I suspect many who who went to the Council of Jerusalem felt the same way: This trial is not about circumcision; it is about doctrine and discipline. But do note, please, that since the Council at Jerusalem, the Church has not been requiring circumcision or other kosher.
Bishop Ackerman seemed to make this same assesment when he and I nattered at Kanuga in September. Last March, also at Kanuga, he had told my bishop, Jack Spong, that although he had been one of the 10 who brought the presentment he was not going to consent to it. Bishop Ackerman then reneged without even telling my bishop; yet my bishop had taken much heat for supporting him when Bishop Ackerman almost came up short of the votes needed for his consecration. In sending me to represent him at the evangelism conference, my bishop asked me to tell Bishop Ackerman that he was extremely disappointed that Bishop Ackerman had lied to him.
"Louie," Bishop Ackerman told me, "I fully meant what I said to Jack in the spring, and I was wrong not to call and tell him that I had changed my mind. I signed the presentment only on the last day and only because Bishop Benitez assured me that the presentment would be withdrawn at Portland. Louie, I think I will never sign another presentment again, ever, not about anything, even if I feel I ought. I feel very bad about this."
When Bishop Salmon told the Commission on Human Affairs that the trial is not about homosexuality but about polity, I asked, "Then are you saying that the Church is scape-goating lesbians and gays?" He replied, "yes."
Scape-goating is evil. If the trial is about the way that bishops do business, surely we should begin by asking why they are doing the immoral business of taking a group already much beseiged on all sides and using us as scapegoats for mere polity. I cannot think of another minority group on the planet that they would consider treating this cavalierly, yet in this case, they seem to see nothing wrong in doing so.
I hear absolutely no good news in the notion that the trial is not really about homosexuals: I hear only the world's message: this is the only group it's still safe to abuse.
The world which will watch the trial does not give a tinker's malediction about the polity of the Episcopal Church. The media which will cover this trial does not for a moment believe that this trial is primarily about polity and collegialty. If that were true, you would have only the same hard-core church press there to cover it. That will not be the case.
The press knows exactly why "the fine upstanding Episcopal Church," the "church of presidents," the [fill in the blank with any of their standard stereotypes about ECUSA] is willing to violate its own sense of decorum and make a public spectacle of itself.
I agree that most bishops would not say they're going for Walter or even for lesbians and gays. It's never easy to admit whom you're going for. It's always easier to ignore your victims and to say that you're doing this on the basis of some high-sounding principle.
The press will be at the heresy trial for the same reason it went to the Scopes trial: An antequated notion of God is trying to deprive God's people of the right to use their minds and hearts to attend to new truth.
In backing the state and William Jennings Bryan in 1925, parts of the church wrote themselves out of the lives of many of the best minds in America. When Scopes lost, textbook makers would not publish biologically honest textbooks until Sputnik (1957); for the 32-year interval, Bryan's ghost hung like the shadow of the dark ages on the minds of biologists, biochemists, physicians....... The parts of the church that backed Bryan did more to undermine the church's influence in the community than anything on the secular world's agenda could possibly have done.
(For more on Scopes: Scopes)
If the church prefers rigor mortis, let it join those who cast the first 76 stones. It won't help at all to say, "Oh but we love Walter and Louie and all our ....."
I'm not speculating. I speak from the trenches. We've been bringing persons into this church by the thousands, and thousands more are watching, most in utter amazement that a church with a strong reputation for rationality has even consented, here at the doorway to the 21st century, to drop all other important matters and try a man for heresy! Surely he must have done something horrendous and eggregious to merit the attention the same church would not give to Bishop Pike 30 years ago?! Not so! The House has consented to the trial knowing full well that 111 other bishops have done one or more of the "heretical" acts with which he is charged. One of the "proofs" that he's a heretic is that the poor fellow just voted the wrong way! Seriously, that's one of the major pieces of evidence!
Every Episcopalian with half an i.q. point left ought to be profoundly embarrassed. The vast majority of adult Episcopalians fled denominations where they had to hang their minds at the door, and now we are captive to a trial where such mindlessness is aired for all the world to see.
You may be surprised to know that, having said all that, I agree with those who say that this trial is not about lesbians and gays as the media will proclaim. But I see it as not about polity and collegiality either. This trial is about the love of God:
Millions have seen the preliminary network coverage of this trial and have concluded, as many have rightly concluded before the lesbigay issue came along, that the Episcopal Church is less than honest when it proclaims boldly everywhere, "The Episcopal Church welcomes you." Millions more have concluded the same thing about God!
Most who see the lie in the claim to welcome don't care any more about lesbigays than do the presenting bishops. But many, many of them wonder whether God loves them, or maybe even whether the Episcopal Church in their community would welcome them, given their understanding of their own weakness and their own unworthiness. The very fact that we are having the trial has given far too many their answer.
It's not God's answer. It's not my answer. I know how much God loves not just me, but my enemies as well. It's in knowing that God loves my enemies that I most discover that God has changed me, because before God loved me, I could not have thought like that.
I believe that God calls lesbians and gays to love well this church that so egregiously abuses us that the whole world might know the only good news there is now or ever has been: God loves absolutely everybody and wants us in joy to love everybody too.
Quean Lutibelle of the Alabama Belles/Louie