Why Did Break Away Diocese Choose This Fight?

I grew up in a blue collar place where almost every male learned to fight. It was a matter of survival. Some liked to fight for the fun of it and I was one of those. There was something very exhilarating about feeling your blood boil.

As I matured and my horizons began to expand, physical fighting lost its appeal, but the desire to feel my blood boil didn’t. I found I was pretty good at rhetorical nose punching, so the intellectual argument took the place of flying fists. Politics, sports, you name it, I was a ready teddy. But as I moved further along in my evolution, I began to realize the wisdom of choosing your fights. You can tell a lot about a person by the fights they choose.

This week an Episcopal diocese in California chose to fight over whether homosexuals can be as fully Christian as heterosexuals. That’s probably not how they would phrase it, but that’s really what is shrinks down to. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. is part of a worldwide Anglican fellowship that traces its roots back to the Church of England.

Over the weekend delegates at the annual convention of the San Joaquin diocese voted to secede from the national Episcopal Church. Clergy and lay delegates alike voted in large majorities to secede in objection to the right of partnered gay and lesbian believers to serve as Episcopal ministers. The move is likely to have dire spiritual and legal consequences. History says the parent church will fight to retain the property of individual parishes within the diocese. It’s not a small fight and choosing it speaks volumes about who these people are.

Let’s be up front; there are a few verses sprinkled through scripture that speak against homosexuality. Most are set in a historical context quite different from our contemporary context of gays and lesbians in committed and monogamous relationships -- the type of sexual relationship we generally find acceptable for heterosexual clergy. But the passages are there. The question is, when did perfect compliance with all scripture become a prerequisite for being Christian? The church, after all, is often described as a club for sinners. Admitting you are one is the price of admission.

Why have they chosen this fight rather than, say, Jesus’ frequent admonition against lives devoted to the accumulation of wealth? Their choice speaks to who they are and, while I could guess what it says, in their own hearts they know and I’m afraid it ain’t pretty. One thing it might say is they’re not fully committed to believing God’s grace is the umbrella under which all Christians stand.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, elected last year as the first woman to lead the U.S. Episcopal Church, had warned San Joaquin Bishop John-David Schofield against voting to break away from the denomination but did not threaten specific consequences. Jefferts Schori supports ordaining partnered gays and lesbians.

"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement after the vote. "We wish them to know of our prayers for them and their journey."