Chicago Free Press Editorial - Seeking faith, constancy and hope

Chicago Free Press Editorial - Seeking faith, constancy and hope
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
December 27, 2006

Last weekend seven congregations belonging to the Episcopal Church in the United States voted to leave that church body in order to express their stance against the ordination of gays and women.

It’s a feud that’s been simmering worldwide in recent years in the Anglican Communion, the global parent of the Episcopal Church. Some conservative Anglican churches don’t want women in the clergy and even more emphatically say they are opposed to having gays in the clergy.

That’s put those churches at odds with other Anglican churches in Canada and England and with many Episcopal churches in the United States. The diocese of New Hampshire even elected a gay bishop, Gene Robinson, a move that’s prompted some Anglican churches to cut off ties with the diocese and the U.S. church.

We don’t presume to argue theology with those who are put off by the ordination of women and gays, and we would fight to the end for their right to believe as they please.

But that doesn’t mean that we think they’re right, of course; in fact, we think it’s a sad state of affairs that people who are supposed to be trying to bring a message of faith, hope and charity to the world are instead espousing a message of bigotry and discrimination.

The churches that voted to split say they want to remain a part of the Anglican Communion by aligning themselves with the anti-gay bishop of Nigeria’s Anglican Church, Peter Akinola, who has openly sought to foment revolt among Episcopal churches in the U.S.

Akinola opposes both women and gays in the clergy. He not only opposes gays in the clergy, he opposes gays’ very existence, apparently.

As detailed in the news section of this issue of CFP, Nigeria is considering a law that would ban gays from meeting, from forming organizations, from even speaking out against their repression. Penalties for violating the new law would include execution.

The law is expected to pass because it has powerful supporters in Nigeria, and one of its most powerful backers is Bishop Akinola. This is the man that some American Episcopalians want to follow, emulate and hold up as a model of God’s righteousness.

What they are saying, these people who would align themselves with Bishop Akinola, is that God has a hierarchy—that God believes women and gay people are inferior to heterosexual men when it comes to their ability to express the Godliness of creation and faith.

Heaven help us—how far is that, really, from saying that God believes blacks are inferior human beings who aren’t qualified to represent him to the faithful?

It’s a relevant question. After all, among the churches that voted to split in Virginia are two of the denomination’s most historic congregations, including George Washington’s church. Those churches, and many other Episcopal churches in the South and in the North, once held that blacks were indeed inferior and that it was therefore OK for white men to own them. Their catechism once included a passage telling slaves that God’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” meant obeying everyone “who has control over me” and to “do as they bid me.”

Bigotry is a singular road, and these churches are free to choose it. But they should do so with their eyes wide open as to where it leads, who they are following and where those leaders would take them. It’s most decidedly not a place of faith, hope and charity.
Editorial