that the fatal struggle erupted after the priest grabbed a knife and demanded that Armenta submit to anal intercourse. As is often the case in murders of gay men, the victim became the chief defendant. The priest's photo album with more than 150 pictures of naked young men and boys, ranging from 14 to 24, was introduced as evidence.
The therapist who testified was Dr. Philip Snedecor of Portland. After three brushes with the law in 1986 in the Portland area, including his kidnapping by a hitchhiker with whom he had sex, Davidson was sent by the Diocese of Oregon to see Snedecor. Snedecor, a retired physician, who had never before or since treated a sexual addict, was nevertheless convinced that Davidson suffered from a severe sexual addiction that demanded immediate treatment. To a large degree this was based on Davidson's propositioning of a male parishioner. By the time Snedecor reached Bishop Robert L. Ladehoff, however, Davidson had transferred to the Diocese of Spokane.
The Rev. Mary Killingstad, a deacon at St. Michael's, Yakima, where Davidson served as Rector at the time of his death, testified that she had approached the Bishop of Spokane, the Rt. Rev. Leigh Wallace, about her concerns about Davidson's hypocrisy in preaching against homosexuality while living with another man who had moved to Yakima with him from Spokane. Bishop Wallace ordered Killingstad not to discuss Davidson's sexuality with anyone else and, she testified, "He [Wallace] assured me that Tom [Davidson] was celibate."
Still another witness maligned Davidson's character. Karil Klingbell, an associate professor at the University of Washington and founder of the Harborview Medical center's sexual assault clinic in Seattle, testified that Davidson had "all the characteristics that the FBI considers trademarks of a sexual predator." She reached such a conclusion through her interviews with the murder -- she never met Davidson.
The defendant had had no previous serious brushes with the law. Armenta had once been quoted as saying, "All people in authority are fools, and anyone can fool them." Those who evaluated his personality, however, both before and after the murder, described him as troubled as a result of childhood abuse but "enterprising."
The prosecution had asked for the standard 10-13 years for Second Degree Murder. Agreeing with the defense that there were extenuating circumstances, however, Judge F. James Gavin sentenced the young man to eight years, with credit for the 10 months he had already been held and with the possibility of parole in about six years. In delivering his sentence, the judge said the hearing was not about sexual preferences, not about guilt or innocence, and not about sentencing Davidson, who has paid the "ultimate price. What it really is is a horribly tragic case. It's a double tragedy."
For someone to take another's life is inexcusable, he said. Yet for someone to pray on another person for personal gratification is also inexcusable, particularly when the person doing the praying is in a position of trust, as Davidson was.
Davidson clearly led a dual life, the judge noted, serving as an excellent priest who attended to people who were down and out. "But as one of those reports said, he was a man with a dark side. He prayed on young men who he knew were looking for some
help."
The judge's decision for relative leniency was based on two mitigating factors: 1) Davidson was the aggressor who was praying on Armenta and 2) Armenta's inability to remember the act of murdering Davidson, attributed to a "disassociative" mental state.
After the sentencing in an interview with David Wasson of the Yakima "Herald-Republic," Armenta expressed sorrow for the murder and said that the attacks on Davidson's character by his lawyers came as a surprise to him.
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*OPINION*
*WHO WILL MOURN?*
by Kim Byham
When I read about the sentencing of the Rev. Tom Davidson's murderer, I couldn't help but contrast it with what happened in Brooklyn six months earlier. You may recall that in that case, a member of Integrity/Brooklyn was murdered and the murderer was found guilty of second degree manslaughter. [See "The Voice," Winter 1993] He had been expected to receive 15 to 25 years for the crime, but members of Integrity/Brooklyn and their friends filled the courtroom and let the judge know someone cared. She sentenced the murderer to 25 years to life. Davidson's murderer, in sharp contrast, having plead guilty to the higher crime of second degree murder, received a sentence of only 8 years.
Did a group from the diocesan ESA chapter Davidson had founded attend the sentencing to let the judge know they cared? Of course not. They were too embarrassed that their founder, stridently anti-gay in public pronouncements, was secretly engaged in a variety of sexual activities with men and boys.
Did a group from the Diocese of Spokane attend the sentencing to let the judge know the church cared? Sadly, no. Indeed, our coverage of this unseemly but not uncommon event has been unique in the church. While publications such as "The Living Church" reported on Davidson's murder, they never reported on the capture or sentencing of the murderer. It was embarrassing and they lacked integrity.
We all know closeted clergy. Indeed, most of the clergy members of ESA are homosexuals. And we are often "let in" on their secrets with the tacit understanding that we won't "out" them. That makes us co-conspirators, at some cost to our integrity, but the closeted clergy, as the judge said of Davidson, pay the "ultimate price."
