INTEGRITY FORUM

FOR GAY EPISCOPALIANS AND THEIR FRIENDS

c Integrity, Inc. 1979   ISSN: 0095-2184

Volume 6  Number 1     Advent 1979

 

INTEGRITY FORUM

Managing Editor:  David R. Williams. 

Editorial Board:  David S. Blix, Rev'd Grant M. Gallup, Rev'd James K. Taylor, Rev'd Dennis Zygadio, O. Carm. 

Contributing Editors:  Rev'd Ellen M. Barrett, Rev'd Malcolm Boyd, Jim Cotter, Louie Crew, William A. Doubleday, Rev'd Carter Heyward, Rev'd Canon Clinton R. Jones, Rev'd John McNeill, S.J., Rev'd James B. Nelson, Rev'd W. Norman Pittenger. 

Circulation:  Integrity/Chicago. 

Integrity Officers:  John C. Lawrence, President; Lelia H. Baldwin, Vice-President; Rev'd Richard G. Younge, Secretary; George W. Casper, Treasurer; and the 8 Regional Representatives as listed on the back page. 

INTEGRITY FORUM:  FOR GAY EPISCOPALIANS AND THEIR FRIENDS is the official publication of Integrity, Inc.  Publication of the name, photograph or likeness of any person or organization is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization.  Editorial correspondence should be sent to Integrity, P.O. Box 891, Oak Park IL 60303 or telephone 312/386-1470.  Copyright by Integrity, Inc.  6 issues per year.  Memberships are $12 per year; subscriptions without memberships are $17 per year.  Add $5 for mailing in a plain envelope.  Make checks payable to Integrity, Inc. and remit to your chapter treasurer or George W. Casper, 530 Massachusetts Av., Boston, MA 02118. 

 

SEXUALITY, LOVE, AND JUSTICE

 

The Rev'd Carter Heyward spoke to those in attendance at the Integrity Convention.  The following is the text of her address.

 

  Tender God, touch us.

  Be touched by us.

  Make us lovers of humanity

  And of all creation.

 

  Gracious God, hear us

  Into speech.

  Speak us into

  Acting.

  And through us,

  Re-create the world.

  Amen.

 

Consider the words of James Baldwin:

 

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover.  If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.

 

The role of the artist.  The lover.  The true teacher.  Counselor.  Christian priest ‑‑ lay or ordained.  If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.  I read and understand this to be our common vocation, we who are here today.  And it is about this common vocation ‑‑ ours as Christian priests, teachers, counselors, artists, lovers ‑‑ that I want to speak today.

 

I stand here with you as one whose own understanding of herself continues to evolve ‑‑ often very roughly, sometimes abrasively even to myself, peppered with surprises about myself and others. An evolving, or developing, sense of self that is never finished. I do not understand myself primarily in categories that suggest that anything about me is static, unchanging, finished.  Even those categories that most of us assume to be basic ‑‑ such as female or male gender, such as racial identity, such as the homo sapiens species itself ‑‑ seem to me more elusive, less static, than we often assume.  I am tempted to say, and will for now, that nothing is fixed; nothing in the world is so essentially what it is today that tomorrow may not surprise us with something new‑‑whether in the nations, governments, religions, economic and political structures of our own country, or in the ways in which we live our lives among friends, lovers, colleagues.

 

And yet, there is something basic among us, something evolutionary ‑‑ and revolutionary; something more basic than femaleness or maleness, whiteness or blackness, gayness or straightness; something more basic than Christianity or any religion.  Something that is unchanging, stable, constant,  precisely in its dynamic, revolutionary movement in the world.  I am speaking of the human experience, and perhaps also the experience of other creatures, of love ‑‑ or, our human experience of god in the world.  And so, if there is one fundamental category that can be appropriately descriptive, even definitive, of who we are ‑‑ of what we are here to do in the world ‑‑ it is that of lover.

 

Because the word "love" has become a catch-all for sweet and happy feelings; because we have learned to believe that love stories are warm and fuzzy stories about dewy eyes and titillating embraces; because we have been taught that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage and that love means never having to say you're sorry; because, in short, love has been romanticized so poorly, trivialized so thoroughly, and perverted ‑‑ turned comp­letely around ‑‑ from its Gospel meaning, we find ourselves having to begin again to re-experience, re-consider, re-conceptualize what it means ‑‑ to say "I love you."   What it means to believe that god is in the world, among us, moving with us, even by us, here and now.  What does it mean ‑‑ to be a lover?  Indeed, as Baldwin notes so well, to make those whom we love conscious of the things they don't see; but, first, to become conscious ourselves of the things we don't see.

 

It occurs to me that it may be the special privilege of we who are here today to take very seriously, and very actively, what it means to love.  Homosexuals have had to fall back on the category of "lover" in order to speak of our most intimate, and often meaningful, relation­ships.  Deprived of the categories that are steeped in the tradition of romantic love ‑‑ categories like husband and wife, fiancee, mar­riage itself, masculinity and femininity, bride and bridegroom; de­prived of the symbols of romantic love, such as rings and weddings and public displays of affection ‑‑ both verbal and physical; de­prived of the religious legitimation of romantic love ‑‑ the blessing of our relationships; deprived of celebration, acceptance, even acknowledgement of our relationships, we have had no other com­mon word for ourselves, and for those whom we love, except the word "lover."  Deprived of civil and religious trappings of romantic love, we may well be those who are compelled to plumb the depths of what it really means ‑‑ to love.  Our deprivation becomes our opportunity and our vocation; to become conscious of the things we have not seen, and to make others conscious of these same things.

 

What might it mean ‑‑ to love?  I want to tell you what I am discovering, in the hope that you ‑‑ each of you, all of you ‑‑ will be moved to consider carefully your own experiences.  There is a time, occasionally, for us to come to a consensus ‑‑ for the purpose of corporate action.  But I am not here this morning to gather a con­sensus on what it means to love, or even to suggest that a consensus would be helpful to us, or to anyone.

 

At this point, the last thing we need is a new set of commandments writ large in stone.  I believe it is a time, in the words of Nelle Morton, to "hear each other into speech."  It is a time to tell our stories, to listen carefully, to begin to experience our experience, to risk realiz­ing ‑‑ and maybe, at times, sharing ‑‑ our own senses of confusion, fear, frustration, anger, even rage, about what is done to us, and about what we do to ourselves and others, all in the name of a "love" that is too often not love at all, but only a sham.  A perversion.  A corruption of ourselves and of the god that is with us.

 

And so I speak personally as a lesbian feminist christian priest and teacher.  I use each of these words to describe myself, because each of them has grown forth out of my evolving sense of how I might best be a lover of sisters and brothers in the world today.  Lesbian.  Feminist.  Christian.  Priest.  Teacher.  Either these dimensions of my identity enable me, as a lover of human beings and of creation itself, or they are destructive, dysfunctional dimensions of who I am, and would best be somehow out-grown or discarded.  For now, these overlapping, at times interchangeable, senses of myself ignite me, excite me, infuse me with a sense not only of what love means, but also that who I am ‑‑ and who you are, and who we are together ‑‑ matters.  If I love you, if we love, we matter.  Lovers make all the difference in the world.  Lovers re-create the world.

 

First, I am discovering that love is justice.  Love does not come first, justice later.  Love is not a "feeling" that precedes right-relationship among the persons in a family or the people of the world.  We do not feel our ways into right-relationship; with other races, other people.  We do not feel our way into doing what is just.  We act our way into feeling.  This was, by the way, the raison d'etre of the Philadelphia ordination; a conviction shared by many that we act our way into new feelings, new emotions, new ideas.  And the act is love.  The act is justice.  "Good feelings" about love and justice come later.  I am discovering that the exact same thing is true in friendship itself.  To my amazement, I continue to experience ‑‑ more and more, in fact ‑‑ that the more just a personal relationship, the more loving this relationship, the more mutual, honest, beneficial, and creative for both my friend and me, the more intensely and remarkably I experience feelings of love between us.  Speaking sexually, the better the friendship, the more sustained and deeper and more precious to me is the erotic flow of energy that bonds us together.  I find this terribly confusing, as you might imagine, in the context of a social order in which there is historically a great divide between "friendship" and "sexual love" ‑‑ between philia and eros.  Most of us have been out of touch, from the beginning, with the eroticism that does, I believe, draw us toward friendship ‑‑ with persons of both sexes.  Indeed, sexuality is itself ‑‑ I believe, more and more ‑‑ our participation in making love, making justice, in the world.  Our drive toward one another; our movement in love; our expression of our profound sense of being bonded together in life and death; our sexuality ‑‑ that which is expressed not only between lovers in a personal relationship, but also in the work of an artist who loves her painting or her poetry; a father who loves his children; a revolutio­nary person who loves her people.

