Maturity in the Midst of Conflict

A Response to the Executive Council Actions
by the Rev. Thomas B. Woodward, the Rev. David K. Fly, and Lisa Fox

The center of the Episcopal Church, made up of the faithful who work and give and witness in response to the love of God they have known through their church, is the winner (if there are any winners) in the resolutions passed by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church today. See "The Episcopal Church's Commitment to Common Life in Anglican Communion" (available here) and the summary of related resolutions.

If we could choose a phrase to capture the meaning of this event and of these resolutions, the one that comes to mind is from the language of conflict within families. It is: “There must always be at least one adult in the room at all times.”

What our leaders have done is what a devoted, mature parent would do within a family torn apart by discord and allegations of disloyalty to the family:

• They affirmed our love for ourselves and for those who want to reorder our family on their terms, not ours.
• They promised a process that will be fair and that will honor our several traditions without violating any of them.
• They affirmed that we will not sacrifice any member of our family.
• They acknowledged and reiterated the kind of boundaries that are necessary for us to continue serving God as the family God is calling us to be.
• They accomplished all this as spiritual adults, not blaming, not making excuses – but reassuring us all that the family will continue to be a family, one which will thrive.

Our Executive Council – under the kind and gracious leadership of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson – has reframed the stresses and strains of our Communion. They have offered our Communion, our provinces, and our dioceses the opportunity to work together in framing our common future. Rejecting "assertions of authority met by counter-assertions of polity," they have called for a course of genuine reconciliation and recognized that "the questions before us now are fundamentally relational."

That our Church is always in need of reformation is clear. The nature of sin is to distract us from our calling, as Church and as individuals. We recognized that fact in the boldest way possible 200 years ago when we named ourselves “the Protestant Episcopal Church.” We protest any and all attempts to dilute or to diminish the power and presence of God in the life of our Church.

It is possible that we will come to see and to understand the "orthodox" stands against the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people into every aspect of our Church’s life as an outward and partial cry for a new dedication to personal and corporate holiness in the church. That cry is profoundly important at a time when forces in our culture are pulling us in the opposite directions of licentiousness and overly strict and oppressive moralities.

Surely, we all agree that our lives, as Christians and as a Communion, must be marked by a wholehearted dedication to holiness. The book of Leviticus tells us that is our calling – and it is our calling because holiness has to do with the being and identity of God, who has created us, redeemed us, and is leading us through the Holy Spirit. The Holiness Code in Leviticus 18ff. notes over and over again that we are called to be holy, even as God is holy.

We must be scrupulous in this discernment: What is involved in God’s call to holiness? and what is simply a response to our fears and the inadequate understanding of the purposes of God from earlier generations? For the majority of the Episcopal Church, it has become clear that the holiness of the Church is tied intimately to its full inclusion of all the people of God – and that the demand for holiness in our sexual lives is the same for all Christians, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

Our history as a Church has been marked, over and over again, by our struggles to understand and respond to God’s continuing call to be "a holy people." Throughout that history, there have been pivotal moments in which we have come to realize that what seemed so clear to previous generations was wrong; God has perpetually given us leaders and insight so we can, in our several generations, get it right. That is the setting for our life together in the coming years.

With all the Church we pray:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen [Book of Common Prayer, p. 280]