I mourn for Tom Davidson although I never met him. Here was a man with deep problems. Those problems were largely known to the Church which did nothing because Davidson was publicly an upholder of "traditional values." Davidson was a self-hating homosexual whose self-hatred eventually destroyed him. The ESA and the Diocese of Spokane poured fuel on the flames. May God forgive them.
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*THE DEIRDRE GOOD CONTROVERSY CONTINUES*
by Kim Byham
As was reported in the Summer 1993 issue of "The Voice," General Theological Seminary Professor Deirdre Good is to be evicted from seminary housing because her life partner moved in with her. In response, Good filed with the New York City Human Rights Commission a complaint which was served on GTS President and Dean, the Rt. Rev. Craig B. Anderson, on June 26.
In response, at a meeting of the GTS Executive Committee and faculty on July 7, it was decided to offer Dr. Good a housing allowance equal to 30% of her salary if she would move off campus. This would constitute a violation of the Faculty Bylaws, however, which require all faculty to live at the seminary. Good declined the offer, based both on principle and on the fact that the rental value of comparable housing in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood was far in excess of 30% of her salary.
After initially taking a fairly low-key posture, Anderson, came out punching with a memorandum dated August 18, 1993. Probably foreshadowing the GTS response to the Human Rights Commission, due September 7, Anderson issued a cogent but somewhat disingenuous three part argument. First, he sets forth a chronology which includes several innuendos. Significantly, Anderson "outs" Dr. Good's life partner, Julian Sheffield, and raises the specter that Sheffield had previously been a student at General without drawing any specific implications but with the obvious hope that the recipient may read something into it. [Sheffield is continuing her studies at Union Theological Seminary.] In the chronology, Anderson points with pride to his meeting with Integrity/New York to discuss the situation on July 15.
In a bizarre exegesis of two General Convention resolutions, Anderson concludes in the second section of his memo that same-sex relationships among the laity are contrary to the "teaching or doctrine of the Episcopal Church." To reach this tortured interpretation, Anderson says that the 1979 Resolution A-53s which says it is "not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual" is dispositive for lay persons as well since "there is general agreement that the Episcopal Church sets no moral standards higher for its clergy than for its laity." On this basis, one could oppose the baptism of lesbians and gay men! Anderson also very selectively quotes from Resolution A-104sa from 1991 but leaves out critical quotation marks and words and makes that compromise resolution seem like gay bashing. Anderson says that no matter what our personal views, "the teaching of the Church must be respected and followed by the Seminary."
In the final section, Anderson emphasizes that the government has no right to interfere with the Episcopal Church's right to discriminate. He pats himself on the back, saying, "In my meeting with Integrity, I tried to give a description of events and a clear sense of our attempts to resolve this issue within the Church and community in a way that is principled, just, and pastorally sensitive.
A fund has been established to help defray Dr. Good's legal costs: THE GOOD CAUSE, c/o The Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, 122 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, NY 11201.
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*THE REVEREND DENTON D. DURLAND III*
1927-1993
Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA, the Rev. Canon Denton D. Durland, III graduated from Hobart College and received his Masters of Divinity from Philadelphia Divinity School in 1954.
Canon Durland's ministry was spent almost entirely in the Diocese of Rochester, during the course of which he was the Rector of St. John's, Wellsville and Canon Missioner To Allegheny County (1979-1987), Coordinator of Volunteer Services for Monroe Development Center (1973-1976), Rector of St. Lukes's, Brockport (1968-1973), rector of St. Mark's, PennYan (1956-1963). He also held a number of interim positions, and was instrumental in forming the diocesan policy on dealing with parish vacancies. He served on many diocesan committees, including the Diocesan Council, was Chair of the Department of Christian Education for three years, and President of the Standing Committee in 1986.
In retirement, "D" continued to serve in the diocese as a consultant for parish vacancies and as an interim priest. He also did volunteer work at AIDS Rochester Inc. and was an active member of Dignity-Integrity/Rochester. "D" also served on the Liturgy Committee, and was serving as co-scheduler of presiders and homilists. He also delivered the chapter's weekly food collection to the ARI food cupboard. His unassuming presence will be missed.
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*WE NEED YOU IN INDIANAPOLIS!*
Would you like to work 14 hours a day for no pay?
Want to pay your own way to Indianapolis plus all food costs?
Can you take an occasional verbal bash?
On the other hand:
How about one of the most important jobs you've ever done?
Want to see how the church really works and affect what happens?
Want to meet great Integrity folks from all over the country?
Want to get frequent thanks and compliments for our presence?
