St. Thomas’ Parish at Dupont Circle
Episcopal Church
We’re Growing a Church Just For You
Jun 28th
On June 20, 2010, the Vestry (or governing board) of St. Thomas’ Parish voted unanimously to move forward to rebuild a new worship space in Dupont Circle. While our new building is going up, I want to be in conversation with you about who we are, what we’re doing here, what we believe in, and why we think this parish matters to the larger communities we live in.
After the original structure, church home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, was destroyed by arson 40 years ago this August, our congregation chose to remain in the neighborhood of Dupont Circle, worshiping, as we still do, in the renovated parish hall. Over time this prophetic decision evolved into an intentional, creative, and courageous leadership role in solidarity with of the growing GLBT community in this historic Washington, DC, neighborhood.
- We opened our doors during the height of the AIDS crisis – welcoming HIV positive individuals to the Eucharist, ministering to the dying and their grieving partners and friends, and honoring the dead with funerals and memorial services when few other parishes did so.
- We pioneered the development of rites for the blessing of same sex unions in the Episcopal Church, writing a still frequently used and widely adapted liturgy in 1998. Subsequently we have hosted countless blessings of holy unions, and our clergy have officiated at many others beyond our doors. Most recently we have been celebrating a steady flow of same sex marriages at St. Thomas’ Parish, including a wedding just this week of a gay couple who have been faithful partners for 33 years.
- All of us at St. Thomas’ Parish have been blessed, too, by a steady growth in the numbers of children in our ranks, some with same-sex and others with straight parents, all of them looking for a spiritual home where they can be assured, as one said recently, that “my child will never learn to hate in this place.”
- As older straight and GLBT members have retired or moved from the parish, younger adults have found a home with us in growing numbers. The result is that the median age of our parishioners is about 35, with only a handful of members over the age of 55, and currently only one vestry member over 45. This influx of young adults has led to a doubling of our congregation’s size and budget in the past 5 years. Now we are in the both enviable and lamentable place of being almost out of room to welcome those still arriving at our doors.
People who come here find an inclusive congregation, whose life is centered in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion — “a place where all can find and be found by God.” We are constantly deepening our practice of faith rooted in vital worship and bold outreach in equal measure, continually learning to love one another and our neighbors, although sometimes it is not clear which is the more difficult. We are proud to be a part of our community, and we also are deeply committed to contributing to our neighborhood and world in days long after we ourselves are gone. We’re growing a church just for you — and a place of sanctuary and refuge, of inspiration and courage, of faithfulness and compassion for tomorrow and the day after.
A General Convention Report
Jul 13th
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Prepared by Eric Scharf
As you should know by now the Triennial General Convention is meeting this week in Anaheim, CA. This is the primary legislative body of the church setting forth the policy and program on a national level for the next three years.
Of particular interest to St. Thomas’ members are two issues; consecration of GLBT priests living opening in committed relationships and same gender unions/marriage.
The first issue addressed the consequences of a resolution adopted at the previous General Convention (titled B033) that called for a moratorium on “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.” This issue has been the cause of wide ranging debate and discussion throughout the worldwide communion over the past three years.
A number of resolutions were proposed to further address the issue, which were considered by the General Convention World Mission Committee. They developed one combined resolution D025 to bring to the convention floor for consideration. The key clause reads “That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, which call is tested through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church.” Other sections of the resolution address our continuing commitment to the Anglican Communion. The full text as finally completed will be available later this week.
Sunday evening the House of Deputies passed D025 by a vote of 77-31 in the lay order and 74-35 in the clerical order. The resolution now goes to the House of Bishops for their concurrence.
Jim Naughton, Communications Director for the Diocese offered this assessment of the D025:
“My sense is that the resolution doesn’t repeal or rescind B033, which in any event urged but did not compel. Rather it expresses the fact that we live now in a new reality. It does not so much pave the way for the election of another bishop in a same-sex partnership as it does remove an artificial impediment to our ongoing discernment on this issue that may, resume diocese by diocese and case by case. I think the resolution will face a much tougher climb in the House of Bishops.”
