Last week, the following letter I wrote to the editor of a local weekly magazine was published in the "Comments" section:
I appreciate ***'s thoughtful and well-researched article on the tensions that threaten to divide the local *** diocese further from the national Episcopal Church, and that church from some other provinces within the Anglican Communion (“A Great Schism?” May 2, 2007). At the same time, as a gay man who has been unable to find a home for myself, my male spouse, and my daughters within the local branch of the church in which I was baptized and raised, the article brought up pain.
It was the Episcopal Church that first taught me that God is not a tyrant or a sanctifier of prejudice, but is the loving source, ground and aim of all creation. To be sure, it also inculcated in me a love for tradition. But, not just any tradition: not the “traditions” claimed by those who condemned Jesus “on biblical grounds” for his fellowship with outcasts. Rather, I was taught that the Tradition of Christ reaches out to embrace all of creation, inviting us all into communion.
It took me time to learn to distinguish between the Tradition of Christ and those traditions cited as justification for excluding some as outcasts. For years, this confusion led me to a misguided attempt to suppress my homosexuality, which is no more superficial to me than the heterosexuality of my straight brothers and sisters is to them. But, ultimately, love—God’s love—won out. I give thanks that God allows me to experience some of that love in the embrace between myself and my partner.
I cannot hate those still caught up in a confusion that so long held me captive. But, I have to name it for what it is, and bemoan its hateful effects. Among those is the fact that it not possible for us to raise our own daughters in the very church that taught me the gospel of love, but which, within this diocese, would teach them that that same gospel rejects a love central to our family.
Thank God, our family has found, at *** First Congregational Church, a congregation of the United Church of Christ, a community that strives to imitate Christ in his refusal to treat any as outcast. I pray that, one day, our local Episcopal churches will come fully to embrace that same gospel.
I appreciate ***'s thoughtful and well-researched article on the tensions that threaten to divide the local *** diocese further from the national Episcopal Church, and that church from some other provinces within the Anglican Communion (“A Great Schism?” May 2, 2007). At the same time, as a gay man who has been unable to find a home for myself, my male spouse, and my daughters within the local branch of the church in which I was baptized and raised, the article brought up pain.
It was the Episcopal Church that first taught me that God is not a tyrant or a sanctifier of prejudice, but is the loving source, ground and aim of all creation. To be sure, it also inculcated in me a love for tradition. But, not just any tradition: not the “traditions” claimed by those who condemned Jesus “on biblical grounds” for his fellowship with outcasts. Rather, I was taught that the Tradition of Christ reaches out to embrace all of creation, inviting us all into communion.
It took me time to learn to distinguish between the Tradition of Christ and those traditions cited as justification for excluding some as outcasts. For years, this confusion led me to a misguided attempt to suppress my homosexuality, which is no more superficial to me than the heterosexuality of my straight brothers and sisters is to them. But, ultimately, love—God’s love—won out. I give thanks that God allows me to experience some of that love in the embrace between myself and my partner.
I cannot hate those still caught up in a confusion that so long held me captive. But, I have to name it for what it is, and bemoan its hateful effects. Among those is the fact that it not possible for us to raise our own daughters in the very church that taught me the gospel of love, but which, within this diocese, would teach them that that same gospel rejects a love central to our family.
Thank God, our family has found, at *** First Congregational Church, a congregation of the United Church of Christ, a community that strives to imitate Christ in his refusal to treat any as outcast. I pray that, one day, our local Episcopal churches will come fully to embrace that same gospel.
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