A RESPONSE BY THE DIOCESE OF CALIFORNIA TO RESOLUTION I.10.d OF LAMBETH, 1998

Submitted by the Lambeth Task Force
to the Bishop, Steering Committee on
Theological Reflection, the Diocesan Council
and the People of the Diocese of California

(THIS PAPER REPRESENTS A WORK IN PROGRESS, OCTOBER, 1999)

TASK FORCE MEMBERS:
Kathleen Bradford
The Rev. Dr. Gary Brower
Cynthia Bussiere
The Rev. Dr. William Countryman
Janet Fischer
Kathy Henry
Anne Jenkins
Tracy Longacre
Charles J. Post, Attny.
Dr. Everett Powell
The Rev. Dr. Bonnie Ring
The Rev. Dr. Barry Vaughan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION

II. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE
     A. INTRODUCTION
     B. THE PRIMACY OF THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE
     C. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PRIMACY OF LOVE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
     D. REVELATION IS ONGOING

III. ANGLICANISM, TRADITION, AND HOMOSEXUALITY
     A. INTRODUCTION
     B. THE TRADITION OF BISHOPS
          1. Introduction
          2. Bishops in the Earliest Christian Writings
          3. Early Christian Developments
          4. Medieval Episcopate
          5. The Reformation
          6. The American Revolution Forward
          7. Bishops Today
          8. Conclusions About Bishops
      C. CHARACTER OF THE LAMBETH CONFERENCES
      D. HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE ANGLICAN TRADITION

IV. THE USES AND AUTHORITY OF REASON AND EXPERIENCE
     A. INTRODUCTION
     B. HOW THE USE OF EXPERIENCE REFLECTS OUR FAITH
     C. REASON AND THE LAMBETH RESOLUTION
     D. REASON: THE SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY OF SEXUALITY
             AND SEXUAL PREFERENCE
     E. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DIOCESE OF CALIFORNIA
     F. OASIS

V. CONCLUSIONS

APPENDIX A
SOURCES

I. SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION

Greetings from the Diocese of California to our brothers and sisters in Christ within the Anglican Communion. We write you out of the deep concern kindled in our diocese by the Resolution on Sexuality (Lambeth, 1998, I.10) which included the statement that the bishops at Lambeth rejected ". . . homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture. . ." (Lambeth, 1998, I.10.d).

At our 1998 Diocesan Convention, our Bishop, The Right Reverend William E. Swing, proclaimed that this Lambeth declaration was wrong. He asserted that a few propositions from the Levitical Holiness Code within the Old Testament should not usurp the primacy of God's love for us and Jesus' command to love God and one another. Bishop Swing called for the formation of a Task Force to explore the issues around homosexuality and Scripture and develop a carefully documented paper that addressed the Resolution. In February, 1999, at our first Diocesan Day of Theological Reflection, interested members of the Diocese joined the Task Force and dedicated six months to studying and discussing the issues raised by the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10.d.

This report represents the conclusions of that Task Force. During the course of our work, the questions we asked were: Is homosexuality incompatible with Scripture? What Scriptural tenets support or refute that contention? How does the Tradition of the Church and of Anglicanism contribute to our resolution of this issue? What is the evidence of Reason and Experience and do they alter our conclusions?

The Lambeth Resolution motivated us to probe our personal and corporate beliefs and to study materials that were new to us. It led us to examine the authority of Scripture, the conflicting messages within Scripture, the Traditions of the Church, the authority of Bishops, the findings of Science and the Experiences of this diocese. These actions are consistent with the need recognized by the 1978 Lambeth Conference for a "deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality, which would take seriously both the teaching of Scripture and the results of scientific and medical research" (Report of the Lambeth Conference, 1978, p. 41).

This report documents our belief that the 1998 Lambeth Resolution's assertion that "homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture" contradicts and nullifies their thoughtfully stated position that homosexual persons "are loved of God and that all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ" (1998 Lambeth, I.10.c), which we uphold. In responding to the Resolution's invitation to dialogue and the Bishops' commitment to listen to the experience of homosexual people (Lambeth, 1998, 1.10.c), we challenge the Lambeth Resolution on three counts:

1. The Resolution's assumption that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture fails to define why or to list any Scriptural references or engage any of the voluminous theological material on the subject. Our study of Scripture led us to accept the primacy of the Commandment to Love and to realize that God's revelation is ongoing. We believe that personal relationships (whether homosexual or heterosexual) that truly reflect the love of God and exhibit the fruits of the Spirit are not incompatible with Scripture.

Like most Anglicans, we honor the Holy Scriptures: we find the Word of God in them and rejoice in their proclamation of the good news of God's love. We see Scripture as one of the ways that God teaches each new generation. Biblical scholarship causes us to acknowledge the contradictions and inconsistencies of Scripture as well as its fundamental teachings and truths. While we do not find detailed prescriptions for behavior in it, the Bible enables us to appreciate God's gracious love and to see the world in new ways. We also do not believe that every Biblical citation is of equal weight. Priority is given to the four Gospels that record the traditions about Jesus' life and teachings and Jesus' insistence on the centrality of love when he summed up the Law and all morality in the commandments to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Some passages of Scripture have been used to condemn same-sex sexual relationships. However, Jesus never spoke about homosexuality and never condemned it. What he did condemn was judgment, social exclusion and ostracism; what he favored was an inclusive community. What Jesus revealed was a new covenant based on love. New revelations led the early church to stop requiring Christians to observe the Jewish purity codes such as requiring circumcision, kosher food rules, and prohibiting sex with a bleeding woman. In his outreach work, Paul realized the importance of this new revelation to the growing church and discredited his earlier condemnation of same-sex intercourse cited in Romans 1:18-32, when he emphatically stated, 'I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself;' (Romans 14:14a).

While there are those within the Anglican communion and the wider Church, who cannot accept the inclusion of homosexuals because they are a class of people historically considered "unclean" and/or an "abomination," we believe that God is saying to us now what God said to Peter in the years following Christ's death: "What God has cleansed, you shall not call uncommon (or unclean)" (Acts 10:15).

2. The passion behind the Resolution at Lambeth and the subsequent efforts to impose it on all Anglican provinces with the authority of law is contrary to the purpose, scope and authority of the Lambeth Conference since its inception. The history of the Lambeth Conference as well as the traditional role of bishops in the Anglican Communion, especially in the United States, show that such enforcement has no precedent.

The responsibility, power or position of bishops has varied greatly over the centuries. Today's bishops are vastly different from their first-century Christian ancestors. Then, a bishop (the Greek episcopos means "overseer") was simply one among several elders in a congregation. However, in the absence of any common credal statements or a formalized canon of Scripture, the bishop soon became the unifying feature of the fractured church (Ephesians 4 and Smyrnaeans 8). Once the functions of preacher, teacher, pastor, presider, and administrator were delegated to other clergy in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the bishop became the transmitter and guarantor of Tradition through his role as ordaining official (Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 9). Moreover, Irenaeus' theory of "apostolic succession" (Against Heresies, 3.3.1-3) did much to exclude diverse opinions. The bishops' role changed again after the legitimization of the Church by Constantine early in the fourth century. As the number and size of dioceses grew, the bishop's authority expanded into the secular realm where they served the needs of rulers who sought to "Christianize" their countries and consolidate their power.

The Protestant Reformation brought dramatic changes to the episcopate. While many Protestant bodies abolished bishops; in separating from Rome, the English Church did not. The Anglican Church reformed the office by relocating the bishop's role into the model of the ancient church. The consecration of a bishop in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer envisioned one "who would be … a guardian and expositor of scriptural truth, a teacher, a warm-hearted pastoral leader among his flock, clerical and lay, and a friend of the poor and needy" (Moorman, p. 118-19).

The English Reformers never envisioned the worldwide fellowship of churches now known as the Anglican communion or the regularly scheduled meetings of Anglican bishops, known as the Lambeth Conference. From its beginning in the late 19th century, "the Conference lacked the competence and the power to make binding decisions on doctrines or discipline" (Sykes and Booty, 1988, p. 195). There is no precedent for binding decisions like that proposed by some members of the Anglican Communion who have pressed for all members of the Communion to accept the 1998 Lambeth resolution dealing with homosexuality. (Solheim, 1999, March 18). From the beginning, as Lambeth conferences have taken up controversial topics, the bishops have never understood their opinions to be anything but advisory. Since the assembled bishops of the Anglican communion have evidenced learning and change over time in other serious and contentious matters as a result of new knowledge and insights, we look to the Lambeth bishops to reconsider their position on homosexuality after further study.

When the Revolutionary War and the formation of the United States resulted in the dis-establishment of the American Episcopal Church from the Church of England, our Bishops were elected, not appointed, and the American episcopate was more egalitarian. The first General Convention of 1789 marked ". . . the emergence of priests and [laity] as co-partners with the bishops in matters of high decision. The recognition . . . given to the laity was . . . something new within the Catholic framework . . . (Whittemore, 1955, pp. 16-17). American bishops have a strong history of moving beyond a place of comfort and custom. We applaud that Tradition.

Today, bishops are confronted with issues both shared by other bishops and unique to their own dioceses. Each bishop exercises different degrees of authority in addressing his or her diocese, with the goal of effectively preaching the Gospel in that place. Some bishops have supported changes in society, as in the struggle over slavery or civil rights--areas where Scriptural support could be found for the traditional pro-slavery position. At other times, bishops, including those of California, have been at the forefront of religious and social change, challenging the status quo (including a Scriptural status quo).

