This month, Assisting Bishop Mary Glasspool attended The Episcopal Church’s Full and Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise in Minneapolis, celebrating the anniversary of the Church affirming that homosexual people are children of God with a full and equal claim upon the church’s love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care. Bishop Mary spoke to our communications team about the gathering and its significance.
I am grateful to all the organizers of what was an important gathering, which celebrated both the progress made and explored the path ahead.
The 50th anniversary of General Convention Resolution A069, which affirmed that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church,” offered a time to pause, to look at where we have come from, where we are currently, and what we need to do next.
Members of The Moth, a global non-profit organization dedicated to storytelling, brought their gifts and skills to help attendees learn how best to tell their stories. It was an affirmation of the power of storytelling: the story of then, the story of now, the story of what is next. And it was a reminder that this anniversary isn’t the end of the story.
Too often, people struggling with their identity may hear the false message that God doesn’t love them, which still happens in far too many churches. We celebrate that The Episcopal Church says, “God loves you. You are a beloved child of God.”
That is worth celebrating. The Full and Equal gathering also reminded us, as a Church, that there is more work to do, including embracing the full diversity found in LGBTQ+ communities, which I think are not one group or one uniform community, but rather a movement involving a beautifully wide range of identities, experiences, and viewpoints.
How do we best honor and celebrate that diversity? How do we break down the barriers around the church and make them porous, so that more and more people can come to know the love of God?
We stand today on the shoulders of many leaders in the Church who sacrificially fought to make “full and equal” possible. Thanks be to God for them all!
This anniversary serves as a reminder that there are many people who have come to The Episcopal Church because of the hard-won progress resulting from having these challenging and important conversations. It’s well worth it. And as the late, great +Barbara Harris used to say: “a luta continua” – the struggle continues!