DO YOU WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
We are now taking applications for Integrity's 1994 General Convention volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering, we will send you the exhaustive "Plans for Integrity's Presence at General Convention 1994" and an application. Applications are due by December 1, 1993. You will be notified if you have been selected by January 1, 1994.
Please send requests for "Plans..." and applications to Kim Byham, Chair of the Standing Committee on General Convention, 7100 Boulevard East #3F, Guttenberg, NJ, or phone 201-868-2485. Due to EURRR copying and distributing the 1991 version of "Plans...," we may contact you before sending the documents. Be sure to supply your phone number.
General Convention runs from August 25 through September 3, but many of our volunteers will need to arrive as much as four days early. In addition, there will be a pre-convention meeting for certain volunteers on a weekend in July. Preference will be given to those who can commit to the entire two-weeks, but we will consider limited numbers of part-timers.
We encourage geographic diversity and insist on gender parity. Please pray about this and apply.
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*INTEGRITY IN THE "[DAILY] NEWS"*
'Suspended Bronx Cleric Rips Episcopal Bigwigs'
by Zachary Margulis
The Rev. Luis Barrios, the controversial Episcopal priest suspended from his South Bronx ministry, last night [June 10] blasted the city's Episcopal hierarchy at a gathering of gay Episcopalians who offered him wide support.
At the same time, Barrios said that a tense, two-hour meeting Monday [June 7] with Bishop Richard F. Grein was "productive" and "positive," and that he hoped to be reinstated at St. Ann's Church in Mott Haven within two weeks.
The bishop had agreed to meet with the renegade priest again today or Monday, Barrios said.
In a largely personal talk following services at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village organized by Integrity, a gay group within the Episcopal church, Barrios said he felt let down by Grein, who refused to speak to him after announcing the May 19 suspension.
"We want a pastor," he told the group of about 40. "Not an administrator." Barrios said that Grein did not explain the reasons for the suspension at Monday's meeting. He offered only that Barrios' letting Free Catholics -- a schismatic church with some openly gay members -- use St. Ann's "jeopardized the ecumenical relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopalian Church."
Barrios, a former Catholic, countered that the Episcopal Church is also schismatic.
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This article appeared in the "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS," Friday, June 11. As with most secular media coverage of religious issues, this article oversimplifies complex issues. We expect to do a full story on Fr. Barrios's suspension in the Winter 1994 issue. He has not been reinstated as of press time (8/31/93).
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*PRESIDENT'S COLUMN*
"Where there is hatred, let us sow love" -- the theme of Integrity's 1993 National Convention in San Diego. It was an appropriate theme and it remains an appropriate motto for us as we continue our journey toward acceptance as full members of the Body of Christ. If we call ourselves Christian, the only response we can ever make when confronted with hatred is to sow or return love for that hatred.
I am not sure I was really surprised that we were attacked with hatred less than a week after our convention ended. Unfortunately, the attack was also aimed at the keynote speaker at our convention banquet: Pam Chinnis, President of the House of Deputies of our church. She was accused of being biased towards us, particularly regarding the appointment of Integrity members to church commissions and committees, etc. (See EURRR Attacks Chinnis, page 13.)
I don't view Ms. Chinnis statement that she would appoint Integrity members as bias. She is simply being fair and equitable in her appointments. We are part of this church and we should be represented accordingly. Perhaps she is also attempting to compensate for the very real bias *against* us that her predecessor exhibited. Regardless, I have found her to be an exceptionally warm and caring person and one who strives for inclusiveness and fairness.
I do view all that Ms. Chinnis told us with the utmost gratitude. She was honest with us. She affirmed us as members of this church, as children of God. She also loved us enough to share with us the pain she has experienced as the mother of a gay son. As far as I know, she had never shared that information so publicly with anyone before, particularly in so open a circumstance. For her pain and for her sharing of that pain I am profoundly grateful and deeply moved.
God has revealed once again love that knows no bounds, love that comes from the heart of God through the hearts of the servants of God. At our last national convention, we heard of conviction and love from the Presiding Bishop. This convention we heard from the President of the House of Deputies. In both cases, their love for us was expressed in terms relating to their own blood families: Ed Browning's grandchild, Pam Chinnis's child. That both should relate to us in such a personal way, I find moving almost beyond words. Yet, both of these kind and gentle people followed the example set by the God we worship. God also related to us through God's child. God ultimately gave that child's life for our benefit.
I wish we could simply bask for a while in the warmth of the love expressed for us. But, I know I can't do that. There are too many whose wish it is to direct hatred and homophobia towards us. We need look only so far as the swift attack that followed our convention. As we approach General Convention next year, we can expect more frequent and more nasty attacks on Integrity as an organization and on us as lesbian and gay children of God.
