Toward a Systematic Theology of a System-Resistant Progressive Catholic

Over the past few months I have been unable to convene the Francis/Clare Community (F/CC), the weekly group of progressive Catholics who meet for a discussion of our world, the lectionary of the church, a potluck dinner and the eucharist. Some are members of small independent Catholic bodies, some still Anglican, some disaffected from organized religion altogether. I've missed my community. But with an evening + day class schedule plus a Buddhist group therapy I was attending, being out three nights a week was just impossible. This hiatus has given me a chance to rethink what I understand to be my religion. It would be easy to take the Unitarian seminarian approach of the via negativa - I don't believe in the creeds, I don't believe in the hierarchy, et al. The via positiva is much more difficult: I believe…..and here's why....

In the past few weeks, I've been engaged by John, a former Disciples of Christ pastor turned Episcopalian, in an internet discussion with a wide range of folks assembled by my friend, all of them unknown to me personally, in topics surrounding the issues of what is meant by the concepts "orthodox" and "Christian." It has been a good experience for me. I have thought that before resuming leadership of the F/CC, I probably ought to have a clear sense of what I saw as the mission of that group, including the theology I would bring to bear on that project. In short, I found myself contemplating the unthinkable - rewriting my own systematic theology. I still feel the way I did my first day in systematics class in seminary when I posed this question: Why is it necessary to have a system into which one's theology could be placed? What kind of G-d could be placed in such a box?

But I think today that my concern is not so much with the box as much as the notion that somehow G-d must fit it, thereby creating a compulsion for all others to do the same. What I've become comfortable with is the notion that we all speak for our own faiths and that anything else is dishonest (we don't all believe the same things) and arrogant (none of us have the right to speak for others, only ourselves).

And so, when the question was raised in our internet brawl this week "Exactly what does 'Christian' mean?" I took it upon myself to offer a stream of consciousness systematic theology of my own. The result follows:

Being Christian for me means being:

* A follower in a way of being fully human and living a life radically open to G_d taught and modeled by Jesus of Nazareth
* A seeker and worker for the Kingdom of G-d he preached, incarnated and ultimately gave his life for
* A tiny piece of polished glass in a huge, rich mosaic of widely diverse tradition, praxis, beliefs and self-understanding that stretches back 2000 years and draws from much more ancient sources in Hebrew, Greco-Roman, Celtic, middle eastern sources
* A human being who finds guidance and inspiration in the wisdom found among the Christian Scriptures sometimes called the New Testament and among the Hebrew Scriptures upon which they are based as well as among widely ranging aspects of the ensuing Christian theological tradition
* A child of G-d bearing the image of G-d who by virtue of the Christian tradition has come to value Creation, its inhabitants and the Creator who lies behind as well as within it

* A mystic who recognizes the divine in Creation and in the inner depths of self, a pattern of spirituality with a long pedigree in the Christian movement
* A prophetic voice for social justice, a vocation with a long pedigree in the Christian movement and in the Hebrew tradition which preceded it
* A professed member of the Franciscan third order seeking to live out vocation to follow the Way of Jesus in the manner of Francis of Assisi

In my understanding of Christian, I value

* Creation, Creator
* Spirit and the power of transformation including the redemption of social institutions
* Image of G-d found on every human face even when I have to work hard at seeing it (particularly when I have to work hard at seeing it)
* The life, teachings and example of Jesus who reveals G_d, embodies Spirit, exalts Creation and provides a Way of living into the same
* Sacraments in which the outward and visible signs point to an inward, spiritual grace (which is NOT to say G-d is not always present just that we are particularly aware of it in that moment and manner)
* Principled, post-conventional thinking found in the teachings of Jesus (Love your neighbor as yourself, blessed are the poor) and in the tradition (war is only just when the last resort necessary for self-defense)
* The witness and example of the many saints
* The apostolic succession and the ordering of ordained ministers not so much in terms of authority (and despite its tendency to tyranny) but simply because the succession provides a historical connection to the very roots of the tradition, a wide stream in which we today stand
* The richness of the 2000 years of Christian tradition, practice, beliefs

*Being open to the constant surprise of encountering the divine in totally unexpected ways

