Quad City priests condemn gay bishop

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Q-C priests condemn gay bishop

By Tony Robinson
Monday, August 11th, 2003


Some officials from Quad-City Episcopal churches have strongly criticized the appointment of the church’s first openly gay bishop, saying it will have severe worldwide repercussions.

Bishops at the Episcopal General Convention confirmed the Rev. V. Gene Robinson to lead a New Hampshire diocese in the wake of some last-minute misconduct allegations that were made against him. After the allegations were dropped, the bishops voted 62-45 to confirm Robinson last week.

The decision sent shockwaves through the mostly conservative Episcopalian churches in the Quad-City region, where congregations are abuzz and priests are giving sermons condemning homosexuality.

“It has been a source of great pain and sorrow for us and others around the world because it signals a departure from the Christian faith,” said the Rev. Steven McClaskey of Trinity Episcopal Church in Moline. “We have to rid the world of this evil.”.

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Great to see that Christian love and tolerance is flourishing in the Quad Cities! All this time I thought Illinois and Iowas ignorant redneck count was quite a bit lower than that of my own state, South Dakota. Maybe not....

RC

Are there 4 cities in the Dakotas???? What the heck is up there????

the metro area consisting of Bettendorff and Davenport, Iowa and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois. None of the four predominate, though Davenport is by some degree the largest of the group.

I am better for it, I also will check out a map. That is one part of the country I havent been to. I wasnt sure the twin cities hadn't doubled!

I grew up in St Louis Mo, I should have known that I guess.

seriously, thanks!

jim

Gene Robinson is of course by no means the first gay bishop in the Episcopal (or any other) church. Nor did he run on The First Gay Bishop platform in New Hampshire. He ran as Gene Robinson, an immensely well liked, intelligent and deeply spiritual human being and priest in the church. What distinguishes him from other gay men whom the church has happily elected to be bishops in the past (and present) is the fact that he isn't lying about it.

As a gay Episcopalian fellow-parishioner of mine put it, the traditionalist position here amounts to a demand that "I should lie about my orientation for your comfort."

After all, gay people in leadership positions in the church is a fact, and always has been. So there are really only two alternatives: ban them from such positions or require them to lie about who they are.* And I humbly submit that the church has happily accepted the contributions of gay people throughout its history, without of course acknowledging the fact. Gays have played key roles in the creation of the Book of Common Prayer and the current Hymnal, among many many other things. Oh but now they don't want to lie about who they are anymore, so I guess we gotta ban 'em, is that it? And, hey, let's also ban any music by gay composers (so long Benjamin Britten) and let's make sure we don't have any gay organists or choir directors or deacons or lay eucharistic ministers or....

I mean, it's simply ridiculous. The gay people are there, they are more than pulling their weight in the church, and to insist that they not occupy any positions of leadership unless they are closeted is to promote a theology of blatant hypocrisy. If you define that as a "departure from Christianity," well, there's something wrong with your definition of "Christianity."

*Footnote: Note that even requiring gays to be "non-practicing" is apparently not good enough--the openly gay bishop in England who just withdrew was IIRC celibate: the mere fact of being open about his orientation was all that was at issue.

Would the Church condone a bishop that had an open, ongoing affair. That is what is currently happening because homosexuals can't marry.

That leads us to the next question of is homosexual sex a sin. If it is, then the Church cannot sanctify the practice by opening the sacrament of marriage to include the practice.

Those are the questions that need to be answered. What they are doing now is to act while maintaining a blind eye to the harder, and inevitable questions of where their faith stands.

...violating my own prohibition on getting into irresolvable issues like this. But I think you're right--those are the underlying issues. And in fact the church was caught up in this unexpectedly in a way that endorses your point. The discussion of gay marriage--the "claiming the blessing" movement--was on the docket for this convention long before the Robinson issue came up, and indeed some people who were involved in that movement were angered at that discussion getting sidelined, and essentially tabled because of it.

And that wasn't the result of a deliberate attempt to precipitate a crisis. Normally the national church would not have had to ratify Robinson's election; that only occured because the canons require it for elections that fall within a year of General Convention. According to Robinson himself, his gayness wasn't an issue in the New Hampshire election; it only became one in the context of the national ratification. And it's a historical fact that General Conventions do not generally overturn such elections--it's actually very rare. To have done so in this case would have sent a very reactionary message.

I think given the situation they made the right decision because I don't buy the argument that homosexuality is inherently sinful. But that's where I break off because I don't think those kinds of bedrock views can be productively debated online.

You seem to know something about this.

Although the church is not entirely clear on the details there appears to be a substantial number of people that believe that Homosexuality is pretty bad on the sin scale.

Why would gays want to be part of an organisation that has rules that forbid them from being accepted and pretty much condemns them to eternal damnation? I've been trying to track down my bible but I've lost it. Are there any definitive passages that condemn homosexuality?

I'm all over the place on this issue. I'm not a great fan of churches anyhow and this just appears to be a continuation of their conservative appraoch to everything. Wouldn't it be good if the church split into a tolerant and intolerant camps? Surely the pro gay concensus is growing?

...and as I say in my other post above I'm already breaking a private rule about entering into these discussions because they involve bedrock views that can't really be productively debated in the limited context of an online forum. But that said....

In Christianity, as I understand it, the difference between the Old and New Law (as St Paul perhaps unfortunately called them) is that sinfulness, for Jesus, was always susceptible to an ethical analysis. That's the doctrine of Love--that acts are evil according as they tend to diminish the humanity of their perpetrators or victims. Even the so-called "hard sayings" seem susceptible to ethical analysis. But the "sinfulness" of homosexuality violates that pattern. There's no ethical content to it--there's no inherent reason to say that one man's erotic love for another man diminishes their mutual humanity; quite the opposite in many cases (at least as many as in heterosexual love). Well, people try, but those arguments come off as strained and contrived in my view. At bottom, it's more like a law of ritual purity. And indeed, one of the few places where it is referred to in scripture is Leviticus, a compendium of rules of ritual purity--none of the rest of which are observed by Christians.

I belong to an Episcopalian parish that has had, essentially, wedding ceremonies for a number of gay or lesbian couples. My priest did not come to that decision glibly. As a matter of fact his attitudes had to change quite a bit before he decided that it was the right thing to do. And his reasoning was that, essentially, to deny marriage to the gay members of our congregation was to consign them to second class status--it was to say you are less than full members, less Christian, less human. And he decided that he couldn't do that and still call himself a Christian.

Hope this isn't about to become a homosexuality or religion pro-con thread cuz I hate those....

Now, I wonder what he means by that?

For those of you heavily into proof texting, I'll offer this:

Those who say "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandmen we have from him is this: those who love God must also love their brothers and sisters also.

I John 4:20-21.

This whole story seems like alot of bashing the bishop to me.

Alot of monkey-spank.

Quad-City priests, go bash your own bishops. In private.

and quite frankly, I don't appreciate you're characterization of all of us as "rednecks". There is intolerance everywhere, as well as open minded people. I have bashed people from the south, so I am not immune to criticism on that count, but please do not condemn all the people of a certain region because a few of them are intolerant bigots. I am not Episcopalian either, and neither are most Quad-Citians.

I didn't say that..... Don't put words in my mouth and make righteously indignant complaints about something I never wrote.

RC