Center Aisle Endorses D025

From the Center Aisle (Diocese of Virginia):

Features & News - D025: 'This is Not a Great Leap Forward'

Two of the deputies who crafted the original Resolution D025, which deals with consecration of bishops, spoke to Center Aisle last night about their work and their hopes.

The Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers of Chicago and D. Rebecca Snow of Alaska began working in 2007 on this resolution, which may come before the House of Deputies today through Special Order X009.

This resolution, Ms. Meyers said, “is really about affirming those relationships” we have with others in the Anglican Communion. “Then it says, ‘This is who we are in conversation with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered people. We have been in dialogue for many years. We have moved to a different place than many other provinces.’”

D025, Ms. Snow and Ms. Meyers stressed, emphasizes the importance of self-differentiation, “saying who we are so we can then be in authentic relationships with others in the Communion where they are.”

Ms. Snow called D025 “the way forward. … an attempt to make a contribution to the Listening Process by making another stab about who we are and where we are.”

“Tell the people that we know that not everyone in the Episcopal Church agrees with what’s in here, and not everyone in the Anglican Communion agrees with it, but we are all acting in light of” Scripture, tradition and reason.

The two deputies described how they came to work together to craft the original resolution.

Ms. Meyers, formerly of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, is the new Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific and a founder of the Chicago Consultation, a
group of 50 bishops, clergy and lay people supporting full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Ms. Snow is a senior deputy in the House and has served on two special legislative committees that addressed issues of sexuality in previous Conventions.

In 2006, Ms. Meyers said, she was in line to testify with a piece of blank paper and a pen in her hand, not knowing what to say. She recalled her own experiences as a woman priest who could not serve in one diocese as well as the words of Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who urged members of that Convention to look for signs of crucifixion in themselves. When it came her time to speak, she said, “I cannot and will not be a party to hammering those nails into the hands and feet of my sisters and brothers.”

Following that Convention, she said, she and others knew they “really had to make this different at the next Convention. We need to bring people together and do this in a way that celebrates the relationships we have in the Anglican Communion, which are gifts of the Spirit. So are the steps the Episcopal Church has taken welcoming lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people, which are also gifts of the Spirit.”

“God,” Ms. Meyers said, “is calling us to hold those together.”

Ms. Snow decided to participate because she was “in favor of trying to find ways to be as gracious and giving as we could. … I was interested in getting to something that looked forward. Rather than try to get rid of something in the past or tie ourselves to the canons, we have to keep marching forward.”

Ms. Snow said the two “agreed that we’ve gotten to the place we’ve gotten in the Episcopal Church because we have spent all this time listening, including those who are opposed to homosexuality.”

“I think we have to be very careful not to act in ways that exclude people who don’t want to be on this train,” Ms. Snow said, “who are not in agreement with moving anywhere, the people who want to hang on to B033 and are fearful of the consequences of not doing so.

“We are not better off for the loss of those voices – however uncomfortable they made others feel, we’re still not better off without them.”

“Even if there is an overwhelming majority (supporting D025), remember, when we go home to our dioceses, there will be parishes at home that will be unhappy.”

Said Ms. Snow, “This is not a great leap forward.”