CLGS

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church voted overwhelmingly to overturn a three-year
moratorium on the election of lesbian and gay people to the episcopate.

While many LGBTQ Episcopalians and their allies are jumping for joy the battle isn’t over.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams expressed his concerns about the recent vote
telling the Associated Press, "I regret the fact that there is no will to observe the moratorium in
such a significant part of the church in North America."

The conservative arm of the Episcopal Church suggests that the openly gay and partnered Bishop
of New Hampshire, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, should resign to avoid disintegration of the
Anglican Communion.

But is the Episcopal Church's impeding schism really about the theological rift that sprung up
after the consecration of its first openly gay bishop?

Or, is the brouhaha really about a church in battle with itself about how to be financially solvent
and theologically relevant in today's competitive religious marketplace?

And those who argue about the “authority of Scripture,” that argument doesn’t hold weight here
because the Episcopal Church has always been challenged on this issue.

For example, in the 1970s, the argument for authority of Scripture came up with the ordination of
women – and so, too, did the threat of a schism. But in 1989, the Church consecrated its first
female bishop – Barbara C. Harris. And conservatives were not only theologically outraged, but
also racially challenged because Harris is African American.

And in 2006, gasps of both exhilaration and exasperation reverberated throughout the Anglican
Communion when it was announced that Katharine Jefferts Schori would be the Presiding
Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA.

All this is no surprise, however, since the Episcopal Church has a history of taking the moral high
ground on social justice issues.

On the theological rift concerning American slavery, the Episcopal Church rebuked the Bible’s
literal interpretation, arguing that slavery violated the spirit of the Bible.

Boston's Old North Church, which played an active role in the American Revolution, served as a
beacon for Paul Revere’s “midnight ride.”

The Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Cumberland, Md., was a major stop on the Underground
Railroad.

While many would like to believe that secessionist congregations battling with liberal bishops
endorsing "sodomy" brought on the financial crisis in the Episcopal Church, the church's coffers
were bare prior to Robinson’s consecration.

And the reason?

Decline in its membership over four decades; the rise of its Third World bishops from countries in
Africa, South America, and Asia; and its egregious act of inhospitality and exclusion of its
LGBTQ population.

The tension that currently exists inside the worldwide Anglican Communion is undeniable. But
what many don't realize is that it is as much about how its unforeseen legacy of unbridled
missionary efforts expanded into the Third World as it is about the conservative arm of the
Church repudiating homosexuality.

But the two feed off each other as Robinson, since his consecration, acts as the Church's
scapegoat.

By pitting marginalized groups like gays and Africans against each other, the Church masks the
geopolitics of race and power while bating homophobia.

Does this scenario sound familiar?

When the liberal wing of the ECUSA consecrated Robinson, the Anglican's Global South -
comprised mostly of Third World countries in Africa, South America, and Asia - did not embrace
the Church's radical shift from a religion of personal transformation to a faith of personal
affirmation. For the Global South, that shift raised not only questions about theological belief,
but also about their ecclesiastical power within the Church.

With centuries of Anglican missionaries traversing worldwide into the hinterlands and jungles of
Third World countries to transform heathens of indigenous religions and fertility cult practices
into good Christians, its globetrotting evangelizing carried not only racist and homophobic
messages that had strong theological holds on its colonial subjects, but it also brought the notion
of power to disenfranchised countries that wanted to be let in to the Anglican ecclesiastical
fiefdom.

One sign of entry is an invitation to Lambeth conferences. They are once-a-decade global
gatherings of Anglican archbishops and bishops that once upon a time functioned as the Church's
only white male club of heterosexual power brokers. They ignored, without moral compunction,
its missionary churches. But things changed. And when they did, they changed not only radically
but also racially.

"In 10 years, when African bishops come to the microphone at this conference, we will be so
numerous and influential that you will have to recognize us," said Joseph Adetiloye, a retired
official with the church in Nigeria, at the 1978 Lambeth Conference, according to The New
Yorker.

While the U.S has, at best, approximately 2.2 Episcopalians today, the center of Anglican gravity
is neither here nor in Britain, but in Africa. There are approximately three million in Kenya, and
nine million in Uganda. But those two countries combined do not come close to the 20 million in
Nigeria, making Peter Akinola, the archbishop there, one of the most influential men in the
Anglican Communion.

A vociferous opponent of LGBTQ civil rights, Akinola has used Robinson as his whipping boy
to flex his muscle as a sign of African power in the Anglican Church as well as to expand his
missionary power by capitalizing on the theological schism that has developed.

Robinson is now a lone voice in the wilderness among bishops. And it's also a way for the
Church to avoid addressing its heterosexism head on.

I remember the preacher at Robinson's consecration. He was the Rt. Rev. Douglas E. Theuner
who was succeeded by Robinson. Theuner preached about the necessary shift that must take
place in the church in order for it to be inclusive of all people, not just with LGBTQ people. He
said:

"When we attempt to bring the margins into the center, we necessarily push the center to the
margins. If Canterbury or New York, for instance, wishes to help Nigeria or West Indies move
toward the center, then for everyone to continue to occupy the space available, Canterbury and
New York must willing move toward the margin. We who have been in the center don't like
moving to the margin, event to different places on it, but we must do that if we're going to affirm
the marginalized. That was the thrust of our Lord's ministry . . . Welcome to the life where Jesus
lived it . . . on the margin!”

For me, the joy in this moment in the history of the Episcopal Church is that it crawls toward
inclusiveness, albeit haltingly and in spite of opposition.
And for those of us on the margins in our churches and faith communities we need to see the
principle of love in action.

The General Convention has voted. And let the Episcopal Church say, Amen.