 

I see love, justice, and sexuality, in close friendship; in the victory salutation of a Sandinista rebel in Nicaragua; in the poetry of e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich; in the celebration of the Maundy Thursday Eucharist on behalf of Maria Cueto and Raisa Nemikin; in the genital embrace and ecstasy of two women, or two men, or a woman and a man, who are doing their best to make justice in their relationship.  Where there is no justice ‑‑ between two people or among thousands ‑‑ there is no love.  And where there is no justice, no love, sexuality is perverted into violence and violation ‑‑ the effects of which most surely include rape; emotional and physical battering; relationships manipulated by control competition, and contempt; perhaps even war itself.  Love is justice.  Sexual­ity is our participation in making love, making justice.

 

Second, I am discovering that love is passionate.  If I love you.  I am invested in our bonding.  You are important to me ‑‑ deeply so.  Passion is a deep realization of our relation, of the significance of who we are together, of the fact that you matter, I matter, we matter.  I may not always be able to show, or to tell, you.  I may even be afraid of you.  I may hurt you, or be hurt by you.  But, in passion I care about us ‑‑ whether or not I "feel good" about us right now ‑‑ and I do not want to leave you comfortless.  If I love you, I am your advocate.  If I love you, I will struggle for you/us.  My passion is my willingness to suffer for us ‑‑ not masochistically ‑‑ but rather, in the broadest sense of the verb "to suffer" ‑‑ to bear up who we are, to endure both the pain and the pleasure of what it means to love, to do what is just, to make right our relationship.  A person of passion, a lover of humanity, is she or he who enters seriously and intention­ally into the depths of human experience, insists upon its value, and finds god, to quote Elie Wiesel, in "the exchange of glances heavy with existence"; or in the testimonies of Sarah Grimke, refusing to live any longer with "someone's feet upon our necks"; or in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., to see the vision of a promised land in which we are "free at last" ‑‑ a land in which love as justice is humanity's common experience.

 

Our passion as lovers is that which fuels both our rage at injustice ‑‑ including that which is done to us ‑‑ and our compassion, or our passion which is on behalf of, and in empathy with, those who violate us, hurt us, and would even destroy us.  Rage and compas­sion, far from being mutually exclusive, belong together.  Each is an aspect of our honesty ‑‑ and our integrity ‑‑ for just as our rage is entirely appropriate to our experience of lovelessness in our own lives, and elsewhere in the world, so too is our compassion the on-going acknowledgement, and confession, of our own refusals to make love, to make justice, in the world ‑‑ beginning in our own homes, in our own beds, at our own altars.  How, in the name of either god or humanity, can we hear an Anita Bryant (or the hidden voices of men in corporate power who use her as a frontispiece); or the frustrated and fear-laced protests against us raised by bishops, priests, and laypersons of our own church ‑‑ without, if we are really honest, experiencing both rage at what is being done to us in the name of love, and compassion for those who ‑‑ like us, and with us ‑‑ act, in some way, every day, on the basis of fear, projection denial, scapegoating, and contempt for persons who threaten us?

 

I am not suggesting that we be marshmallows.  To the contrary.  I myself would like to continue to toughen up, and to work passionately love and justice at every level of life as I experience it.  I believe, that the way to move on through these trials by fire, being shaped by courage and passion, is to actively be able to realize, and accept, my own participation in fear and denial, in injustice and lovelessness.  And to do what I can each day "to go ‑‑ and sin no more."  I realize that, regardless of my good intention, my own feet will always be placed squarely on someone's neck ‑‑ perhaps when I least realize it ‑‑ and that it is the loving, just vocation of those whom I am putting down, hurting, oppressing, to ask me to remove my feet from their neck; if need be, to tell me; and, finally ‑‑ if I refuse ‑‑ to knock me off.

 

We, who are lesbians and gay men in the Church, find ourselves, of course, in a social situation in which we are asking ecclesiastical authorities to remove the feet of a predominant theological tradition ‑‑ both sexist and heterosexist ‑‑ from off our necks.  Some of us are telling these institutional authorities.  And, if it is not done, our loving and just vocation is to knock it off.

 

We need to remember something.  Both as oppressor (white, male, upper middle class people, capitalists in a world yearning for com­mon sources, or unjust lovers in one-to-one relationships) and as oppressed (female, homosexuals, the poor, blacks, other colors or minorities, or victims of domination in personal relationships) ‑‑ we need to remember that it is the oppressed ‑‑ women, lesbians, gay men.  black people, poor people, victims of domination and control ‑‑ who set both the timetable, and the agenda, for liberation.  If we say now is the time, now is the time!  Our compassion is chastened and sustained by our rage.

 

Love is so passionate ‑‑ full of such yearning, such adamant insistence, for right-relation, such compassion, such rage.  And it is absolutely irrepressible.

 

In a society, essentially a contemporary world-order, built upon sex roles; an economy -- namely capitalism (although Marxism has a similar set of sex-role problems) ‑‑ maintained upon sex-roles; a religion ‑‑ Christianity ‑‑ thoroughly patriarchal and rooted in sex-roles, the deepest currents of women's liberation and gay lib­eration merge in radical feminism and threaten to bring down the entire social/economic/religious structure of reality.

 

Many fear that lesbian feminism poses a threat to the nuclear family, the economic order, and religious assumptions about marriage as the blessed state, the fatherhood of god and the motherhood of women, the procreative norm of sexuality, and the high value of dominant-submissive relationships beginning with male property rights and extending to God the Father.  Those who fear that this is what we are about fear rightly.  As lesbian, feminist, christian, I believe that our vocation is to bring down the Sacred Canopy that has heretofore prevented our active realization of love and justice in human life as the only sacred ‑‑ godly, right, and normative ‑‑ dimension of our life together on earth.  If economic structures do not encourage love, justice, mutuality, cooperation in human life, they should be un-done.

 

Heterosexism is built and maintained upon patriarchy: patriarchal definitions of what it means to be female and male and of what it means to have sex ‑‑ fantasies that rigidly delineate the male from the female, the masculine from the feminine, the anima from the animus, the top from the bottom, the initiator from the receiver, and the power of the phallus from the gratitude of the womb.  Heterosex­ism is a social structure pervasive in our culture and worthy only of being un-done.

 

And yet, to participate in its un-doing, is to feel a little crazy.  For I, like you, like us all, have been raised and instructed in heterosexist values.  Since my "Coming Out" article in Christianity and Crisis (early June issue), I have come to realize that these heterosexist assumptions all but complete, finish, our sense of who we are in the world.  To reject them privately is difficult, tedious, and leads us toward strange senses of schizophrenia.  To reject them publicly is to take a step none of us is ever prepared to take.  It is to begin to act our way into what we hope, believe, or trust, will be new ways of feeling and thinking about ourselves and others in the world.  Is to state publicly that we are lesbians or gay men to enter, for a time at least, into a sense of oneself as crazy?  This has been my experience.  By "craziness," I mean that my own sense of what is important, of who I am in relation to others in the world, of what my vocation as priest and teacher is, even my sense of what is happening in my closest relations ‑‑ with friends and lovers ‑‑ is called into question, often as much by me, as by others.  To feel crazy is to wonder if I am concocting a reality meaningful only to me ‑‑ and a few folks who are crazy enough to agree with me; it is to feel as if I have stepped outside the arena of what is not only acceptable, but also intelligible ‑‑ even, at times, to myself.  My decision (years in the making) to state publicly that I am a lesbian was a decision central to my vocation as a teacher (of students, for whom sexuality is usually a primary concern); as a priest (of a church, in which sexuality is a bedrock of the entire corpus of theological tradition and praxis): as a feminist (in a society founded upon unjust assumptions about fe­male and male roles); as a Christian (who believes that the com­mand to love neighbor as self has as much to do with eros and philia as with agape, and that such love knows no gender-confines): and indeed as a lover ‑‑ a person in pursuit of friendship, justice, and co-creativity in the world, including our most immediate and inti­mate relations.

 

To say I am a lesbian is to make a statement at once personal and political.  It is to acknowledge the fact that, in our present social order, equal sexual relationships ‑‑ relationships truly mutual ‑‑ are available largely in same-sex relationships.  I have come to believe that it is unwise to expect true personal equality ‑‑ mutuality of common benefit ‑‑ between women and men in a sexist society.  And, while I can appreciate ‑‑ and affirm ‑‑ the efforts of women and men toward this end, this is not where I choose to invest my self, my energy, my passion.

 

The lesbian relation, as I experience it, may be mutual, and as such, may offer a glimpse into a way of being in the world that is as instructive for women and men in relation, as for women and women, and men and men.  To be a lesbian is, for me, a way ‑‑ the best way for me ‑‑ of being lover.

