The Episcopal Church (U.S.A.) and the Anglican Communion

  You may have read in the New York Times or Washington Post some version of The Episcopal Church USA has been sanctioned, or censured, or temporarily suspended from the Anglican Communion. That's not true. The best description I have found of what actually happened was written by Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and McFaddin Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School.

Here's the link: http://abmcg.blogspot.com/2016/01/no-episcopal-church-has-not-been.html.

Here's a link to the Presiding Bishop, The Right Reverend Michael Curry's, response: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2016/01/15/video-presiding-bishop-responds-to-primates-actions-stresses-relationships/

and the response of our diocesan bishop. The Right Rev. Andrew Dietsche

http://www.dioceseny.org/news_items/308-bishop-responds-to-primates-vote-to-sanction-episcopal-church

The short version could be flipply summarized as "three years of not having to attend official meetings is a punishment?!"

More prayerfully,there is a often a cost to doing the right thing, and getting to "the right thing" in any institution is often a long time coming. It is absolutely "right, and a good and joyful thing," that the Episcopal Church offers ordination and marriage rites to people regardless of their sexual orientation. It is also right to honor the relationships across the Anglican Communion, and frankly within the Episcopal Church and within our diocese, by continuing to work together with integrity in spite of profound disagreement. The Presiding Bishop said it well:

"Our commitment to be an inclusive Church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all."

Let's keep on  opening the doors of our church, our institutions, and our hearts to the fullness of God's love, in more ways than we can ever ask or imagine.

Allison