St. Thomas’ Parish at Dupont Circle
Same-Sex Marriage
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
A quiet week in DC Northeast
Jun 23rd
It was a quiet week in Washington Northeast . . . . At least until the Metro crash. I had just arrived home from teaching French at Catholic University of America when vehicle after emergency vehicle went wailing off towards where I had just come from, and auto theft alarms and the hundred-thirty-pound Rottweiler next door (incongruously named Flossie) raised up their voices in orgasmic worship of the siren gods. Great fun until I turned on the news and learned what it was all about; it will be some time before I hear another really really loud fire engine and say, “Cool.”
It was a less quiet week for the fellow doctoral students whom I’m coaching through their language qualification exams in French and German. It’s easy enough for me to concoct a quiz question like, Circle the correct completion: Elles sont (a) allé (b) allés (c) allées. Not so easy for George, laboriously mastering his first foreign language at thirty, or Dave, trying to memorize conjugations while his wife is weeks away from delivering their second child and he is entertaining The House Guests from Hell – old college friends with a four-year-old, the three of them fighting like cats and dogs. Being a doctoral student at Catholic U is not a stress-free occupation.
And, curiously, especially not so for my fellow students who are Catholic.
I’m free to float past the authority claims, the arguments against permitting use of condoms in any circumstance (though shouldn’t we take care to protect lives now, so we can attend to souls later?), and the posters for pro-life novenas and campus chastity drives. My Catholic colleagues are not. Sally, an historical theologian in my German class, understands what was lost at Vatican I (1870), when the teaching authority of the church was taken away from university theologians and given to an ordained hierarchy lumbered with its own claim of infallibility. As a committed Catholic, she is stuck with living in an institution that now will not, because it cannot, ever overrule itself; there will be no Brown vs. Little Rock-equivalent doctrinal declaration in her lifetime.
By historical accident, not by superior wisdom, we Anglicans arrived at a different understanding of authority. Queen Elizabeth, knowing she faced the possibility of religious civil war in sixteenth-century England, created a Church of England that demanded uniformity of worship but knew better than to seek uniformity in how that worship was understood; “I desire not,” quoth she, “windows into men’s souls.” We were left free, individually but in community, to decide for ourselves what Scripture is really saying to us and what God demands of and for us in the major decisions of our lives. This has its own risks; where a Roman Catholic polity can be as centripetal as a black hole, ours can be as centrifugal as a dandelion gone to seed.
It also calls us to a different kind of responsibility, both in individual discernment and in balancing individual discernment with the demands of living in a communion that functions by consent and consensus. For some of us, the question is how to balance the conviction that in-church blessings of same-sex unions are not merely lawful but demanded by God’s justice, with the regrettable but deeply felt reluctance of African bishops to countenance any such thing. For others, the question is how to live with being answerable for so many choices. One of my German students is a cradle Episcopalian who became a Catholic in search of greater certainty. The infallibility of Pope in Council is for him the foundation of all spiritual security, and he scraps about it continually with Sally. Their most recent blow-up (not, thank heavens, in my class room) was about, of all things, the validity of Anglican ordinations. She, arguing for, thought the matter was still open for theological discussion. He, against, was quoting canons of Vatican I. Verbatim. In Latin.
Desmond Tutu has asked for a sense of proportion in the Anglican Communion’s debate about sexuality and authority; why is this one sin, if it be a sin, so much more important than any other? Yesterday’s Metro crash, also, is a call to perspective; are we really going to enquire into firefighters’ personal sexual orientations before letting them go into the wrecked cars to pull out passengers? Action is as important as purity of doctrine; our faith doesn’t count for much if it doesn’t take us outside ourselves and outside our immediate faith communities to serve Christ in the world. And our discernment isn’t on the right track if it makes us less, not more, charitable towards those who disagree with us. My gut reaction to Bishop Akinola is to reject him as vitriolically as he rejects me. But then I remember what living in Nigeria was like, how the culture operated, and I can see – just – how many of the authoritarian certainties that represent safety to him are threatened if two men are free to kiss. Anger and fear are joined at the hip; it is his fear that makes him angry, and we can insist that it is time for the church to endorse the blessing of same-sex unions, not later but now, and still pray for his fear. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Selling Advent
Dec 3rd
There are almost as few things for sale with an Advent-theme as there are Lenten-collectibles. Lent, of course, is focused on the events leading up to the end of Jesus’ life at the age of thirty-three. Lent is a hard sell, and few people try to make a living off of Lenten trinkets.
But it comes as a surprise to many of us that one of the central themes of Advent is the final judgment. Advent, we are jolted to learn, isn’t just about waiting for the baby Jesus in the manger, but also our anticipation of the end of all things at the last judgment when Christ comes back on ‘the last day’ as the Lord of all of creation for all time .
No wonder that both seasons – Lent and Advent – are ‘hard sells’. They are, after all, periods for introspection about “the time of this mortal life” (BCP, 211), and thus have a certain ‘penitential’ quality to them – a tone of giving-up or turning-loose of our attachment to ‘things’. So ‘selling Advent’ sounds like an oxymoron, if not just in bad taste.
As a result, we are left with Advent Wreaths and Advent Calendars for the most part, although personally I can never find where I put the four-candle-styrofoam-form last year for my wreath, and I always get to about December 15th before I realize that I’m ten days behind with my calendar already, and give in to sloth.
So it’s been interesting to think about whether there are actually any ‘consumer goods’ out there with Advent themes that are worth considering even in an age of recession. The trick, of course, is how not to fast-forward to Christmas, even when trying to celebrate Advent — like this Nativity Advent Wreath I found for sale online this week.