3. The Lambeth bishops voting for the Resolution failed to acknowledge or recognize the experiences of God's grace in the lives of gay and lesbian Anglicans and their rich contributions to the life of the church. In the diocese of California over the past twenty-five years, attitudes toward gays and lesbians have changed. This has resulted from of an increased appreciation of the primacy of love in Jesus' teachings and deeper experience with gays and lesbians, their families and supporters. We believe the Lambeth resolution is contrary to the principles of Christian love.

Jesus' perspective entails transformation: the development of a new and loving heart and a new way of being in God's world. In reading and interpreting Scripture, we seek to discern the change of perspective that Jesus wants to evoke in us. Jesus' emphasis on loving God and neighbor is captured by his words, "no other commandment is greater than these." Scripture is the history of God's continuing love for humankind, even when that love is not emulated or returned. Jesus' very presence among us testifies to God's love for us (John 3:16).

Every definition of "right" or Christian behavior must be tested against Jesus' insistence on the centrality of the commandment to love. Jesus taught his disciples to accept the outcast, especially those whose behavior violated the social or purity codes of his day, like lepers, the demon-possessed and those who were ritually impure like women during menstruation and the dying. We are convinced that Jesus' insistence on love extends to and includes the gay men and lesbians and bisexuals of today. We also believe that in baptism, all become children of God and equal members of the body of Christ. As the people of God; we are people who are in this world but are not of this world; we are called to challenge any worldly categories which divide us.

We understand God's revelation to be an ongoing process. The New Testament repeatedly conveys that the full import of Jesus' message was not and could not be understood immediately or completely at that time. It is filled with promises of greater understanding to come. The Gospels tell us that his own disciples often had difficulty understanding Jesus' intent. Like our forebears in our journey of faith, we seek new and more complete understandings of Jesus' message.

As Richard Hooker pointed out long ago, the Bible itself is not accessible to us except through the use of reason (Hooker, Laws II, vii, 3). We do not separate the authority of the Bible from the authority of Tradition, Reason, or Experience and we must use all of these resources if we are to discern faithfully God's will. Respect for Experience recognizes the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit on our beliefs, our relationships and our lives. Christians came to recognize that slavery was evil, not because Scripture said so (which it did not), but because slavery was experienced as dehumanizing, cruel and immoral. Justice requires us to consider all data on controversial matters which attempt to measure human worth. While our ability to think and reason are God-given, our interpretation of events and issues is influenced by the breadth and specificity of our experience. People with different experiences frequently draw different conclusions about the same events and issues.

This Task Force recognizes that we are speaking to the larger Church through the prism of our own experience in the Diocese of California. The rejection of "homosexual practice" as incompatible with Scripture fails to capture the experience of lesbian and gay Episcopalians who experience sexuality as one element of our human identity and one expression of the capacity for relationship. We believe our dialogue should confront instead the question of what constitutes a holy relationship.

As other Christian churches grapple with this issue, many are caught in painful and divisive debates (Brash, 1995. p. vii). In the midst of this debate, we ask one basic question: is there any justification for excluding a class of people from full participation in the Kingdom of God? Our answer is an unequivocal No! We do not find anything in faithful and monogamous same-gender sexual relationships that makes them unworthy of either God's love or neighbor love. In fact, we know many faithful Christians who are partners in such relationships and whose love of God, of self, and of neighbor appears to be enhanced by this. Our honest experience informs us that Christian lesbians and gay men exhibit the fruits of the Spirit and the blessings of God.

We do not find that homosexuality is intrinsically evil or that homosexuals are flawed beings; nor that sexual relations between people of the same sex are sinful. There is no evidence that homosexuality is an illness to be healed or the result of a disordered mind. We believe that our sexuality is an intrinsic part of our humanity. Because everything that God created is good, we believe that all aspects of our humanity, including our sexuality, are holy and blessed by God. Some in the Church who grant that homosexual desire is part of God's Creation urge that gay and lesbian people choose celibacy rather than sexual relationship. We find no reason to deny the gifts of partnership to our gay and lesbian members. Like "our need for touch, for conversation, for the sharing of food, joy and grief, our sexual desires remind us constantly that we are members of one another and cannot flourish without companionship." (Breidenthal, 1997, pp. 117-118).

Since the Church has changed its decisions with regard to other behaviors that were once regarded as sinful, like marriages that do not produce children and the relationships of those who have divorced, we expect the church to change its view of homosexuality. We concur with Thomas Breidenthal, professor of Moral Theology at the General Theological Seminary in New York, when he describes the Christian household as "a place where Christ can be learned and nearness sanctified" (Breidenthal, 1997, p. 15). This statement is equally valid for heterosexuals, gays and lesbians.

We find that living out the Gospel imperative to love God and one another precludes the rejection of homosexuality, homosexuals, or homosexual practices. We affirm God's call to include and accept all people as children of God. We understand Christ's Incarnation, death and resurrection to have redeemed all of who we are as human beings. Just as we have witnessed the work of the Holy Spirit in our congregations and communities, we have witnessed the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of lesbians and gay men. We uphold relationships (both non-sexual and sexual) that exhibit the fruits of the Spirit: honesty, integrity, mutuality, respect, hospitality and other qualities that recognize and mirror God's love, and believe that these relationships are holy and blessed by God. We believe the terms of the dialogue regarding homosexuality needs to focus not on "homosexual practices", but rather on the conditions, attitudes, and components which must be present for a relationship to be considered holy.

The Diocese of California has undergone enormous change in the last twenty-five years. Some of the shameful events in our history have been recounted in order to highlight the potential for a change in understanding of our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers. Even in the relatively progressive Diocese of California, we are far from achieving the goal of offering God's inclusive love and our unequivocal acceptance to all of God's people. Yet, this diocese is at the forefront of efforts within the Episcopal church to incorporate both straight and gay people: not perfectly so, but certainly substantially so. In the twenty years of having homosexual clergy during Bishop Swing's episcopacy, we have had no complaints of inappropriate behavior. The gay and lesbian clergy in the Diocese of California have been a great blessing from God. Gay and lesbian clergy and laity serve on virtually every major commission and committee in the Diocese and in congregations where they are members. They have blessed us with a wealth of gifts.

A comprehensive plan to study and review these conclusions includes congregational study, regional feedback sessions and consideration at all nine deanery meetings. From all of this, we hope to gather a response that speaks to and for this diocese. We ask those who read this report to read it in its entirety, to study the evidence without prejudice, and after thoughtful consideration, to determine whether they come to these same conclusions or different ones. Additional review will occur in regional meetings and at all deanery convocations. The Task Force will consider all the feedback before drafting the final version of this paper. It is our intent that the final report will represent the voice of the people of the Diocese of California.

We seek to share with you our experience as an Anglican community, where the task of growing in love for one another is a priority. At the Day of Theological Reflection, Bishop Swing reminded us that, "...a majority of bishops around the Anglican Communion consider homosexuality always to be sinful and homosexual couples always to be unworthy of blessings and homosexual candidates for ordination always to be perverse in their aspirations." In response, he said "...it is important to the whole that the few should be heard" and "we can attest that the Light of Christ has appeared in the Bay Area darkness and we will unashamedly 'Let It Shine' ... so... that the world might know what God has been doing with us and through us and in us" (The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing. Afternoon Sermon to First Annual Day of Theological Reflection. February 27, 1999. Unpublished). After a summary of this report is presented at our Diocesan Convention in October, 1999, the entire report will be sent to each Parish and Mission in the Diocese for study, discussion and feedback.

We invite our brothers and sisters throughout the Anglican Communion to engage in dialogue with us, to share their perspective and dilemmas, and to see and hear ours.

II. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE

A. Introduction

Several questions regarding the authority of Scripture in the Episcopal Church were at issue for the Task Force. In what way is Scripture authoritative and how has it been authoritative in the past? How do we interpret Scripture? What validity and authority may we give to Tradition, Reason and Experience? How does Tradition change? We attempted to answer these questions with the assistance of the traditional Anglican tripod of Scripture, Tradition and Reason and Experience.

As Episcopalians in the Diocese of California, we share with Anglicans throughout the world a high regard for the Holy Scriptures. We have heard in and through them, again and again, the Word of God proclaiming to us the good news of God's love. We recognize, however, that even if Anglicans share a high regard for Scripture, we do not always read or understand it in the same ways. The Bishops gathered at Lambeth in 1998 reaffirmed the classic Anglican reverence for careful study of Scripture (Lambeth, 1998, III.1), urging that "the Biblical text be handled respectfully, coherently, and consistently, building upon our best traditions and scholarship believing that the Scriptural revelation must continue to illuminate, challenge and transform cultures, structures, and ways of thinking, especially those that predominate today." Yet, the same gathering of bishops chose to short-circuit this same process of patient inquiry when they declared that "homosexual practice [is] incompatible with Scripture" (Lambeth, 1998, I.10), without ever engaging the substantial body of contemporary scholarship on the question. Such pronouncements make it clear that there also exists within Anglicanism an approach to the Bible rooted in the Calvinist, or Reformed, tradition, which treats Scripture primarily as a book of law to be interpreted by church authorities. This tradition is generally comprised of the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and Germany, the Presbyterians in Scotland, and the Puritans in England.

We who form this Task Force see Scripture in a way that we believe is more traditionally Anglican: primarily as the promise of God's love and forgiveness and the word of grace constantly new and renewing in each new generation. The Bible, by itself, does not normally resolve major problems for Christians. When new issues arise in our history, as they do, the study of Scripture is one aspect of finding a faithful resolution for them, but not the only one. The question of slavery, for example, was resolved in the nineteenth century only with great difficulty and partly as a result of political and economic developments. Anglicans today are so clearly convinced that slavery is immoral and unchristian that we have difficulty remembering that many of our ecclesiastical forebears, as recently as a hundred fifty years ago, argued on its behalf and founded their arguments directly on Scripture because the Bible acknowledges slavery and never takes a conclusive stand against it. To frame our Christian ethics, then, exclusively on the basis of what the Bible commands or forbids is not only inadequate, but impossible. (For a fuller analysis of the arguments presented here, please see Countryman, 1990, and Countryman, 1994.)