In my understanding of Christian I believe

* in G-d, mystery beyond human understanding and construction, who creates, sustains and redeems all of creation (Aquinas - We come from G-d and we return to G-d)
* I can trust G-d with my life here and now as well as whatever - if anything - may follow this life. It is not necessary for me to falsely reassure myself by contracting with G_d through the agency of organized religion (accepting Jesus as personal Lord and Savior, buying into creed or confession) for this to occur.
* in the communion of saints - all of them. Though I do not know there is a life after death, I sense that there is, choose to believe that there is and I experience the souls of those who have gone before me, particularly as they surround us in the eucharist.
* that the Way of Jesus is salvific - it brings health and wholeness to human beings

* that the Way of Jesus is transformative, redemptive personally and collectively
* that the Kingdom of G-d is the heart of Jesus' life and mission and that it is still as potentially life-giving to day as in his day
* that the Kingdom of G-d is the means by which love of neighbor and concern for the least of these, the fundamental tenets of Jesus' teaching, are expressed as right relation, justice

* that the deepest experience I can have of the presence of G-d occurs in the heart of the Creation
* that the second deepest experience of G_d's presence occurs in the heart of the sacraments.

I am a Christian despite

* The needs of so many fellow Christians to create boxes into which they would fit G-d (a laughable notion)
*The needs of so many fellow Christians to create a single box into which they would fit the diverse tradition of which we are a part
* The needs of so many fellow Christians to proclaim the requisite beliefs all must hold so they can feel secure about their own
* The history within our tradition of legitimizing and practicing almost every social pathology known to humanity: slavery, racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, anti-semitism, colonialism
* The tendency toward self-deprecation required of the faithful as a means of aggrandizement of patriarchal constructs of G-d (sovereign, judge, king, et al)
* The tendency toward infantilization of the faithful by its hierarchical leadership including telling people what they must believe in the name of some elusive notion of orthodoxy rather than asking them what they do believe and why

* The long pattern of legitimization of war if not the outright calling for crusade
* The tendencies of exclusivism found in most Christian theology that tend to play out in intrafaith wars for control and extrafaith pathologies such as anti-semitism, crusades, White Man's Burden and the legitimization of often genocidal conquest
* The virtual loss of any authentic appreciation for and following of Jesus (orthopraxis) in favor of conformity to rule-driven moralism and constructed belief systems (orthodoxy)
* The presumption of far too many Christians to speak of their faith in prescriptive terms (you must believe...) rather than descriptive terms (I believe...and here's why...)

Finally, there are a handful of singular aspects of the tradition that strongly inform my understanding of being Christian :

From the Gospels:

* The Beatitudes
* The Lord's Prayer
* The Prodigal Son
* The Good Samaritan
* The Great Commandments
* Jesus' articulation of his vocation from Isaiah at the beginning of Luke (free the captives, heal the wounded, et al)
* When you've done it to the least of these....

From the Christian Scripture:

* "Faith without works is dead: - James
* In Christ there is no slave or free... - Paul
* Paul's four fold form of the eucharist: took, blessed, broke, gave

From the Hebrew Scripture:

* Genesis creation accounts (both of them)
* the Prophets
* the Psalms and Proverbs
* Micah - What does G-d require of you? Love
mercy, do justice, walk humbly with G-d
* Proverbs - Without a vision, the people perish

From the Tradition:

* Historical: Meister Eckhart, Hildegaard of
Bingen, Peter Abelard, Teilhard de Chardin,
Iranaeus
* Modern: Latin American liberationists, Matthew
Fox, John Hicks, Elaine Pagels, John
Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Bob Funk,
* All will be well and all manner of thing
will be well - Julian of Norwich
* Canticle of the Sun - Francis
* St. Richard: Day by day, three things I pray,
to see thee more clearly, love thee more
dearly, follow thee more nearly.

