I’ve expressed some real misgivings about some of the comments made by Peter J. Boyer of The New Yorker about the Episcopal Church in an online Q and A. Boyer is the author of A Church Asunder, a piece in this week’s issue of the magazine, which hit newsstands and most mailboxes today.
Having been prepared for the worst, I must be quick to say that I think the piece, which I’ve finally had the chance to read, is quite good. By which I don’t mean necessarily good for the Church, but good in a journalistically accomplished sort of way. It is fair, nuanced, and he treats most of the issues on which he touches in some real depth—the one exception being evangelism, where he buys the conservative boilerplate—“If you just preach what we tell you, you will grow.”—uncritically. His miniature portraits of Bishops Gene Robinson and Bob Duncan, accomplished primarily by narrating their spiritual biographies, bring them both alive.
Boyer he leaves one major area of our current situation unexplored: who is paying for the pro-schism initiative? I hope to address that in some detail fairly soon. Otherwise, I think he’s written a good primer for people who are new to the issue, and elicited some telling quotes from a number of the individuals he spoke with. (For disclosure’s sake, I should mention that I am quoted at the end of the piece.)
Here are three quotes I’ve culled that I think fair usage rights permit me to pass on.
The first is from Peter Akinola, who makes what, to me, is a breathtaking claim:
“It is simple,” Akinola told me. “We believe we know the mind of the Lord. We believe we know what he’s asking us to do in his holy word, and we simply respond to his command. . . . It is the power of the word, and the Lord has blessed our efforts.”
The second is from Bob Duncan:
“I’m not in a fight over sexuality, gracious sakes,” he says. In his earlier career in campus ministries, he often ministered to young gay and lesbian people. “I loved them and cared for them,” he says. “We brought them in and helped them understand that God loved them. And actually not all of them came out of their same-sex affection, but they grew a lot toward God. We just made it clear we can’t bless the relationships. Everybody’s a sinner; you’ve got to break yourself.”
And the third is from Gene Robinson:
“The reason that I have trouble with Bob Duncan and that bunch is that they are seeking to align our church with Peter Akinola, who says that homosexuals are lower than the dogs,” he recently told me. “That is very close to saying ‘inhuman,’ which is very reminiscent of what Germans said about Jews and so allowed them to devalue Jews, that it was O.K. to exterminate them. Bob Duncan wants to ally our church with the church of Kenya, where the primate there said that, when I was consecrated, Satan entered the church. What most people don’t realize is that homosexuality is something that I am, it’s not something that I do. It’s at the very core of who I am. We’re not talking about taking a liberal or conservative stance on a particular issue; we’re talking about who I am.”