 

It is to begin to untangle myself from the "lies, secrets, and silences" that have been draped as a shroud over our life together on earth.  It is to invite projections onto myself, to trigger anxiety, to learn to bear up ‑‑ with others ‑‑ a common pain, common yearning, common responsibility to make each other conscious of the things we don't see.  It is to suggest that eros, philia, and agape are different words for the one experience of what it means to love.  It is to affirm that lesbianism is a political act, a spiritual affirmation of God, the power of relation, in the world.

 

We are just learning to name ourselves, to experience our experience, to speak of these things without trembling and even apology.  For me, lesbian sexuality is loving sexuality.  It is just sexuality ‑‑ that is, it is sexuality that can be rooted and expressed intimately bet­ween peers who have work to do together in the world ‑‑ specifi­cally, the liberation of women.  It is to "linger on the detail" ‑‑ the particularity of being women, in patriarchal society.  Adrienne Rich speaks of lesbianism as a "primary intensity" between women ‑‑ an intensity, it seems to me, that is vital ‑‑ at least for some of us ‑‑ if we are ever to take ourselves, and our sisters, as seriously as we were born to believe we should take men; whether church fathers or natural fathers, employers, husbands, or sons, the Sonship of a Redeemer, or the Fatherhood of our Creator.  Lesbian feminism is a protest against the structures of male dominance ‑‑ including that of one-to-one relationships: a movement to effect mutual, just relationships in the world.

 

And yet, we who are lesbians ‑‑ and perhaps gay men as well ‑‑  need to be on guard against being washed away by the torrents of craziness (which is what has happened to many of our foremothers and fathers), or ‑‑ worse yet ‑‑ finally engulfed by powers that be, and convinced that the only way we can survive in the world is to accommodate ourselves ‑‑ quietly, passively, invisibly ‑‑ in con­formity with the norms of the present order.

 

This is not a call to "come out."  It is a call to be aware of what you are doing, and why.  To realize the depth of the dilemma in which feminists, lesbians, and gay men find ourselves ‑‑ whether we are 100% in the closet, 95% out, 50% both ways, or completely unclear on whether we are in or out ‑‑ or even of whether or not we are gay!  It is a call to realize that what homosexuals are perceived to be about (and what some of us are about intentionally) is not, simply the right to lead our own private lives, but rather, an overhauling of the entire social structures of our own time.

 

Those who resist us have good reason.  The stakes are high.  True sexual liberation ‑‑ for homosexuals and for women ‑‑ will happen only when our economic, religious, educational, business, and other social structures and customs do not operate on the assumption that men will lead and women follow; that men work away from home and women have babies; that only a man and a woman constitute a creative couple; that only procreation is truly creative; and that in order to have a social order, someone must be on top and someone else on bottom: economically, religiously, sexually, otherwise.  To challenge these assumptions is, in some very real sense, to go mad.  The "fathers" are not with us.  Our families do not know how to be with us.  Our church believes it must be against us.  The Bible admonishes us.  Jesus was silent about us.  The authorities that despise the threat that we pose ‑‑ and despise it all the more if we happen, or appear to be, wise and happy people.  It is much easier to tolerate a sad and pitiful homosexual than a proud and creative gay man or lesbian. If we affirm ourselves, we are seen as sick; if we renounce ourselves, we are called healthy.  And we think that we are crazy.

 

All of which is to say that, for me, lesbianism has been, and is, a tedious but important way of my learning to love ‑‑ myself, my friends, my God.  Lesbianism means justice ‑‑ for women.  Lesbianism means creative cooperation among women, on behalf of a humanity of women and men in which cooperation so often gives way to competition; and love, to coyness, manipulation, and often contempt.

 

If I love you, I have to see things I have not seen before ‑‑ and I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.  If our common vocation is that of lover, perhaps we can be more conscious of what justice is in our own lives ‑‑ and in the world; conscious of our own passion with and for each other, as each of us seeks to make love; conscious of our own feelings of craziness ‑‑ learning ‑‑ God with us ‑‑ to realize that we are not "out of our minds."  We are, at last, beginning to live with integrity ‑‑ to re-claim our minds as our own; integrity, in which personal life-style and political conviction are one; in which friendship, sexuality, love, and justice are a common stream flowing into righteousness at home and elsewhere in the world; in which we begin to understand ‑‑ actively, in our own lives, with our lovers and our friends, as well as in our passion for justice for women, blacks, Native Americans, in the U.S., Latin America, the Middle East ‑‑ that loving is a revolutionary act‑‑always.  It is exactly the opposite of "romantic love."  To really love is far more exciting and far more compelling.  Such loving needs no church blessing ‑‑ although it is good when it is forthcoming, whether for a gay couple, civil rights, or the revolution of the people in San Salvador.

 

To say I love you is to say that you are not mine, but rather your own.

 

To love you is to advocate your rights, your space, your self, and to struggle with you, rather than against you, in your learning to claim your power in the world.

 

To love you is to make love to you, and with you, whether in an exchange of glances heavy with existence, in the passing of a peace we mean, in our common work or play, in our struggle for social justice, or in the ecstasy and tenderness of intimate embrace which we believe is just and right for us ‑‑ and for others in the world.

 

To love you is to be pushed by a power/god both terrifying and comforting, to touch and be touched by you.  To love you is to sing with you, cry with you, pray with you, and act with you to re-create the world.

 

To say "I love you" means ‑‑ let the revolution begin!  God bless the Revolution!  Amen.

 

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

 

"The trouble with the House of Bishops is God," said Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of California at the Integrity Convention banquet.  As I reflect on my experiences at the General Convention, those words have great meaning for me.  I spent a lot of time in Denver monitor­ing the House of Bishops.  I listened to most of its deliberations, and I talked with more than half of the bishops in the course of two weeks.  I came away greatly disillusioned and gravely concerned by what I saw and heard.  The best one could say is that the quality of leadership among the bishops is poor. Many of those chosen to lead the Church would have a difficult time finding their own way to the corner grocery store!  I found it mind-boggling to contemplate how in God's name most of them got elected.  Ability and leadership could have had little, if anything, to do with it.  In those two weeks, there was plenty of politics, lots of rhetoric, and much petty haggl­ing, but little theology and slim evidence of any committed pastoral concern on the part of most of them.  Many, if intelligent, certainly didn't show evidence of it, and if enlightened, preferred instead to let their ignorance shine.  They even found it difficult to write an intelligible resolution.  Any sense of the prophetic, of an ability to lead the Church into the future, was nowhere to be found.  There were a few notable exceptions ‑‑ profound theologizers like C. Kilmer Myers, prophets like Paul Moore, thinkers and proponents of grace like Wesley Frensdorff, and supremely loving and pastoral individuals like Otis Charles among others ‑‑ but they are most assuredly a minority.  Their words seemed to go unheard and surely unheeded.  The trouble with the House of Bishops is indeed God.  A more frightened, embattled, and chaotic group, I have rarely seen anywhere.  They are immobile and unable to respond to the needs of the Church, the events of our times, and the struggles of our people in any solid and firm way.  In some noteworthy instances I, a confirmed layperson, was pastoring the Bishops, instead of the other way around.  And, I have no doubt that I am more confident in what I am doing than most of them are in their activities.  And just as assuredly, it will be Integrity, not most of the bishops and their clergy, who will minister to gay people effectively in the aftermath of Denver.  For starters, most of them haven't the foggiest notion of what we are talking about when we discuss real ministry to gay people, much less knowing where or how to begin the task.

 

Integrity's presence in Denver was powerful, dignified, and proud.  While General Convention caused pain and sorrow to many gay brothers and sisters may I assure you as a firsthand witness to the scenario in Denver that I am convinced that we "have our act together," far more than either the House of Bishops or the Church as a whole.  They need our witness and ministry a lot more than we need theirs.  We do a much better job of caring for each other, loving and supporting each other, and providing real ministry among ourselves, than the bishops and most clergy could provide to us.  They have a lot to learn from us, from women, from other minori­ties, of what the Church and its ministry might be.

 

I am less enamored of "the Church" and its leadership and I've become a bit more radical.  We need seriously to think about why we put up with the kind of oppression and nonsense that went on in Denver.  My first suggestion has to do with our economic power in the Church (and the Bishops do sit up and take notice when you talk about money).  If we remain in the Church, and I hope we will, we shall have to expect a lot of oppression to continue, but we certainly don't need to Fund it!  I urge that any Integrity member who makes a pledge to a parish/diocese consider giving at least half of that pledge to Integrity instead.  Fund with your tithes an organization that works for you and ministers to you, instead of funding the Church powers that oppress or ignore you.  In those places where the oppression is overt and heavy, I suggest that those members give all of any current pledge to Integrity instead.  I think of a diocese like Louisiana, where the Bishop will not allow any priest to celebrate the Eucharist for Integrity on threat of deposition.  I met a gay cleric from Louisiana who lives in utter fear of his bishop, supposedly his pastor, who in reality has zero to offer him except to add torment and fear to his already marginal existence.  I say to you now that not one thin dime of gay money should be flowing into the coffers of parishes or dioceses that ignore our needs and murder our spirits.  If you take up my challenge, write to your Rector and Bishop telling them so, and why.