OK, that's a beginning, the first word, not the final. As with most things in my life, it is indeed a work in progress.

p.s. I also believe there is a particulary hot spot reserved in hell for those who create these *$#!schizy HTML editors

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Perambulations from Exile at the Turn of a Year

Morning, New Year's Eve, 2006

Perhaps it's ironic that a man who spent four years of his life in seminary, years before and after reading and taking classes in topics surrounding the Christian tradition, who jumped through the million hoops required for ordination (including scoring highest in his seminary class on the grueling five day General Ordination Exam) and who was ordained in two of the most colorful multicultural liturgies (diaconal and priestly) ever conducted rarely goes to church, much less ever functions as a priest. Such is the life of those who return from progressive dioceses of the American branch of Anglicanism, the Episcopal Church, to the regressive, backwater dioceses of their birth, my own being the Diocese of Central Florida (DIOCFL).

In this diocese dominated by homophobia and approaches to faith that differ only by degrees of fundamentalism, the idea that I would ever function as priest here has never been a serious consideration. I knew that when I realized in 1995 that it was time to come home from the west coast, that my callings to be son, brother and uncle had become more pressing than my calling to serve the Episcopal Church in a progressive diocese. And so I find myself free on Sunday mornings, like this one, the end of a very long and tough year, standing at the gate of a New Year, thinking about the year just past and the year to come. This morning I will spend time in my yard, communing with G-d in the plants of the good earth, sharing hymns with the birds, marveling at the stained glass passing by on wings of butterflies, giving thanks for the warm Florida winter sun of G-d.

When I attend an Episcopal church - and I was there for midnight mass last week - I drive the 10 miles north to Winter Park to St. Richard's Church. It's probably the only true safe parish in the diocese, at least that I know of and that's accessible without a long drive. By safe I mean that it's not overtly homophobic and that I won't be pounded over the head with mean-spirited, legalistic sermons which will prompt me to wrestle with my urge to bolt from the church for the rest of the service. The pastor at St. Ricky's is a once-retired priest I've known for years, well educated, former Roman Catholic priest. (Roman retreads, as they are sometimes called). He's the consumate priest, thoughtful, concerned about his flock. He should have been bishop and lost to the current occupant of the position by one vote on the 13th ballot 16 long years ago.

The parish is oh-so-very-tolerant of gays as white middle class liberals tend to be. It's filled with elderly people, the mark of life here in the elephant graveyard, but there are some young families as well, even a few West Indies Anglicans punctuating an otherwise very white parish. In short, it's a nice group of people as white middle class Episcopal parishes tend to be in most places outside these dioceses of darkness in the grips of homophobia and fundamentalism. It's tolerant of people like me and for people like me, tolerable though only in moderate doses.

But it's not dynamic. It's not the parish life to which I grew accustomed in California. It's not a place where racial and ethnic diversity are a way of life, not an aspiration. It's not a place where social justice issues are the stuff of ordinary consideration, not the topics we can't talk about except in heavily nuanced, and thus meaningless, terms. It's not a place engaged with the world around us, it's a place seen as a refuge for those who agree to leave the world at the door, the eternal Episcopal salvation by good manners.

When I attend St. Richards, I find myself struggling with competing feelings: the comfort of an old shoe and the searing, unhealed loss of that to which I devoted my heart and soul for nearly two decades. It comes via the feeling of connection to a past I remember fondly - the salad days of the Cathedral of St. Luke downtown, struggling to develop and appreciate a diverse urban parish, reaching out to other faith traditions in interfaith dialogue, operating truly educational programs through adult education and a diocesan Institute for Christian Studies, where questions were raised rather than party line answers provided.

I also find myself missing the heady days of my four years in California, being a minority in a minority/majority population, learning new cultures and languages, watching my symbol system explode with new understandings and appreciations, talking about real issues - in the church, no less! And, oh yes, not feeling that I had to constantly be on guard because I was gay. (We're past that issue, Harry, a long time ago, the priest on the commission for ministry told me). I miss those incarnations of Episcopal Church. And while I appreciate the good people of St. Richards and their faithful pastor, for those of us who've seen Paree, how can this farm of mediocrity (on a good day) ever appeal for very long?

