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The Wideness in God's Mercy

By Louie Crew

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p.540)

I was honored to be one of the presenters at the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire on November 2nd. Getting to this point has been a pilgrimage for us all. A week earlier, I attended Executive Council for the first meeting of this triennium. The week before that I was in London during the meeting of 37 primates of the Anglican Communion. The week before that I was in Dallas during the summit of the American Anglican Council.

I called Grace Cathedral and asked where we might connect with other gay Episcopal couples. The person on the phone could not muffle amusement as she put me through to another person, who could not muffle amusement as he put me through to another person . . .

On February 2, 1974, in tiny Ft. Valley, Georgia, Ernest Clay and I said the marriage vows in the Book of Common Prayer. In our relationship I was for the first time experiencing my wholeness and I began to get a glimpse of how much God loves me, but not me only, absolutely everybody. The following summer we spent in Berkeley, California, where I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California. I called Grace Cathedral (San Francisco, California) and asked where we might connect with other gay Episcopal couples. The person on the phone could not muffle amusement as she put me through to another person, who could not muffle amusement as he put me through to another person who could not muffle amusement as she put me through . . .

God used this highly placed tittering to speak to me loudly and clearly. They could not have been more wrong, yet here I was in "gay city" and speaking to employees of one of the most liberal congregations in the Episcopal Church.

"What are you going to do about it?" asked the Rev. Peter Haynes, Berkeley chaplain, when I made an appointment to wrestle with the Holy Spirit in his office. I left knowing that I would start an organization and would name it Integrity, to reclaim for God that which God's church was violating.

About many of our decisions in life, we know that we may be wrong. About some we know that we are right, even if much of the world thinks otherwise.

Such is the decision of Gene Robinson to stand for election and to accept the call of the Diocese of New Hampshire to have him as their bishop, even if much of the world thinks otherwise.

Back in 1974, I realized immediately that I was caught up in a spiritual reality much bigger than I was. It is not ourselves whom we proclaim, but Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as Jesus' servants.

Gene Robinson has already reminded us that gays will be in the episcopacy even were he to disappear. Right now, no one knows which of the many talented lesbian and gay Episcopal clergy the Holy Spirit will lead other dioceses of the Episcopal Church to elect as their bishop. Given the horrendous abuse that Gene Robinson and Mark Andrew, his partner, have had to endure, we need right now to be praying for a double portion of God's spirit for those who will possibly permit themselves to be considered by search committees. For starters, they should look closely at:

The Very Rev. Cynthia Black, dean of Christ the King Cathedral in Portage, Michigan, one of the founders of the The Oasis in the Diocese of Newark, and member of the national Executive Council
The Rev. Michael Hopkins, immediate past president of Integrity, rector of the much revitalized St. George's Church in Glenn Dale, Maryland in the Diocese of Washington
The Rev. Canon Jeffrey John, canon at Southwark Cathedral in London, appointed Bishop of Reading but declined when the Church of England lost its backbone
The Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, former missioner for The Oasis in the Diocese of Newark, rector of St. Paul's Church in Chatham, New Jersey
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, dean of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio
The Rev. David Norgard, executive director of Episcopal Community Services in San Diego, California, former missioner for The Oasis in the Diocese of Newark
The Rev. Susan Russell, director of the Claiming the Blessing collaborative based in Pasadena, California, and president of Integrity
The Very Rev. Robert Taylor, dean of St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, Washington

and oh so many more . . .

"Shield the joyous" is a petition in one of my favorite parts of the Book of Common Prayer (Compline). I have long understood it from the point of view of the joyous -- that they be protected from all that might interrupt that joy. It also asks God to protect the unhappy from all that joy.

Throughout the Anglican Communion many are unhappy with the Diocese of New Hampshire and with the consents to Robinson's election given by the bishops of the Episcopal Church with jurisdiction and by the House of Deputies of General Convention. (See the votes.)

The American Anglican Council (AAC) asked the primates to expel the Episcopal Church (TEC) from the Anglican Communion and to give TEC's membership to the AAC. The primates refused, and recognized that they do not have jurisdiction in the autonomous provinces of the Communion.

Many at the AAC summit in Dallas signed the commitment: "We redirect our financial resources, to the fullest extent possible, toward biblically orthodox mission and ministry, and away from those structures that support the unrighteous actions of the General Convention. We will support our partners in the Anglican Communion." The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas has already announced that it will give no money to the Episcopal Church. See data on the dioceses of other bishops who attended the summit.

Some are threatening to leave the Episcopal Church. Only people can leave. Parishes cannot. Dioceses cannot. If a parish votes to leave the Episcopal Church, those who vote to stay remain the Episcopal Church in that parish. Legal precedents are quite clear.

Some are threatening to leave the Episcopal Church.

Only people can leave. Parishes cannot. Dioceses cannot. If a parish votes to leave the Episcopal Church, those who vote to stay remain the Episcopal Church in that parish. Legal precedents are quite clear. People may leave, but they leave the property to be used as givers intended, by the Episcopal Church in that place.