 

"The trouble with the House of Bishops is God."  The trouble with us is that we have supported our oppressors, failing to call oppres­sion by its name, and to point it out when we see it.  I suggest you act to do your part to end that oppression this very day.

 

God bless,

Faithfully,

John C. Lawrence, President

 

CHURCH SHOULD LOOK AT HUMAN SEXUALITY, NOT HOMOSEXUALITY

by William Stringfellow

 

William Stringfellow addressed the Integrity Convention on September 7, 1979 and the following is the content of that address.

 

What disturbs me most about the public emergence of Christians who are homosexuals is the exaggeration of the significance of sexuality and sexual preference per se which these circumstances have occasioned in the Episcopal Church, and in the churches generally, in America.  The matter of sexual proclivity, and the prominence of the sexual identity of a person, are both highly overrated.  If this notoriety can be attributed to the enthusiasm of certain homosexual zealots, it can also be blamed on those within the church who seek scapegoats or need victims to persecute in order to tranquilize their anxieties and their skepticism concerning their own justification.  This has placed us all in a situation in this Convention where there is danger of an overkill reaction, particu­larly so far as sexuality and the priesthood is concerned.  I have already expressed myself in an article in The Witness (July, 1979) on sexuality and the priesthood, and do not repeat those observa­tions here, save to reiterate that the issue is not homosexuality, but sexuality in any and all of its species and that, as much as I can discern, sexuality is as extensive and diverse as human life itself; there are as many varieties of sexuality as there be human beings.

 

I commend you to consider sexuality in the context of conversion, in the context of the event of becoming a Christian, in the context of the event in which one becomes a new person in Christ. In that event, whatever else must be said of it, all that a particular person is, sexuality along with all else, suffers the death in Christ which inau­gurates the new (or renewed) life in Christ.  One dies to self: every talent, every gift, every capability, every attribute, every limitation, every feature or facet of our personhood, every detail and item of our biography and inheritance, suffers that death in Christ.  It is a death of personality, intelligence, emotion; of the psychic and the physical, of what the Greeks called "body and soul," or "flesh and spirit."  And it is a death to distortion, confusion, illness, idolatry, brokenness, ambiguity, corruption, dissipation and to all of these.  It is so truly death that on the day of the undertaker there is, for the one who has already died in Christ, no surprise ‑‑ nothing new concerning death to be confronted.  But that death in Christ in which we are restored for new life does not involve the denial or suppres­sion or repression of anything which we are as persons.  It involves instead the renewal of our persons in the integrity of our own creation in the Word of God.

 

Thus, behold Saint Paul ‑‑ about whose conversion we know more than any of our predecessors in the Gospel (since he wrote of virtually nothing else!).  Among other things, Paul was a most zeal­ous man.  He possessed the attribute and gift of zeal.  He boasted, before his life in Christ that he was the most zealous persecutor of the Gospel; he boasted in his new life in Christ that he was the Gospel's most zealous apologist.  Both before and after, as it were, he is still Paul, the extraordinary zealous person.  His zeal is not repressed or rejected in his conversion, it is renewed and accepted.

 

The new life in Christ means, for our minds and our bodies and for any of our abilities, that we have the exceptional freedom to be who we are and thus to welcome and affirm our sexuality as a gift, absolved from guilt or embarrassment or shame; to be liberated in our sexuality from self-indulgence or lust; to be freed to love with wholeness as persons and to recognize and identify and embrace the same wholeness in others; to be freed to enjoy, to celebrate, to play, to have fun in our own creation in relationship to others and to the rest of creation.

 

Thus I am disturbed because the church treatment of homosexual­ity seems to be largely in a void ‑‑ separated out from the broader context of human sexuality in its marvelous diversities.  (In this, in truth, the church is retrogressive ‑‑ far behind where society cur­rently is.)  More than that, the church treatment of homosexuality rests largely upon false stereotypes which at once demean or deny the individuality of sexuality and furnish pretext for the kind of vehement and hysterical defamation which was visited upon Ellen Barrett.  The purpose, all the while, of such stereotyping and slander is evident: it is a way of covering up the sustained hypocrisy and pastoral default which has so far, for so long, characterized the situation of homosexual clergy, especially in their relations with ecclesiastical authority.

 

If homosexuals are needed as victims and scapegoats for such purposes, the wider ecclesial and political implications of being consigned to such a fate must not be overlooked.  This same device:

 

• aborts any conscientious ministry to others, to laypeople and to those outside the church, so far as sexuality is concerned;

 

• distracts from other issues that claim and deserve the attention of the church ‑‑ like those signalled by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship or the vexing problems related to church invest­ments and endowments;

 

• suppresses attention to other aspects of our humanity vulner­able to lust, about which the New Testament is often caustic, like gluttony, the dissipations of success, the idolatry of lucre.

 

• imposes a superficial conformity and quietism among clergy out of fear of exposure, or worse, of slanderous assault

 

• is silent about the league of the church with fallen principalities and powers ‑‑ including, notably, the worldly institutions of family and marriage, profoundly distorting the Gospel's view of these powers.

 

Dear friends, I have come here to make these few remarks by way of exhorting you:

 

• be urgent, but do not boast;

 

• resist hypocrites, eschew temptation;

 

• insist that everyone regard you as a person, accede to no stereotypes;

 

• whenever homosexuality is mentioned, be certain sexuality is first considered;

 

• embrace your witness as an intercession for others;

 

• conduct yourself becomingly as a new person in Christ and, most of all, love yourself; in that way you will be enabled to love others and honor the Word of God which loves you.

 

GENERAL CONVENTION ADOPTS RESOLUTION ON ORDINATION OF GAYS

 

The following resolution was adopted by the House of Bishops during the 66th General Convention.  The resolution originated in he Committee on Ministry of the House of Bishops after their consideration of the Report and Recommendations of the Joint Commission on Human Affairs and Health and other resolutions that were introduced during the convention.

 

The Substitute Resolution

 

Homosexuality and the Ordination of Homosexuals

Committee on Ministry ‑‑ House of Bishops

 

Whereas, we are conscious of the mystery of human sexuality and how deeply personal matters related to human sexuality are, making it most difficult to arrive at comprehensive and agreed-upon statements in these matters, and

 

Whereas, we are aware that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church must continue to study these matters in relationship to Holy Scripture, Christian faith and tradition, and growing insights, and

 

Whereas, the 65th General Convention recognized "that ... homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church ..."; and

 

Whereas, all the clergy and laity of the Church are expected to render compassionate and understanding pastoral care to one another and to all persons

 

Therefore be it resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, that the 66th General Convention receives with gratitude and appreciation the Report and Recommendations of its Standing Commission on Human Affairs and Health with special reference to the re­quested study of the matter of ordination of homosexual persons, and

 

Be it further resolved, that this General Convention recommend to bishops, pastors, vestries, commissions on ministry, and standing committees, the following considerations as they continue to exer­cise their proper canonical functions in the selection and approval of persons for ordination:

 

1. There are many human conditions, some of them in the area of sexuality, which bear upon a person's suitability for ordination.

 

2. Every ordinand is expected to lead a life which is "a wholesome example to all people" (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 517, 532, 544).  There should be no barrier to the ordination of qualified persons of either heterosexual or homosexual orien­tation whose behavior the Church considers wholesome.

 

3. We re-affirm the traditional teaching of the Church on marriage, marital fidelity, and sexual chastity as the standard of Christian sexual morality.  Candidates for ordination are ex­pected to conform to this standard.  Therefore, we believe it is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual, or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside of marriage.

 

The following is the roll call vote of the House of Bishops on the resolution on homosexuality.