Of course, part of the problem is, the young man who went to California to take his hero's journey full of dreams and hopes came back a middle aged man with a golden fleece of new understandings that no one who wants to receive. And at some level, I don't know how I could have expected more. The truth is that I changed radically in seminary, California, Latin America and two years of doctoral work in Tallahassee. And Central Florida changed while I was gone, becoming almost as diverse demographically today as California was. But the Diocese of Central Florida did not change much. It stagnated. Such is predictable when ultraconservatives, resolutely committed to a mythologized golden age, are at the helm. And, frankly, from my observations of the Via Media list of Central Florida, the faithful remnant opposing what appears to be a looming schism of many within DIOCFL, the Episcopalians who remain within the church here to reconstitute the diocese will still likely be pretty conservative and conflict adverse. The author(s) of the Proverbs remind us that without a vision the people perish. And the writer of the Apocalypse of John quotes G-d as judging the banality and mediocrity of spirit of the Laodiceans this way: "You are neither hot nor cold; I will spit you out of my mouth."

Of course there is the Unitarian Church which I frequent about as often as the Episcopal Church these days. I love the Unitarians. So conscious, so willing to engage the world, so right on social justice and interfaith awareness, but so lacking in the things that feed my soul: mystery, symbols, liturgy. I almost always come away from church there having had my conscience pricked, my knowledge base expanded, my thought process engaged. I sometimes feel connected to some of the people there, particularly my old boss from my days at the Public Defender's office and their very fine pastor. She is Harvard educated, pastorally sensitive and willing to walk the walk of social justice work in this community. But what I don't feel as I cross Hampton Avenue, the street on which I lived for eight years prior to moving to California, is that I've actually been to church. Lessons and sermons is essentially a Protestant way of being religious. And I have learned anything over the years, it is that my spirit is Catholic with no prefix. While my progressive politics are much at home with the UUs, as they call themselves, my spirit cries out for connection to something deeper.

And so I will spend this Sunday morning in the cathedral of nature, missing the religious life that once preoccupied me, fondly remembering a life that has come and gone. Perhaps the birds will lift my spirits this beautiful sun washed day. Perhaps I'll experience the presence of my beloved late mother in the butterflies she loved so much. As we used to say at the beginning of each service in the Methodist Church of my youth: This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Well, we'll try.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Question for the Episcopal Church:
Can we face up to the truth of our misanthropy?

[N.B. - On the Episcopal Voices of Central Florida list (a list devoted to those resisting the seemingly pending fundamentalist led schism of the diocese from the national church), the unavoidable issues surrounding the place of gay and lesbians in the church have arisen. I've attempted to dialogue with the list on these issues with little success. Frankly, I sense that the chances of the Diocese of Central Florida joining the late 20th CE - much less the 21st CE - anytime soon are remote, even in a faithful remnant diocese that might result from schism of the more rabid conservatives here. This posting is the third in a series of modified versions of an exchange on the list with a very nice and I believe well intentioned Episcopalian here in Central Florida.]

RE: The perennial objection by those holding homophobic attitudes toward having them identified as such

We Need Everyone

First, let me make clear that it is not my desire that anyone leave the Episcopal Church. I believe we need each other, that diversity of experience and resulting understandings are healthy and that without them, we end up essentially engaging in the intellectual incest of the like-minded and like-situated. When perspectives outside those of the likeminded are unable to break through, the distorted results of the groupthink within the circle are not terribly different from those of the limited gene pools of familial and tribal incest.

My goal is not to exclude anyone. Indeed, it is exactly the opposite - to include everyone, fully include them as first class citizens. The only thing I see as worse than sectarian tendencies to circle the theological wagons to define insiders and demonize outsiders is the tendency within a self-proclaimed inclusive institution to create hierarchies of status built on highly arbitrary socially constructed bases. I want everyone to belong. I want everyone to count. And I want everyone to have equal access to the rights and privileges of our church, regardless of any innate or socially constructed status. And I see anything less than that as inconsistent with Jesus' vision of the kingdom of G-d.

Like a cancer deeply buried within

I also recognize that overcoming long held, generally unexamined prejudices is difficult. Straight people hardly need to tell LBGT persons about how difficult it is to come to grips with homophobia. Most of us have wrestled with its most virulent strain, internalized homophobia, most of our lives with the predictable results any socially imposed self-deprecation would generate. The lives of Jim McGreevey, former governor of New Jersey and Ted Haggard, the self-loathing evangelical pastor, are current examples of the self-destructiveness of internalized homophobia. Roy Cohn, the gay-baiting Red Scare conductor of witch hunts who later died in pain and self-loathing in the first wave of the HIV pandemic, is a good example of how destructive pathological internalized homophobia can prove to a society generally.

