The Advocate on ++Katharine Jefferts-Schori

Love this piece on ++KJS by the Advocate.

Here is my fav part on +Schofield:

I don’t need to move from the chair I’m sitting in to wonder whether Bishop Schofield and I are on the same planet, especially when he says, in deference to those who would vote against his ecclesiastical revolution, that he “know[s] what it feels like to be a minority.”

Admittedly, as a non-Christian lesbian, I can never fully appreciate the pain felt by a straight white Christian man in the United States. Given the discrimination Bishop Schofield must confront every day, it’s fortunate that he’s protected by a federal hate-crimes law so that he can’t be attacked for his religious beliefs or his white race — not like I can be attacked for my “sexual brokenness,” as our Congress just freshly affirmed.

And on a more positive note:

Non-Episcopalian gays and lesbians might not think we have a dog in this fight, but we all have a vested interest in the outcome. We find ourselves in a very rare position here, one so unfamiliar to LGBT people we can scarcely grasp its significance: In the determination of the U.S. Episcopal Church to take a stand for our equality and inclusion, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, while the folks fighting for us risk their political and financial footing in the Anglican Communion, the third-largest Christian body in the world, which is far more sympathetic toward your Bishops Schofield than to the progressive platform embraced by Bishop Jefferts Schori and the majority of her church’s 2.5 million members.

We never asked Episcopalians to take up our fight. Rather, it seems, their spiritual path has led them to believe that we aren’t any less deserving of ministry or recognition or even consecration simply because we happen to be unpopular sexual minorities. I wish that weren’t an extraordinary concept in 2007, but it is. And Bishop Jefferts Schori has hardly blinked in a year of denominational strife that has seen her character and her commitment to her religious office questioned, challenged, dismissed, and maligned.

In this age of gay bashing from all sides, it isn’t often we encounter a religious leader—or any leader—willing to bulldog for our rights, especially when faced with such a potentially high cost to herself and the institution she represents. What I wouldn’t give for such genuine representation in our elected officials.

And finally, on ++KJS herself:

I keep meaning to bake that woman a cake.

In my fruitless search for a presidential candidate who not only believes in my essential equality but is willing to say it out loud and stand by his or her position when the inevitable attacks come down, I wonder if any money I may have set aside to donate to that elusive candidate’s campaign might not be better spent tithing to the Episcopal Church. At least there I know my support will go toward furthering my rights, not sending them to the back of the bus—or throwing them under it.

It’s hard to remember this perception from a non-Episcopalian at the hard moments when things get rough and we don’t get everything we want in the latest council, meeting, or convention, but there it is.  We are in a Church that ultimately wants to make full room for us at the table, even though they may not yet know how to do it.  That, for me, brings both comfort, sometimes anger, and the need for patience as I realize that there is intent and further waiting to be had while we work out the rest of the logistical issues as the chairs are lovingly being rearranged to make the space.

j