 

     For

 

Abellon, Northern Philippines

Appleyard, Pittsburgh

Atkins, Eau Claire

Atkinson, West Virginia

Baden, Virginia

Bailey, West Texas

Belshaw, New Jersey

Bigliardi, Oregon

Brady, Fond du Lac

Brown, J.B., Louisiana

Browne, Liberia

Brugreen, Armed Forces

Burt, Ohio

Caceres, Ecuador

Carral-Solar, Guatemala

Cerveny, Florida

Child, Atlanta

Cilley, Texas

Clark, Delaware

Coburn, Massachusetts

Cochrane, Olympia

Cox, Maryland

Davies, Dallas

Davis, Erie

Duncan, Southeast Florida

Elebash, East Carolina

Folwell, Central Florida

Fraser, North Carolina

Frey, Colorado

Garnier, Haiti

Gaskell, Milwaukee

Gates, Tennessee

Gibson, Virginia

Gilliam, Montana

Goddard, Texas

Gooden, Panama and Canal Zone

Gosnell, West Texas

Gray, Mississippi

Gressle, Bethlehem

Gross, Oregon

Hall, Virginia

Harte, Arizona

Hauser, West Texas

Haynes, Southwest Florida

Haynsworth, El Salvador

Heistand, Arizona

Henton, Northwest Texas

Hillestead, Springfield

Hogg, Albany

Hosea, Lexington

Jones, Wyoming

Jones, South Dakota

Jones, Missouri

Keller, Arkansas

King, Idaho

Leighton, Maryland

Liqht, Southwestern Virginia

Manguramas, Southern Philippines

Martin, New York (Executive for Ministries)

Masuda, North Dakota

Mayson, Michigan

McAllister, Oklahoma

Merino, Colombia

Millard, Europe

Moore, Easton

Murray, Central Gulf Coast

Parsons, Quincy

Persell, Albany

Porteus, Connecticut

Powell, Oklahoma

Reed, Kentucky

Reeves, Georgia

Righter, Iowa

Rivera, San Joaquin

Robinson, Western New York

Sanders, Tennessee

Schofield, Southeast Florida

Sheridan, Northern Indiana

Sherman, Long Island

Shirley, Panama and Canal Zone

Sims, Atlanta

Smith, New Hampshire

Stevenson, Central Pennsylvania

Steward, Western Massachusetts

Stough, Alabama

Temple, South Carolina

Terwilliger, Dallas

Thayer, Colorado

Thompson, Northern California

Vache, Southern Virginia

Van Duzer, New Jersey

Voegeli, Haiti

Vogel, West Missouri

Wallace, Spokane

Warner, Nebraska

Weinhauer, Western North Carolina

Witcher, Long Island

Wolterstorff, San Diego

Wood, New York (Executive for Administration)

 

     Against

 

Anderson, Minnesota

Arnold, Massachusetts

Bennison, Western Michigan

Browning, Hawaii

Burgess, Massachusetts

Charles, Utah

Cochran, Alaska

Cole, Central New York

Corrigan, Colorado

Dimmick, Northern Michigan

Frensdorff, Nevada

Gordon, Michigan

Jones, Indianapolis

Kerr, Vermont

Krumm, Southern Ohio

McGehee, Michigan

Montgomery, Chicago

Moore, New York

Mosley, Pennsylvania

Myers, California

Ogilby, Pennsylvania

Primo, Chicago

Putnam, Oklahoma

Reus-Froylan, Puerto Rico

Richards, Florida

Romero, Northern Mexico

Rusack, Los Angeles

Spears, Rochester

Spofford, Eastern Oregon

Spong, Newark

Trelease, Rio Grande

Walker, Washington

Wetmore, New York

Wolfe, Maine

 

Immediately after the vote of the House of Bishops, John Krumm, Bishop of Southern Ohio introduced the following "conscience statement" into the House and encouraged the Bishops to sign it. The text of that statement follows:

 

We ‑‑ bishops in the Church of God who associate ourselves with this statement ‑‑ affirm our belief that Holy Matrimony between a man and a woman as a covenanted, exclusive, and (by God's help) a permanent relationship is the predominant and usual mode of sexual expression, blessed by God, for Christian people particularly and for humankind generally.  To this state the vast majority of persons have clearly been called.

 

We also affirm the sacrificial sign of celibacy, for the small minority genuinely called to that state, as a valid and valuable witness to a broken and selfish world of the virtues and spiritual power of Christian self-denial in the service of others.

 

Nothing in what follows is intended to deny or to weaken either the vocation to Christian marriage or to Christian celibacy: and nothing, especially, is intended to weaken or demean, or deny the centrality of, the institution of the Christian family.

 

However, there is a minority of persons who have clearly not been called to the married state, or given the graces for it ‑‑ whether they realize this before, or painfully and often tragically discover it after­wards ‑‑ and who are incapable in the very nature of their formed personalities of conforming to the predominant mode of behavior.  Why this is so is a mystery known only to God; even the researches of modern science have been unable to provide an adequate answer for it.  Nor is there convincing evidence that these people, of homosexual orientation, have been given the very special and extraordinary grace the Church has always seen to be necessary for the healthy expression of Christian celibacy.

 

We who associate ourselves with this statement are deeply conscious of,, and grateful for, the profoundly valuable ministries of ordained persons, known to us to be homosexual, formerly and presently engaged in the service of this Church.  Not all of these persons have necessarily been celibate: and in the relationships of many of them, maintained in the face of social hostility and against great odds, we have seen a redeeming quality which in its way and according to its mode is no less a sign to the world of God's love than is the more usual sign of Christian marriage.  From such relationships we cannot believe God to be absent.

 

Furthermore, even in cases where an ideally stable relationship has not, or has not yet, been achieved, we are conscious of ordained homosexual persons who are wrestling responsibly, and in the fear of God, with the Christian implications of their sexuality, and who seek to be responsible, caring, and non-exploitive people even in the occasionally more transient relationship which the hostility of our society towards homosexual persons ‑‑ with its concomitants of furtiveness and clandestinity ‑‑ makes inevitable.

 

We believe that the action of this House, which declares that "it is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside of marriage," while it has the specious appearance at first glance of reaffirming and upholding time-honored verities, carries with it a cruel denial of the sexual beings of homosexual persons ‑‑ against whom, given the title of this resolution, it is principally aimed.  It also carries with it, in implied logic, a repudiation of those ministries, by homosexual persons and to homosexual persons, already being exercised in our midst; and it invites, furthermore, the prospect of retroactive reprisals against ordained homosexual persons, with consequences of untold harm to the Church and its people, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

 

This action also speaks a word of condemning judgment against countless laypersons of homosexual orientation who are rendered by its implications second-class citizens in the Church of their baptism, fit to receive all other sacraments but the grace of Holy Order ‑‑ unless, in a sacrifice not asked of heterosexual persons generally, they abandon all hope of finding human fulfillment, under God, in a sexual and supportive relationship.  This action, thus, makes a mockery of the vow and commitment which the Church has made to them in that sacrament of baptism, to "do all in [its] power to support these persons in their life in Christ" ‑‑ all of these persons, without exception ‑‑ and calls into question the vows of us all to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being."

 

Furthermore, speaking for the future, if these recommendations were to be carried out as this House seems to intend, they would fatally restrict our traditional freedom and duty as Bishops in the Church of God ‑‑ with the concurrence of our Standing Committees, Ministry Commissions, and the like ‑‑ to determine the fitness and calling of individual persons to Holy Orders ‑‑ with each case being decided, not on the basis of the individual's belonging to a particular category or class of excluded persons, but on the basis of his or her individual merits as a whole human being, and in the light of the particular circumstances obtaining in that case.

 

We have no intention of ordaining irresponsible persons, or persons whose manner of life is such as to cause grave scandal or hurt to other Christians; but we do not believe that either homosexual orientation as such, nor the responsible and self-giving use of such a mode of sexuality, constitutes such a scandal in and of itself.

 

Our position is based, consistent with our Anglican tradition ‑‑  which values the gifts of reason and welcomes truth from whatever source ‑‑ on the insights of what we understand to be the best and most representative current findings of modern science and psychology on this subject.  But even more, our position is based, ultimately, on the total witness of Holy Scripture.  For we are persuaded that modern exegesis and interpretation of the Scriptures ‑‑ in the light of the original languages and our enhanced understanding of the cultural context of the particular passages which relate, or seem to relate, to the subject of homosexuality ‑‑ gives no certain basis for a total or absolute condemnation either of homosexual persons or of homosexual activities in all cases.  Holy Scripture indeed condemns homosexual excesses and exploitation, but it no less condemns heterosexual excesses and exploitation as well; and as the cure for the latter is more responsible and less selfish expression of heterosexuality, so the cure for the former is a more responsible and less selfish expression of homosexuality, not a conversion from the one to the other.  On the other hand, the total witness of Holy Scripture is to a gracious God of justice, mercy, and love.  It is on that witness we take our stand, and it is to that God we make our appeal.