That is precisely why it is important to engage in the painful truth telling process of self-confrontation in getting at this social disease of homophobia. No one wants to see themselves in misanthropic terms. I cannot name one of my relatives or friends in 1960s segregated Central Florida who were willing to recognize that their understandings and values were racist. But they were. And it was only when we were forced to confront that reality, almost entirely after integration was a fait accompli, that it began to change. I dare say that we who grew up in an overtly racist culture will spend the rest of our lives confronting the subtle but indelible lines it has drawn upon our lives.

The Problem of Reductionism

That being said, I think you raise a good point when you object to the implicit reductionism in the common use of the term homophobia. At some level, we all have a tendency to reduce the complex reality of the other to the lowest common denominator when we call them on their misanthropic thinking. Thus it is not surprising that a person who holds largely unconscious racist understandings, for example, resists confronting those understandings because at a basic level they fear being reduced to that single malevolent aspect of themselves: "just a racist." Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame, makes a powerful point when, speaking of capital felons, she says "[P]eople are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives."

That the products of a historically homophobic culture hold homophobic attitudes is not surprising. But that does not mean they can be reduced to a single trait caricature: "just a homophobe." And those who would do so are not terribly interested in either helping the other confront that misanthropic attitude or in social change; they are interested in self-righteousness at the expense of the dignity of the other. It is one thing to recognize an attitude and pattern of behaviors as the products of a socially constructed misanthropy and thus capable of change. It is quite another to dismiss the other as "just a homophobe," less than fully human and thus unworthy of one's time and energies.

Clearly, it requires the ability to think critically to distinguish the criticism of an attitude from the demonization for purposes of dismissal of the human being who holds that attitude. It is hard work. But it is the work to which the Way of Jesus calls those who would seek ever closer approximations to the Kingdom of G-d here and now, as Jesus taught us. And it is the work of those who recognize that an unjust institution is the explicit rejection of our highest ideals as both followers of Jesus as well as Americans.

That work begins with truth telling, painful as it almost always is. The fact it is painful does not excuse us from engaging it. But if we believe what we say in our Baptismal Covenant, we are not alone in this task, we simply have to be willing to do our part: "I will with God's help."



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Question for the Episcopal Church:
What do you have to lose if change occurs?

[N.B. - On the Episcopal Voices of Central Florida list (a list devoted to those resisting the seemingly pending fundamentalist led schism of the diocese from the national church), the unavoidable issues surrounding the place of gay and lesbians in the church have arisen. I've attempted to dialogue with the list on these issues with little success. Frankly, I sense that the chances of the Diocese of Central Florida joining the late 20th CE - much less the 21st CE - anytime soon are remote, even in a faithful remnant diocese that might result from schism of the more rabid conservatives here. This is the second in a series of modified versions of an exchange on the list with a very nice and I believe well intentioned Episcopalian here in Central Florida.]

My dialogue partner has made several well taken points:

1. Reluctance to grown and change is part of the human experience.
2. Change is occurring as is evident in the backlash against it
3. The Episcopal Church is doing better than other churches in changing

My responses:

It's human nature to resist change

I agree with much of what you say here. While change is a constant in human
history, human beings tend to resist change. And most people readily focus on
penultimate concerns (carpeting, praise music, social respectability) rather
than doing the hard work of seeking things of ultimate concern (per Jesus:
the Kingdom of G_d), just as you note. Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed the
same thing a half century ago.

This is particularly true when dealing with issues of disparate social power and
privilege. Human beings who enjoy privilege in their socially constructed world
are reluctant to give it up. That is particularly true when such privilege is held
at the expense of others. This makes change difficult because what is
essentially required is an admission to oneself that the understandings one has
held for a long time were not only wrong but have proven destructive to others.
In church terms we call that repentance (literally rethinking, reconsidering)
which leads to regretting, remorse and ultimately to change of mind, behavior
patterns and thus of life. Little wonder that this proves so difficult.

