Anglican Battle Over Homosexuality Takes a 'Bizarre' Turn

Two of the United States most regressive retired bishops, Alex Dixon, formerly of Tennessee, and Fitzsimmons Allison, formerly of South Carolina, have now joined with some of the Anglican Communions most homophobic archbishops from Singapore and Africa to consecrate two American right-wingers to be bishops "to the dissidents in the United States".

These new bishops were chosen by no representative body. Their ordination was a power grab by an antiquated minority.

Let me say this carefully, but clearly. Anyone who elevates their prejudices to the position where they are defended as the will of God is evil. Anybody who justifies their denigration of another person's being based upon a quotation from an ancient sacred text called the Word of God is simply out of touch with contemporary scholarship.

This action flows directly out of the strange, almost pathological, action taken at the Lambeth conference in 1998. At this once-a-decade gathering of the world's Anglican bishops, a resolution was passed rather decisively condemning homosexuality as contrary to God's clear word in scripture and suggesting that any homosexual activity must be condemned by all Christians.

The winning majority at the Conference was made up of conservative Americans (who were a defeated minority on this issue at home) and the evangelical wing of this Church in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, together with the majority of Third World Anglican bishops.

The winning resolution revealed an attitude toward Holy Scripture that reflected total ignorance of the last 100 years of critical biblical scholarship. It also revealed an absolute void in knowledge of contemporary medical and scientific data in regard to the origins and nature of homosexual orientation.

Let me say this carefully, but clearly. Anyone who elevates their prejudices to the position where they are defended as the will of God is evil.

Anybody who justifies their denigration of another person's being based upon a quotation from an ancient sacred text called the Word of God is simply out of touch with contemporary scholarship.

Anybody who will not open themselves to the new knowledge readily available in medical and scientific circles because it calls into question their uninformed attitudes is profoundly ignorant.

There is no dialogue that is possible in those circumstances, and any attempt to engage in some form of dialogue is doomed to failure. In the process of seeking to do so, truth is not well served, integrity is compromised and one's deepest convictions are violated.

At the same time, the people who are representative of the issue being discussed--in this instance, the gay and lesbian Christians of the world-- are victimized once more by a weak and spineless leadership.

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