I read the Eames Commission Report today with mixed feelings. I uphold, firmly and without hesitation, the ministries and relationships of my lesbian and gay friends. At the same time, I see that the Episcopal Church in the USA mishandled the process by which it approached and consummated its advocacy of these causes, and I recognize ample ground for Anglicans who dissent from these conclusions. I don’t see a way that the Commission could have gone further without utterly alienating the vast preponderance of my neighbors in the Communion — and the point of the commission’s report was to ascertain how best to maintain the communion.
The Report answers its assignment by saying, “This is what ‘communion’ means. Looks as though the ECUSA and the Diocese of New Westminster [the Canadian diocese that’s developing rites for blessing same-sex unions] haven’t been living out their end of that. Since we can’t undo what’s already happened, let’s avoid exacerbating the tensions by making formal decisions that ignore the threat to communion that we presently face — specifically, no more non-celibate gay bishops, and no formally-recognized rites for blessing gay relationships.”
Thus far, I can’t see a lot to argue with. The USA has devoted tremendous energy to its internal struggles over sexuality; it has put relatively little effort into convincing the rest of the world that there’s a solid theological case for the church’s mind. Having convinced a constituency in the US sufficient for the election and consecration of Bishop Robinson, and having charted a course through toward experimental rites for solemnizing same-sex unions, the ECUSA proceeded. A sizable number of US Episcopalians and a vast proportion of world Anglicans outside the US remained unconvinced, but that did not prevent ECUSA from going forward.
At this stage, one question is: does the urgency of the theological justice point (assuming that is granted) outweigh the importance of conducting this sort of deliberation in collaboration with everyone involved? The US leadership argues that its actions fall into the category of the kinds of things about which the rest of the world doesn’t really have a say (things like whether to ordain a particular candidate to the diaconate or presbyterate). The rest of the world points out that the episcopacy constitutes a sort of hinge office, the fulcrum of the relationship between the diocese and the wider church; under those circumstances, decisions about who becomes a bishop absolutely make a difference to the world church. The US acted unilaterally — and in defiance of specific entreaties from the every collective body of world Anglicans (which the Report identifies as “Instruments of Unity”) — at a juncture when the rest of the church deserved consultation.
Since the Eames Commission unanimously concludes that the US and New Westminster disregarded their obligations to pursue more collegial deliberations, the Commission’s conclusions seem relatively mild. Indeed, I’m a little surprised that the Commission attained unanimity; I expect that more conservative spokespeople will be gravely disappointed in it, and I can see why they would be. Their frustration will be mirrored by those who see the Report as the church closing ranks in support of a defensive ideological timidity, once again relegating the lives of the gay and lesbian faithful to secondary importance.
The Commission evidently looked for a way to fulfill its charge to find a way to preserve communion (not to determine anything about sexuality). They chose to refuse either to punish the US and New Westminster or to minimize the significance of those bodies’ actions relative to the world of Anglicans who did not consent to them.
So: do I like the Report? No. Do I respect the labor that must have gone into it? Yes. Does the Report make a closely reasoned, theologically careful case for its findings. Yes. Can I imagine the Commission doing a much better job of outlining a way forward that may sustain communion across the board? No.
I read the Report with an eye open to the influence of Bishop N T Wright, with whom I’m acquainted through New Testament guild circles. It looked to me as though his thought pervaded the Report: a strong Pauline streak, with firm emphasis on an expansive construal of the scope of communion. I was impressed, then, that despite Bp. Wright’s strong opposition to the consecration of Bp. Robinson and to the recognition of same-sex unions, he was able to vote for a Report that left room for an outcome inimical to his deeply-held theological convictions.