Confronting misanthropy at the core of one's soul has the potential to create a
good bit of cognitive dissonance. It can leave one wondering who they really
are. If the inherited understandings of the other against which one has defined
themselves no longer can be trusted, how do I know who I am? And if this
pattern of thinking, which I have taken for granted, seen as common sense
and thus beyond questioning, has proven not only wrong but destructive,
what other aspects of my thinking might be similarly untrustworthy? Most of
us who grew up in the segregated South and endured the pains of
desegregation know this kind of cognitive dissonance and its related pain only
too well.

But why does change ever occur?

The only aspect I think you miss here is the reason change occurs. It does
not occur because people simply are given enough time to reflect on their
attitudes and come to the realization that their privilege is unfounded and
their understandings are destructive to others. Rather, it comes because
those who labor under the injustice of their privilege and those who are in
solidarity with them come to consciousness and steadily apply pressure to
change on the people and institutions which perpetuate that injustice. And
there are few more effective ways of doing that than simply calling upon
people to live into their own stated ideals: Love of neighbor as oneself
simply cannot be reconciled with unjust social relations. Equality under
the law (the inscription over the doors to the US Supreme Court building)
simply cannot be reconciled with discrimination in practice.

The example of John Newton, the composer of Amazing Grace might
be helpful here. Here is a man who benefited from the misery of other
humans whom he impressed into chattel slavery for years until he came
to the realization that slavery was sinful. For Newton that meant he
eventually left the slave trade and freed his own slaves. Ultimately it
would mean undertaking to rectify the injustices his life's privilege had
created, becoming an outspoken voice in the abolitionist movement. But
that whole transformation began as a result of his realization that his
attitudes, his conduct and the rationalizations he had used for so long to
maintain an untroubled soul were sinful. While I do not share his
evangelical theology, I think it is instructive to note how he saw himself,
his former attitudes and his conduct: Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound, that save a wretch like me. It's a hurtful word - not unlike
homophobic - but it was precisely the fearless and truthful willingness
to confront that wretchedness that prompted a life of justice seeking.

We're less phobic than the Bab-dissed

While the Episcopal Church may be light years ahead of regressive
churches like the Southern Baptists, it is simultaneously light years
behind the rest of society. The University of Central Florida where
I work is hardly the bastion of progressive thought and behavior
but even there, the university has found its way to prohibiting
discrimination in employment and promotion. Our LBGT
employees are first class citizens, at least on the books. But that
did not happen because the management of the university was
given enough love, space and time to come to their senses. It
occurred because the union there made it one of their priorities
and refused to back off its insistence that change occur.

The same is true within the Episcopal Church. Change has not
occurred because clergy protective of their power and laity
protective of their social respectability have simply come to
the conclusion that their attitudes and practices were wrong
and sought to rectify them. The reality is that change has
occurred because of nearly 50 years of concentrated effort by
those who languish under the injustice of a discriminatory (and
thus hypocritical) institution. Change has occurred because a
few brave souls were willing to brave the fierce opposition that
coming out of the closet involves and were willing to speak the
truth in love about the church the way its policies have devalued
their lives. And how much more powerfully can love be
demonstrated than being willing to endure the firestorm that
confronting a beloved church on its own sinfulness uleashes?

So, while I agree that change is happening and that the backlash
we are seeing from "the Old Guard" indicates that, I cannot agree
that patience is the appropriate response. People who are the
victims of injustice do not have the luxury of patience. Hence, King's
recognition that "Justice delayed is justice denied." Hence, also,
Burke's observation that " The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good people to do nothing."



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Question for the Episcopal Church:
Is Your Homophobia Worth Dying For?

[N.B. - On the Episcopal Voices of Central Florida list (a list devoted to those resisting the seemingly pending fundamentalist led schism of the diocese from the national church), the unavoidable issues surrounding the place of gay and lesbians in the church have arisen. I've attempted to dialogue with the list on these issues with little success. Frankly, I sense that the chances of the Diocese of Central Florida joining the late 20th CE - much less the 21st CE - anytime soon are remote, even in a faithful remnant diocese that might result from schism of the more rabid conservatives here.This posting and the next couple to follow are modified versions of an exchange on the list with a very nice and I believe well intentioned Episcopalian here in Central Florida.]