While for many this resolution will not represent a strong enough action, however it probably represents the best compromise that is possible at this time. It has not been announced when the House of Bishops will consider D025.
As for the second issue, again a number of resolutions to both amend the Canons to allow the performance of same-gender blessings or marriage rites and others to develop rites for these.
The collective resolutions were the subject of a legislative hearing on July 9th which heard from more than 50 speakers. On July 13 a major resolution (c056) on same sex blessings cleared the Prayer Book Committee by a huge margin (6-0 among bishops, 26-1 in deputies.) The key clause states: That all bishops, noting particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships’ are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church. Bishop Henry Parsley supported the resolution, but in a minority report will argue that the “generosity” in the resolve noted above be limited to states where same sex marriage is legal. Further action in the House of Bishops has not yet been scheduled.
For more information on these issues and following further developments the following resources are suggested: Integrity General Convention Presence — http://sites.google.com/site/allthesacraments/Home
Hellooooooooooooo Epis-pickle-palians!
Jul 13th
VirtuallyFaithful here! Are you following General Convention? You should. But not too closely.
It’s like watching a waterfall — powerful and inspiring, but get too close and it’ll knock you over. You also don’t want to pay too much attention to all the droplets slashing out on the rocks. Go downstream a bit. Watch the water flow. Sometimes the stream itself will shift a little. Most times it doesn’t, because the total force of the stream is far bigger and more important than any few hundred or even thousand gallons that get dumped in all at once.
When light shines on all those exquisite drops, rainbows appear, as is right. But the rainbows aren’t to be confused with the waterfall, or the stream that drives it. No stream, no waterfall. No waterfall, no rainbows. So don’t just look at the rainbows alone. But do notice them. They are, after all, one of God’s favorite signs of unbreakable covenant with us all.
Listen to the water. God speaks through the mystery of that sound. It’s a different voice than you hear in Washington Weekly or on talk-radio, or even online in blog posts like this. It’s more subtle. Less in your face and pugnacious (there’s a word for you!). God’s like that. Really faithful to us. While we’re virtually faithful, at best, in return. That’s what it is to be the church. So watch and listen, but more to God than to General Convention. But since we’re the Episcopal Church, watch and listen to what’s going on there, too. God may even choose to speak from the maelstrom, again.
Four New Episcopalians!
Nov 3rd
This past Saturday, November 1st – All Saints’ Day – four members of St. Thomas’ Parish – Tim Johnson, Topher Bengtson, Aaron Adkins and David Park – were among the 245 persons confirmed or received into the Episcopal Church at Washington National Cathedral.
Bishop Chane was assisted by two retired Bishops – Mike Creighton (Central Pennsylvania) and Allen Bartlett (Pennsylvania). Bishop Bartlett is pictured at left with our four confirmands, plus The Rev. John Dwyer (Asst. Rector) and The Rev. Nancy Lee Jose (Rector) and Wayne Floyd who led the confirmation class for the group.
This was the largest contingent ever confirmed and/or received in a Diocese of Washington service, which included a historic number of Spanish-speaking Episcopalians, many of whom came from three Hispanic congregations in the Diocese of Washington.
Another Confirmation Class will form in the winter to prepare people who wish to be confirmed or received at the Spring Confirmation Service at the Cathedral.
Why Darwin Still Matters … as Do Our Views of Him
Sep 17th
“Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,” Rev. Malcolm Brown, director of missions and public affairs for the Church of England, wrote in an essay entitled “Good Religion Needs Good Science.”
“We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.”
Brown’s amends include a much needed corrective that Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson and other Christian creationists might consider.
“Subsequent generations have built on Darwin’s work but have not significantly undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection. There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching. Jesus himself invited people to observe the world around them and to reason from what they saw to an understanding of the nature of God (Matthew 6: 25-33),” Brown wrote.