In protest you could wear an “It’s Only Advent” button while you’re out doing your Christmas 
shopping. Or you you could be less self-righteous than I tend to be and look at a wonderful website and blog by the artist Jan Richardson to see some of her fabulous Advent art and to buy one of her Advent books – Nancy and I own Night Visions and have just ordered The Advent Door.
Here’s someone who’s been captivated by Advent, and her art can unleash a whole new set of associations about this special season.
Spend some time looking at her Advent Hours Series of Greeting Cards, or one of her fantastic prints, like “Wise Women Also Came.”
Advent is such a curious season for so many Christians because it invites us to entertain the possibility that God chose to be in our midst precisely because creation is one of God’s favorite places to be. God took flesh, became incarnate, because our flesh was worthy of bearing God … then … and still is now.
It’s hard to sell Advent because we’ve been so thoroughly taught that our bodies are bad that we can no longer even imagine they are good enough to be God’s place to dwell. So we wait in Advent for this miracle to become ours again … althought it is already, if we were only awake enough to see it.
Bishop Chane: editorial in The Guardian
Jun 26th
As usual, Jim Naughton, the Canon for Communications in the Diocese of Washington, scoops everyone on statements by his boss and our Bishop, John Chane. The Lead, part of the superb diocesan blog, Episcopal Cafe, posted the following editorial by Bishop Chane from the UK newspaper, The Guardian.
The framing of mutual joy: Our church’s evolving attitude has led us to the point where we must consider gay marriage.
Archbishop Rowan Williams has tried to take the issue of gay marriage off the table at the Lambeth Conference, which begins in three weeks. But the celebration of a gay relationship at one of London’s oldest churches last month, and the well-publicised gathering of anti-gay Anglicans in Jerusalem this week, suggest the controversy must eventually be faced squarely.
Conservative Christians say opening marriage to gay couples would undermine an immutable institution founded on divine revelation. Archbishop Henry Orombi, the primate of the Church of Uganda, calls it blasphemy. But, theologically, support for same-sex marriage is not a dramatic break with tradition, but a recognition that the church’s understanding of marriage has changed dramatically over 2,000 years.
Christians have always argued about marriage. Jesus criticised the Mosaic law on divorce, saying “What God has joined together let no man separate”, but even that dictum appears in different versions in the Gospels, and was modified in the letters of Peter and Paul. Christians had to square the ecstatic sensuality of the Song of Songs with Paul’s teaching that marriage was a fallen estate, useful primarily in saving those who could not be celibate from fornication.
This tension is indicative of the church’s long struggle to reconcile the notion that sexuality is a gift from God with its deep suspicion of the pleasure of sex. As the historian Stephanie Coontz points out, the church did not bless marriages until the third century, or define marriage as a sacrament until 1215. The church embraced many of the assumptions of the patriarchal culture, in which women and marriageable children were assets to be controlled and exploited to the advantage of the man who headed their household.
The theology of marriage was heavily influenced by economic and legal considerations; it emphasised procreation, and spoke only secondarily of the “mutual consolation of the spouses”. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, the relationship of the spouses assumed new importance, as the church came to understand that marriage was a profoundly spiritual relationship in which partners experienced, through mutual affection and self-sacrifice, the unconditional love of God.
The Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer puts it this way: “We believe that the union of husband and wife, in heart, body and mind, is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”
Our evolving understanding of what marriage is leads, of necessity, to a re-examination of who it is for. Most Christian denominations no longer teach that all sex acts must be open to the possibility of procreation (hence, contraception is permitted). Nor do they hold that infertility precludes marriage. The church has deepened its understanding of the way in which faithful couples experience and embody the love of the creator for creation. In so doing, it has put itself in a position to consider whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
Opponents of gay marriage may raise other objections – that it is unsuitable, for instance, to raise children with two mothers or two fathers. I believe these arguments are easily refuted, but they are arguments about effective social policy, not sound theology. Christians who want to deny others the blessings they claim for themselves should not assume they speak for the Almighty.
John Bryson Chane is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington DC, and a member of the Chicago Consultation, which works towards the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Anglican church.
Archbishop of Canterbury criticizes London same-sex blessing
Jun 22nd
“We have heard the reports of the recent service in St. Bartholomew the Great with very great concern. We cannot comment on the specific circumstances because they are the subject of an investigation launched by the Bishop of London.”On the general issue, however, the various reference points for the Church of England’s approach to human sexuality (1987 Synod motion, 1991 Bishops’ Statement — Issues in Human Sexuality, Lambeth motion 1:10, House of Bishops’ 2005 statement on civil partnerships) are well known and remain current.”Those clergy who disagree with the Church’s teaching are at liberty to seek to persuade others within the Church of the reasons why they believe, in the light of Scripture, tradition and reason that it should be changed. But they are not at liberty simply to disregard it.”
The statement by the archbishops of Canterbury and York was in response to the civil blessing of the partnership of two gay priests in London.
[Episcopal News Service] Two gay clergymen who had their partnership blessed in a London church and the priest who led the ceremony have received both criticism and praise for the move which conservatives say is at odds with the Church of England’s policies and more progressive Anglicans believe is long overdue.
According to reports, the Rev. Peter Cowell and the Rev. Dr. David Lord “exchanged vows and rings in front of hundreds of guests” on May 31 at St. Bartholomew the Great Church in the City of London.
The Rev. Martin Dudley, who led the service, said he didn’t have any regrets and he did not seek permission from London Bishop Richard Chartres.
Dudley said that the ceremony didn’t resemble a marriage and was “quite simply the blessing of a civil partnership.” He said the church’s guidelines don’t prohibit such blessings, “but ask me to respond pastorally and responsibly to what I’m being asked to do.”
Meanwhile, Chartres has ordered an investigation to take place, saying that services of public blessings for civil partnerships are not authorized in the Church of England or the Diocese of London. Civil partnerships have been legal in England since December 2005.
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.