RE: Straight people need time to become comfortable with the idea of same sex marriages; they simply need "love, prayer and time."

Perhaps the specific issue of same sex marriage is new. But the larger
underlying issue of first class citizenship of LBGT members of the church is
hardly new. The General Convention in 1976 declared that "homosexual
persons are children of God and have a full and equal claim with all other
persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the
Church…[and] entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other
citizens…" It also "call[ed] upon our society to see that such protection
is provided in actuality."

Since then, the church has studied, engaged in dialogue, resolved, wrung its
hands, threatened schism and sold its soul - and its LBGT members in the
process - to insure a ticket to the Lambeth tea party. But the bottom line is
simply this: LBGT persons do NOT have a full and equal claim with all other
persons upon the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the
Church. Ironically, while the rest of society has made noticeable, though
slow, progress toward removing discrimination in our society at large, it
has become the church generally and, in places like this diocese, the
Episcopal Church specifically which has proven the most vociferous
opponent of equal protection of the laws, both within and outside the
church.

The argument that people just need time to get comfortable with these
new ideas is hardly anything new. Those of us who grew up in segregated
Central Florida are very familiar with this argument. White people just
need time to get used to the idea that black people will be treated
equally in our society. Indeed, it was precisely that argument that
prompted Martin Luther King, Jr. to observe, "Justice delayed is justice
denied."

What reveals the lie in this plea is simply this: there is no timetable for
getting comfortable. There is no end point on this process of "love, prayer and
time." To test this theory one only has to ask: How much time do you need?
Give us a date when your process will be completed. We will wait patiently.
But the reality is, we all know one will not be forthcoming.

The reality is, acceptance of peoples historically treated unjustly does not
precede the institution of just social relations. White people did not get
comfortable with black people prior to integration. It only occurred in
retrospect when the caricatures and stereotypes began to be punctured
by experience of real live human beings who proved not much different
from us. Male priests and bishops did not get comfortable with women
priests prior to their entry into pulpits where they proved themselves
equally adept as their male colleagues. A million years will not prove
sufficient to a people ommitted to the comfort of their inherited,
unexamined understandings.

But, as the poster noted, attitudes are fairly generationally related. If the attitudes of our young people are any indication, the changes in attitudes regarding same sex relationships will be a fait accompli in only a few years.

My observation is that this is already happening. With the breakdown of taboos
on LBGT relationships in our media and the changes in the laws of states and
the practices of many corporations, the children coming to adulthood today
will have lived in a culture where discrimination against LBGTs is rightly seen
as the product of the social disease of homophobia that it is. In the last election,
amendments which singled out LBGT relationships for discrimination,
prohibiting legal marriages, passed in six of the seven states in which they
were proposed. But in looking at the exit poll data, a striking demographic
jumps off the page - the group with the lowest level of support for these
amendments was the 18-25 year old voters and in six of the seven states,
that demographic group voted against the amendments. The group with
the highest support was those over 65. Thus, I observe that in another
10-20 years, it is likely that much of this dispute will be over and resolved
in favor of equality for LBGT persons.


The questions that this raises for the church, however, are significant:
If the church continues to define itself by its opposition to LBGT persons,
what is going to draw keep people who have long since recognized the
injustice in such positions? If our elderly who support the status quo die
off and our young who cannot reconcile such positions with fundamental
theological principles of indiscriminate love of neighbor opt out, whither
the church ?

Bottom line: Is our homophobia, our reluctance to grow and change,
worth dying for?



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
https://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

At 53, still the 8 year old boy, amazed, watching the heavens light up

I never seem to be amazed at how excited I still become when a manned space mission blasts off from Kennedy Space Center. Cape Canaveral is perhaps 45 miles due east of Orlando. On a clear day (or night, as the case was this time), the rockets clear the horizon within 10 seconds of liftoff. While we're a bit too far here to see the rocket body itself without telescope, we can see the fantail plume of gases, fire and smoke rushing from the rocket engines, propelling the rocket ever higher into space.

