Resolution D025 - What does it really mean?

I read through the blogs and news service reports last night after the House of Bishops voted to concur with amendment with the House of Deputies on resolution D025. Most of them said things like “General Convention opens ordination process to Homosexuals” or “US General Convention Pushes Anglican Communion Closer to Schism.” Speaking as one who was present for the debate in the House of Deputies, most of the headlines and reporting (including Episcopal News Service) frame the resolution in terms of novelty and conflict. But even a surface reading of the resolution will show that there is nothing novel in the resolution and nothing that would either diminish or increase the current conflicts in the Anglican Communion.

The Joint Committee on World Mission received 14 resolutions asking everything from a repeal of 2006 General Convention Resolution B033 to reaffirming the same resolution, and everything in between. The joint committee did a wonderful, creative, and inspired thing ... they presented a resolution that affirmed our place as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion; our commitment to ongoing fellowship, support, and interdependence within the Communion; and, without reference to B033, stated the present reality in the Episcopal Church in regards to the role and status of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons as well as the present reality that “Christians of good conscience” in the Anglican Communion, and not just in the Episcopal Church, are not of one mind on the matter.

Both those who wish to move forward on and those who are opposed to the blessing of same sex unions and the ordination to the episcopate of homosexuals in committed relationships are prone to read this resolution as a repeal of B033. Except that B033 did not create a moratorium as has been asserted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and conservatives within the Church. What B033 committed the Bishops and Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church to was to “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”

So what, really, does this mean? Put simply what the General Convention has done is express our reality without evasion or apology. It has invited the rest of the Communion to accept us for who we are in the spirit of community and dialogue. It is a courageous act of authenticity and differentiation of self within the context of the global Anglican family. It is a reclaiming of our identity as Anglicans and not only Episcopalians. It is a clear expression that while we recognize the tensions that exist in the communion we also recognize the tensions in our own church and in the midst of those tensions we stay committed to dialogue and community.

In an age when so much of our process is litigious and adversarial (both in the Anglican Communion and in society in general), this is truly an Anglican Via Media response calling for engagement in the broad middle of the church that neither compromises positions nor tolerates appeasement, and for that reason we have ample cause to be proud of our church.

Peace and joy,

Mike