 

Taking note, therefore, that this action of the House is recommendatory not prescriptive, we give notice as we are answerable before Almighty God that we cannot accept these recommen­dations or implement them in our dioceses insofar as they relate or give unqualified expression to recommendation 3.  To do so would be to abrogate our responsibilities of apostolic leadership and prophetic witness to the flock of Christ, committed to our charge: and it would involve a repudiation of our ordination vows as bishops:  in the words of the new Prayer Book, "boldly [to] proclaim and interpret the Gospel of Christ, enlightening the minds and stirring up the conscience of [our] people," and to "encourage and support all baptized people in their gifts and ministries ... and to celebrate with them the sacraments of our redemption;" or in the words of the old, "to be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf."  Our appeal is to conscience, and to God.  Amen.

 

signed

 

Anderson, Minnesota               McGehee, Michigan

Arnold, Massachusetts             Montgomery, Chicago

Bennison, Western Michigan        Moore, New York

Browning, Hawaii                  Myers, California

Burgess, Massachusetts            Ogilby, Pennsylvania

Charles, Utah                     Putnam, Oklahoma

Cochran, Alaska                   Reus-Froylan, Puerto Rico

Cole, Central New York            Richards, Executive Council  Corrigan, Executive Council       Romero, Northern Mexico

Davidson, Western Kansas              Ruck, Los Angeles

Dewitt, Pennsylvania, Resigned    Spears, Rochester

Dimmick, Northern Michigan        Spofford, Eastern Oregon

Frensdorff, Nevada                Spong, Newark

Jones, Indianapolis               Trelease, Rio Grande

Jones, Missouri                   Walker, Washington, D.C.

 

MATTHEW   MARK   LUKE   JOHN

THE EXTENSION OF THE GOSPEL TO LESBIAN AND GAY CREATURES

by Louie Crew

 

Let the word go forth:  God loves us!

 

I am talking the same revolution that began in Judea, moved to Samaria, and now threatens to engulf the whole world, especially, some would say, if we get involved.

 

God loves us is not an innocuous platitude but a serious faith statement which affirms that the creator of the universe, contrary to an ancient consensus, does not come down to an assembly line, look squarely into the eyes of lesbians and gay males, and say with disappointment, "I suppose that I am entitled to a few mistakes."  God does not make rejects.  God does not redeem persons only to say that they were not worth redeeming.  God loves us.

 

Recently a bishop told me that lesbians and gay males are upsetting the Church primarily by our bad form:  the issue is really one of etiquette, he suggested.  "If a priest whom I invited to bring a spouse or an 'intended' to my dinner party were to call to inquire whether the dinner companion might be a member of the same sex, I would have to say, wouldn't I:  'Well, frankly, I don't know how I would arrange the seating.  I'm sorry, but you know how these things are ‑‑ a male, then a female, and so on, and so on."

 

By contrast, our records show clearly that God's etiquette required God to leave the ninety and nine to fend for themselves (presum­ably as sheep they weren't terribly fastidious about Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt) while God searched for the missing one.

 

God loves us.  It is a false report which suggests that God operates heaven as either a heterosexual club or a Nazi laboratory.  God does not require us to wear pink triangles, and St. Peter is not a macho bouncer for the American Legion.  We must expose these heresies as such as quickly as possible.

 

"But, Louie," another bishop once implored.  "I don't know how to minister to you!"  And indeed he did not know and did not minister to me.  He worried about what others would think were they to see him casually in my company, and he pointedly spurned all invita­tions to be the guest of known lesbians or gay males.  Even in public, he is wont to proclaim his "love" for lesbians and gay males with periodic beeps in which he labels us as victims of "character disor­ders."  (Lepers bells these days seem to be audible only at such ultra high frequencies.)  One wonders how our Lord would ever have gotten close to prostitutes and other street folk had he similarly whipped up the public sentiment against them.  Is it any wonder that most of the lesbians and gay males who dare to come near to such members in the hierarchy do so only incognito, as in ecclesiastical drag?

 

Knowing how to minister to anyone requires very little specialized information.  The Good-Samaritan demonstrated clearly that we minister to one first by not ignoring the person needing our ministry.  We go to the victim, we bind up the victim's wounds, we place the victim in a healing environment, we pay the victim's bills, and we check up later to determine the victim's progress.

 

Notice that the Samaritan did not first take a consensus to determine what to do ‑‑ whether the hasty and allegedly moderate consensus of modern sexuality commissions or the deliberated and vigorously homophobic consensus of the heterosexuals who have always monopolized western Judeo-Christian civilization.  Rather, the Samaritan went immediately about the process of helping, without a whole lot of questions.

 

Nor was the Samaritan concerned about the endorsement implied in the ministries.  The endorsement is always perspicuous:  This victim has worth.  Full stop!  Very revealingly, in Christ's story the image of the minister is that of one who is also an outcast.  Christ did not seem overly concerned to protect God Almighty's reputation but identified the actions and concerns of God with those of a despised Samaritan.  Nor did the Samaritan try to change his Jewish victim into a Samaritan, as attempt many heterosexual "ministers" who approach us.

 

I strongly urge us to give very little heed to most of the talk that characterizes the Church's response to homosexual persons right now, even as Christ would not have us measure God's intentions toward the Jewish victim by the behavior of the other Jews, the priest and the Levite, who ignored him.  Behind the report of the Spears' Commission [Joint Commission on Human Affairs and Health] in the Episcopal Church and similar reports for other bodies is much too much concern for what the world will think and barely a sugar cube full of the loving ministry we need in the lesbian/gay male community.  In entertaining even the possibility of denying the sacrament of Holy Orders to us as a class, the Church blasphem­ously mocks God for loving the whole world.  Those who rush to protect the Church's "good name" from foul associations with the likes of us "faggots and lezzies" need to attend the mass more closely, wherein we perpetuate Calvary's memorial of what God thought of a good reputation.  Literally, God is too busy loving us to give a damn.

 

When we say "God loves us" us means anyone and everyone, but for a moment let's focus on God's love for us as the community of lesbian and gay male Christians.  I strongly suspect that among ourselves we will find the greatest unbelief in the gospel at this point.  Some of us jump to violate our integrity by saying: "Of course, God loves me as a musician: of course God loves me as a priest or a teacher; of course God loves me as a mother, father, sister or brother; but what has my sexuality to do with God's love? I control my lust as best I can, and that's the end of that."

 

Others of us have worked hard at feeling guilty about matters of the least consequence, sometimes even for feeling simple affection for another human being, while at the same time we tolerate in our­selves the severest judgments against other lesbians and gay males.  Even if heterosexuals were to go to another planet for a full decade, they could go with strong assurance that already sown in our community are seeds of dissension and distrust.

 

Right now, all across the Church are many thousands of lesbians and gay males who are far more intimidated than would be most heterosexuals by our assembling as lesbians and gay males.  To divert attention from their sexuality, many of our sisters and brothers have collectively purchased for the Church literally tons of stained glass and enough organ pipe to stretch from coast to coast.

 

Perhaps St. Paul may not have been altogether wrong when he speculated in his letter to the Romans about the etiology of some homosexuality suggesting that some of us follow a pattern of refusing to glorify God as really God, as one really able to love us as full persons with our sexuality integrally a part of our wholeness:  "Hence all their thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness.  They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves."

 

I remember after my own "conversion" from a Baptist closet to an Anglican one, in 1961, how very shocked I was to find in The Hymnal 1940 the same old haunting, but ultimately saving truth that I had hoped to escape by taking up incense and vestments, No. 409:

 

  Just as I am, without one plea.

  But that thy blood was shed for me,

  And that thou bidd'st me come to thee,

  O Lamb of God, I come.

 

  Just as I am: thou wilt receive;

  Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,

  Because thy promise I believe.

  O Lamb of God, I come.

 

Strangely, God loves us more than often we love ourselves, perceives worth in our chemistry and our relationships which we have been schooled to devalue.  Sometimes I think that St Paul would recast his advice for gay males and lesbians to read: "Do not think of yourselves more lowly than you ought to think."  Our learned attitudes die hard.  Even after more than a dozen years of relative openness I am amazed to discover my own capacities to long for the fleshpots of Egypt rather than boldly to assume the re­sponsibilities of my freedom.  Last month when Ernest and I first got shut of Georgia (and Georgia got shut of us), I found by the Wisconsin River opportunities which I had not enjoyed for the six years in the peach orchards.  In my first visit to the parish, no one knew.  I had the option of sneaking back into a closet for a few days' respite.  Likewise, in my classes I have had my first chance in years to be seen as a professional before being prejudged as a queer.  This fleeting whiff of closet fumes has been intoxicating, if artificial.  St Peter knew as much before the rooster set up such a racket; strangely, it always seems to be just the nondescript supernumer­aries ‑‑ a serving girl saying, "Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee;" a woman at the parish coffee hour saying, "Is your wife coming now or later?" ‑‑ who want to ask us the questions which would in effect expose us as part of that crowd busy upsetting the world.