Over the past two centuries, it has become clear that the books of the Bible were written over a long span of time and in cultural contexts different from any in existence today. Careful Biblical scholarship has helped us to see that Scriptural texts need to be interpreted with their ancient contexts in mind and then reconsidered in light of contemporary knowledge and experience. For example, the full meaning of the creation of the heavenly bodies in Genesis 1 becomes apparent only when we place that narrative against the background of other Ancient Near Eastern creation stories, in which the heavenly bodies are themselves seen as divine powers. When the book of Genesis relegates sun, moon, and stars to the fourth day of creation, it is to emphasize their subordination to the God of Israel. If we hope to translate what such passages may have meant then into what they might mean now, we shall have to avoid the temptations of literalism (that is, of assuming that the meaning is already obvious) and of proof-texting (that is, of citing short phrases out of context). We also have to address the scientific findings and theories that explain the creation of the universe from a very different perspective. Every time we read the Bible we are in conversation with people from another "world."

Meeting together on our Day of Theological Reflection, the people of our Diocese gave expression to a great diversity of ways of reading and dealing with the Bible. People asserted that they do hear God's Word in Scripture - not so much in the form of detailed prescriptions for behavior as in reminders and promptings to seek new ways of looking at the world and a new sense of God's gracious and surprising love. For this purpose, the Holy Scriptures do not need to give us some single, unified, systematic account of Christian faith and morals; nor do we need to impose such a system on them. Quite the contrary; we receive and celebrate the diversity within Scripture as one of the ways that the Scriptures are at work in our own experience of faith, prompting us to question and to seek new clarity as well as giving us for our sustenance, the learnings of prior generations of faithful people wrestling with God.

As Anglicans, we do not separate the authority of the Bible absolutely from the authority of Tradition, Reason or Experience. As Richard Hooker pointed out long ago, the Bible itself is not accessible to us except through the use of Reason (Hooker, Laws II, vii, 3). We would add that it is impossible to read the Bible without being influenced by Tradition, which suggests to us what we can expect to find there, and by our own Experience, which provides the context in which we try to understand what God is saying to us. This is not to say that either Tradition or Experience entirely determines what Scripture will mean for us, but simply that they are inevitable partners in the conversation that constitutes interpretation of the Bible. They cannot be shut out of the process, even if we should wish to do so.

All of Scripture is potentially valuable to us. God's voice may be heard on any page. However, it is not possible to treat all of Scripture with equal reverence at any given moment. We note, for example, that even in the first Book of Common Prayer, certain portions of the Bible were omitted from the Daily Office lectionary; indeed, hardly any of the Revelation of John was included. Not every Biblical citation, then, is of equal weight. On the more positive side, we note a certain priority of honor given to those readings from the four Gospels chosen for use in the service of Holy Communion. For these and for these alone, Anglicans customarily stand.

The honor shown the Gospel readings shows a particularly high regard for the four books that record the traditions about Jesus' life and teachings. That, in turn leads us to give priority, in our efforts to understand the meaning of Scripture as a whole, to what we can discern of Jesus' perspective. Jesus preached a metanoia, a new way of being in God's world, a new and loving heart. Above all, in reading and interpreting Scripture, we always are seeking to discern that change of perspective that Jesus wants to evoke in us. This is not simply a matter of determining rules of belief and behavior, but of finding the perspective on life that God wants to engender in us, a perspective that we cannot learn in advance but only in the unpredictable process of living our way, by grace, into it.

Jesus gives us a few definite signposts. One is his insistence on the centrality of love. Jesus was willing to sum up all morality in his quotation of the two love commandments from the Torah: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. We take this with utmost seriousness and we ask of every claim to define Christian behavior what it has to do with these two basic commandments. This inevitably affects our reading of the Scriptures in relation to sexual orientation. If we are to regard same-gender sexual relationships as bad, in themselves, we shall have to be convinced that somehow they are intrinsically in violation of the commandment to love God, self, or neighbor. If, by contrast, we find faithful Christians among us who are partners in such relationships and whose love of God, of self, and of neighbor appears to be enhanced by this, then we shall conclude, on Jesus' authority, that such relationships meet the Scriptural test of godliness.

Some may object that there are other passages of Scripture that do treat same-sex sexual relationships as wrong. Despite the large literature on this subject, the experts remain in disagreement about their meaning. In the present state of study, an appeal to them is inconclusive, at best. While Leviticus (18:22, 20:13) does forbid some kind of sexual interaction between males (possibly anal intercourse), this prohibition takes the form of a purity regulation, like the rules about circumcision, kosher food or the prohibition of intercourse with a menstruating woman (Leviticus 18:19) which is not binding on Christians. In Genesis 19, the story of Sodom is a story of rape and thus, does not condemn all same-sex intercourse.

In the New Testament, few passages make any reference to the subject. There is nothing on the topic in the Gospels, unless, as some have suggested, the centurion's slave, whom Jesus healed (Luke 7:1-10), would have been understood at the time to be his beloved. In the epistolary literature, two passages contain words sometimes translated into modern English as 'homosexuals' (1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10). In truth, the meaning of the Greek words is quite uncertain. The Epistle of Jude (7) refers to the Sodom story, but treats the issue there as one of sex with angels, not sex with other people of the same gender.

The most disputed New Testament passage is Romans 1:18-32. Most modern translations assume that Paul is here describing same-sex intercourse as sinful. A more cautious reading of the Greek, however, notes that Paul does not apply the language of sin to these acts but rather that of impurity and social disgrace. What Paul is getting at in this passage appears to be primarily a condemnation of Gentile culture as idolatrous. In his outreach work, Paul realized the importance of no longer requiring the purity code of Christian converts. Later in the same letter to the Romans, he states emphatically, 'I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean' (Romans 14:14). Paul's mission among the Gentiles involved him constantly in violations of the purity laws of the Torah. Given his experience, we do not consider same-sex intercourse, condemned in Leviticus as a violation of purity, as inevitably sinful (see Countryman, 1990 for a fuller analysis). Like everything in Scripture, the meaning and importance of these passages, long used to condemn homosexual people or same-sex intercourse, depends on how they relate to the overall message of the Gospel. No single bit of Scripture is interpreted in isolation; scattered items, like those that may allude to questions of sexual orientation, must be seen in terms of a larger whole. The church has found this necessary even with unambiguous pronouncements like Jesus' prohibition of divorce. Anglicans long adhered to the tradition of Western Catholicism that took the relevant passages as legal pronouncement and forbade divorce and remarriage. In this century, however, American Episcopalians and a number of other Anglican churches have moved toward the traditional Eastern Orthodox interpretation. By understanding Jesus' words as establishing an ideal, not a minimum of Christian behavior, they have permitted both divorce and remarriage. If such a shift is possible in interpreting texts from the Gospels themselves, it should be permissible with the few and scattered texts referring to homosexuality.

The interpretation of Scripture that we offer may appear to be new, but it is squarely in the tradition of Christian re-reading and re-interpreting of the Bible over the centuries. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the full import of Jesus' message could or would be apparent immediately in his own time. The Gospels tell us that Jesus' original disciples often had difficulty understanding his intent and often fell short of the ideal of love he held out for them. We do not expect that the church can be exempt from similar failures. To the contrary, we think that we are part of the long journey of faith toward learning, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the full implications of Jesus' message. Just as it has taken the church many centuries to recognize the sinfulness of slavery, the death of marriage or the full equality of women and men in the eyes of God and of Jesus, so the church is slowly, in our own time, beginning to realize that Jesus' message of love includes other people long marginalized by Christian practice.

The critical thing is that our reading of the Bible be governed by a sense of what is central to its message. In the following three sections, we explore further the significance of Jesus' summary of the law, of the divine message in the Old Testament that led toward it and the truth that revelation is an ongoing process.

B. The Primacy of the Commandment to Love

In the gospel of Mark, a scribe came up to Jesus and asked, "'Which commandment is the first of all?' Jesus answered, 'The first is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these'" (Mark 12:29-31, New Revised Standard Version). This commandment is echoed in John 15:12, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."

The importance of Jesus' commandment to love God, neighbor and self is marked by the fact that it is cited in all three of the synoptic gospels (Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:25-28 and Matthew 22:34-40). In each instance, Jesus is quoted as saying, "no other commandment is greater than these." Each commandment to love is stated in the imperative which emphasizes that this is his summation of the Law and the Prophets. In naming the three objects of love, God, neighbor and self, Jesus is combining the teachings of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 with Leviticus 19:18. The quote from Deuteronomy contains the opening words of the ancient Jewish confession of faith known as the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One." Congruent with his Jewish heritage, Jesus here affirms the oneness of God. By adding the quote from Leviticus, Jesus makes the love of God, self and others the foundation of Christian faith and life.

God's love is first. God's love for God's people is stressed throughout Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments. It is a love freely given. It is a love that inspires creation, with our Creator/God loving all that has been created. Scripture is the history of God's continuing love for humankind, even when that love is not emulated or returned. In fact, Paul reminds us that, "neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). Nothing, not even sexual orientation or the hatred of those who are different can diminish God's love for any of us. God's love is so abundant that there is more than enough of it for all of us.

The love of God has the power to transform us. God's love is so great that we are enabled to respond with love. Our love for God is our grateful and grace-filled response to God's love for us. This love is not minimal or restricted. The response called for is total: we are to love God with our whole selves, body, mind, soul and strength.

