RE: [HoB/D] GAFCON Response to Evangelical English Bishops

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

> Thank you too for this gracious response.
> 
> I do note that you didn't quite answer my question. I asked about the
> Anglican Communion holding its ground on the received teaching of the
> church, you narrowed it to the GAFCON group.
> 
> Perhaps you see them as one and the same.

You're right.  I apologize.  I inadvertantly shifted the focus of your 
question to GAFCON, when you asked whether not listening is spart of why
the Anglican Communion is holding its ground on the received teaching 
of the church.  I focused on GAFCOn as currently the loudest 
about holding the received teaching of the church, but most in the Anglican 
Communion hold to the received teaching as well, and mot of them have not 
had close conversations with lgtb Christians.

I can see why some, me included,  are sick and tired of talking about 
"the subject", but that is not the same as listening to the experience
of gay and lesbian Christians.

Some who even like us are often unwilling to break through the taboos of
asking us what they want to know.

And what many want to know is not what most lbgt Christians want to talk
about.  Most lgbts I know are more concerned with justice rather than with
being liked or 'accepted'; and almost none of us wants to explain LGBT 101.
Why should we submit ourselves to conversations in which lbgts take all the
risks, conversations in which heterosexuals are not willing to be equally
vulnerable?

I am talking about disciple to disciple conversations, not about argument.
I enjoy a good argument as much as most other English professors, but I am
glad that St. Paul did not bring gentile converts with him to the Council at
Jerusalem.  It would not have been effective evangelism to have them listen
to all the reasons they ought to have their member clipped.  That's not the
good news that brought them to the faith.

I was brought up with all of the systemic privilege accorded to white young
men in Alabama in my generation, nee 1936.  At age 25 I decided
to apply for a job in Africa through an international agency that placed
teachers (The Africa-America Institute).  The interview took place at
Atlanta University (a place that segregation had not placed even on my radar
screen).  I was one of almost  100 candidates for a few jobs, and I was one
of the only ones interviewed who had only a master's degree at the time.

I did not sleep well for three days.  How could there be so many bright
well-educated African Americans and I had never met any with more than a
high school education?   What other reality had I been segregated from?

(Incidentally, I was offered one of the few jobs, but too late to take it,
not because of my superior education, but because I had an academic minor in
Greek, whereas many of the Ph.D.s had majored in agronomy or engineering --
obviously not of much value in an African education system with values
established by the colonialists.  In 1961, most African countries were still
under colonial governments.)

Heterosexism has segregated most straight Christians from lesbian and gay
disciples of Jesus, and most think they are not segregated because they have
read a few articles and seen some gays on TV or in film footage of a Pride
parade.   Read how disgusted the GAFCON pronouncements are when they
reference the fact that those going to Lambeth 2008 will have to be around
Bishop Robinson and his partner. I have not heard a louder "Yuck" since
grade school.

Jesus always has spent lots of time with those who prompt "Yuck!" He's given
lesbians and gays much good news to share with this church
and with the world.   The history of the Gospel from the beginning has been
to extend God's love to hitertofore excluded people.  Jesus had his own
first success as a missionary, not with the Jews to whom he was sent, but
with the Samaritans.

It's a bit hard to share the good news with the world when so many in the
Anglican Communions have not yet heard the results of the Council of
Jerusalem and have not yet gotten over the Yuck Factor.

Joy anyway!

Louie