LGBT ANGLICANS BACK ON CHOPPING BLOCK
CANTERBURY, UK-The Rev. Susan Russell, President of Integrity USA, issued the following statement after today's release of Part Three of the Windsor Continuation Group's Preliminary Observations:
"LGBT Anglicans are back on the chopping block based on the work of the Windsor Continuation Group. While we recognize that this is a long-term process, sadly, what was continued today was the process of institutionalizing bigotry and marginalizing the LGBT baptized. Acceptance of these recommendations would result in de facto sacramental apartheid.
"We applaud the strong testimony in today's hearings from TEC bishops who are committed to be pastoral to all the sheep in their flock, not just the straight ones. We call on them to take that witness to their Indaba groups. We ask them to remember the 1976 commitment of the Episcopal Church to 'full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church' for the LGBT baptized.
"It is a sad thing indeed that the message today's report sends out from the Anglican Communion to the world is that homosexuals getting married in California are of more concern to the church than are homosexuals being mugged in Nigeria.
"As Integrity continues to offer our witness here at Lambeth Conference, we demonstrate our deep commitment to our ongoing relationship with the rest of the global Anglican Communion. At the same time, we will witness to our conviction that the vocations and relationships of the LGBT baptized are not for sale as bargaining chips in this game of global Anglican politics. At the end of the day, too high a price to pay for institutional unity."
The Rev. Susan Russell is available for interviews and comment.
Press contact in the UK:
Louise Brooks, Senior Press Officer, +44 (0)7503 695 579,
tvprod@earthlink.net
I have NO problem with walking apart from the WWAC if this is what it has come to. I pray TEC's bishops will not cave in to this craven pandering to homophobes. (Who must share some responsibility for the poor troubled, hate-filled man who thought it was OK to kill people in a church that supported women and gay rights)
ReplyDeleteSusanKay, I don't either, but the ABC and his allies are likely to bring down the Church of England along with the Anglican Communion. Can the CofE survive without being propped up by the US and Canadian churches? It's very sad.
ReplyDeleteDunno, GM, but it hasn't been propping us up in terms of emotional or political support lately, so we have to get beyond quid pro quo and into grace, what?
ReplyDeletePaul, don't get me started on Rowan! He's more of a disaster for his own church and for the Anglican Church in Africa than he is for us here in the US. Maybe the CofE needs to die before new life will come.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, we must move on to grace. Lambeth is a great distraction from what the church should be about.
Re this ludicrous proposition someone on TA wrote: “Therefore the moratoria, in my humble opinion, are one-sided.”
ReplyDeleteMore than that. It is a proposition which will not last. Dead in the water. Won’t hold water.
Not to mention highly Immoral. Trading property against Human Rights...!? Who could have though this up other than Apparatchniks?
Now, does anybody believe this scheme, really??
“Trading” some of the most valuable property in the World (on the threshold of Washington, in the Virginia cases ;=) against losing Human Rights for gay people??? TEC should give up many of its congregations and churches – and Gay American Citizens their Civil Rights?
Why not let the Courts of Justice go through with what they have already begun? TEC will keep what is theirs and Gay Americans get their full Civil Rights, including Marriage...
My two pence.
In my humble opinion, it is never moral to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many. Jesus calls each of us to take up our cross, and, if necessary, to lay down our lives, but he never asks us to lay crosses on the shoulders of others and offer them as sacrifices, however good we may view the cause.
ReplyDeleteThe moratoria do just that, lay the crosses on the shoulders of others and sacrifice them for the sake of unity.
SusanKay
ReplyDeleteI think that, if it were a simple matter, TEC should walk away from the WWAC. That would be the honest thing to do.
But what about those people in TEC who are still Christians? Those who think that Christianity is about obeying the will of God, rather than dictating it? Those who do not wilfully interpret scripture to gratify their desires? What about them?
SusanKay, did you mean to say WWAC in your second paragraph instead of TEC?
ReplyDelete