 

Of course, individually and collectively we must break our silence if the world is to experience our revolution:  God Loves Us.  God has no other voices but ours; only in human countenances can God's be seen.  While the Church would prefer to respond to lesbians and gay males, if at all, as to an awkward interruption, a breach of etiquette, God always visits only on the time-table of someone's need.  Gay need is a major instrument for God's presence in the whole state of Christ's church today.  As surely as it is more blessed to give than to receive, we are instruments of God's blessings to the heterosexual populace as well.  Many a person, gay or nongay, will never see God's face or know God's love if we hide from our clearest opportunities to be thus used by God.

 

Let us not underestimate the urgency of our mission.  Homophobia is no garden variety blight, but a major pestilence, always serious and sometimes lethal.  Only God keeps statistics on our communi­ty's suicide rates.  By a fierce paradox, our own scholars seem compelled to speak of positive aspects of our life to the near exclusion of computing the price we have to pay in our being oppressed.  We need hard data on our real problems, the better to attack them.  At every moment, lesbian and gay male youngsters are being taught self-depreciation so vigorously by every aspect of our culture ‑‑ but most especially by our schools, our homes, and our churches ‑‑ that most of them will have little chance later to ap­propriate more liberating information.  Mental hospitals and prisons already house far too many of us who have oppressed ourselves by fulfilling grim heterosexual prophecies about us.  Alcoholism, depre­ssion, fear, and loneliness daily ravage our community.  If you are saying, "Not my part of it," or, "God, deliver me from that part of the gay community," please be prepared to take responsibility for those prayers.  It is easy to love our neighbors if we can pick and choose them.  Even the unbelievers do that very well.

 

We lesbian and gay male Christians must not let Pharisees set our agenda, as so often they have done in our dealings with the Church.  We are called to forgive the Pharisees, but they must not distract us from urgent priorities.  Those who control most Sees and Cures in the Church have not dwelt among us closely enough to shepherd us wisely; and often a campus minister or a parish priest is a healthy hazard for a babe in Christ within our community.  We lesbian and gay male Christians must be especially strong lest we be led through much show of piety to hide from our responsibilities to those in need.  Perhaps we are lucky in that our precarious position within the hierarchy forcibly reminds us that true religion is not so much a matter of how we behave towards one another.  As one priest and friend wrote me recently: "I more and more agree with (our un­churched friend) that the games we play with the leadership of a dying spirituality are not worth the candle.  'Our friend' has more godliness in his peach preserves than they have in all of their theological stances.  And God told me that."

 

Like members of other minorities, lesbians and gays are under steady pressure to validate ourselves by external criteria ‑‑ how successful we are, how stylish we are, how quantitatively intelligent we are.  As Christians we must never forget God's advice to Samuel:  "People judge by appearances, but the Lord judges by the heart" (2 Samuel 16:7).  And the Lord has judged us already, in advance.  The verdict is in:  God Loves Us.  God is still in the business of working miracles.  God wants to take your life and mine and make us ministers of that love here, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

 

THE TROUBLE WITH THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS

 

The following is the address delivered by the Rt. Rev'd C. Kilmer Myers, Bishop of California, on the occasion of his receiving the 1979 Integrity Award in Denver, Colorado, September 7, 1979.

 

My dear brothers and sisters:

 

It is with the greatest of pleasure ‑‑ and honor ‑‑ that I receive this Integrity Award for 1979.  I am able to think of many who in their struggle for human rights deserve it more.  Indeed, the number of those in our Christian Community who cry out from prison for simple justice grows day by day.  If our fellowship means anything at all, when they, the prisoners and captives, suffer, we suffer.  Indeed, in ways most of us will never know until End-time, they belong to the Church of the Crucified God.

 

Through the centuries of the life of this still-young Church, the chains which shackle humankind have been slowly breaking.  The reason for this liberation is not that the Church herself possesses courage and will, but because some few both within and without that beloved Church have heard the clear voice of the Liberating Christ.  And, as a result, have acted without thought of life or limb.  They have been harassed, tortured both physically and psychologi­cally, slain.  By grace they have willed it to be this way.  They have not sought martyrdom; it has come their way as the result of their following Jesus of Nazareth.  But their reward cannot be measured by any earthly standard; for they are one with the Lord our God.  They are priests and kings because they have been servants ... servants sure of their end, not by human prediction, but by Ab­rahamic faith.  By them we measure the content of the faith of the Church.  Behind them we measure the Church's faith by the trust in God of the Lord of the Church who, 'though abandoned by God, discovered by faith that in the Resurrection he had a companion, a Father, who himself suffered that same abandonment.  The Cross was God against God, God with God.  The crucified Jesus was exalted to be the Son, very God of very God.

 

And so the Church is measured by the Cross of Christ.  And so are we all ‑‑ especially the outcast, the marginalized, those outside the "Hedge of Israel."  You, I, are lost without the Cross.  And so is the Church, especially the Church, that New Israel.  The question raised so aptly by William Stringfellow, "Has God Abandoned the Episcopal Church?" is the central question before this General Convention.  I speak only for the House of Bishops. That House does not know this to be a question at all ‑‑ unless by a miracle it has changed since its last gathering in Kansas City.  This is not to say that many bishops are unaware of the peril.  It is to say that as a corporate body it feels quite sure that God is with the present Church.  The House also feels that great segments of the Church are slipping through the episcopal fingers and it wants them back.  At least that's the way it seems to me.  And I may well be uncharitable and wrong.  Pride and hypocrisy may have overcome me.  It may be that because I'm at the end of my role as a Diocesan Bishop that I've chosen this time to give vent to my spleen against the institutional church. If so, may the Holy One forgive me.  But that's how I feel at the center of my conscience.

 

If the Church is abandoned by God, then who is God? For hundreds of years the Church has thought it has known the answer to this central question.  It has been a Greek answer:  the answer of the philosophical theologians.  It is not the answer of the biblical theologians like Isaiah and Mark ‑‑ or even John.  Basically, since the late Fathers, since Thomas Aquinas, the Church's God has been omnipotent, time-less, immutable, disinterested, not an involved participant in human and cosmic history.  Indeed, this God has no history at all and because of that Jesus Christ came to have no history.  And then, by a curious blend, the God of the Church also has been the God of the priestly tradition of the Old Testament ‑‑ the God who, though high and removed, thundered out the Law, the Law which, when obeyed in its minute details, would lead the righteous to God and the unrighteous to the pains of hell.  What a devilish brew!  How far from the God of the prophets and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ!  The God he called "My Father" was like the Song of Mary; He ate and drank with the poor and the dispos­sessed, the marginal, those outside the "Hedge of Israel."  He joined his Son on the Cross; he raised up from death the crucified man from Nazareth whose history was and is the history of God.

 

The trouble with the House of Bishops is God.

 

"... WITH COURAGE TO MAKE THE ASCENTS"

A sermon by the Rt. Rev'd Otis Charles, Bishop of Utah

Delivered at the opening Eucharist of the Integrity Convention,

Denver, CO, September 7, 1979

 

When John Lawrence wrote to me about this occasion and the time, 8:30 a.m., was suggested, I said "8:30 A.M.?"  Well, here we are. And I just want to share with you today that I feel absolutely affirmed by being here in this place with you, with my brother bishops, with the clergy who have gathered, with each and every one of you.

 

As we begin this Integrity Convention, this General Convention, the words of the Gospel are in my heart, and I'm sure are also in your hearts:  "And there shall be one flock, under one Shepherd."  The words of the Gospel are in my heart with desire that we all shall be one and know in reality that about which Paul speaks: life shared without separation.

 

It may not all come the way we would like it to, in the time we would like ‑‑ but, as I understand this morning's Old Testament reading from Isaiah, the people had been allowed to return to Jerusalem by the graciousness of Cyrus; as a sign of his mercy the people were given that for which they had yearned.  When they found them­selves back in that land from which they had been separated:  back in the place of their worship; back in the center of their contact with the one who had led them into freedom; they found bickering and separation.  The city didn't get built.  Nothing was happening ‑‑ and so, they cried out: "Awake, awake, strong arm of the Lord!  Come into our midst!"  And the Lord said to them, "Why are you anxious?  Don't worry about it.  Don't be as men who pass away as the grass.  In the words of the Psalmist, "Happy is the person who trusts the Lord," ‑‑ that's hard to do sometimes, but....

 

There is a sign of hope and that sign is here in the bishops who are in the midst of the congregation this morning, sharing this Eucharist with you.

 

You'll remember, some vividly, that the bishops were called to Chicago after the ordination of the eleven women in Philadelphia. At that meeting, a small group of seventeen voted not to censure those bishops who had ordained women to be priests of the Church. Four of the seventeen are here celebrating with you.  The seventeen seemed like a very, very small voice at that moment in Chicago, but....

