Pastoral Letter From Bishop Smith and Bishop-Elect Reddall
February 28, 2019
Feast of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper and Elizabeth Evelyn Wright
The Bishop Diocesan may deliver, from time to time…a Pastoral Letter to the people of the Diocese….The Bishop may require the clergy to read such a letter to their congregations.*
–Canon III.12.3
“For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We have watched the news of the United Methodist Church’s Special Session of the General Conference with aching hearts.
The UMC’s Conference was a global gathering of Methodists to determine if their branch of the Jesus Movement would be more open to the full inclusion of their gay and lesbian members in all areas of ministry and marriage equality. The outcome was a strengthening of the prohibitions against the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ members.
The challenges faced by the UMC are not unfamiliar to us in the Episcopal Church. While the Episcopal Church in the United States has now officially committed itself to the full inclusion of all people, it has not been without the sacrifices of many people of faith who were told they were not worthy of the full sacramental rites of our church, and who were repeatedly admonished to be patient, to wait, and to put a desire for denominational unity ahead of their own spiritual health. We lament, too, our own communion’s harmful short-sightedness in the recent invitations to the 2020 Lambeth Conference of all active Anglican bishops and spouses except those spouses of bishops in same-gender relationships. This action is contrary to the values of the Episcopal Church.
How do we live in denominations and global communions where there are different understandings of the gift of sexuality, simultaneously loving our neighbors who differ from us and at the same time refusing to compromise on our welcome of all people as full members of the Church? And how do we do so particularly when we recognize that it is our Anglican communion’s colonial actions which have laid the groundwork for this very division? These are hard questions of following Jesus in our world, and will guide our long-term actions as we embark upon the Way of Love.
But for today, our response is primarily pastoral. We offer our love and support to those who are devastated by and affected by the United Methodist Church’s decisions. We offer our love and support to those in our own churches for whom this news cycle is all too familiar and opens old wounds. And we pray that Christ will guide all people of faith out of prejudice and into truth; out of hatred, and into love.