Whenever there were questions regarding the scope or meaning of his teachings, Jesus provided examples. It is from his examples that we can be clear about what it means to love God, neighbor and self. That is why Jesus used the story of a good Samaritan to illustrate neighbor love. This story, which appears in Luke 10:25-37, describes a man who is injured and left for dead by robbers. According to Levitical law, if a man is dead, he has become unclean and untouchable. If he is dying, his caretakers risk being made unclean if he dies. For these reasons, the injured man is avoided and ignored by pious Jews (a priest and a Levite in the story). Their piety has caused them to place the Levitical law above the commandment to love their neighbor. However, Jesus' example makes it clear that neighbor love places the welfare of another above the issues of purity and piety. In his illustration, Jesus describes how a Samaritan cares for the man anyway. This too is significant because the Samaritans were a sect whom the Jews of Jesus' time distrusted and hated for their impiety and impurity. Yet, Jesus chose one of them to serve as his model of neighborly love.

In this story, both the unclean man left for dead and the unacceptable Samaritan are identified as neighbors to love. Jesus said to his questioner just what he says to all of us: "Go and do likewise." What each of us yearns for is compassionate understanding and that is what we are called to give. Throughout his ministry, Jesus reached out with love and acceptance to the outcasts of his society. Yet the Church, throughout its history, has rejected and marginalized many groups of people: slaves, adulterers, heathen, Jews, raped women and the divorced. This Task Force believes that it is time for us to stop doing this. In the realm of God, brought forth by Jesus, no one should be regarded as unacceptable or cast out.

In this commandment, neighbor love depends on love of self. We are to love others in the same way or as much as we love ourselves. This means having as much concern for the welfare of our neighbor as we do toward ourselves: giving them as much time, being as interested in them and showing them as much tolerance and forgiveness as we give ourselves. A problem arises because not all of us love ourselves. Marginalized people throughout history have often found it difficult to love themselves. They absorb the hatred of others instead of the all inclusive love of God. As a result of their own self hatred, they have scape-goated and hated others. Jesus corrects this injustice and stipulates that in all instances, love has primacy. Love is the basis for relating in the name of Jesus Christ.

The biblical stories of Jesus' encounters with others shows him reaching out in love to the very people his culture and society shunned. Many of them subsequently proclaimed his good works and healing powers and brought others to faith. It is in living out this gospel imperative that we are tested. Sometimes, it is God we distrust and avoid. Sometimes, it is ourselves whom we detest and reject. Sometimes, our hatred is reserved for particular neighbors. The text in Leviticus 19:18 calling for love of neighbor, which Jesus cites, is set alongside a command not to nurture hatred against another, nor to take vengeance or bear ill-will. Whenever we do not love God, ourselves or any of our neighbors, we have failed to fulfill these commandments.

The covenant that God first established with Abraham and then extended to the people of Israel was based on mutual commitment and reciprocal responsibility. The same covenant guides the Body of Christ, calling us into relationships of mutual love. It also is foundational to Baptism, Holy Matrimony and Ordination. The same principles apply to the holy unions of same-sex couples.

In baptism, all become children of God and equal members of the body of Christ. This provides us with a primary identity as the people of God; as such, we are people who are in this world but are not of this world. As Christians, we are called to challenge any categories which have been made by the world which divide us. This is possible because in baptism, we become new people. As Paul said to the Galatians, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28).

Jesus not only set those love standards, he lived them. Throughout the gospel narratives, Jesus is shown as one who loved God with his whole being and all humankind, without reservation. His very presence among us testified to God's love for us: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Jesus also said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34). Whenever we love God, our neighbors and ourselves, we are living out the commandments and the faith we share in the Christ of God. In its study and its report, this Task Force is being obedient to the call to proclaim the good news of God's love to all people. We believe there are no exceptions or conditions.

C. The Foundations of the Primacy of Love in the Old Testament

When Jesus was asked about the commandments of law, he responded with his own hierarchy of values. He did not give equal weight to every statement in the law, but chose Deuteronomy 6:5 as the greatest commandment and Leviticus 19:18 as the second greatest commandment; he added that the rest of the law was dependent on these. He did not choose the Levitical dietary code, or the keeping of the Sabbath, or the Levitical code on sexual relations, a code which reflected a culture that placed high value on tribal population growth in a harsh and competitive environment.

In the Old Testament, many of the teachings derive from a societal need to build and maintain tribal or national strength; there are strictures against intermarriage and guidelines to enhance prolific reproduction within the group. In contrast, the story of Ruth, which also is held in high esteem, is a story of intermarriage. Ruth, who became the great-grandmother of King David himself, was a Moabite. Within Hebrew Scripture, the story of Ruth is one of loyalty, devotion, kindliness, love, and of placing oneself under the protection of God; the issue of intermarriage is recognized as irrelevant.

A careful reading of Genesis, chapter 19, emphasizes the protection that one is obligated to provide the visiting guest. The violation of this obligation is the evil of Sodom. Ezekiel makes this clear, "This was the guilt of Sodom: pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but giving no aid to the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49).

The two most significant features of the Law are allegiance to the true God and justice in dealing with one's fellow human beings. Jesus quoted the law, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:5)," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18)." Jesus' quotations stand in the tradition of the words of Micah, "…what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8) The Law applies equally to how homosexuals are to live and also how others are to live, including their treatment of homosexuals.

Observance of the law by the individual is, of course, not a complete view of Old Testament teaching. Much emphasis is given to the covenant between God and God's people in community. The wording of Genesis, chapter 9, telling of the covenant between God and Noah included the phrase, "Noah and his sons." The thrust of God's covenant with Abraham concerned the great numbers that would be Abraham's descendants (Genesis 17). The reciprocity expected was Abraham's devotion to the one God. Later, concerning the covenant being made, God instructed Moses to convey the message to "the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel" (Exodus 19:3). This illustrates that a covenant is initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith. The sons and daughters of the covenant include all the members of the body; none are excluded.

The new covenant of the Christian community of faith is anticipated in Jeremiah 31:31-34. God reveals to Jeremiah a new covenant for "the house of Israel and the house of Judah," and God says, "I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . . and I will remember their sin no more." This is the covenant of forgiveness and mercy for all members of the community. On the basis of the spirit of this new covenant, our community of faith, the Church, is to work together with all its members to build relationships, both between persons and between the Church as an institution and its members, that will live into the covenantal promise.

Thus, the Law and the Prophets instruct our behavior concerning sexuality consistent with instruction concerning our behavior in the other aspects of our life. The heart of the Law applies to all. We are to avoid violence, greed, self-centeredness, betrayal, irresponsibility (which would include promiscuity), anger, vengeance, and power-seeking, and we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, in a spirit of love for our fellow human beings, in order to love the Lord God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might.

Furthermore, as Jesus modeled for us, we Christians are to give much study, close attention, and an open heart to God's Holy Spirit as we weigh each of the statements in Holy Scripture for their relative meaning and applicability to our life experiences.

D. Revelation is Ongoing

Scripture itself proclaims that revelation is ongoing: that life is a journey toward deeper understanding, that history is an unfolding story of God's purposes for creation. The New Testament is filled with promises of greater understanding to come, of secrets to be revealed, of prophesies to be fulfilled, of the unknown to be made known. This is why this Task Force is unwilling to rely on Old Testament purity practices and legal codes when they contradict the universal love and acceptance subsequently proclaimed by Jesus.

In his farewell to his disciples Jesus said,

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. (John 16:12-15)

Scripture advocates action, change and transformation. It calls us to think anew, to act anew and to persevere. It informs us that Christ's teachings may not be immediately understandable. The disciples themselves were puzzled by the parable of the seeds that fell on fertile and infertile ground. They needed him to explain that the seeds falling in good soil were like those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience (Luke 8:9-15).

The coming of the Spirit set in motion a process, the dawning of a new creation and a revised partnership with God aimed at revealing God's purposes for creation. With this in mind Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Scripture tells us that we are beings in a creation that is ongoing, to whom more is revealed by God over time. It is a creation in which all the law and the prophets are summed up in the commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. In such a creation, it is inadequate to conclude, as does the 1998 Lambeth Conference, that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture because same gender sex is condemned in Leviticus. In such a creation there is every reason to revise our thinking in order to make an equal place in the church for gays and lesbians.

III. ANGLICANISM, TRADITION, AND HOMOSEXUALITY

A. Introduction

A "three-fold cord, not easily broken" was 16th century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker's vivid image for Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, the three sources of authority in Anglican theology.

Scripture is the only one of the three strands of the "three-fold cord" that has a defined source, and even then there is much uncertainty about how it is to be interpreted and who is to do the interpreting. To say that Reason is authoritative begs similar questions: How is it to be employed? And whose reason are we talking about? The most elusive source of authority may be Tradition. While claiming that Tradition is an important source of authority, Anglicans are at a loss to say exactly what they mean by Tradition. Anglicans generally understand the authoritative sources of Tradition to include the Nicene and Apostles' Creed, the Book of Common Prayer, and the voice of the Spirit as expressed through bishops, priests, deacons, and laypersons.

When exploring Tradition, we must take care to differentiate between Anglican Tradition and local traditions, customs, and practices. Anglicanism has striven for unity in things essential and freedom in the non-essentials.

The resolution of the 1998 Lambeth conference declaring that the "practice" of homosexuality is "incompatible with Scripture" raises the question of how the Anglican Tradition can illuminate our understanding of homosexuality. It has often (and pertinently) been noted that homosexuality is not mentioned in the four gospels, nor in any of the Anglican Prayer Books, nor are scriptural passages regarding homosexuality included in the eucharistic lectionary of the Episcopal Church U.S.A.