 

Not long after, the Church affirmed the place of women in the priesthood as an expression of the wholeness of the Body.  And so we can believe that which we hope for as we gather here in this Integrity Convention, that there might be coming from within the midst of the Body of Christ as we know it, gathered here in Denver, an expression of the wholeness of the Church which does not say one is in and another is out:  but rather that the reality of one flock under one shepherd ‑‑ will truly come to be. Receive the Chicago experience and the bishops in your midst as a sign of that which may be.

 

Last month, I took the est standard training.  That was a fascinating and productive experience.  I commend it to anybody. In the est training, time is given to explore and become aware of all parts of your body.  I was surprised to discover that there were parts of my body the names of which I did not know.

 

That is an apt analogy of where we find ourselves at this moment in time.  Within the Body of the Church there are parts of the Body which are not known; parts of the Body which are not known by name, parts of the Body which people will not know ‑‑ even as we do not recognize all of our members in our own physical bodies.

 

And so, we come into a context, those of us who are gathered here.  I'm assuming that by being here each one of us is willing and ready, whether we be gay or straight, to acknowledge that within us there is both gayness and straightness; that we are, each one of us, a composite.  And I'm not now thinking of that spectrum most fre­quently held before us, a straight horizontal line with gayness at one end and straightness at the other and somebody called normal presumably in the middle.

 

But, rather, I'm talking about another kind of grid.  I wanted to bring a blackboard in here but I looked at the church before we began and it didn't seem to fit.  Let me try to picture it with my arms ‑‑ it's this kind of a graph:  think of two intersecting triangles; one triangle running to the right with its spectrum of gayness and another triangle running to the left with its spectrum of straightness.  The two triangles intersect one another.  Each one of us is a composite of straightness and gayness.  I'm assuming that those of us who are here are here because we accept the reality of our gayness and our straightness and have, in ourselves, in some way, faced that reality.

 

And so we come into a context in which, we would hope, that the whole Body of the Church gathered in General Convention might be able to experience its gayness as well as its straightness and thereby experience its wholeness.

 

As we present ourselves to the rest of the Body, it is important how we make that presentation.  You, each one of you, and all of us together, have the power to create the context in which that will come to pass.  We create the context in which the Body will experi­ence its gayness.  Somebody else out there will not create the context.  We might like to say that they create the context; we might like to say that they do it to us.  But indeed, we, individually and together, create the context.

 

I was struck when I came into the Church by the way you were sitting scattered around the church, separated and apart from one another.  This is the kind of context we create so much of the time:  separation!  Look around ‑‑ look at how you're seated, experience the separation here.  We allow separation to exist; we allow it to exist.  We talk about togetherness ‑‑ and we sit in odd corners of the church.  It doesn't have to be this way.  We can demonstrate by the way we act, by our behavior, our ability to create a context which is the context in which we want to live.

 

Now, we can come from either of two positions: that of fear, or that of faith.  Here I'm drawing heavily on insight which I discovered in a Lindisfarme book called Earth's Awareness, published by Harper & Row and given to me by one of the monks at the Zen Center in San Francisco.  In one of its chapters, Brother David Stendall-Rast, a Benedictine priest, says that the reality we experience most of the time is that we are afraid to affirm Jesus' promise, "I have come that you may have life, and that you can have it abundantly!"  We're afraid of life ‑‑ afraid!  The Church is afraid.  Why is that?  Brother David says it's because we come out of the position of fear, a position that requires control.  Each of us has a need to control our own life.  In order to do this we feel compelled to control the lives of others.  That's what survival is about:  fear of not being in control.  Survival can never be about living.  Remember what Jesus said.  "If you would live, you must lose your life."  And that doesn't sound like survival:  that's a different kind of thing.  So, when we act out of fear, we're really acting out of the need to control; to survive: to protect our turf; and the way we function is to try to get every other person into our space ‑‑ because I know my space; I can control my space.  If you don't stand with me, then you're wrong.  The result is a win -‑ lose situation.  I win, you lose.

 

That is the way we function.  That, for the most part, is the standard operating procedure for us individually and for the Church.  And one of the dangerous aspects of the Spears report on human sexuality is the subtle, hidden, quiet inference that the normal sexuality for human beings is heterosexuality.  Implicitly the report says "Stand in my straight space."  All the way through the report are words which convey the sense of "I'm right, you're wrong: we win, you lose."  Some people may think this is an exaggeration, but that's the way it appears to me.

 

We live out of fear in all kinds of areas of our life.  David Stendall-­Rast's point is: "It doesn't have to be that way."  He holds up another word, "faith."  But he says, "I'm only going to use that word 'faith' once."  Because "faith" as a word is loaded with so much, we really can't handle it, can't get through it.  So he says faith is to be understood as meaning the absolute trust in life.  Faith is absolute trust in life.

 

Fear, which is without trust, is enclosed, turned in upon itself ‑‑ puts capital T's on everything‑‑capital T, Truth; my truth.  Capital P; protestant.  Capital C; Catholic.  Capital F; Faith.  Coming from fear, my way is the right way!

 

Faith, which is absolute trust in life, is not turned in upon itself; is open; is absolute trust in the process.  Life is process; life is on going; is organic; is evolving; is developing.  We can trust life.

 

So, we can assist in forming the context for this General Convention.  Integrity has the choice of operating out of the stance of fear, which really says everybody's got to get into our position ‑‑ or, Integrity can operate out of that position of absolute trust.  And that, I think, if you go back and look at that 51st chapter of Isaiah, is what it's about: trusting in the process.  It never looks like what we think it s going to look like.  It never looks like that.

 

The point is that all is constantly evolving as that which is to be becomes reality.  We can help the process of becoming by creating a context which does not require others to align with us in our space, but seeks alignment around absolute trust in life, in the process of becoming, which is faith.

 

Now, we don't know where this General Convention is going to end up.  So I want to say one more word about the way we handle what may be.

 

We all know that for the women of the Church who sought ordination there was a lot of pain along the way.  I don't need to talk to you about pain along the way but, I think we do need to prepare ourselves for the worst that may be.  It will come that we get discouraged, and disillusioned, and flip out and say "I'm not going to have anything more to do with the whole damn business." Priests give up their vocations; people leave their baptismal inheritance; we separate from one another.  It doesn't have to be that way.

 

The opening hymn praised Him who walked the way of life ‑‑ Jesus.  Jesus had incredible openness to the process.  Try to visualize what that process was for him ... his total openness ... he took to himself the whole bit ‑‑ the whole bit.

 

Here at the beginning, we are already in the process of walking out on the other side of this General Convention.  We need to create for ourselves space to be able to take the whole bit: to live in Jesus' compassion, and in the spirit of this morning's psalm, "Happy the pilgrim inspired by you, O Lord, with courage to make the Ascents." The Ascents is a technical term:  The Ascents were the songs of the pilgrims as they ascended to Jerusalem.  "Happy the pilgrim ins­pired by you, O Lord, with courage to make the Ascents" and sing along the way.

 

Brothers, sisters, that's what we have to begin doing right now: developing within ourselves the sense of pilgrimage ‑‑ of being in process and the ability to sing along the way.

 

I really want to be a little sentimental this morning.  I'll leave it to your good judgment whether it should happen.  I am thinking of others who have gone before us: our Black brothers and sisters ‑‑ and they know how to sing along the way.  They have a song which I think is not inappropriate.  It may seem too sentimental. But ‑‑ will you start the song?

 

[The congregation, many moved to tears, sang "We Shall Overcome."]

 

ALLAN STIFFLEAR APPOINTED 1980 CONVENTION DEAN

 

Integrity President John Lawrence has announced the appointment of the Rev'd Allan Stifflear as Dean for the next Integrity Convention to be held in Boston from August 21-24, 1980 at Emmanuel Church.  Allan currently serves as Director of Libraries at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.  He is a former Convenor of Integrity/Boston, is currently serving on the chapter's steering committee, and has served as the Regional Representative for the New England Region.  Allan has already organized a committee and has begun the lengthy process of planning for the convention.  More information will appear in the next issue of Integrity Forum but do plan to attend!  Anyone who has attended previous Integrity con­ventions will tell you that you won't want to miss it.  If you have never been to one, consider making Boston your first!  You may write to Allan for further information, or if you have any suggestions, at:  9 Rockwell St., Cambridge, MA 02139.

 

REFLECTIONS OF AN ATTENTIVE OBSERVER

at the debate on homosexuality, The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Denver, Colorado, September 1979

by Harry A. Woggin

 

                               I

 

at the joint hearing on September 12, 1979:

 

From deep within