Integrity wants Same-Sex Blessings
A month ago I wrote that we should enter into a period of grace and give the Lambeth / Windsor process one last throw. I got some stick from US conservatives for even daring to suggest such a thing. Here’s the key paragraph that caused upset:
Here then is perhaps one road forward for the Conservatives. GAFCON and the Global South should call an immediate moratorium on border-crossing. Yes, that will be painful for many. It will explicitly involve the dying to self that I spoke about above, for in the short term it will leave many abused and attacked in liberal dioceses, believing that they have been abandoned by those who said they would provide rescue. It would also implicitly involve confessing that the act of crossing diocesan boundaries was wrong, for we there would be no need to have a moratorium if crossing boundaries was seen by all as acceptable. But beyond these two things, it would at the same time indicate that we are serious about holding the Communion together, and what it would also do is give TEC, Canada (and Scotland now it appears) a very clear opportunity to also engage in the moratoria that they have been asked to impose, on same-sex blessings and ordaining and consecrating those in sexual relationships outside of marriage. There is a US House of Bishops meeting in September followed by Diocesan Conventions throughout the Autumn, easily enough time for all the necessary bodies in TEC to have come to a clear and unequivocal decision before the Primates’ Meeting in early 2009 on whether they want to take the path advocated by Rowan.
Today, Susan Russell unveiled an advert that Integrity are running in the September issue of Episcopal Life. This is it:
It looks as though Integrity are not interested in the moratoria or any part of the Windsor / Lambeth process. What do we all do now?
Peter I think your suggestion of a period of grace was a very good one. Sadly I think it became clear last weekthat the GAFCON ites were not interested in the moratoria on boundary crossing…. I’m not very surprised at that, or at the reaction of Integrity.
Of course Integrity is against the moratoria on ssbs and partnered glbt bishops.  They’re a lobbying group for glbt folks. They also aren’t TEC, even if many in TEC find their arguments convincing. Given all this, why should anyone change their position based on Integrity doing what one should have expected them to do?
Jon
In his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:
For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see … that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
While all this talk of a “cooling off period” is wonderful, I don’t see how it benefits anybody except the Opponents of Equality.