Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams
The ABC has been suffering with a terrible disease for many years. For a long time, there was not a diagnosis. In more recent years he' s finally got a diagnosis:
Spinelessflipflopanglicanosis.
Next week the Anglican Communion Primates are having a primates meeting in Tanzania. Some of the global south primates have there underwear all in a wad because the ABC decided to invite the primate of The Episcopal Church (well, yeah. TEC pays a lot of money to the coffers of the Anglican Communion.) The global south primates are furious with him for inviting her without their permission. They just can't stand the thought of being in the same room with the American Primate, PresidingBishop Katharine Jefferts -Schori.
So much for the Anglican principals of discernment and listening.
Last night I received an email from Jeff Martinhauk, seminary student and computer whiz.
Being a very active social justice person, I was thrilled that Jeff had taken on the task of writing an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury with a petition for folks to sign. I'm not going to explain all of what Jeff says when I can put it here in Jeff's own words.
Link to Jeff's Blog: http://leaningtowardsjustice.wordpress.com/about
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February 6th, 2007
An Open Letter to His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury
Prior to the Meeting of the Primates in Tanzania
February 6, 2007
Your Grace,
I write to you not as a part of any organization or group, but on my own accord as a member of the Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Communion. As a gay man in this great church, I am slowly realizing the mistakes we in the gay and lesbian community have made in our efforts to bring our unique perspective on the Gospel message to our brothers and sisters in Christ within this church. Perhaps in an effort to assimilate into heterosexual society, we have been overly prepared to make apologetic arguments based on similarities with our straight counterparts. We seem to have placed our trust in the established leaders and processes of the church, hoping that if our arguments are strong enough that our case will be heard with a sympathetic ear. Of course history has never, to my knowledge, shown that the oppressed have made much progress by placing hope in the powers of the institutions that oppress them. We cannot make progress with apologetic arguments, attempting to assimilate into institutions held by primarily heterosexual males who have never experienced our oppression. Isn’t that why the high priests rejected the message of Jesus, a fellow Jew? I need not remind Your Grace that the fear of change is a powerful resistance to the prophetic voice, as it was for Caiphus. “What will it do to our institutions?” “What will it do to our own positions?” “How will we be remembered as leaders?” These must have been difficult questions for the Sanhedrin as they conspired against Jesus. Questions with answers that Jesus apparently felt were worthy of martyrdom.
Some argue that the “nature or nurture” discussion has an impact on our fate. I say to them that being “gay” or “lesbian” in the U.S. is a social construct. Sexual attraction is not something we choose, but claiming our identity as “gay” or “lesbian,” is. Just because our identity is a social construct does not de-value it. Gender roles are social constructs. There are, I hope, few that would say that the gender roles of women in the patriarchal society of the Old Testament (or even the New Testament) should be held up in today’s society—although, as Your Grace knows well, exactly which gender roles are appropriate today is still a heated topic in the Communion, depending on the cultural context of the discussion. Just as racism is a social construct with very real consequences, gathering its existence from the brokenness of humanity, those suffering from the oppression of racism must claim their identity and move forward shining light into the blindness of their oppressors that they may see, and in so doing freeing themselves from the chains of oppression. So too we gay and lesbians, as a distinct people of God, must claim our identity and move forward, letting our own light shine with the light of the Gospel that we might be free in Christ Jesus, even as we struggle to loosen the blindfolds within our own church that others might see.
What has been lost in the discussion in the Communion is how our identity is directly tied to the debates we are having. It seems to me that discussions about whether or not to have gay and lesbian bishops and whether or not to have gay and lesbian marriages, have been removed from the point at hand—what it means to gay and lesbian people.
We need gay bishops because of the significance of having prominent, Christian leaders who can speak out about our lives. They can rid us of the closet. They can prevent oppression. When a young man is attacked because he is gay and left for dead, strung up on a fence in Wyoming by his murderers, would his attackers have known better had they seen an active gay Christian, preaching and teaching the Gospel? When a young teenager stands in the bathroom of her parents’ house, contemplating suicide because she knows that she is the only one in the world that feels the way she does, might she feel different if she had a role model providing a healthy Christian model of living, who also happened to be a lesbian? When an aging gay couple must face life or death decisions and have only each other for family but are denied the same decisions as a heterosexual couple in the hospital, with the state, and in the church because they were not able to get married and so now prepare for death as single people, they face an unnecessary and terrible agony. The list goes on. If the church in any way judges our lives differently, the church participates in the violence that is perpetrated against us. If the church sends our culture a message that it is ok to discriminate against gay and lesbian people—whether through the rites of the church or in its theology—then it also tells the straight people in our culture that it is ok to perpetuate violence, agony, and suffering upon us. Love and discrimination simply are not compatible. Our culture has learned that. Separate is not equal.
Though I have already said that appealing to a position of power from a position of oppression has historically been fruitless, I still write in the spirit of God’s eternal hope for the hopeless. Will Your Grace be an instrument of hope for ALL of us? Will Your Grace help create a Communion in which difference does not diminish under a central authority, but thrives because it is cherished and celebrated as the diversity of God’s full creation?
As the Focus of Unity for our Communion, I beg Your Grace not to appeal to irrelevant procedural issues which may or may not have been followed, nor to the red herring of possible communication difficulties in other parts of the church. Rather, I beg you, to consider those of us within your care as the Focus of Unity who are marginalized, who deserve God’s love, who are part of this great diverse Creation, and who need to hear what we have not heard directly yet: namely that God loves us, that God does not endorse violence against us, and that the way to prevent that violence is through Jesus Christ as our liberator and savior. Can the Anglican Communion be a place where all of the Body of Christ is welcome?
Yours in Christ, Jeffrey J. Martinhauk
Please sign the Petition to the Archbishop here or
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