The same is true for a diocese. Should a diocese elect to leave, the persons voting to leave may do so, but the diocese remains as the remnant of faithful members of the Episcopal Church who stay. According to the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, those who remain may petition bishops and all Standing Committees to hold an election to choose the next bishop of the Diocese.

We need to be very patient with those who act rashly in these times. I have found through long experience that if I treat with genuine kindness those who disagree with me it makes it much easier to work together in the future when they change their minds, as thousands have.

I am told that a parish once came to Paul Moore, Jr., when he was Bishop of New York, and threatened to leave, with a lawyer ready to draw up the lines of battle about the property. With the permission of the diocese's Standing Committee, Moore offered to avoid the legal struggle by leasing the property to the departing congregation for a dollar a year for the next 100 years. They took the offer, and when they disbanded a few years later, the property was still there for the diocese to continue the ministry of the Episcopal Church as the original donors intended.

There are many ways by which leaders of the Episcopal Church may responsibly fulfill our fiduciary obligations. Mainly now we need patience. The church has endured similar reaction on many other occasions when it has acted boldly. Venomous rhetoric spewed forth in the church press unrelentingly for well over a year when Paul Moore, Jr., ordained to the priesthood honestly lesbian Ellen Marie Barrett in January 1977. (See Moore's own account in his book, Take a Bishop Like Me, Harper & Row, 1979)

Some of the opposition borders on the arrogant. The Rev. George Conger, a leader in the American Anglican Congress, reported in The Living Church (10/15/03) that Archbishop Peter Akinola [Nigeria] and others objected even to having Eucharist with Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. They relented and received Eucharist together only when urged to do so by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In a sermon during a prayer service on that same day, retired former primate of Central Africa, Walter Makhulu, warned that some primates are acting like "Taliban Zealots . . . The notion of an exclusive church is totally abhorrent to me. It is a heresy in the same way as apartheid was . . . the Bible should not be used as a whip to beat those regarded as sinners." (reported in the Guardian). See also Makhulu's sermon at the end of the Lambeth 1998 Conference.

Kevin Jones' article "American Anglican Council Excels at Shutting Doors" tells of a goon deployed by the American Anglican Congress to attempt to deprive me of my constitutional right to freedom of association, which occurred in the public areas of the hotel where the AAC met in Dallas, Texas. I visited that site for the same reason that I attended the consecration of four bishops for the Anglican Mission in America in 2000 and the U.S. Anglican Congress in December 2002: I wanted to be a loving, non-anxious presence, a visible member of the leadership of the Episcopal Church who care deeply about them. I respect their faith commitments. We agree about far more than we disagree about. It is very important that we not demonize one another. God needs us to unite to bring news genuinely good to absolutely everybody.

At Lambeth 1998, bishops pledged themselves to "listen to the experience of homosexuals." In August 2001, three years after their pledge, I queried 443 Anglican bishops to learn how they were living into that commitment. Only 23 responded, some to complain that I asked. At least two archbishops have treated me personally with great disdain when I have attempted to engage them in dialogue. I received an excoriation by the Archbishop of Uganda. Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria dashed away to avoid engaging Ernest and me in conversation when I served as a reader during his enthronement at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2002.

Louie Crew (right) seen in London during the October 2003 Anglican Primates meeting with international friends Chris Hanson, Rowland Jide Macaulay, and Brenda Harrison.

I am pleased that at the primates meeting in London last month (October 2003) the primates recommitted themselves to this pledge. I hope they will establish a way to monitor their own progress, lest they further undermine their moral authority -- which is the only authority each may exercise beyond his (alas) own province.

When the BBC interviewed me live just after the press conference that ended the primates meeting in London, I praised the primates for not speaking beyond the bounds of their authority. "They acknowledged that they have no jurisdiction in the Episcopal Church. They acknowledged the pain to persons on all sides of this controversy. They set up a process to study the issues. The [U.S.] Presiding Bishop explained the process by which we elect our bishops, instead of appointing them, and noted that short of the Second Coming, he expected to be in New Hampshire to carry out his constitutional duty of giving order for consecrations."

"Then you think the crisis is over?" the reporter asked me.

"The crisis is never over for Christians," I replied. We need to get on with the real crises facing our world -- poverty, racism, AIDS, injustice . . .

There's a wideness in God's mercy

like the wideness of the sea;

there's a kindness in his justice,

which is more than liberty.

There is welcome for the sinner,

and more graces for the good;

there is mercy with the Savior;

there is healing in his blood.

There is no place where earth's sorrows

are more felt than in heaven;

there is no place where earth's failings

have such kind judgment given.

There is plentiful redemption

in the blood that has been shed;

there is joy for all the members

in the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader

than the measure of man's mind;

and the heart of the Eternal

is most wonderfully kind.

If our love were but more faithful,

we should take him at his word;

and our life would be thanksgiving

for the goodness of the Lord.

Amen.

Louie Crew is a writer and a well-known collector and disseminator of statistics and little-known facts about the Anglican Communion, which may be found on his website. He is a contributing editor to The Witness and publishes a regular column on "A Globe of Witnesses." Louie may be reached by email at lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu