If you're not from Dallas, I bet you didn't know this
Texas is the unlikely home of biggest gay church
Article has the usual boring Reuters slant - why even bring in the Southern Baptist guy at the end? - but is quite interesting. My reaction has always been, of *course* gay people still want to keep going to church, they just don't want to be told being gay is wrong -- which is what you get at most conservative Protestant congregations, including the majority of Baptists, but hardly in most "mainline" Protestant churches (though there, it might not be as socially palatable - but things have changed so much). Of course, the Catholic Church does not object to "orientation" but to "disordered behavior", but people either reject this as a meaningless distinction or else say of course you can't expect people to be continent . . . but I don't want to get into that here. I'm just pointing out that Southern people believe in God and in going to church on Sunday, and they don't stop beliving just because they might be homosexual.
P.S. check out the pictures - the church was designed pro bono by the architect Philip Johnson, though I don't know if the actual building is from his design - that great slab 'o' bell tower is, though.
posted by Meg Q at 3/23/2007 07:40:00 AM
3 Comments:
How're you doing, Meg?
I've heard about this gay church, and I think you make a good point that church attendance in the South doesn't stop just because a person's gay.
There's some interesting sociology here.
We were in Granbury when the scandals in respect to pedophile priests began to be understood. (Every time I start to feel comfortable that the situation has been reversed, some new revelation will be forthcoming.)
Well, at this juncture people began to flee the Catholic Church in droves, and new converts stopped signing up.
Naturally, many former Catholics flew into the arms of the Episcopal Church because of the obvious compatibility of ritual, practice, and so forth.
No sooner were they giving assurances to their friends about how comfortable they felt in their new church than someone shot the chuckwagon out from underneath them.
The Episcopal Church decided to ordain openly gay priests (one installed as a bishop who had cheated on his wife in a homosexual relationship then "married" his gay lover... now he's a bishop).
And of course women priests being ordained.
Well, one would see these former Catholic/Episcopalians staggering around in the middle of the street with a dazed look on their faces.
I noticed down on Forest the other day that a previously Episcopal Church now has the word "Anglican" stamped in bold letters.
With women ordained to the Episcopal priesthood, they theologically conceptualized the crucifixion as a mother giving birth to a child. Conservative Episcopalians would have none of it, and Catholics who fled from the pedophilia scandals to find their new home in the Episcopal Church were aghast and completely at sea.
So I'm presuming that part of the Episcopal Church will now turn into a completely gay scene.
This is getting too long...
I finally found a really good book discussing the psychology of pedophile priests. Its title is The Changing Face of the Pristhood, by Donald B. Cozzens, PhD. He's president-rector and professor of pastoral theology at St. Mary's Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Cleveland. He's editor of the best-selling "The Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest" and editor of Emmanuel Magazine, among his many other activities in the church.
It's only 143 pages long, and he's clearly well-versed in Jungian and Freudian psychology. He has something he called the "presbyteral oedipal" complex. The new priest is the son, the diocesan bishop is the father, and church of course is Holy Mother. It's very good, and I recommend it.
--Greg in Dallas
Hi, Greg! I'm always so glad when you leave a note here, even if I don't respond right away (or - given my migraines - at all!).
I totally know which parish you're talking about up on Forest Lane. They've always been pretty "hard-core" "Anglicans" - I wouldn't be surprised to learn they were directly reporting to Peter Akinola! (Cantab not being "Anglican" enough for "serious" Anglicans, these days.)
A funny thing up here, most Canadians (where the CofE offshoot is called "Anglican") I've met almost think Episcopalians are from another planet, *just* because of the name - Canadian Anglicans and U.S. Episcopalians being to all intents and purposes identical. It's made me think that perhaps just having chosen a different "name" back after the Revolution now makes the American "Anglican" Church seem a strange and exotic "branch", if not another plant entirely, to the rest of the Communion. What's in a name, indeed.
Hi-ho again Meg,
I'm very sorry to hear about the migraine headaches. My wife occasionally gets the less onerous "migrainoid episodes", and it's really the pits. I have a lot of sympathy for those of you that have to wrestle with those things.
Addendum to our last exchange. It's not only Catholics running to the Episcopal Church.
Episcopal Bishop Daniel Herzog retired on January 31 and quietly joined the Catholic Church.
He was a bishop for a long time and said that he had been thinking about this decision for quite some time. He did not want to burden anyone with his decision until after he had fully discharged his responsibilities as bishop.
I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to see what's happening here. A lot of people are trying to find a way to desert the sinking ship.
We live in interesting times, do we not? People keep trying to find a church they can run to that offers a safe haven. Unfortunately, in this day and time everybody has their own set of flaws.
Take it easy...
Greg in Dallas
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