(suggestions for consideration by those involved in the crisis in the ECUSA)
In the ECUSA, we are seeing increasingly both liberal bishops in their diocesan messages and advocates of the LesBiGay lobby in their writings and speeches using the Anglican doctrine of reception with respect to the blessing by the church of same-sex couples. This Anglican doctrine was created (from other forms of the doctrine of reception in the ecumenical movement and with respect to the history of doctrine) in 1988 in order to deal with the reality of divisions within the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women.
What the doctrine teaches is that after a synod or convention passes the necessary legislation to allow women to be ordained, then that doctrine and practice is in the process of reception - of testing and discernment - until such time as there is consensus about it, one way or the other. However, women in orders are to be treated as if they are truly and fully ordained even though their orders and position are being tested and discerned. Respect, good will and kindness are to be shown by all to all.
Applied to the "gay" issue by people in the ECUSA, the doctrine of reception teaches that after the General Convention of the ECUSA has passed the legislation allowing the blessing of "gay" couples (with local bishop's approval) and has confirmed the election of a priest (in a "gay" union) to be a bishop, then this doctrine and practice is in the process of reception, that is being tested. Discernment is being applied. As this goes on, those in such unions are to be treated as in legitimate and wholesome partnerships. All in the church are to be respectful and kind one to another so that there are no outcasts.
So it is that, whether we like it or not, the ordaining of women and the blessing of same-sex partnerships have been brought together and placed, as it were, under the same umbrella. This way of thinking is gaining ground in the ECUSA and also in Canada and Great Britain.
But is there a deeper more profound relation between the ordination of women and the blessing of "gay" couples? Yes, there is, and it is a connection which few in the conservative or the liberal camps of the Church appear to wish to think about or to acknowledge.
This relation and connection is NOT that of immorality - that both these church rites break the moral law of God. Obviously, "gay" sex is contrary to the law of God concerning sexual relations and it is described in the NT as a sin which, if not repented of, bars a person from the kingdom of God. Virtually all say that a woman who is ordained is not guilty of breaking that which we normally think of as the moral law of God - the second part of the table of the Ten Commandments. If anyone is guilty of breaking any law, be it of the first or second part of the table of the Commandments, it is the bishop who ordains her.
What does unite these two rites is that each is a setting aside, or a breaking, or a disregarding, of the Order that God in his wisdom has placed within the natural creation and in the kingdom of God, as we know them. Obviously "gay" sex is unnatural -- contrary to the Order within creation wherein male and female are equal but different, complementary, and ordered one to another for the purpose of procreation and personal fulfillment. Thus "gay" sex is both immoral and disordered - BUT yet it can be forgiven and those involved in it helped and healed.
However, women's ordination (which elevates the women to pastoral oversight) though not immoral is also unnatural, contrary to God's order for the relation of the two sexes and for the ordering of His Church. Male and female are certainly equal in dignity, worth and ability; but, they are also distinct in order, even as the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are equal in their Personhood and their Divinity/Godhead but in an ordered relation one to another - the Father together with His Son and with His Spirit. The Father is first in order, the Son second and the Holy Ghost, third: in the human race the male is first in order and the woman second in order (see Genesis 1: 27 & St Paul's teaching on headship). To break this order is to interfere with what God has blessed.
Thus it is that when the Church, even with good intentions and according to the best secular wisdom of the day, introduces innovations that are contrary to known divine Order, then the result is disorder in terms of the kingdom of God, and, immediately a window or door is opened through which further forces to cause disorientation and disorder enter. This has been the case so clearly in the Provinces of the Anglican Communion in the West (North) and may be the cause of the collapse of this Family of Churches as we have know it.
So the relation between women's ordination and the blessing of "gay" couples is that they are both examples of disorder and a breaking of the command to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength. In each, however, those who do the ordaining or give the blessing are more guilty than those who are ordained and blessed.
P.S. One could add that the blessing of serial monogamy by the clergy in the ECUSA is another example of disorder, which also opens windows and doors wide to allow secular forces to enter the church and change her mindset and practice and make her weak in moral theology and vigor.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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