If I had my druthers, I’d have had the Episcopal Church more actively involved in the lives of other Anglican Provinces for the past four decades or more, such that we would have had a more vivid sense of our mutual life, and would have communicated more effectively the sorts of reasoning that make the consecration of Bishop Robinson a source of joy, and the blessing of unions among our beloved friends and relations a source of renewed strength for our own committed relationships. We didn’t extend ourselves for those years, and now we can’t be surprised that others feel that we have left them (and the faith by which they have been saved) behind us. If we’re going to disagree, vehemently, we ought to devote all the more energy to working together and helping one another, so as to make sure that our discernment not be clouded by our provincialism, whether of the right or of the left. This Report, frustrating though it be in certain respects, seems to ask us to redouble our efforts to bind our lives more closely with those of sisters and brothers far away, so that we’re speaking and praying and reasoning and deciding about real human beings, rather than paper cutouts, projections, abstractions from the flesh-and-blood people whose lives will bear the consequences of the decisions we ultimately reach.
DRMA: Floe by Philip Glass; Heart of Gold by Neil Young; He’s On The Beach by Evan Dando; Veronica by Elvis Costello & Paul McCartney; Deep Ellum Blues by Jimmie Dale Gilmore; Work Song by Paul Butterfield Blues Band; Roll Jordan Roll by Fairfield Four; If You Want Me To Stay by Sly and the Family Stone; Listen by Sophie B. Hawkins; I'm Free by the Who; All the Things She Gave Me by the Waterboys; The Sermon by the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama; All This Useless Beauty by Elvis Costello; Wild Wood by Paul Weller; Jon the Revelator by Taj Mahal et al.; Custard Pie by Led Zeppelin; Come On In the Room by Georgia Mass Choir; Dancing With Tears In My Eyes by X; Danny Boy by Black 47; CIA Man by the Fugs; Memphis Queen by Joe Grushecky & the Iron City Houserockers; Ring of Fire by Elvis Costello; Smiling Faces Sometimes by the Undisputed Truth; The Day I Tried to Live by Soundgarden; Trouble by Lindsey Buckingham; The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead by XTC
Posted by AKMA at October 18, 2004 06:19 PM | TrackBackI look forward to your thoughts on this report. I have printed it out - but I too, need time to digest its impact on the Anglican communion, ECUSA, the diocese and on me.
Posted by: Lee Ann at October 18, 2004 08:14 PMI'm not going to lie, this really makes me hate that this is the religion to which I belong. I don't understand anyone who has a problem with homosexuality. I just don't. Maybe it's the generation gap but I was very happy with the decision to elect Bishop Robinson and very unhappy with the responses from all sides.
I just don't know.
Posted by: Anthony Smith at October 18, 2004 08:56 PMAKMA, you're being more generous than I am yet inclined to be. I think your "take" on the state of things is about right, for the Episcopal Church. Not, perhaps, for the rest of the Communion--but others can speak for themselves.
What concerns me:
Bp Robinson is effectively uninvited from everything. Is this unprecedented? I don't know; I'm trying to find out.
This notion of communion and instruments of unity has certain presumptions about things like local and universal church and the character of truth (possession, not process) that I find deeply troubling.
On a lighter note, I think the revisionist history of the ordination of women is a hoot! Not at all the reality that I and others live and lived through. But oh well, if we can't find a positive example, we can always invent one. But isn't it telling that it's about gender (surely one of the issues with sexual orientation: how do we tell gender anymore?) rather than, oh, marriage and divorce, or, heaven forbid, money, relief and development efforts, prayer book revision, indigenization of the episcopate, worship, etc.
There is much more to be said. Somebody will certainly say it. And when there is nothing in particular to be said, someone will say that too.
Posted by: Ellen at October 18, 2004 08:59 PMHey, y’all, I only just finished typing!
Lee Ann, I hope this makes sense to you; one of the Report’s strengths, it seems to me, lies in its strong account of mutual accountability, and I know myself to be accountable to you (along with the other saints who have taken part with me in shared reflection, prayer, and service).