Anglican Tradition is dynamic, not static. One defining characteristic of Anglicanism is that it seeks to be open to the movement of the Spirit and fresh understandings of ancient truths. The Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastic order, puts it this way: "Faithfulness to tradition does not mean mere perpetuation or copying of ways from the past but a creative recovery of the past as a source of inspiration and guidance in our faithfulness to God's future, the coming reign of God" (Rule, 1997, p. 7).

From the very beginning, Anglicanism has looked both to the example of the past and been flexible and open to new insights. Citing the precedent of the Eastern churches and Byzantine rulers, Henry VIII declared his and England's independence from the bishop of Rome, and asserted the monarch's ancient privilege of appointing bishops to their sees. Under his son, Edward VI, the English Church departed further from the pattern of the Western church by issuing the liturgy in the vernacular and allowing clergy to marry. This faithfulness to the past and openness to the future continues to characterize Anglicanism. For example, in recent years, many provinces of the Anglican communion have opened the way for women to be ordained to the priesthood and episcopate.

A central feature of Anglican thought is God's incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth; Anglican theology is rightly regarded as profoundly incarnational. This theology is a principal influence on the Anglican tradition. "Who Jesus was, and is, affects the ordinary life and belief of Christian people.... The early church came to understand one thing... the identity, unity, and ultimate mission of the church was to be found only in the Incarnate Christ" (Griffiss, 1997, p. 102).

The judgment of the 1998 Lambeth conference that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture" compels us to measure their judgment against Tradition. What are the criteria for determining who is and is not a full member of the Kingdom of God? The bishop, clergy, and lay people of the Diocese of California believe that justice and righteousness call us to include our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters into the full life of the church. In proclaiming this, we see ourselves as faithful to Anglican Tradition. In this section, we will look at the roles of bishops and the Lambeth conferences in our Tradition and also at what the Tradition has said about homosexuality.

B. The Tradition of Bishops

1. Introduction
Our review of the resolution on human sexuality by the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Bishops led us to examine the episcopate itself, its origins, development, nature, and authority. Our review has contributed to our understanding of the role of the Bishop generally and of our Bishop in the Diocese of California. We have noted several changes in the Anglican episcopate: (a) today's Anglican episcopate bears little resemblance to the office outlined in the New Testament; (b) it is the product of disputes over heresy and church order throughout history; (c) it lived through and was changed by the Reformation of the 16th century; (d) today's American episcopate was changed by the American Revolution and the formation of the United States in the 18th century; and (e) today's American episcopate differs from its Anglican counterparts due to its historical development. The Anglican bishops assembled at Lambeth do not derive from any direct scriptural ordinance, but are instead the products of the ongoing interplay of Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

2. Bishops in the Earliest Christian Writings
First-century Christians probably would not recognize today's bishops or their power or position. A bishop (Greek: episcopos meaning "overseer") was simply one elder (Greek: presbyteros or "priest") among several in a congregation (see: Acts 20:17, 28; 1 Peter 5:1-4; 1 Timothy 3:1ff; Titus 1:5-7; 1 Clement 42, 44). According to the early second-century Didache, bishops were of equal rank in the community with catechists (Didache 15). All of these sources attribute the same characteristics to those leaders; bishops were to be of good character and righteous. They were not, however, clerics of high authority.

3. Early Christian Developments
An episcopate that begins to approximate that of today was described by Ignatius of Antioch early in the second century. Ignatius placed the bishop at the center of worship and teaching. In the absence of any common credal statements or a formalized canon of Scripture, the bishop became the unifying feature of the fractured church (Ephesians 4). This centrality of the bishop was made visible at the Eucharist (Smyrnaeans 8). The bishop stood at the head of a clerical hierarchy, presiding in the place of God, surrounded by the apostolic conclave of priests, and aided by the deacons (Magnesians 6; cf. Trallians 2, Philadelphians 4). In the third and fourth centuries, this trend toward a single authoritative bishop solidified. Irenaeus' theory of "apostolic succession" (Against Heresies, 3.3.1-3) did much to exclude diverse opinions. A bishop who received ordination at the hands of at least three orthodox bishops at the beginning of the fourth century (Nicaea, canon 4) was understood to stand in the authoritative shoes of his predecessors; heretical groups could not claim that lineage. "Apostolic succession" also placed the individual bishop within a corporate whole, the wider Body of Christ (cf. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, eccl. 5).

Throughout early Christian history the role and position of the bishop arose partly, if not primarily, as a response to changing circumstances. The bishop became the primary preacher/teacher, pastor, celebrant/presider, and administrator. As these functions were delegated to the other clergy, the bishop became the transmittor and guarantor of tradition through his role as ordaining official (Hippolytus, Apostolic Traditions 9).

4. Medieval Episcopate
After the legitimization of the Church by Constantine in the early fourth century, the number and size of dioceses grew. Then, as Roman civil administration broke down, the leaders of those dioceses took over many of the old governmental functions. When the secular rulers sought to "Christianize" their countries (and so consolidate power), the bishops became the major tools. Those who had once been the chief pastors to groups of Christians became players in struggles between differing political and ecclesiastical factions; some even led armies into battle.

Bishops became men of affairs, and increasingly alienated from the people. As officials of the state, they were often feudal lords, with oversight of lands and vassals. As officials of the Church, they also were expected regularly to inspect parishes, administer confirmation; they were to hold annual synods, visit monasteries, ordain, and maintain ecclesiastical courts. These concerns reduced their contact with the individual members of their dioceses and the churches themselves.

By the Middle Ages, the selection of bishops became the privilege of temporal rulers and higher ecclesiastical officials. Kings wanted bishops who would reflect their religious and secular concerns. This, of course, contributed to a great variety of episcopal roles, as conditions in France differed from those in Germany or England. The confusion over who could select bishops, culminated in what became known as the Investiture Controversy.

On the other hand, with the breakdown of Carolingian rule, bishops began to look increasingly to Rome for guidance. Monasteries, wishing to be out from under the control of local bishops, also placed themselves directly under the authority of the Pope. An increasing centralization of power and authority in the person of the Bishop of Rome resulted. The Church in Rome could set policy, make pronouncements, choose bishops, and, through papal directives, instruct and influence local affairs.

5. The Reformation
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century brought its own changes to the episcopate. Those changes were most dramatic on the European continent, where several of the Protestant bodies did away with bishops altogether. However, in separating from Rome, the English Church did not, however, abolish bishops; it sought to reform the office, to make the Church in England the Church of England. The nature of that reform was made clear in the earliest prayer books.

The vows and prayers used during the consecration of a bishop in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer envisioned one "who would be, above all things, a guardian and expositor of scriptural truth, a teacher, a warm-hearted pastoral leader among his flock, clerical and lay, and a friend of the poor and needy" (Moorman, p. 118-19). Bishops in England were still men of affairs, especially those in larger sees who may have been appointed to the House of Lords. The Anglican reformation sought to relocate the bishop's role in an earlier model, that of the ancient church.

Part of that reform was a rejection of the hierarchical vision of the papacy. Even more radical was the view of Richard Hooker, who recognized that not all things contained in Scripture were meant for all times. Accordingly, laws can change; Hooker saw that the Jewish laws, given by God, had been superseded by the new covenant (Hooker, Laws, I, xv, 1-3). The same is true of the episcopate itself: even though upon the bishops "authority . . . descended . . . from the very apostles themselves, yet the absolute and everlasting continuance of it they cannot say that any commandment of the Lord doth enjoin; and therefore must acknowledge that the Church hath power by universal consent upon urgent cause to take it away if thereunto she be constrained" (Hooker, Laws, VII, v, 8; as cited in Till, 1960, p. 71).

6. The American Revolution Forward
The Revolutionary War and the formation of the United States had a reformatory effect on the Anglican episcopate in this country. Prior to the Revolution, there were no Anglican bishops in the United States; our clergy were under the supervision of the Bishop of London (who never visited this country). After the Revolution, the Episcopal Church in the United States became disestablished. Bishops were elected, not appointed. Because the American bishops-elect were heads of local parishes, the newly-consecrated ones returned from Scotland or England to their parishes. The nature of the American episcopate was more egalitarian from the outset. The first General Convention of 1789

marked . . . the emergence of priests and [laity] as co-partners with the bishops in matters of high decision. The recognition . . . given to the laity was . . . something new within the Catholic framework. . . . Many in England thought and still think that the Church can only be adequately guarded by bishops; at the most, by bishops and priests. (Whittemore, 1955, pp. 16-17)

Bishops in the United States had to develop a new model for being a bishop. It was only after a second generation of bishops was consecrated that the American Church began to come into its own. American bishops had to learn how to function in a frontier society as they carried the Church into the developing territories of the West, establishing schools, planting churches and creating dioceses. They ministered to and with the dioceses and congregations they served. For many years, those congregations were very homogeneous, both in terms of race and class.

It took a priest, William Augustus Muhlenberg, with several other clergy to bring this matter forcefully before the bishops with these words of the Muhlenberg Memorial which are as applicable today, in the situation before us, as they were 150 years ago:

The actual posture of our Church, with reference to the great moral and social necessities of the day, present to the minds of the undersigned a subject of grave and anxious thought. Did they suppose that this was confined to themselves they would not feel warranted in submitting it to your attention; but they believe it to be participated in by many of their brethren, who may not have seen the expediency of declaring their views, or at least a mature season for such a course.

