05 August 2009

Justice in the Episcopal Church

I am Episcopalian, and I have been since my confirmation in the church thirty-four years ago, minus a few years when I didn’t go to church because my faith was weak or I was “too busy,” ridiculously enough.
As many may know, three years ago my church, officially the Episcopal Church USA, or ECUSA for short, approved the ordination of an openly-practicing homosexual bishop. Vicki Gene Robinson, a male priest, was approved by the national body in a triennial ECUSA convention to lead the Diocese of New Hampshire six years ago. His selection and ordination was highly, and rightly, controversial. The next convention shied away from the controversy, and other issues associated with homosexuality and its relationship(s) with and to the ECUSA. That all changed this year.
In the midst of this maelstrom over the past six years were efforts by conservative, biblically-based congregations, and then dioceses, to secede from the ECUSA and join the more conservative and traditional Anglican church in North America, and Episcopal dioceses in South America, specifically that of the Southern Cone.
Unfortunately for these congregations, the ECUSA’s laws state that all parishes within the Church are the property of the Church’s diocese, and diocesan property is owned by the national body. This intrigues me, as my church is still encumbered by a mortgage that we, the congregation, are responsible to pay. The church law has been challenged in state and Federal courts, with mixed results.
In the meantime, the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the ECUSA is a member, has seen a number of national dioceses pushing to expel the ECUSA from the communion, citing biblical references, and claiming blasphemy by the ECUSA.
Then, just last month, the ECUSA voted to allow bishops to bless homosexual unions, though it did not move to write and include services in the Episcopal prayer book. In the wake of the convention at least three openly homosexual clergy have been nominated for the bishopric.
With this in mind, I joked with my parish priest recently that perhaps we should secede from the local diocese, turn over the parish AND its mortgage to the diocese, and then re-purchase the property at the fire sale for a much lower price, saving the congregation potentially a great deal of money! It was all completely tongue-in-cheek, but it did get me to thinking on the state of the ECUSA.
During the most recent convention, a prospective clergy stated that upon his ordination he hoped to be able to bless the union of a homosexual couple he knew because it was “about justice.” Now, I could argue for days that anything that is clearly non- or anti-biblical, or potentially blasphemous, could never be just. Justice from a cultural or secular point of view not based in biblical fact or teaching, is just, well, not just.
Anyway, I then thought of all those congregations, and the justice behind seizing property that was purchased, not by the greater Church, or by the diocese, but by the parishioners within the congregation, or their family or predecessors.
It occurs to me that the ECUSA has become more worried about the secular world and less about its flock, and that what is right by society in America has become more important than biblical teaching. How can the ECUSA proclaim that it is right to ordain openly-practicing homosexuals to the priesthood or bishopric, in spite of the biblical restrictions, and then seize property that a diocese or the Church has no real financial interest?

Is THAT just?