Peace to you. I was born and raised Catholic . . . then I realized I needed a more inclusive religion especially of gay/lesbian and female leadership and through many twists and turns found the Episcopal church –and without knowing it, I was researching what the church stood for in the middle of the controversy over the confirmation of the gay bishop. Well, to make a long story short, I joined a church that supported the more inclusive view of God’s love and it was not the old “St. Luke’s” . . . Inclusivity is important to me, diversity is important to me. I left the Episcopal church a few years back to go on a journey and seek God on my own, for various reasons. I have a personal relationship with “God” and it has become deeper because I went outside the constraints of Christianity and have learned about him from other traditions. I have become a more loving and giving person in so doing and slowly becoming more courageous to stand up for injustices that I see going on in our world. I had to grow passed my comfort zone of Christianity –I am still growing — to become more in tune with “God”… there are so many faith traditions from which to learn. I hold that pluralistic view which you describe above. But I disagree with the last sentence. And from this last sentence: “But to hold this position you probably have to gloss over real differences among the various religions and spirituality traditions which risks not taking any of them seriously enough” and the fact that you use the word “probably” I see that you do not understand what pluralistic Christians think. Of course, you cannot given that you are a leader of the church. In the end of your letter, you say that you can speak from the Christian experience only . . well, please refrain from making blanket statements of Christians who follow other faith traditions . . . Why should anyone take any religion seriously? The minute one does, one risks attachment to a set of ideas that immediately makes a person feel that they are “right” and the others wrong . . . judgement of others follows. . . and from there seeds of arrogance are planted, and in the extreme case hatred . . . I know you are a loving person and havent gone down this path _I am not talking about you-, but it is so easy for many to do so. I am trying to understand the other religions, find the common ground and go from there. In understanding other faith traditions, I open my eyes to the differences -a learning experience does not gloss over differences . . . I do not know where this journey will end … all I know is that I take my spirituality seriously, and maybe you are right, maybe in the end I will not take any religion seriously because in the end it is a personal relationship we have with “God” and I really think he,she, it does not care whether a person takes any one of the man-made traditions seriously. Just that we live a life based in love and compassion and understanding . . .

I don’t think you can really follow Jesus and not be committed to justice. I had in mind folks like 19th Century evangelicals in the U.S. and Great Britain who led the abolitionist movements, as well as Christians who opposed Nazism like the theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although I wouldn’t put him in the “exclusives” camp, there is also the great example of Martin Luther King and the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the Civil Rights movement. You can’t submit yourself to Christ and not be committed to justice any more than you can not be committed to compassion and forgiveness. You know “Loving your neighbor”, “the least of this” “Blessed are those who seek Justice.” The Western World’s progressive political beliefs are the children of Judaism and Christianity.

Yes, the current members know the history of St. Luke’s. You all choose to leave the Episcopal Church because a majority of us have come to see that the justice that following Jesus commands includes full acceptance of gay and lesbian people in the life of the Church and decided, through our democratic decision making structures, that that includes all of its ministries, lay and ordained. ( Yes, you can site a handful of lines of Scripture in opposition, in the same way that earlier defenders of slavery and the opponents to the ordination of women had their proof texts to quote.)

You were in no way forced out of St. Luke’s or the Episcopal Church. You are all still welcome here at St. Luke’s. You were and are totally free to hold your own positions on this issue and to openly disagree with decisions the Church as a whole has made, while still being members. No one in any way tried or will try to hamper your dissent. I fail to see the injustice you were resisting. You of course were free to leave. You were simply not entitled to take Church property and assets with you. In the Episcopal Church, a local congregation holds property in trust for the purpose of being an Episcopal Church and property returns to the larger Episcopal Church if that purpose in no longer being served. The Courts in California, and every other state where this issue has been tried, have ruled that legally this is the case.

Bob, why don’t you drop by my office sometime for a cup a coffee and we can discuss this further.

Peace,
Bryan
P.S. Bishop Bruno sends his best regards as well.

I wonder how many of your current congregants are aware that three years ago, 90+% of the members of your parish voted to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church. They did so knowing full well that they were risking the loss of the ability to worship in a place where many had been doing so all their lives and, for some, where their families had been doing so for generations. The Vestry members (I being one of them) knew that they were at risk of being personally sued by an Episcopal hierarchy that was not very tolerant of dissent from its “anything-but-exclusive” viewpoint. But the parish members and the Vestry could clearly see that they were facing a much greater risk; that of being forced to violate their conscience by being forced to walk down the progressive road to ruin. So, being the “softer version exclusives” that they were (and are), they became “the most committed resisters to injustice” by disaffiliating anyway. The rest, of course, is history. They were sued (as a body, and individually as Vestry members) and then forced out of their treasured property. Of course, God, being God, did not desert and they are now thriving as the local Anglican alternative, St. Luke’s Anglican Church, La Crescenta (anyone interested can “google” it).

It will be of great interest to me to see if you leave this response up on your blog. I hope you do (even though Bishop Bruno probably won’t like it