The Episcopal Fast

The Religious News Service headline reads, "Top Episcopal Bishop Urges Fasting on Gay Issues." My first reaction -- before I read the article -- was, "It's bad enough that churches are tearing themselves up over these issues but now they can't eat!"

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori meant it metaphorically, of course. She was responding to the Anglican primate's directive to the American bishops, which I blogged [http://debrahaffner.blogspot.com] about earlier this week.

The bishop's statement read, in part:

God's justice is always tempered with mercy, and God continues to be at work in this world, urging the faithful into deeper understandings of what it means to be human and our call as Christians to live as followers of Jesus. Each party in this conflict is asked to consider the good faith of the other, to consider that the weakness or sensitivity of the other is of significant import, and therefore to fast, or "refrain from eating meat," for a season. Each is asked to discipline itself for the sake of the greater whole, and the mission that is only possible when the community maintains its integrity.

Justice, (steadfast) love, and mercy always go together in our biblical tradition. None is complete without the others. While those who seek full inclusion for gay and lesbian Christians, and the equal valuing of their gifts for ministry, do so out of an undeniable passion for justice, others seek a fidelity to the tradition that cannot understand or countenance the violation of what that tradition says about sexual ethics. Each is being asked to forbear for a season. The word of hope is that in God all things are possible, and that fasting is not a permanent condition of a Christian people, nor a normative one. God's dream is of all people gathered at a feast, and we enter Lent looking toward that Easter feast and the new life that will, in God's good time, be proclaimed.

But what does that tradition really say about sexual ethics? Surely she's not talking about that part of the tradition that doesn't believe women should be leaders of the church (or even speak within the church.) Surely she's not talking about polygamy or patriarchy or divorce or premarital sex.

No, she's talking about people who fall outside of the heterosexual, monogamous, married model that is espoused as the moral norm. I had hoped instead that she would talk about understanding how sexual and gender diversity are part of our blessed endowment.

Somehow a time-out doesn't seem to me what is needed. These compromises ultimately not only satisfy none, but do damage to the thousands of faithful who are gay and lesbian or who love gay and lesbian people.

I had hoped for better. May her fast lead to new insights and commitments to justice for all.