I try to understand what is behind some of the attacks. It is fear - fear of change, fear of that which they don't understand. It is fear born of the threat that comes from interaction (or lack thereof) with those who are different, fear that comes when we confront the Gospel face to face and realize we don't always measure up to what it requires of us.
We are called to love. We are called to return love for hatred. We are called to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus as expressed in the Gospel, the Good News. The news isn't always good to those who can't accept the fact that it is meant for all God's children - even those that aren't like the rest, even those with darker skin, even those who aren't male, even those who are lesbian and gay, even those who are poor.
The love, the Good News will overcome the fear and the ignorance. It will eventually even overcome the hatred. But to do so, the Good News must have a human face. It must have a heart and a mouth to witness to the Gospel message. We are that human face. We have the hearts and the mouths to understand and proclaim the Gospel. We are the sources of the love that must be sown, even in the faces of hatred.
As it has been for so long, our tasks are clear and the road lies before us. The tasks may not be easy and the road may not always be flat and without curves. Yet we know that the Gospel calls us down that road and directs our tasks. And we also know that it is the hand of God guiding us along our way, sometimes leading with a beckon, sometimes urging with a gentle push.
No matter how often we find hatred, my sisters and brothers, let us always sow love. If we are to remain people of integrity, we have no other option.
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*CHU AT CHURCH CENTER*
Long-time Integrity member Thomas K. Chu has been appointed staff officer for young adult and higher education ministries at the Episcopal Church Center. In this position, Chu will respond to the needs and concerns of young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 both in and out of university settings. The Rev. Giles Asbury, Episcopal chaplain at UCLA and former president of the Episcopal Society for Ministry in Higher Education, praised Chu's ability to "listen to people whose perspectives and outlooks are different from his. He is well-known and respected by various chaplains around the country." A 1989 graduate of Columbia University, Chu was assistant for congregational development at the Episcopal Church Center and was co-chair on the planning committees for four national Asian youth and young-adult events prior to his appointment. Chu previously served on the Board of Integrity/New York.
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*CHALLWOOD STUDIO*
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*Special Insert to "The Voice of Integrity," Fall 1993*
Integrity feels that it is important that our members be kept fully and promptly informed about all significant news affecting the lesgay community in the Episcopal Church. The following letter from Bishop Otis Charles is unquestionably of great significance. It is unlikely that it will be published in its entirety anywhere else. Bishop Charles asked that his letter not be made public until after the meeting of the House of Bishops in Panama City (September 24-30). We have honored that request. Undoubtedly, his "coming out" will be discussed at the meeting, which also will focus on the first draft of the Bishops' Pastoral Teaching on Human Sexuality, prepared pursuant to the 1991 General Convention's Resolution A-104sa. Integrity was represented at the meeting in Panama by Fred Ellis of Nashville, Tennessee, Scott Helsel of Guttenberg, New Jersey, and the Rev. Grant Gallup of Managua, Nicaragua.
September 1993
To: The Bishops of the Episcopal Church
From: Otis Charles, Bishop of Utah, Retired
For the past several months, I have openly communicated with my family and with growing numbers of my colleagues and friends that I am a gay man. While in many way I would have preferred that this communication remain a personal and private one, I am well aware that given my vocation and my calling as a bishop, and given the general climate of public speculation so prevalent today, that could not long be the case. Out of respect for the collegiality of the House and for our personal relationship, as well as to avoid conjecture I want to communicate with you directly.
For 45 years I struggled with my sexual identity. In the isolation and darkness, I felt that there must be something wrong with me. I turned to others for help. I prayed with all my heart to be healed. Nothing changed. I was still me, pulled apart inside by feelings I schooled myself to believe were unnatural.
Then God did a marvelous and wonderful work in my life. God led me to Agnes Sanford. God led me to ask Agnes Sanford to pray with me for my healing -- to pray that I might be delivered -- and God heard my prayer. I was healed. To my surprise it was not from homosexuality but from my fear of myself, from my discomfort about who I am. It was a charismatic moment for me. I was born again and yet the power of the learned experience that it was unacceptable to be both priest and gay kept me silent. I said nothing to my wife, my family, my bishop.
Only very much later in another moment touched by the Holy Spirit did I have the courage to say aloud what before I had spoken only to my confessors and to Agnes Sanford. Since that evening of truth telling to Elvira and our friends Bill and Barbara Frey in July 1976, I have for the most part remained silent and by my silence have given power to the forces that work to maintain the culture of silence within the church and the community.
