Re: Disappointment

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

Thank you for your generous response to my note.   I wish you success in
your effort to find your way theologically to support lgbt persons. Tobias
Haller has a new book out from Church Publishing that may be of assistance:
Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-sexuality.

Like the thief on the next cross, I did not come to my salvation by rewiring
my theology:  I experienced God at work in my holy relationship with Ernest,
and miraculously the promises from which I had so long seemed excluded made
sense and included us.  That happened before the church was even willing to
name the subject, but less discuss it.

While D025 does not repudiate B033, it clearly, and intentionally, moves us
beyond it.  It does so by describing where we are.  It grounds us in our own
canons, not in the 2006 resolution.

D025 is not the road block for nominating committees and Standing Committees
that B033 was.  65.7% of the bishops with jurisdiction voted for it.  Some
of of those also voted for the more restrained minority point of view of the
Anaheim Statement.

The moritorium on lgbt bishops is not officially ended however; that will
not happen until a majority of bishops with jurisdiction and Standing
Committees consent to the election of a lbgt person.  That vote could come
soon, as both Los Angeles (suffragan) and Minnesota (coadjutor) will
announce slates in September.  Both have lgbts whom nominating committees
are considering.

The Archbishop of Canterbury would not have expressed disappointment had he
understood D025 as keeping us in the same place.  I doubt that the elation
at All Saints in Pasadena would surprise him and more than Archbishop Robert
Duncan's revived bid for ACNA to become the Anglican franchise in North
America.

You describe well what happened in Anaheim, I think:  going there, you were
much closer to the center of TEC's position than you are after GC.   The
'broad middle has shifted,' or I would prefer to put it, 'The broad middle
has recognized that it is not where it used to be.'

It yet remains to be seen where we will be.   I look forward to discovering
that with you.

Louie