Sarah Dylan Breuer, an openly gay, partnered, liberal member of the Special Commission, has posted an article in The Witness with her personal reflections about the commission’s report (PDF). It’s a graceful and gracious essay, well worth reading.
One passage gladdened me: The Special Commission’s report, according to Breuer:
says a gentle but firm “NO” to the ecclesiology in the Windsor Report that presents bishops as the final word on church teaching or discipline, or worse yet as “princes of the church” (or, in jargony terms, the “monarchical episcopate”).
Brava, and amen (“so be it”).
More excerpts from her article follow; all emphasis is mine:
… Taking our sisters and brothers from across the Communion seriously as conversation partners means that we’ll push back at times. I believe that Desmond Tutu is right: oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Serious international listening should challenge not only Americans to think seriously about American hegemony, but also homophobes and heterosexists to think seriously about heterosexism, and those in power to think seriously about how they can empower those with less.
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… I also believe that true communion is based not on a superficial papering-over of differences, and most certainly doesn’t require any of us to deny who we are, but rather requires us to respect the very real differences we have with one another as gifts that may build up the Body of Christ and further our participation in God’s mission of healing, justice, and reconciliation.
Throughout my time on the special commission, I kept something very intentionally in mind: namely the way Jesus taught his followers to respond when someone struck them in the face, or sued for their cloak, or when Roman soldiers forced them to carry their pack a mile. As Walter Wink has pointed out, Jesus’ response was in each of these cases to do MORE than what was asked (or demanded), and yet to do so in a way that reclaims agency and reframes the situation in a way that transforms it utterly. My goal as I participated in the special commission’s deliberations was to follow Jesus’ way of relating to others, looking for a creative “third way” that called out the gifts and dignity of all concerned rather than getting drawn into the kind of “tit for tat” response that perpetuates conflict.
With this in mind, I wanted to ask (and often did so aloud), “Where is there room for grace here? What can I give to encourage and support conservatives? What will the rest of you give to support and encourage me and LGBT people affected by our words and decisions?” Other members of the commission responded to those questions, and often brought them up when I didn’t. The report is not what it would have been had I been the sole author; in most ways, I believe it’s better than that. It’s far from perfect, but I believe it’s a contribution to the conversation that could prove fruitful at convention, and here are some of the reasons I think so:
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[The report] says a gentle but firm “NO” to the ecclesiology in the Windsor Report that presents bishops as the final word on church teaching or discipline, or worse yet as “princes of the church” (or, in jargony terms, the “monarchical episcopate”). … It sets forth clearly that we hold the ordering of the church’s ministry to flow from Baptism, that the gifts of the Spirit (including those for apostolic ministry) are poured out over all of God’s people, and that we believe that lay people, deacons, and priests as well as bishops must have a voice in church councils (as surely the principle of “what touches all should be decided by all” should imply!). And for this reason, the report expresses appropriate wariness toward proposals such as adding the Primates as members of the Anglican Consultative Council when doing so threatens to drown out the voices of women.
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