Anthony, I won’t trivialize your frustration by claiming that I fully feel it. I do feel a portion of that frustration, and also a frustration from some friends who see the US church as a patronizing pedant, determined to have its way regardless of the consequences. I ally myself with you, but I still hear them, and their grief is not inconsequential.
Ellen, this is a first read-through (interrupted by a lot of instant messaging and worrying about the Red Sox). I don’t know the struggles over women’s ordination as you do — I wasn’t paying the least attention back then, so I don’t recognize the inventive elements in the Report’s treatment of the process (though it would be hard to miss the “put the best face on it” tenor of the narrative). Neither do I know any of the personalities or political forces as you do, save perhaps Tom Wright; until I see other wise, I’m willing to construe this as a temporizing gesture, reserving a space within which reconciliation might ensue — or might not.
I did note with interest the relative paucity of examples of how change takes place appropriately. My favorite example — usury — would have constituted the parties in different, intriguing ways.
What I anticipated was that all US bishops who didn’t specifically repudiate the consecration might be excluded. . . .
Posted by: AKMA at October 18, 2004 10:49 PMI thought the commission did a pretty creditable job in a "Mission Impossible" situation.
The really tough part is how any innovation will ever happen in the Anglican Communion (or even the larger church) if everyone has to agree on everything.
Are we headed for a kind of Amish Anglicanism where we get stuck in a time warp we can't bootstrap ourselves out of?
Posted by: dave paisley at October 18, 2004 11:53 PMAlthough I could devote only a quick scan to the "Windsor" report yesterday, my first response was one of immense respect for the care with which the commission members dealt with an impossibly difficult situation. Yes, the issues of human sexuality and the church are ones that I care about greatly, but they just aren't the most important ones facing the church today. As far as I can see, the only way forward, the only way out of this situation, is to proclaim and live out the Gospel -- each one of us, every day, in every thing we do, in love and service to our neighbor. And I trust that if we are faithful in that, then somehow all the rest of this will work out.
Posted by: Holly at October 19, 2004 08:17 AMRE: paragraph 49, "Communion... subsists in visible unity, common confession of the apostolic faith, common belief in scripture and the creeds, common baptism and shared eucharist, and a mutually recongnized common ministry."
I suspect I am the only person who is troubled by the confused concept expressed as "visible unity." This notion is so often voiced, assumed, spoken, written that it actually at times seems to mean something related to the two terms... "visible" and "unity".
Of Ecosystems, visible unity, I think, means something. Of the Episcopal Church, well, exactly how extensive a unity? And if not fully extensive, then a unity that is and is not a unity. Unity here, but not there.
Unity, if such there is, is INVISIBLE or it is a body or an ecosystem or an economy.
Anyway, this is the sort of thing that niggles and makes me wonder at the fondness for visibilities. This repeated attachment to phrases like "visible unity" "visible center" (as in bishop) etc. are confused with the idea of the visible church. Visible church is fine, sensible. Visible unity is, when you think of it, a term that only begs the question... what of actual unity?
Actual unity is of another kind than some organizationally defined collective... which is the way that I think visible unity signifies. Therefore, communion too should be conceived as an invisible unity.
Posted by: Mark Diebel at October 19, 2004 11:26 AMIs being right the most important thing, from a Christian point of view? That's the question I would ask Anthony, and I believe it's the question asked of us by the Windsor report. I believe in an inclusive church, but I agree with AKMA's remarks about communion. I don't say there's an easy way to reconcile my convictions with consideration for those who believe otherwise, but at least we should frame our arguments in theological terms that we share with our opponents. I hope ECUSA leaders will be measured in their responses. The report could have been much harsher, and I think liberals have an opportunity now to stake out the high ground of kenoticism (if I can put it that way!).
Posted by: Patrick Coleman at October 19, 2004 11:27 AMPatrick,
Since this is someone else's blog I won't use the language that first comes to mind. Your question is, obviously, the one that everyone keeps asking those who feel that ordaining Bp Robinson was a really good and right move. There is a strange implication like, "Yeah we all know that gay people are just people too and can have wonderful ministries and all that but... can't we just not give them the same things we have until other people feel the exact same way?"