The divided and distracted state of our American Protestant Christianity; the new and subtle forms of unbelief, adapting themselves with fatal success to the spirit of the age. . . the utter ignorance of the Gospel among so large a portion of the lower classes of our population, making a heathen world in our midst; are among the considerations which induce your memorialists to present the inquiry . . . whether the Protestant Episcopal Church, with her present canonical means and appliances, her fixed and invariable modes of public worship, her traditional customs and usages, is competent to the work of preaching and dispensing the Gospel to all sorts and conditions of men, and so adequate to do the work of the Lord in this land and in this age . . . (Muhlenberg, as cited in Whittemore, pp. 25-26)

Muhlenberg and his fellow memorialists recognized that the bishops were guardians of a glorious tradition. They also recognized that that tradition could actually hamper the work of the Church.

7. Bishops Today
In the American Church today, bishops are confronted with both problems shared by other bishops as well as problems that are unique to their own dioceses. The work and concerns of bishops in the urban centers of New England are different than those of the rural Midwest. Bishops with primarily Anglo populations in their dioceses address different issues than those with large immigrant populations. Bishops from wealthy dioceses have concerns different than those in poorer situations. Some bishops have episcopal help in ministering to their flock; others do it alone. We are reminded of the bishops in the pre-Constantinian church, where some worked with primarily Jewish Christian congregations, and others worked with Gentiles. For some, matters of kashrut (kosher foods) were still a concern, and for others, extremely wealthy aristocratic Roman women were a large part of their congregation. Each bishop addresses his or her diocese with the goal that the Gospel be preached fully and effectively in that place.

8. Conclusions About Bishops
While the Anglican episcopate has roots in the New Testament, it has no mandate from Scripture to do any more than help other elders guide a single congregation. From that humble beginning, we have seen bishops ascend the thrones of St. Peter and St. Augustine. We have seen what was originally a congregational authority extend to global authority. We have seen gracious bishops and we have seen bishops abuse power. We have seen colonial bishops hand their authority to indigenous successors.

Cut off for decades from any real episcopal oversight, the early bishops of the United States had to develop their own understanding of what it meant to be a bishop. They began with no palace, only a parish pulpit. They had to listen to their congregations and/or dioceses. They were part of the settling of a continent, not simply missionaries to an indigenous population. They did this work among a primarily Christian population; they were not forced to compete with other (non-Christian) religions for the faith of their followers. Some bishops noted changes in their society, as in the struggle over slavery where scriptural support could be found for the traditional pro-slavery position. Other times, the bishops (including those of California) have been at the forefront of religious and social change, challenging the status quo (including a so-called scriptural status quo). The bishops of America have a strong history of moving beyond a place of comfort and custom to areas where ministry has not taken place. We support their continuance of that reasoned Tradition.

C. Character of the Lambeth Conferences

After breaking from Rome, the English Reformers never envisioned the worldwide fellowship of churches that we know now as the Anglican communion. Nor did they foresee the meetings of Anglican bishops known as the Lambeth Conference which are scheduled approximately every ten years.

However, by the middle of the 19th century, Anglican leaders, especially in the United States and Canada, began to call for a pan-Anglican meeting of bishops. The Convocation of Canterbury, meeting in 1867, took up this issue. Around the same time, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, in consultation with bishops from England, Ireland, the U.S., Canada, and the then-British colonies, proposed what came to be known as the first Lambeth Conference.

Archbishop Longley of Canterbury issued invitations to his fellow Anglican bishops in February of 1867. The agenda for their meeting included discussions of ritualism, the "reunion of Christendom", prayer book revision, and most significantly, the Colenso affair.

In 1888, Archbishop Benson, president of the third Lambeth conference, expressed the purpose of the Lambeth conferences in this way: "I opened the Conference by pointing out that the Conference was in no sense a Synod and not adapted or competent, or within its powers, if it should attempt to make binding decisions on doctrines or discipline" (Sykes and Booty, 1988, p. 195). Thus there is no precedent for binding decisions like that proposed by some members of the Anglican communion regarding the resolution on sexuality (Lambeth, 1998, I.10.d).

From the very beginning, the Lambeth conferences have taken up controversial topics. At the first Lambeth conference in 1867, the bishops considered the issues around Bishop Colenso of Natal, who had scandalized many conservatives by raising questions about the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He had been deposed and excommunicated by Bishop Robert Gray, the senior bishop in southern Africa. Colenso appealed the decision, but the Lambeth Conference refused to challenge Gray's authority, so Colenso's appeal was denied.

While homosexuality was not addressed by the Lambeth conferences until the 1970s, the subject of contraception indicates the general trajectory of the bishops' thinking. On this issue, the Lambeth Conferences have moved slowly toward a more liberal understanding. As early as 1908, the Lambeth Conference went on record as opposing contraception, or to use their phrase, "Neo-Malthusian appliances", and even favored, "[t]he prosecution of all who publicly and professionally assist preventive methods" (Stephenson, 1978, p. 121). In 1920, the Lambeth Conference still regarded the "open or secret sale of contraceptives" to be an "incentive to vice" and linked them to "the continued existence of brothels." However, they allowed that contraceptives could be used "in those cases where there is such a clearly-felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence" (Stephenson, 1978, pp. 189-171).

A resolution out of the 1958 Lambeth conference authored by Bishop Stephen Bayne of Olympia expressed the opinion that,

...the procreation of children is not the only purpose of marriage. Husbands and wives owe to each other and to the depth and stability of their families the duty to express, in sexual intercourse, the love which they bear and mean to bear to each other. Sexual intercourse is not by any means the only language of earthly love, but is, in its full and right use, the most intimate and the most revealing; it has the depth of communication signified by the biblical word so often used for it, "knowledge"; it is a giving and receiving in the unity of two free spirits which is in itself good (within the marriage bond) and mediates good to those who share it. (Stephenson, 1978, p. 209)

The Lambeth conferences have consistently eschewed the ultimate authority of a general council of Roman Catholic bishops, and have never understood their opinions to be anything but advisory. Furthermore, the Lambeth bishops have evidenced growth, learning, change, and in good Anglican fashion the incorporation of new insights, especially in the area of human sexuality.

D. Homosexuality and the Anglican Tradition

The word "homosexuality" did not enter English language usage until 1897. Soon thereafter, the "love that dare not speak its name" began to come to the attention of Anglican theologians. Poet, social reformer, and some-time Anglican priest (he resigned his orders in 1873) Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was far ahead of his time by living openly with his partner George Merrill and by writing books that advocated what he termed "homogenic" love.

Another landmark was the Rev. Canon D.S. Bailey's book, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (1955), an inspiration for the Wolfenden Report which, in turn, paved the way for the elimination of legal penalties for consenting homosexual behavior between adults in Great Britain in 1967.

In the 1970s, however, English and American bishops began to consider seriously and discuss openly the issues being raised by gay men and lesbians. Theologian Norman Pittenger's groundbreaking book, Time for Consent, argued that:

…society must accept the homosexual, whether male or female, as a human being who should be accorded the same rights and privileges as are granted, without hesitation, to the heterosexual of either sex... He or she is not an 'abnormal' person, with 'unnatural' desires and habits; to the homosexual, the desires and habits found in that state are entirely 'normal' and 'natural' - and we have no way whatsoever of discovering any eternal standards of normality or naturalness from which such persons depart. (Pittenger, 1970, pp. 17-18)

The Church of England's General Synod Board for Social Responsibility, writing in 1979, came to the conclusion that "...we do not think it possible to deny that there are circumstances in which individuals may justifiably choose to enter into a homosexual relationship with the hope of enjoying a companionship and physical expression of sexual love similar to that which is to be found in marriage" (Homosexual Relationships, 1979, p. 52).

Quite different was the conclusion of the Ethics and Social Questions Committee of Australia's Diocese of Sydney:

From the church the homosexual should expect to find understanding and sympathy for human weakness and he should also expect to find support and encouragement to live the kind of life which God requires. He will not expect to be blamed or shunned for his homosexual propensity (regardless of its cause) but, on the other hand, he will not expect to be received if he does not intend to abide by God's word and stop his homosexual acts, and seek to achieve with God's help such sexual reorientation as may be open to him. (Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, 1973, p. 19)

Not long before the Church of England and the Australian Anglican church went on record with their opposing points of view on homosexuality, the 65th General Convention (1976) of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. passed a resolution stating that "it is the sense of this General Convention that homosexual persons are children of God and have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church" (Hopkins, 1997, p.2). Soon after that historic resolution, New York's Bishop Paul Moore shocked many by ordaining Anglicanism's first openly lesbian priest, the Rev. Ellen Barrett. Subsequently, the 1979 General Convention passed a resolution stating that "it is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual, or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside of marriage". (Hopkins, 1997, p. 4)

Perhaps the most significant development in the American church was Bishop Walter Righter's trial in 1997 for having ordained a non-celibate gay man to the diaconate. Righter's acquittal must be regarded as a watershed, for it tacitly removed the barriers to gay and lesbian ordination in the Episcopal Church U.S.A.

The 1978 Lambeth Conference affirmed "heterosexuality as the Scriptural norm", but recognized "the need for deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality, which would take seriously both the teaching of Scripture and the results of scientific and medical research" and also recognizing "the need for pastoral concern for those who are homosexual, encourages dialogue with them" (Report of the Lambeth Conference, 1978, p. 41).

The 1998 Lambeth conference's resolution declaring that homosexuality is "incompatible with Scripture" almost certainly does not represent Lambeth's last word on the subject of homosexuality. Surely, none of the bishops at Lambeth 1998 would concur with Bishop Colenso's deposition and excommunication for questioning the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. And before another century has passed, we hope that a future Lambeth will be as welcoming of gays and lesbians as they are of new Biblical scholarship.

