1980s TEC precursors to ACNA, from TEC viewpoint
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Thread by @dianabutlerbass
Archbishop of Nigeria: "ACNA was formed by GAFCON, as a safe haven for faithful Christians who reject the apostasy & rebellion in TEC."
Couldn't really be clearer. ACNA's whole reason for being is anti-LGBTQ. It isn't just a church "struggling," it is their raison d'être.
It is one thing to be part of a denomination trying to come to terms with tradition, the Bible, polity, and justice for LGBTQ persons (like the UMC) and a different thing to be a clergy person ordained into a denomination founded explicitly to oppress an entire group of people.
Can you imagine WILLINGLY vowing to obey a bishop in a denominational body who says "The deadly ‘virus’ of homosexuality has infiltrated ACNA. This is likened to a Yeast that should be urgently and radically expunged and excised lest it affects the whole dough."
And that's what young ACNA priests have done. It isn't just neutral. It isn't about liking the liturgy. It is about forwarding a church with an explicit agenda against LGBTQ persons and their wholeness.
Of course, young Anglican (ACNA) priests won't tell you this. They hide it.
They invite followers to read their books and columns, to join their churches - all the while knowing that their entire denomination was founded on dangerous theological crap like this - theology that kills people.
You can dress stuff up in vestments and pretty prose in all kinds of liturgical romanticism, but it is still a vicious hierarchal and patriarchal system that demands total obedience and authority in the name of God.
And the way such systems work is by setting oppressed groups against one another.
I know this from experience.
A story I've never told in public - but have shared with significant leaders in TEC and international Anglican Communion:
When I was in seminary in the mid-1980s, I was literally recruited by the anti-LGBTQ forces then gathering in TEC.
I was in my early 20s, a very promising theology student, married (at that time) to someone in a conservative Presbyterian denomination.
I haven't written much about that time in my life. Mostly because I've carried deep shame about it. (My next book has an entire chapter on it, however. It is time to talk.)
I was eager to be accepted, had become convinced that only order and authority would save Xianity.
I literally gave my mind and my loyalty to powerful conservative men - I wanted to teach, I wanted to write - and I saw that they were the gatekeepers. I wanted to please them.
And so they invited me to stuff.
Private meetings, conferences.
This wasn't a digital world. I have few records of these meetings other than notes and calendars (many of my files were destroyed in a flood in Santa Barbara in 1993).
So, this is from memory. And that's why I haven't talked about it in public. I have no "proof" per se.
I remember a particular meeting - where I was the only woman. And there were no people of color.
The men were talking about their strategy to "take over" the Episcopal Church. They spoke of how they were going to use liberalism against itself.
How they'd use TEC's liberal hope for "tolerance" and diversity to include them - and how they'd then use their place at the table to keep TEC from adopting policies to include gay people.
They were gleeful about this.
How you could use a group's good intentions to hurt people.
Throughout these gatherings, they spoke more specifically of their strategy.
And shared how they'd "use black people" against the church. "Because no liberal will ever speak up against someone who is black."
Only they didn't use the word "black."
And boy, howdy, did they laugh.
I was shocked. And I didn't know what to say. At the time, I wanted conservatives to take the Episcopal Church back. I thought it was God's will.
But here were men I admired talking filthy back-room politics in racist ways...it was hurtful, confusing.
I acted like it wasn't a big deal - one loud mouth.
And the men kept inviting me to their meetings and events because it looked good to have a smart blond girl in the room (I guess).
The strategy was very specific (as I learned). They wanted to use African church leaders to take down the Episcopal Church. They would send missionaries to African to fuel anti-gay theologies, supply $$, etc to dioceses that stood up to pro-LGBTQ leaders in the western church.
I was part of a meeting at a certain Episcopal seminary where faculty members spoke of upcoming trips to Africa to work on this plan.
Many years later, I would speak to some pretty wonderful African Anglicans who told me that they knew that conservative white people were using them for this purpose.
They weren't unaware of all of this. And many didn't go along (some, of course, did).
As I sat at one of those meetings about the "Africa strategy," it finally occurred to me - the only woman in the room AGAIN - that they might be grooming me to be used in the same way.
That it wasn't just an "Africa strategy" pitting race against gay people. But that they had a gender-strategy, too.
You can't believe how much they praised me when I'd say shit like "I'm a woman. God made me that way. It isn't a choice like being gay."
(Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. See...I told you...I feel so ashamed.)
And I helped a group of them craft a careful theological plan about how they might support women who wanted to be ordained and serve as "associate" priests - if and only if - they stayed under some male authority. (A senior pastor or a male bishop.)
I was the only woman in that discussion.
Again. UGH UGH UGH. More being ashamed.
Anyway, a group of us at a theological meeting talked about how - theoretically it might be possible for some limited form of women's ordination for the right women - as long as there was NEVER a woman who became a bishop.
Not long after, Barbara Harris was consecrated a bishop in The Episcopal Church - and that upset their strategy applecart in significant ways.
Because now, they couldn't "take over" the church. They'd have to take it down.
And that's when my loyalty began to wane (c. 1990ish). When I started turning down their invitations, started throwing out their mail when it arrived.
I realized that they were using me. And that this was never about Jesus or God or a renewed church.
It was about their power.
Thus began my slow distancing. And also my own metanoias about LGBTQ rights and personhood, gender, and race.
By 1995, I was in an ENTIRELY different place.
Most of my current friends and colleagues know me only 1995 onward. Because I inhabited a different world before that.
And I stepped out of the world, seeing all this. Feeling the wrongness of it.
And that world brutally cancelled me for doing so.
(I still bear wounds from the five years of that journey. But that's no reason to feel bad for me - it was a necessary journey - and one I'm glad I made.)
If you've read my books, listened to me preach or speak, this is the background.
This is WHY I talk about politics, race, LGBTQ rights, feminism. BECAUSE IT IS SO IMPORTANT - and because very powerful forces want to keep us all from engaging justice together.
Manipulating people intersectionally is the strategy.
And doing that in God's name is the strategy.
I'm sharing this on Twitter now for a couple of reasons.
1) People don't know this history. This is the backstory of ACNA. Sorry if you don't like it. But I was there before the beginning.
2) This religious/church history echos our political history. Religious groups often serve as a test case for political strategies; and political strategies are often imported into church fights. It most often isn't about the Bible, it is about power.
3) I want to let others know that you can change. You can be deep in. And you can get out. There is life and freedom outside the boundaries.
And you can make right when you contributed to wrong. You really can.
4) I'm worried about a new authoritarian and hierarchical turn in religion right now - it isn't just in white evangelicalism. It isn't just in Catholicism. There are new forms of this stuff making its way into (even) the so-called liberal mainline. And that has me terrified.
The gateway drug into getting where you never imagined you'd be is fear - fear of denominational decline, fear for your own job - and fear leads us to give ourselves over to others - "my vows," "the tradition," "the church insists."
The Christian life is about fullness and freedom. About the brilliant power of grace and giftedness and wholeness and letting go into the life of the ever-creative, always surprising God.
That literally scared me in my 20s. I said words like that. But living them was freaking terrifying.
And so, slowly, inch by inch, I cut theological corners, accommodating to things I never thought possible.
Please don't do that.
Restitching the fabric was hard.
But wow.
Am I ever glad I did. And still do. One thread at a time.
Thanks for reading my story today. This is a thread I almost didn't post.
(Also, appropriate leaders in TEC know this - I have shared this story internally with those who needed to hear it over the last 12 years or so.)
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