A New Willingness to Listen

He was a reluctant warrior in the holy wars over homosexuality, this bishop from Mississippi.

Rising on the floor of the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention, which ended here Friday, the Rt. Rev. Chip Marble said that he had been in the middle of the road all along.

“I’m still in the middle,” he told the nation’s Episcopal bishops, meeting in a cavernous hall of the Colorado Convention Center. “But we must find a way to honor same-sex relationships.”

It was a surprising position for a bishop from Mississippi, usually a religiously conservative state.

But it was no more surprising than the plea moments earlier by the Rt. Rev. William Swing, the Episcopal bishop in San Francisco, a center of gay activism. Swing said that his church should not bless same-sex unions, at least not yet.

The upside-down positions of Marble and Swing were, to be sure, somewhat anomalous. In voting here and at other denominational conventions this spring and summer, most liberals continued to vote in favor of church approval for same-sex unions while most conservatives were opposed.

But Marble and Swing were not alone in breaking the mold, and their unexpected stances are evidence of the crosscurrents that have been pulling and tugging this year at a number of the nation’s most historic and prominent Christian and Jewish denominations.

Responding to same-sex couples remains a troubling issue for the nation’s churches and synagogues. In debates at denominational conventions throughout the year, there has been talk of schism and disillusionment on both sides.

“We’ve heard of the pain of gays. Let me tell you of the pain of traditional Episcopalians who feel the church has betrayed their trust,” Bishop Bert Herlong of Tennessee said during the debate here. “For them, it is not an issue of justice. It is about morality.”

Meanwhile, some gay rights advocates have become more militant. At the Episcopal meeting here, the Presbyterian convention last month in Long Beach and the Methodist annual meeting earlier this year in Cleveland, supporters of gay marriages were arrested after staging nonviolent protests.

It is easy to see the outcomes of votes this year in terms of winners and losers. In March, rabbis in the Reform Movement overwhelmingly declared it appropriate to use Jewish rituals to bless committed same-sex relationships. But the Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal conventions rejected similar proposals. Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention underscored its belief that all homosexual acts are contrary to biblical morality.

In some ways, positions appear to be hardening. Traditionalists and gay-rights advocates in the Presbyterian Church both plan to campaign at the grass-roots level to ratify or defeat a proposed amendment to the church’s constitution that would prohibit same-sex blessings. Liberal United Methodist ministers say they will continue to put their ordinations on the line by defying church law and officiating at ceremonies uniting same-sex couples.

The depth of such conflicting views sometimes plays itself out in unusual ways. At the Episcopal convention, for example, a delegate from Texas carried out a kind of exorcism by sprinkling salt around the seats of liberal delegations. The episode embarrassed even traditionalists and the delegate, the Rev. Nelson Koscheski of Dallas, resigned his position and returned home.

At the same time, however, church leaders say that despite wide divergences and deeply held viewpoints on sexual morality, people on both sides of the divide are beginning to listen to each other.

“We have ceased to condemn each other while still talking and trying to convince each other of differences and divisions,” said Episcopal Bishop Charles Duvall of the Central Gulf Coast, who opposed rites for blessing same-sex unions.

The listening, they say, is a direct outgrowth of the growing visibility of gay men and lesbians in the nation’s congregations. As straight congregants and clergy get to know gays and lesbians in their midst, human faces replace abstraction and sexual politics. Real-life experience comes into tension with traditional interpretations of sexual morality and church order.

Nowhere is this tension more evident, perhaps, than in the lives and ministry of bishops. By canon and tradition, they are charged with being guardians of the faith, yet called upon to be prophetic. In times such as these, that dual mission can mean stretching the envelope to adapt ancient wisdom to new circumstances.

“I once said no to blessing a same-sex union,” Bishop Vincent Warner of Seattle told other Episcopal bishops here. “I was trying to uphold the unity of the church. Since that time I have watched gay and lesbian friends I care for and love deeply die while waiting for something to happen. . . . I’m unwilling now to watch those who I care for deeply either die or lose hope.”

Other bishops acknowledged that such pastoral experiences may be compelling, but they are unable to reconcile such experiences with scriptural injunctions.

“Scripture and tradition does not support everything we would wish to bless and, perhaps, that God cannot bless,” Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh said.

With the convention season now over, the debate will continue in individual churches and dioceses. In Southern California, for example, the votes of three area Episcopal bishops in favor of developing same-sex rites has angered a leader of the traditionalist American Anglican Council, the Rev. Canon David Anderson of St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach. Anderson said he was especially irritated by the vote of the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, who will succeed the Rt. Rev. Frederick H. Borsch as diocesan bishop.

Bruno’s vote “is going to make it very tough” to continue dialogues between traditionalist and non-traditionalist groups in the diocese, Anderson said.

Tough, yes. But Anderson is not walking away from the dialogues. There seems to be a willingness, church leaders said, to listen.

The Latin word obsculta should be the watchword in further debates on issues of sexuality, said the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold III. “Obsculta--listen,” Griswold told the convention, quoting the rule of St. Benedict. “Listen with the ear of the heart.”