The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has referred to “standing at the foot of the cross” after coming up with a weaselly statement on the place of lesbian and gay people in the church and especially in episcopal orders. This is, I suppose, meant to reflect the personal pain that each bishop feels at being “forced” to abandon our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters to the wolves of Lambeth Palace in exchange for an invitation to tea with the Queen and Bible Study with Peter Akinola.
My response, in another venue, was this:
This guff about “standing at the foot of the cross” needs to be countered forcefully. We are all crucified and raised with Christ; this I believe fervently. However, bishops suffering from cognitive dissonance are not “standing at the foot of the cross”. These bishops have themselves selected the tree, sawed it into planks, required lesbian and gay people and their friends to carry the cross to Calvary, personally hammered the nails in, and raised the cross on which they’ve crucified us on high. They should not be allowed the luxury of standing beneath that cross wringing their hands and saying how upset they are. The honourable exception, of course, is +Gene, who has himself suffered in this entire sorry situation perhaps more than we know. He’s up there with the rest of us.
It’s bad enough that the ECUSA feels forced to throw us under the bus, as it were, but now it appears that all this splitting of doctrinal hairs may yet prove to be in vain, as we hear from Reuters that the carefully worded message of the House of Bishops is still not enough to satisfy Peter Akinola. You may notice the lack of the customary honorifics attached to his name. This is because it seems clear to me that he is acting out of ill will and in bad faith, which is unworthy of an ordinary Christian, let alone an archbishop.
Time magazine has written an article about the situation. And this week’s edition of Anglicans Online takes a somewhat different perspective.
But in the end it’s behavior like this — with all its flashbacks to Rome and the hideous pronouncements of the Mad Inquisitor (in both his prior and current offices) — which has, one hopes not irrevocably, driven me away from all forms of organized Christianity. There is too much hatred fueled by hunger for power, and too little faith, in our collective houses of worship.