Giving Up Church for Lent

Following her less than thriumphal return from the meeting of Anglican leaders in Tanzania, the Presiding Bishop of the Episocopal Church has asked the faithful to observe a season of fasting, which she has defined, in part, as temporarily abandoning the church's fundamental embrace of all people. She is saying, in effect: let us temporarily exclude gays from the privileges of inclusion while we ponder whether the "other side" might have a point.

Peter Akinola, head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, represents the other side. His country is pondering a law that makes gayness a crime. It is a first step toward exterminating gays. Do we really need to reflect prayerfully on whether that might be a good thing? Do we need to ask God's guidance as to the value of all human beings in God's sight? Is this not, in essence, a religious Munich?

During the meeting in Tanzania, the primates (as the leaders of Anglican provinces are called) went to Zanzibar to hold a Eucharist (Episcospeak for Holy Communion) to repent of the Church's involvement in slavery on this two-hundredth anniversary of Wilberforce's successful campaign against slavery in Britain. I think it's wonderful that the primates were feeling penitent about their institution's past sins. But of course the irony is that the primates were knowingly continuing to treat certain humans as less human than they, the essential condition for slavery to flourish.

Not only that, but there was not one word, so far as I can tell, about slavery in the present day: sex trafficking, employment slavery, the ownership of humans. It goes on. There are an estimated 800,000 women in sex trafficking in the world today; some 200,000 of them are in the US. Nigeria is an important hub of the sex trade in Africa and has not signed on to the international agreement to combat the trade in people as sexual objects. Akinola and his US followers have not said a word about this modern-day slavery. Nor has the American church (the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed a resolution condemning sex trafficking in 2003 but, typically, nothing else seems to have been done about it).

In the United States, Atlanta and San Francisco are bustling centers of the sex trade, but I have not heard a single word from the bishops in those cities about the crime of slavery under their church noses.

Perhaps some repentence for current sins is in order.

Many members of the Anglican Communion are in countries that participate in sex trafficking. There are also wars on the planet. There is starvation. There is genocide in Sudan. There is stuff for the church to talk about and to do something about.

But the primates assembled in Tanzania could only think about one thing (well, they did mention a few other matters, but we know that they were not the real meat of the meal).

And the leader of the Episcopal Church in the US appears to have agreed with the conclusion of the primates that now would be a good time to consider whether gays really belong. Or whether the rantings of bigots (don't tell me about their pain, please) should engage our Lenten reflection.

The Episcopal Church has finally made itself profoundly irrelevent by concluding that membership in an exclusive, private club (The Anglican Communion)--never mind that it has membership rules that exclude certain "impure" groups--is more important than, well, just about anything.

For me, that means that I am going to take this period of Lent to give up the church, to withhold monetrary support (do not tithe for apartheid), to stay away from its sacred ceremonies and pious follies, and to reflect prayerfully on how those of us who loved a different church might call it back to faithfulness. If you are interested in joining me, let me know. (And if you are not an Episcopalian but believe that your church is also irrelevent to the present real world, feel free to join in--or, rather, opt out.)