IV. THE USES AND AUTHORITY OF REASON AND EXPERIENCE

A. Introduction

Those of us called by God to do God's work in the world through the Anglican Communion, find our teaching authority through Scripture, Church Tradition, and the use of Reason and Experience. Church historians credit Richard Hooker with first formulating this position and gaining its acceptance. In his major work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker writes:

Whatsoever either men on earth, or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountaine of wisdom, which wisdom hath diversly imparted her treasures unto the world. As her waies are of sundry kinds, so her maner of teaching is not meerely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some things she leadeth and trayneth them only by worldly experience and practice. (Hooker, Laws, II, i, 4)

As Anglicans, we are not free to rely solely on Scripture, Church Tradition, Reason or Experience. We must use all of these resources in the current controversy surrounding the amendment to the Lambeth Resolution on Human Sexuality (i.e., "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture") if we are to faithfully discern God's will and proclaim it accordingly.

While our ability to think and reason are God-given, our interpretation of the same events and issues is influenced by the breadth and specificity of our experience. This Task Force recognizes that we are speaking to the larger Church through the prism of our own experience here in the Diocese of California.

B. How the Use of Experience Reflects Our Faith

Respect for experience is recognition of the action of the Holy Spirit, whose presence in our lives and relationships can transform our beliefs about issues and individuals.

The ability of human experience to change people's minds is not a new phenomenon. The book of the Acts of the Apostles gives an account of how the early Church agreed to include Gentiles without first requiring them to uphold all the laws and customs of the Hebrew people, symbolized through the act of circumcision. They came to realize that Gentiles could be faithful followers of Jesus without first becoming faithful Jews.

At the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-29), Peter declared: "we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they [the Gentiles] will" (Acts 15:11). Rather than requiring new Gentile converts to adhere to the entire Mosaic Law, they agreed that the Christians of Gentile background should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, fornication, and meat not ritually butchered and that they would be free of many of the other purity codes, including circumcision.

C. Reason and the Lambeth Resolution

"We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual people."
- Lambeth Resolution on Sexuality, Section C

The amendment, "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture," is flawed in several respects. First, the term "homosexual practice" fails to capture the experience of lesbian and gay Episcopalians in the Diocese of California and elsewhere, who experience sexuality as one element of our human identity and one means of expression of the capacity for relationship. All relationships involve moral choices and require just action. Rather than discussing "homosexual practice," we believe our dialogue should confront what constitutes a holy relationship.

We do not find that homosexuality is intrinsically evil or a flaw in our being, nor that sexual relations between people of the same sex are sinful. There is no evidence to support the notion that homosexuality is an illness to be healed.

Our sexuality is an intrinsic part of our humanity. We believe that everything God created is good. Therefore, all aspects of our humanity, including our sexuality, are holy and blessed by God. Our value as human beings in Creation is affirmed by God's becoming human through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Many in the Church grant that homosexual desire is part of God's Creation, but urge that gay and lesbian people to choose celibacy rather than sexual relationship. We find no reason to deny the gifts of partnership to our gay and lesbian members, nor to others who traditionally may have been denied blessing, such as heterosexual couples in which one or more partner has been divorced. The Rev. Thomas Breidenthal, Professor of Moral Theology at the General Theological Seminary in New York, asserts that

sex should be honored by Christians not only because it is part of our nature as creatures of God - rejecting our sexual nature is like rejecting our bodies and emotions - but because it makes plain our connection to one another. Like our need for touch, for conversation, for the sharing of food, joy and grief, our sexual desires remind us constantly that we are members of one another and cannot flourish without companionship. (Breidenthal, 1997, pp. 117-118)

The Church has changed its decisions with regard to behaviors that were once regarded as sinful. For example, we now recognize the goodness and legitimacy of sexual relations within marriages that do not produce children. We recognize that divorce may be necessary and we do not withhold blessing on the relationships of those who have been divorced. We believe that the qualities of a holy relationship are not determined by its ability to produce offspring, nor by the sex of its participants. We concur with Breidenthal when he describes the Christian household as "a place where Christ can be learned and nearness sanctified" (Breidenthal, 1997, p. 15 ). Our experience has shown this statement to be equally valid for heterosexuals, gays and lesbians. Moreover, the qualities that Breidenthal identifies as furthering the goals of Christian householding -- bodily fellowship, exclusivity, accountability to the Church, permanence, equality, nonviolence, generosity, hospitality and nurture -- would apply to all relationships, whether sexual or non-sexual. (Male/female, male/male, or female/female.)

D. Reason: The Science and Sociology of Sexuality and Sexual Preference

We believe that our fulfillment of God's call to love each other does not depend on the discovery of a "cause" of homosexuality or a determination of the amount of choice involved in sexual preference or orientation.

However, some observations are worth mentioning here. The science and sociology of sexuality are inextricably linked. Homosexual relations have existed across time and culture, largely without self-identification of participants as gay or lesbian. The term "homosexuality" did not exist until the mid-nineteenth century (Blasius and Phelan, 1997, p. 67). Even within our Diocese at this time, there are differing experiences of the spectrum of desire from homosexual to heterosexual, and differing choices with regard to identification. Many people feel that they are inherently homosexual or heterosexual as individuals; others experience sexual interest in people of either sex, simultaneously or at different times in their lives. They may describe themselves in terms of their most frequent or most current interest or relationship; they may refer to themselves as bisexual; or they may not choose a category at all.

There is a growing body of research on human sexuality and gender preference. There has been enough conflict and change in the understanding of sexuality in recent years to know that we have not reached a final truth. We also recognize the limitations of research that involves only one gender, or social class, or geographical area. Much of the available research has been about white, middle- to upper-middle-class males who identify almost exclusively as homosexual and who live in North America and Western Europe. This research is not useful for application to the gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people who live in various economic conditions in all parts of the world.

Sexuality is such a complex human behavior that it is highly improbable that any single factor will be found to explain it. There is considerable evidence that our sexuality is shaped by both genetic pre-disposition and our experiences (see Murphy, 1997). The inadequacy of a nature or nurture determinant is evident in the results of studies from the 1990's of gay men and lesbians with a twin. In the monozygotic twin (meaning he or she shared identical DNA), 50% of the male pairs were gay and 48% of the female pairs were lesbian. Of the dizygotic twin pairs (meaning they shared no more DNA than non-twin siblings), 24% and 16% were also gay or lesbian respectively. While this study is a strong indicator of some genetic factor for sexual orientation, if genetics were the only factor, then 100% of the monozygotic twins would be gay or lesbian. As these twins were also raised in the same household by the same parents at the same historical point in time, if nurture were the only factor, the concordance rate should be closer to 100% for both the monozygotic and the dizygotic twin pairs (Murphy, 1997, pp. 31-32).

Large-scale studies of human sexuality were not done until the work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey in the 1950's. Kinsey's studies were revolutionary in that they found that "a considerable portion of the population, perhaps the major portion of the male population, has at least some homosexual experience between adolescence and old age" (Kinsey, 1948, p. 610).

Kinsey's survey found that 37% of their total male sample aged 16 to 55 had engaged in at least one homosexual experience to the point of orgasm. An additional 13% reported reacting erotically to other males without overt contact. Ten percent of his sample identified themselves as primarily homosexual for at least a three year period, and four percent self-identified as exclusively homosexual throughout their lives. Kinsey concluded that "the homosexual has been a significant part of human sexual activity ever since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal." (Kinsey, 1948, p. 666).

This study caused a firestorm of reaction in psychiatric circles, primarily because homosexuality had been regarded as a very rare phenomenon found among mentally disturbed individuals. Books published after Kinsey with titles such as The Homosexual in Society and Society and the Homosexual (UK) called for more compassion and less legal intrusion. For the first time, authors suggested that it was unlikely that adult homosexuals could be changed.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association's board of trustees determined that homosexuality should be deleted from their list of mental disorders. Their Fact Sheet Series includes the following position: "For a mental condition to be considered a psychiatric disorder, it should either regularly cause emotional distress or regularly be associated with clinically significant impairment of social functioning... homosexuality does not meet these criteria." (American Psychiatric Association, 1996, par. 1).

They further state:

There is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of 'reparative therapy' as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation. … There is no evidence that any treatment can change a homosexual person's deep-seated feelings for others of the same sex. Clinical experience suggests that any person who seeks conversion therapy may be doing so because of social bias that has resulted in internalized homophobia, and that gay men and lesbians who have accepted their sexual orientation positively are better adjusted than those who have not done so. (APA, 1996, par. 5-7)

E. The Experience of the Diocese of California

The Diocese of California has undergone enormous change in the last twenty-five years. Some of the shameful events in our history have been recounted in order to highlight the possibility and importance of a changing understanding of both homosexuality and our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers.

In 1974, while visiting the Bay Area, Dr. Louie Crew called Grace Cathedral to ask where he and his partner could meet other gay Episcopalians. His call was transferred from one staff member to another so that all could laugh at his request. As a consequence, Dr. Crew founded a publication called Integrity, which subsequently grew into a ministry that has greatly influenced the entire American Episcopal Church in its understanding and acceptance of its gay and lesbian members. (Crew, 1997).

In 1977, the Bishop of California, C. Kilmer Myers, refused to license a priest by the name of Ellen Barrett, because she was a lesbian and open about it. (B. D. Ring, personal communication). At that time, few of the gay clergy serving parishes in this diocese were open about their sexual orientation.

In 1981, the Diocese of California responded to a time of injustice and violence by founding a ministry among the gay and lesbian community and seeking reconciliation between this community and the church. Known as The Parsonage, lay "parsons" were commissioned for ministries of pastoral care, a publication was produced that was both literary journal and political newsletter, and a storefront location was occupied on Castro Street in San Francisco, which was the very heart of the lesbian and gay community (Oasis/California).