“The anti-evolutionary fervour in some corners of the churches may be a kind of proxy issue for other discontents; and, perhaps most of all, an indictment of the churches’ failure to tell their own story -
Jesus’s story – with conviction in a way which works with the grain of the world as God has revealed it to be, both through the Bible and in the work of scientists of Darwin’s calibre.”
Though Darwin is a hero to atheists, he was raised in the Anglican church, thought about becoming a clergyman, later attended a Unitarian church and described himself as an agnostic. “In my most extreme
fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God,” he wrote in 1879. “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.”
It has been noted in recent commentary on Palin’s nomination to run for Vice-President on the Republican ticket with John McCain that “As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin called for teaching creationism alongside evolution in public schools. But after Alaska voters elected her, Palin, now Republican John McCain’s presidential running mate, kept her campaign pledge to not push the idea in the schools.
She’s in favor of teaching both creationism and evolution in the public schools. ‘Teach both,’ she said in a 2006 gubernatorial debate. … McCain believes the issue should be decided by individual school districts.”
Maximal minimalism
Jun 22nd
The genius of Anglicanism, as Episcopalians have understood it for at least the past 120 years is what I call “maximal minimalism” – that is to say, the maximal statement of faith can be best conveyed by the minimal number of core convictions.
The Lambeth Conference of 1888 stated it far better in Resolution 11 than any lengthier Anglican Covenant will ever do, when it said “That, in the opinion of this Conference, the following Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God’s blessing made towards Home Reunion”:
(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.”
(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself–Baptism and the Supper of the Lord–ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.
(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.
- In its wisdom the church didn’t try to impose one reading of Scripture on everyone, or set up a tribunal for settling whose interpretation is correct;
- The church didn’t try to say what the creeds meant or exactly how one should understand them before becoming a Christian;
- The church affirmed baptism and holy communion as the central sacraments of the church, but didn’t try to set out who could and couldn’t be baptized or celebrate or receive holy communion; and
- The church left the central symbol of the Episcopal Church – the episcope, or bishop — to be “locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.”
This “maximal minimalism” was not the result of believing too little. It was the result of believing too much to let any single interpretation, or understanding, or teaching, or doctrine, or church body or structure or person have sole authority over how God can and cannot be understood to be alive and at work among God’s people at any given time.
Sometimes less is more. Like now.
Anglican Covenant – a bad idea whose time has come?
Jun 22nd
Dr. Wayne Whitson Floyd, a lay theologian, chairs
the Education and Formation Committee
at St. Thomas’ Parish, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
One of the recommendations of the 2004 Windsor Report, written in response to reaction against the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, was that the Anglican Communion move towards the adoption of a so-called Anglican Covenant. Despite many gallant attempts to make Windsor into a statement of the beauty-of-unity that is the Anglican Communion, I remain unconvinced. As the old Southern saying goes: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” I say this because I am convinced that such a document — however nuanced its wording — would in effect state the means by which official condemnation of the Episcopal Church’s full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians at all levels of church life could be justified. It also would define the Episcopal Church’s action in consecrating Bishop Robinson as having removed TEC from the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. Dress it up however you want, but IMHO it’s still a pig.
To its credit, the response of the Episcopal Church up to now has been far from enthusiastic about such a Covenant — “it would be a bad idea that I do not support” Washington’s Bishop John Chane was overheard to say recently. Our bishops and Executive Council and General Convention deputies have agreed, however, to study the idea and make recommendations about the Covenant (the official study guide can be found here), which is in its second draft (the full text can be found here).
The Diocese of Washington’s Episcopal Cafe recently commissioned a series of articles on the Covenant, which give you an idea of how it is being approached officially by the Episcopal Church. And the General Theological Seminary’s Desmond Tutu Center, following its April 2008 conference on the proposed Covenant, has posted on its website more html, mp3, and pdf resources and responses to this than most Episcopalians will ever have the patience to absorb.
I realize I betray my own heterodox Episcopalianism — and poor Southern manners — by having lost already most of my patience to participate in what already is a several years long extended series of debates among our bishops, Executive Council members, General Convention deputies, seminary faculty and all manner of cogs in the complex machinery that is the Episcopal Church. This will continue past this summer’s Lambeth Conference, into the 2009 General Convention, and certainly beyond.