Here in Central Florida, there is an old custom of folks leaving their homes and places of work to go watch the skies when rockets lift off, particularly manned flights. We find open fields absent of light, like my father last night in Bushnell, 50 miles to the west, who would have to wait another few seconds to see the tiny yellow/orange/white spot rising from the eastern horizon. Here in Orlando, many of us go to lakeshores, bringing portable radios (and today more sophisticated hand held electronic devices with television broadcasting) and often libations with which to celebrate successful launches. We hold our breath, letting it out in a long gasp of awe as the rockets mount the heavens and we follow it with cheers and applause. Bravo! Tens from all the judges, even the Russians!

In my own lifetime, I have seen hundreds of rockets lift off from the Cape stretching all the way back to my third grade class, piled into the playground by our teacher who told us to look to the east, our eyes squinting in the bright sun. And there on the horizon, the first American manned space shot (we were behind the Russians at that point!) crossed the blue/white sky of early afternoon, leaving a vapor trail behind it, carrying Alan Shephard into the history books. It was love at first sight and has never abated since.

Not unlike the phenomenon of Kennedy assassination awareness of place and company, I remember exactly where I was when the first flight to circle the moon lifted off. I remember the images the crew sent back to earth, the first time we had seen our beautiful blue and green planet from space. And I remember the lump forming in my throat as I realized things would never be the same. I remember the first lunar landing mission lifting off from the Cape early in the morning, a cold morning in Central Florida in which my father, brother and I shivered in the car parked alongside the cow pasture that has since given way to a shopping center and a high school. And I remember our state student council leadership training conference coming to a complete, screeching halt at Stetson University, everyone leaving the conference room to crowd around the televisions in the student lounge to watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon and his reflection on that event: One small step for man, one giant leap for humankind.

But the legacy of the space program watcher contains great sorrow as well. I remember the very sad evening during high school when news of the Gemini astronauts burning alive in their capsule at the Cape interrupted the Miami Hurricanes game to which we were all listening on the transistor radio. I remember praying with all my might for the Apollo 13 astronauts, drifting home from space on little more than hope and desperate measures. And I remember the very long drive home a Jesus Seminar on the Road conference I had attended in Sarasota, the grim news of the break up of the Columbia over Texas pouring from the car radio as I struggled to stifle tears, hurtling across the Central Florida I-4 corridor at 70 mph.

The most poignant memory of this long love affair came with the disastrous end of the Challenger in January 1986. It was a particularly cold day in Central Florida that morning, the 26 degrees in Orlando a record low in a decade of harsh freezes of the century. I wondered why NASA would send up a rocket in such cold weather. (Later a friend from NASA told me they had been heavily pressured by the Reagan White House to have the shuttle in orbit for the upcoming State of the Union address). I had stayed home from the law firm that day, too sick to go to work. As I lay on the couch, half dozing, the telephone rang. It was a friend calling to say the shuttle had just exploded. "Go outside," was all he said.

There in the sky was the most unnatural cloud I had ever seen. My neighbors, who had gone out to see the shot, stood there, mouths agape, stunned. When I asked what had happened, they pointed to the swath of clouds swerving left and down. "That's where it went down," they said. Back inside the warm house, the television was full of scenes of the explosion, repeated over and over until many people in the world had visions of that explosion burned into their memory banks. And while the television reporters kept hope alive for much of the day that perhaps the astronauts had survived the cataclysmic explosion, those of us shivering on the street corner in Orlando that morning knew just from the unearthly configuration hanging over our heads for the duration of that day that there would be no survivors. While the clouds themselves dissipated by the following day, an overwhelming sense of grief would huddle low over Central Florida's psyche for weeks to come. A people that celebrated successful launches of manned space flights was in deep mourning.

And yet, knowing the possibilities of disaster (including danger to the observers should the occasional nuclear payload explode with the rocket lifting off), we still make our pilgrimages to the open fields, lake shores, skyscraper windows, beach fronts, to watch, to hope, to pray and to celebrate. Last night, we celebrated a successful launch that turned our cool, indigo evening skies nearly bright as day. And I gave thanks for the latest chapter in this lifetime of watching, waiting and hoping, celebrating humanity's technological genius. But most of all, I gave thanks that after 45 years and countless launches, I am still that eight year old boy from Bushnell, watching that speck of light racing across the sky, feelings of amazement and excitement racing through my mind, hope and gratitude filling my heart.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++