The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego joined all six California Episcopal Dioceses, issuing a statement urging voters to vote “no” on Proposition 8, a November ballot initiative which, if passed, would amend the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage.“We do not believe that marriage of heterosexuals is threatened by same-sex marriage,” the Bishops stated in the document signed on Sept. 10. “Rather the Christian values of monogamy, commitment, love, mutual respect and witness of monogamy are enhanced for all by providing this right to gay and straight alike.”
Organized in 1789, the Episcopal Church is the American branch of Anglicanism, the religious tradition born of the once Roman Catholic Church of England. The Episcopal Church is comprised of a community of 2.4 million members in 113 dioceses and 11 nations. The tradition in its present form blends elements of Catholicism and Reformation church life.
“We believe that continued access to civil marriage for all, regardless of sexual orientation, is consistent with the best principles of our constitutional rights,” reads the statement signed by the Rt. Rev. James R. Mathes, the Bishop of San Diego. “We believe that this continued access promotes Jesus’ ethic of love, giving and hope.”
Organized in 1973, the Diocese of San Diego is comprised of a community of 50 congregations with 22,000 baptized members throughout San Diego, Imperial and Riverside counties and Yuma, Ariz.
The local Bishop said he supported the Supreme Court’s decision in May and opposed the effort to amend the constitution.
“At a federal level, the constitution has only been successfully amended to expand rights, not remove them, and it follows that California would maintain a similar posture,” Mathes said, noting while supporting the rights of gays and lesbians, he is also mindful the church has not yet made the decision to bless same-sex unions.
“We are in the midst of a challenging but vital conversation about holy relationships in this diocese and indeed across the communion. I ask all people of the diocese to hold the court’s decision gently. Prayerfully remember that God has placed his children, who share different perspectives on same-sex relationships, next to each other in church every Sunday,” Mathes said.
In June, Mathes took a step toward the full acceptance of gays when he ordained Thomas Wilson, the first openly gay deacon of the local Dioceses, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral.
Wilson, who moved to San Diego eight years ago with his partner of 20 years, is expected to serve as a deacon for six months to a year before becoming a priest, Mathes said.
The ordination of gay clergy has been the center of nationwide controversy in the Episcopal Church, as church leaders have struggled to reconcile theological tradition with a changing world and some congregants’ more tolerant views.
Controversy has stirred since, when the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who is gay, was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, resulting in dozens of congregations across the United States, including nine in the San Diego diocese, to split from the Episcopal Church. Many formed new, more conservative congregations affiliated with the Anglican Church.
In a recent visit to San Diego, presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was asked about how she understands some of the passages in the New Testament that speak about homosexuality.
“I understand them as culturally contexted, speaking to specific circumstances that Paul, or another writer, encountered. What we understand as the mature love between two people of the same gender committed to each other in a lifelong partnership, was unimagined in the first century,” she said.
“The passages that do seem to speak to what some people say is homosexuality, I understand to be speaking to issues of abuse, power relations – a soldier and his male slave – or to things that we would probably more appropriately translate as ‘cult prostitution,’ not to the kind of relationship that we would expect of any two mature, Christian adults, whether homosexual or heterosexual.”
Still, the California bishops said while their denomination and even they themselves remain divided on whether Episcopal clergy should officiate same-sex marriages, they are united in the belief that it would be morally wrong for voters to overturn the California Supreme Court ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to wed.
“Some of us believe it is appropriate to permit our clergy to officiate at such marriages and pronounce blessings over the union; others of us believe that we should await consent of our General Convention before permitting such actions,” they said.
“Nevertheless, we are adamant that justice demands that same-sex civil marriage continue in our state and advocate voting ‘no’ on Proposition 8.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++“Nevertheless, we are adamant that justice demands that same-sex civil marriage continue in our state and advocate voting ‘no’ on Proposition 8.”
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(Source: GLT.com)