The African Church and many of the other third world churches are an intergral part of the communion but I am troubled to find them becoming more reactionary in their Christianity. It is very complicated, with all the horrible history of the Christian church in general and the compromised position of the Anglican church in particular I want us to finally listen to the colonized but at the same time if a gay person is not in full communion with our church I don't feel that any of the means of grace are really valid. Though it is certainly not the same degree of violence as in Chile during Pinochet, I feel by turning away the gay and lesbian community after we have welcomed them is effectively to make the church the two or three walking out as oppossed to the hundreds who stayed in without protest.
I joined the Anglican community in order to be a part of a progressive church with a wonderful amount of good theology and good praxis. In the end though I don't know that the Church universal is good for anything anymore and I don't want to feel that way.
Posted by: Anthony Smith at October 19, 2004 12:17 PMAMKA -- I appreciate your courage in writing about the report. Frankly, the possible response from any number of sides can feel less like a discussion and more like political discourse where people yell slogans at each other.
I am struggling with my thoughts about the report. I must say that the term "non-celibate gay" grates on the ear, or at least my non-celibate gay ear. I know it is not meant in offense. Who are these non-celibates gay or straights who have a defined role in our theology or practice? Gay people do not leave their humanness at the door of a Church that sees them as something other than fully human.
Bishop Robinson got an award from a gay rights organization the other day. In response, he said that there were gay kids in Concord, New Hampshire who don't know the Bible, and would be hard pressed to find the scriptures, but they intimately know passages that they think means that God hates them and that they have no place within God's church for them as they deal with their lives.
I've always thought that the theological arguments in these discussion are terribly weak, unimaginative, and not very helpful on either side (supporting anti-gay interpretation or rejecting anti-gay interpretations). But at the base of this exercise is taking a part of humankind and making us into something else.
That we never move beyond Old Testament holiness codes to Acts or Galations is a little surprising. I am no scholar, but it seems that at the heart of this is calling unclean what is not unclean.
As far as where we go from here, we also have an obligation to decide how much toleration we can allow in treating gay folk as this something else, how much we can be silent to the words of the African primates who have extremely harsh ideas about gay people, and the result of such tolerance in Africa and here.
As far as better things for the Church to do, it's a nice concept, but for us, at this time, this is the thing that we have in front of us and all around us. Tabling the conversation (which is what the Report appears to be doing)seems to indicate that God is incapable of a church that can deal with the issue.
Posted by: Don at October 19, 2004 06:03 PMI find it amazing that the church of the last 50 years is the first to 'see the light' and let homosexuality and the ordination of women be ok. I guess the consensus of 2,000 years and the foundation of the Scriptures was somehow not enough.
Paul saw homosexuality as the far end-point of God's judgment on an idolatrous people, the ECUSA sees it as something worth celebrating. I wonder where the ECUSA fits on the Romans 1 spectrum?
"I joined the Anglican community in order to be a part of a progressive church ..."
It strikes me that this is a very telling comment. When I grew up as a cradle Episcopalian (many years ago), the Episcopal Church was one Church with one faith, even if it encompassed groups with different emphases within that one faith (e.g. evangelical, Catholic, liberal). Now it has gone beyond different emphases to the point where there really are two different faiths: the traditional and the progressive.
For those who are traditional, the faith does not change. What the Church believed and taught on the day of Pentecost, we are to believe and teach now. For those who are progressive, the very word "progressive" indicates that the faith should change, that it should "make progress".
These two faiths are so different that I have to wonder why "communion" between them is thought to be desirable - by either side. If we no longer believe and teach the same Gospel, then why should we pretend to walk together?
Posted by: Chris Jones at October 21, 2004 03:58 PM