Forget the extremes; listen to the middle

By Lauren R. Stanley


    “What,” a man at church asked me recently, “are we going to do now? What’s going to happen to the Episcopal Church?”

    He was asking about the controversy that has raged in the Anglican Communion for the last three years, centered on the American consecration of a gay bishop living with a male partner and the acknowledgement that in some U.S. dioceses, blessings of same-gender unions take place.

    Many conservatives in the Episcopal Church and throughout the Anglican Communion have condemned those actions and anyone who supports them. Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, one of the Episcopal Church’s leading critics, compares the American Church to a cancer that needs to be cut out. Do what we conservatives want, he says, or be gone.

    Many liberals in the Episcopal Church and throughout the Anglican Communion cheered the actions that took place in 2003 and, claiming that issues of human sexuality are issues of God’s justice, want more support for gays and lesbians. We are radical prophets, they claim. If you don’t like what we liberals are doing, be gone yourselves.

    Both conservatives and liberals have huge pulpits and use them loudly. Outsiders watching this debate cannot be blamed for thinking that all the Episcopal Church talks about, thinks about and acts on, is sex.

    But many of us caught in the middle believe that neither side speaks for the rest of us. Most Anglicans, both in the United States and throughout the world, do not believe that the core issue of our faith is sexuality. Most of us want to focus on preaching the Gospel, curing the sick, caring for the homeless, feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty.

    Of course, few listen to us in that vast middle, because we don’t have big pulpits. And we don’t speak in sound bites.

    We don’t look at the world as black and white. We can see the justice on both sides of the sexuality debate. And most of us have no idea which side is correct.

    We want to focus on Jesus and what Jesus told us to do: Preach. Teach. Baptize. Care. Love. Hope.

    What we get instead are blasts from each extreme threatening to throw the other out of the Anglican Communion (as if anyone had that right, which no one does, by the way).

    And we caught in the middle wonder what has happened to the Gospel.

    Loving God and loving our neighbors are the two main commandments laid down by Jesus in his ministry. The fighting taking place right now seems to fulfill neither. Left and right throw verbal bombs at each other, make demands that couldn’t be met even if anyone wanted to, and threaten to cut each other off. Both sides focus on sexuality and whether or not it’s a sin. Each side claims it knows God’s mind, and the other does not. Each extreme is more interested in winning the fight than in admitting, as one Episcopal bishop likes to remind us, that we all could be wrong.

    The truth is, this great debate truly is not about sexuality. It’s about how we remain a family of faith. It’s about how we talk to and with each other, how we listen to and with each other, how we work together. It’s about authority and control, and who has it and who doesn’t.

    With neither side willing to give an inch, divorce seems to be on the horizon.

    And this will not be an amicable divorce. It will be nasty and brutal, and will leave many of God’s children desolate and desperate, feeling and being unloved.

    Those of us caught in the middle are sick of this fight. It’s not that we don’t want to discuss the issues; it’s that we’re tired of being yelled at, threatened and condemned. We’re tired of having the world think that all we think about is sex. We’re tired of being told that only one side can be right, that only one side is the true faith. We’re tired of being told that if we don’t agree – 100 percent – with one side or the other, that we are going to hell.

    We in middle wish those on the extremes would pay more attention to what we believe is the most important job God has given us: reconciliation and how we can bring that about in our suffering, needy world.

    While extremes fight over control, we want to focus on healing, loving, hoping.

    The liberals and conservatives can holler and threaten all they want. But the world would be better off if it listened not to the extremes but those in between.

    Perhaps we in the middle need a bigger pulpit.