Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Being Right is Not the Point
Someone has to eat the garbage to keep the system healthy
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
June 2001Drama and confrontational scripting have turned a dispute between the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the leadership of a small congregation into a national curiosity.
Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon, has told the leadership of Christ Church in Accokeek, Maryland, that she will not approve its calling the Rev. Samuel Lee Edwards as rector. She cited his publicly stated antipathy toward the Episcopal and his inclination to take parishes out of our church.
Edwards moved his family into the rectory anyway.
Recently, the leadership of the congregation prevented Bishop Dixon from celebrating Eucharist and preaching inside the church. She presided at a service outside.
Edwards is opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. He does not recognize Dixon as bishop.
I have written to Bishop Dixon and Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, suggesting a way to look at the problem that could preserve charity and unity while denying nobody's conscience.
My interest has to do not with who appears to win a particular issue, but with an ecclesiology of charity.
Though Bishop Dixon has considerable "right" on her side and has borne much abuse, who is right is not the point. It seldom is. Those who doubt this should ask their spouses.
No matter who "wins" this, the witness to the world is that followers of Jesus Christ fight each other, bully each other, and get legalistic with each other, dredging up principles and sophistries as necessary.
What could possibly justify the negative publicity that Jesus gets in this disaster.
Both sides have plenty to be angry about, but as God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry?"
This is about Christianity. Do we convert people by crushing them? That's not the way I read the Incarnation.
When people are at their least attractive is when we are to get as close as we can to them. "While we were yet sinners, God loved us" has to do with the present as well as the past.
As leaders, bishops are called to be misunderstood and projected upon. There isn't a moment when they have the freedom to sacrifice the core of their religion to win a battle. I'm with Gandhi on this one. Suffering comes with the territory.
Bishops have the specific responsibility of maintaining the unity of the Church -- even with those who treat them like garbage.
We don't maintain the unity of Christ's Church by "being right." The late Rabbi Edwin Friedman said in his lectures on family systems that no aquarium survives unless some fish is willing to eat the garbage. I have found eating the garbage to be profoundly instructive.
I think the folks in Accokkek are in error theologically on women's ordination, but the Episcopal Church has said that theirs is a recognized and protected theological position.
I have lived through schism in another denomination. Having escaped tell the story, my witness is that schism is worse than heresy. Schism is only destructive.
There is here a strange echo of the people in my youth who thought nuclear war was winnable, or the folks at the RCA plant in Lancaster who thought nobody would buy those cheap Asian radios. I think it's called denial: this ship may sink, but we'll not give up our spot on the promenade deck. We talk about thinking outside of the box, but we don't do it because we don't recognize we are in one.
The Gay issue, the Women's issue, the Race issue, and the Class issue aren't going to be settled in my lifetime, except for people in competing camps whose thinking is blissfully without nuance, whose appreciation of complexity never transcends the possibility of putting both ketchup and mustard on a hot dog.
My mission is to ensure that all those trying to live out their relationship with Christ -- black or white, gay or straight, old or young, traditionalist or liberal, male or female, powerful or powerless, rich or poor -- are respected and nurtured as we deal with issues that concern and challenge us.
I think we are called to keep the people who are strangely attracted by issues in one church, gathered by what and Whom they have in common.
That will continue to require us to think outside the box. It can't happen unless we remain connected, unafraid, listening as carefully as we give our witness.
Maybe our children will get it right, but we have to maintain a community in which they will have a shot at it. Leaders have to set the pace here.
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