http://caughtbythelight.blogspot.com...manifesto.html
I have seen ministries wrecked by homophobia. I have seen the scars born by LGBT clergy who have made pilgrimages into the unknown as they escape hostile dioceses. I have sat with them as they listened to subtle, patronizing bigotry couched in gentle, "pastoral" voices. I have watched them get sliced and diced online and in person, told to return to the closet, and seen in print how they are regarded by some merely as abominations. I have watched them react with heartfelt sympathy to those who conscientiously cannot find their way out of the theology that prevents them from accepting sexuality other than that between a man and a woman. I have seen them persevere through elections, searches, and discernment processes where they knew, at the end of the day, they were being rejected simply because of their sexual orientation.Type the rest of your post here.
They have taught me healing ministry. They have taught me how to cry and be honest about who I am. They have loved me while even knowing that I could walk away from them because of their sexuality. . .that I could walk away at any moment with impunity as far as the greater society and Church is concerned, because I have that privilege. I have betrayed them in word and deed as an ordained priest. I have sold them out to chummy up with people I fear. I have dismissed and abstracted them away in my writing and preaching. And, yet, they continue to love me and call me back again and again to my full humanity in community and communion. And what is more Christ-like than that? Does not Christ love us most visibly and without reserve when we betray him? Is that not what the gospels and our greatest theologies about salvation teach us?
I have seen the face of Christ most in the wounded, loving, caring, and compassionate gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered Christians of this Church, lay and ordained. I am who I am because of who they are, and who God in Christ has been through them. They have become a part of me, and an integral part of my spiritual journey into the heart of God in Jesus Christ.
So, to the Primates I now say, as a priest at the growing edge of the Anglican Communion, and with no intended reproach towards those who strongly disagree with my position on human sexuality:
Wherever my brothers and sisters are damned, I am damned as well.
1 comment:
I cut and paste this from the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island - preamble and all:
I am reminded of a poem written by Rev. Martin Niemöller about the silence of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power. He was an early supporter of Hitler, but by 1934 came to oppose the Nazis. It was largely his connections to influential and wealthy businessmen that saved him until 1937, after which he was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. He survived to be a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II. Here are his famous words:
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came fore the Jews,
and I didn‘t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
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