From the outset, I must say that I simply think the whole endeavor is a bad idea, but a bad idea whose time appears to have come.
It’s a bad idea for some fairly simple reasons: More >
Authentic Anglicanism?
Jun 22nd
[Episcopal News Service] Conservative Anglicans and former Episcopalians started to arrive in Jerusalem June 19 in anticipation of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a controversial summit regarded by some critics as a rival to the 2008 Lambeth Conference.The GAFCON event, set for June 22-29, is expected to draw 1,000 participants, including former Episcopal priests, some of whom are currently engaged in litigation concerning Episcopal Church property.
A closed-door pre-conference consultation in Amman, Jordan, was promptly wrapped up June 18 after key participants, including Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, were denied entry for lacking the necessary diplomatic paperwork, according to news reports.
GAFCON has come under fire from local Church leaders, including Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem Suheil Dawani, who expressed his concern that the conference would “import inter-Anglican conflict” into his diocese. Dawani previously called on organizers to move the conference, but his requests have not been honored.
The Most Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, primate of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, also has raised concerns about the event and acknowledged that his advice to the organizers — that this was neither the right time nor place for such a meeting — had been ignored.
Anis has declined an invitation to attend the conference.
Bishop Robert O’Neill of the Diocese of Colorado has traveled to Jerusalem at Dawani’s invitation.
On June 19, GAFCON’s organizers released a document, “The Way, The Truth and the Life,” which, according to a news release on the conference website, “sets out to define authentic Anglicanism, discuss what is at stake in the conflict, and what the future holds for orthodox Anglicans.”
In the document, which is critical of recent developments in the Episcopal Church, Akinola writes: “We have made enormous efforts since 1997 in seeking to avoid this crisis, but without success. Now we confront a moment of decision.”
“There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion,” he adds.
GAFCON is being held one month prior to the Lambeth Conference when more than 700 of the Anglican Communion’s bishops are expected to gather at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, for more than two weeks of study, prayer, learning, sharing and discerning.
Mel White & Gary Nixon Wed
Jun 22nd
Many members of St. Thomas’ Parish will be interested in the news of the marriage of LGBT activists Mel White and Gary Nixon this past week at All Saints Church in Pasadena.
[Episcopal News Service] The Rev. Dr. Mel White and Gary Nixon, cofounders of the LGBT activist organization Soulforce, were married on June 18 at All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, where they met and fell in love 27 years ago.
The ceremony, both joyful and tearful, was the first same-gender wedding performed at the Pasadena church since the California State Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a voter-passed law defining marriage as the union only of a man and a woman.
Gene Robinson & Mark Andrew Civil Union
Jun 9th
As reported in the Anglican Mainstream and the Union Leader.Com, and the web site of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hapshire, “V. Gene Robinson, New Hampshire’s Episcopal bishop, entered into a civil union yesterday with his partner of 20 years, Mark Andrew, according to WMUR-TV.
The ceremony, held at St. Paul Church, coincided with the fifth anniversary of Robinson’s election as the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop.”
It also comes just before Bishop Robinson departs for the Lambeth Conference, the meeting every ten years of all of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. He is attending as an outside observer, due to his being excluded by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the official list of invitees.
The Washington Post coverage adds that “Robinson and Andrew held two ceremonies — a non-religious one in which they became legal partners followed by a formal church service to give blessings to God for their relationship. … Robinson has said he wanted to enter into the civil union before leaving for England to ensure Andrew and his two daughters had legal protections given the threats to his life.”
Gene Robinson has been a frequent guest of St. Thomas’ Parish at Dupont Circle, whose Rector, The Rev. Dr. Nancy Lee Jose, welcomed Gene and Mark during a visit last year.
The Episcopal Cafe reports that “Afterward, during the reception and dinner that took place at Canterbury Shaker Village, Susan Russell gave a 5-minute video interview, which can be found here.”
