A New Day in The Episcopal Church by Dean Brian Baker

I just arrived home. General Convention was absolutely exhausting, and exhilarating. If you haven’t heard, this morning we passed the resolution that will open the door for same-sex blessings/marriages. A few days ago we passed the resolution that will allow us to ordain gay or lesbian bishops. Both of these resolutions passed by huge majorities.

It is clear that a new era has come to the Episcopal Church. We have stopped holding ourselves hostage to the concerns of others in the Anglican Communion. Yes we care about our sisters and brothers in other provinces of the Anglican Communion. But we aren’t going to try to hold the Communion together by discriminating against gays and lesbians. Not anymore. Not ever again.

And we aren’t going to put a bushel-basket over the particular light we have in The Episcopal Church. Because we care about our siblings in the Anglican Communion, we will share with them the gospel of Christ that we have found. That gospel necessarily includes the full inclusion of those who are gay or lesbian. We now know that our church would be terribly diminished if we didn’t have the witness of the brave and holy gay and lesbian Christians. Why handicap Christ’s body?

That’s enough opining for tonight. I’m home for 36 hours. Then I get my son to scout camp and fly to Salt Lake to take care of some business before driving back to Sacramento with Andrea.

I’m hoping in the days to come I’ll have a chance to blog about some of my experiences at Convention. I had a lovely breakfast with the Dean of the Cathedral in Central Florida where we openly discussed our differences and explored what the direction of this convention meant for each of us. Andrea and I went to the opening of a short documentary about the strain on gay families caused by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I then participated in a panel discussion with Dan Choi and a few other folks. (This wasn’t part of Convention. It just happened to take place while we were there.)