As recently as the summer of 1991, I sat silently through the Phoenix General Convention. I did not join the debate openly and honestly, simply saying "Hey, you are talking about me. I am a gay man." I allowed myself to be one of "those" spoken about outside the House -- the guessed-about number of Bishops who are gay. I was sufficiently troubled by my silence that I subsequently told the Presiding Bishop what I had been carrying silently in my heart for so long and, one by one, I have been doing so with other bishops and colleagues, as well as family and friends.
Some may question what calls me to speak out now. After all, I am 67 years old. My children are grown and independent. I have retired from my ministry as Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School after eight fulfilling and fruitful years. Why not simply and quietly live out my years in a respectable, comfortable arrangement with my wife and family, or else pursue my expression of my sexuality quietly, outside the glare of public notice and attention? Some may even wonder if all this is being made known now because of some incident or misconduct that has come to light. That is not the case.
My choice to make myself known in this way and at this time is a personal one, whatever motive or meaning others may infer. Sexuality is part of the richness, the complexity of God's creation. It is an essential part of our human experience, and it is a part of the experience of priests and bishops. Indeed it deserves -- perhaps even requires -- to be dealt with as straightforwardly and sensitively as matters of doctrine and pastoral care.
I have promised myself that I will not remain silent, invisible, unknown. After all is said and done, the choice for me is not whether or not I am a gay man, but whether or not I am honest about who I am with myself and others. It is a choice to take down the wall or silence I have built around an important and vital part of my life, to end the separation and isolation I have imposed on myself all these years. It is a choice to live my life as consistently as I can with my own integrity, a choice to be fully who I am and to be responsible for all that I am.
It is also a choice that has deeply affected Elvira and our children. Speaking the truth to Elvira forever changed our relationship. To say that the years since 1976 have been painful is totally inadequate. They have been wrenching for us and for our family. Elvira and I began our life together with a deep commitment to have and hold each other in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until departed by death. Our marriage has been blessed. We have five healthy, intelligent, creative daughters and sons and nine wonderful grandchildren. Out life together has been good. Slowly, however, Elvira and I have come to realize that we must live our lives separately.
In
reaching this decision, I have been moved and humbled by the support and love
of Elvira and our children and their families, by their openness to me, their
willingness to hear me, and most of all by their affirmation and love for
me. Still, it would be unreal not to acknowledge that for each of us this
is a very different experience. There is anger, grief and loss, and at
the same time we are stronger than ever before in our communication and our
understanding of reconciling love.
I am aware that the reactions to my openness about my sexuality will encompass the whole range of emption and opinion. For those for whom homosexuality is an incomprehensible (or even reprehensible) aspect of human behavior, there may be a sense of shock and perhaps revulsion and sadness. For those for whom the expression of their sexuality as gay and lesbian men and women has long been hidden, suppressed, and scorned, there may be a sense of affirmation and perhaps even victory.
Beyond the reactions, beyond any sense of winning or losing, beyond any opinions and feelings about what is right and what is wrong, I would hope for people to be able finally to see in my story neither a victory nor a loss but a fellow human being and Christian on the journey that life is, a human being subject to all the feelings of joy and sorrow, of pain and wonder, of love and fear, a human being doing his best to follow his heart and his Lord and to live a life of integrity and service to others.
This may be particularly difficult within the Episcopal Church. For the past twenty years or more, the subject of our diversity - racial, sexual, cultural - has been controversial, painful, and often divisive. Yet something new is being done in our midst -- in spite of our reluctance. We now have three black diocesan bishops. Three women have been elected to the episcopate, one a diocesan. The same diocese that elected a woman to be its chief pastor seriously considered a gay man, living in a covenanted relationship. Blacks, women, gays -- all have had to struggle and continue to struggle to be visibly present with voice in the exclusive world of white, male, heterosexual dominance.
Because we are a people of faith, our quarrels have at times taken place as theological and moral arguments -- after ignoring or even threatening the very ties of brotherly and sisterly love that binds us together as a community of believers. But precisely because we are a community of faith, bound to one another in that faith, I believe God is breaking the walls of separation. The Spirit is drawing us to a new understanding and experience of inclusion. I also believe God has drawn me to speak the truth of my experience. And I believe that as gay men and lesbians speak openly, telling the stories of their lives, the community of faith is strengthened.
As for the future, I expect to continue to live my life in the context of my calling as a priest and bishop. After a period of reflection and prayerful mediation on what God is calling me to do, I intend to find ways to allow my experience to inform my ministry and to make a contribution to others. I have made this commitment to myself, for myself, and for the church I love.
I count on your continued prayers and support and look forward to being with you at the meeting of the House of Panama.