In the words of our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, the Parsonage "started with a bang, but the AIDS epidemic kept taking away so many, so many of our folks." (Oasis/California, par. 2). As the AIDS crisis worsened, most congregations in the diocese experienced great suffering and loss.

In 1986, this diocese initiated and organized the first national conference on AIDS sponsored by any denomination. After that conference, the Diocese began a chaplaincy at San Francisco General Hospital to serve those who were ill with and dying of AIDS. The testimony of those living with HIV/AIDS and those caring for them motivated many of our parishes and missions to expand and intensify their ministries. Out of this experience grew a number liturgies of healing and remembrance and church sponsored educational programs on the crisis, safe sex and caretaking skills. For many heterosexual members of the Diocese, HIV/AIDS brought them into fuller recognition of the real lives of their gay and lesbian neighbors.

So serious was this crisis that by September of 1994, after several attempts to rejuvenate the effort, the ministry of The Parsonage finally ended and the storefront facility was closed. Influential in its closing was the fact that many Episcopal churches in the city of San Francisco had become welcoming to gays and lesbians, which lessened the need for a social, religious and support group program in the predominantly gay Castro district. The mission of The Parsonage, however, has not been fulfilled. Gay and lesbian people are not in unity with each other and the church. Injustice and violence continue. Few Episcopal congregations outside the city were receptive to gays and lesbians, and this presented a pressing need within the diocese as a whole.

The need for specific ministries for and with the gay and lesbian population of the diocese of California continues in the same way that there is call for ministries among ethnic, cultural, and language groups that historically have been alienated from the Episcopal Church and the majority population of our society. In fact, one might argue that the demand for population-specific ministries is only just emerging. Sadly, in the Episcopal Church and in the United States, there is no shortage of disaffected groups of people who find it difficult to separate the message of truth and love that we as church proclaim from the oppression that we still promulgate.

In the City and County of San Francisco, fewer than 17 per cent of the population identify themselves as "religious," and only a fraction of those attend church. (Oasis/California, par. 4). If it could be measured, we would probably find an even smaller proportion of self-identified religious persons in the lesbian and gay community. The mission fields are plentiful. It is time for our diocese and our congregations to seed and harvest them. Many Episcopal congregations remain ignorant of how they may be inadvertently unwelcoming of - or even hostile to - gay and lesbian people. Even in the relatively progressive Diocese of California, we are far from achieving the goal of offering God's inclusive love and our unequivocal acceptance to all of God's people. It is time for the whole church to hear the voices of gay and lesbian people.

F. Oasis

The Most Reverend Edmond Browning, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, declared our mission imperative by echoing: "It is our Christian duty to strive for justice and peace among all people and ... to respect the dignity of every human being." In response, a network of Oasis congregations began in June, 1989, in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. The eventual result of the Oasis Congregations Program has been a network of concerned congregations committed to justice for lesbians and gay men, knowledgeable about homophobia and heterosexism, and concerned about the particular spiritual concerns of lesbians and gay men, their families and friends.

Founded in 1995, Oasis/California was chartered by the diocese of California as a ministry of gay men and lesbians and their families and friends, committed to serving Christ in the gay and lesbian community and to gay liberation in the church and the world. To date, six congregations have become Oasis/California congregations through a process which entails congregational study, commitment and plans for welcoming; several others are in various places on the road to becoming Oasis congregations.

Oasis/California seeks to make our diocese a welcoming place for lesbians and gay men, and provides congregational-based educational programs to address the issues raised by the conjuncture of spirituality and sexuality. The mission of Oasis/California is the spiritual empowerment of lesbians and gay men, evangelical outreach to the lesbian/gay community, witness through presence at gay and lesbian community events, pastoral care for lesbian and gay people, the education of congregations to increase their understanding of homosexuality and the present day experience of gay and lesbian Christians, and advocacy both within and beyond the institutional Church. Oasis/California strives for the day when the godly love of lesbian and gay Christians may be honored by all brothers and sisters in Christ and the dignity of every lesbian and gay individual is respected fully in our society.

After the vote at Lambeth and his speech to our Diocesan convention in 1998, Bishop William Swing addressed members of this diocese at the Day of Reflection. He noted that:

We have opened ourselves to incorporate both straight and gay people for many years now. Not perfectly so, but certainly substantially so.

In terms of marriage, homosexuality makes no dent in the institution of marriage in the Diocese of California. It is a non-issue.

In terms of the ordination process, the main difference between my interviews with homosexuals and interviews with bishops who take the opposite view is that homosexuals tell me the truth about themselves, but must lie to other bishops. In twenty years of experience of having homosexual clergy, we have had no complaints of inappropriate behavior and two decades of truth-telling.

In terms of affecting the morale for mission in general, homosexuals who are clergy in the Diocese of California have been a great blessing from God.

Today, we can say that we are witnessing the Holy Spirit at work, leading couples in homosexual and heterosexual relationships on the path to sanctification. We are blessed with a wealth of gifts in our gay, lesbian and straight clergy and laity. We come together before God, in prayer and in work, in ministry with one another.

What is new is the honesty and openness in which people are allowed serve the Church. It has become unremarkable for many congregations to call openly gay and lesbian clergy. Lesbian and gay priests counsel straight couples, teach children, minister to senior citizens. With the Bishop's oversight, some parishes have developed processes and liturgies for the blessing of same-sex couples in committed relationships. (The Right Reverend William E. Swing, Sermon to First Annual Diocesan Day of Theological Reflection, February 27, 1999, Afternoon Session. Unpublished.)

Gay and lesbian clergy and laity serve on virtually every major commission and committee in the Diocese and in congregations where they are members. These significant changes result from a change in attitude in our Diocese toward homosexuals and homosexuality

V. CONCLUSIONS

The Resolution on Sexuality from the 1998 Lambeth conference invited Anglicans to enter into dialogue. This is a response from the Diocese of California to that invitation, a response informed by Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience.

We believe the 1998 Lambeth Conference was wrong to reject homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.

Scripture is the story of God's love and forgiveness, and the word of grace constantly new and renewing in each generation. Context is essential to its meaning, as is Tradition, Reason, and Experience. Not all of its passages are to be treated with equal reverence. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are not a single, unified, systematic account of faith and morals.

Jesus' teachings are at the heart of the Christian's understanding of Scripture. He calls us to new ways of looking at the world and a new sense of God's graciousness and surprising love. He preached a new way of living with a new and loving heart. Jesus never discussed homosexuality or forbade it. The passages which do treat same-gender sexual relationships ignore the primacy of his commandment to love.

We believe the terms of the dialogue regarding homosexuality should not focus on "homosexual practices," but rather on the conditions, attitudes, and components which must be present for a relationship to be considered holy. Just as we have seen the work of the Holy Spirit in our congregations and communities, we have witnessed the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of lesbians and gay men. We have found faithful Christians whose love of God, of self, and of neighbor appear enhanced by their same-gender sexual relationships. We uphold relationships (both non-sexual and sexual, both straight and gay) that exhibit the fruits of the Spirit: honesty, integrity, mutuality, respect, hospitality and other qualities that mirror God's love. We believe that these relationships are holy and blessed.

For Jesus, all morality was summed up in the commandments to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. We conclude, on Jesus' authority, that such relationships meet the Scriptural test of godliness and are, therefore, compatible with Scripture. It has been our experience that gay and lesbian persons in our Diocese have been blessed by God and walk in God's light and love. Our Diocese would suffer greatly at the loss of their lay and ordained ministries.

We are struggling to fulfill the vision of our former Presiding Bishop, The Most Reverend Edmund Browning, that there shall be no outcasts in the Episcopal Church. We understand that adhering to the primacy of the gospel of love is difficult, especially in those nations where the church's survival is endangered by conflicting religions and morals and where each person's freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is not an established right.

One of the hallmarks of Anglican Tradition is that Tradition does change. The church has changed its decisions with regard to other behaviors that were once regarded sinful, such as marriages that do not produce children, or the re-marriage of divorced persons; we trust that the church will change its attitude toward homosexuality.

Recent developments have been encouraging, in that the Anglican communion is beginning to listen to its gay and lesbian members in various ways. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. have arranged for a consultation between bishops regarding this matter where "all shades of opinion within the Communion" will be heard. (Anglican Communion News Service, 1999). We pray that a spirit of peace, love and humility will prevail at these meetings.

The 1998 Lambeth conference's resolution declaring that homosexuality is "incompatible with Scripture" almost certainly does not represent the last word on the subject by the bishops at Lambeth. We have come to understand that, while maintaining a similar high regard for Scripture and Jesus' teachings, what divides us most is our different interpretations of Scripture. We invite our brothers and sisters throughout the Anglican Communion to engage in dialog with us, to share their perspective and dilemmas, and to see and hear ours.

APPENDIX A

Lambeth Conference 1998
Section/Theme One:
Called to full humanity

Resolution I.10

Human Sexuality

This Conference:

(a) commends to the Church the subsection report on human sexuality;

(b) in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage;

(c) recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ;

(d) while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex;

(e) cannot advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions;

(f) requests the Primates and the ACC to establish a means of monitoring the work done on the subject of human sexuality in the Communion and to share statements and resources among us;

(g) notes the significance of the Kuala Lumpur Statement on Human Sexuality and the concerns expressed in resolutions IV.26, V.1, V.10, V.23 and V.35 on the authority of Scripture in matters of marriage and sexuality and asks the Primates and the ACC to include them in their monitoring process. [Note: the sections referred to in (g) may be found at http://www.lambethconference.org/1/sect1rpt.html.]

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