Open letter to the house of Bishops at General Convention

the Episcopal Church does not welcome me

[a note to my non-episcopal readers: currently representatives of the whole Episcopal church are gathered in Louisville, Kentucky for the business of the church as they do every three years. The church works in two houses - the house of deputies (lay people, priests, and deacons) and the house of bishops (which is -obvs- the bishops)]

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Dearest House of Bishops-

Greetings to you of the purple shirts and pointy hats,

Greetings to you who hold the heavy weight of the church in one hand and your own humanity in the other,

Greetings to you as you gather in community to do the business of the church and to decide the future of the church.

Yesterday presiding bishop Michael Curry greeted you saying “the whole world will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another, that you are people of love, that you live together in love and transform this world by the power of love.” I am not sure what it is that the world sees, but I do not see Love. From where I am standing the Episcopal Church looks like it is soaked in fear and prioritizes almost everything over Love.

There was a resolution- A145- I did not attend the hearing, and maybe you didn’t either, but it got shot down by the bishops on the accessibility & inclusion committee before you could even discuss it this week.

Resolved,

That the 81st General Convention urge Bishops, Standing Committees, and disciplinary authorities to exercise pastoral compassion and discretion during the 2024-2027 triennium with those clergy and laity who disclose the diverse ways in which they are forming family and household structures that seek to be holy, faithful and lifegiving, pending a review by the Task Force to Study Household and Relationship Diversity of the application of Canons I.17.5, and III.1.2 across the Episcopal Church with respect to marital status and family status.

You were going to be asked to exercise pastoral compassion to people like me and you rejected even the chance to have that conversation. I heard how unwelcome I am.

You have polyamorous clergy in your diocese, you have clergy who are the wrong kind of queers, you have clergy whose bespoke families can’t fit the 1950s archetype the church still worships. Your clergy are scared. They are scared of you, their bishops, their pastors. I am begging you to sit with that. Title IV is a cruel and evil system modeled on criminal law. This is a choice you have made and continue to defend. You have church-funded lawyers to attack clergy who have no access to defense they do not pay for themselves. Where is Christ in this? Where is Love?

You have priests in your care who are either living in fear that they will be outed and have their lives destroyed, or who are leaving quietly in shame and grief because the church that once welcomed them in love can no longer tolerate their existence.

On the The Episcopal Church’s website it says-

We have a legacy of inclusion, aspiring to tell and exemplify God’s love for every human being. Ordination and the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon are open to all without discrimination. Laypeople and clergy cooperate as leaders at all levels of our church. Leadership is a gift from God and can be expressed by all people in our church, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

This is a lie.

Leadership cannot be expressed by all people in our church. I was stripped of my ordination because of the way I love. The way I formed a family was deemed, not just unacceptable for a priest, but unworthy of pastoral compassion by one of your own. There was never a conversation about love. There was never a conversation at all.

There are many things I would ask of you bishops, but if I may just ask one thing it would be this:

Please tell the Truth.

Tell the truth to your clergy and to the world. The Episcopal church’s legacy of inclusion is built on the broken backs of those who were excluded. They begged the church to acknowledge their humanity. They made themselves small enough and safe enough to be conditionally welcomed as long as they performed normalcy. Every group that has been “welcomed” came in at an awful cost for the sake of a church that would later smugly congratulate itself on their presence.

Please tell the truth that not all are welcome in the Episcopal Church. Please tell the people in the pews that heteronormative monogamous marriages with their roots in capitalism, patriarchy, and the ownership of women are the only vessel in which the church can tolerate love.

And because I am greedy (as a bisexual polyamorous woman I am well familiar with that accusation) I will ask for a second thing:

Please be kind.

If love for polyamorous clergy is too much ask, do you think you could manage kindness? The world is full of fear and pain and war and hunger. The world is hard enough. Be kind to your clergy. Be curious about their lives, they are good people who are trying to live lives of love and integrity.

And please be kind to each other. It looks like it is hard and lonely work to be a bishop. I worry that you are also afraid of one another. I have wondered if my bishop was so cruel because she was afraid of what you would say to her if she extended any curiosity or compassion to me. This is all speculation of course. The moment I disclosed the shape of my family to her I became her enemy.

And it turns out that today is one of those days where the gospels seem to have worked their way too deep for me to shed easily and I hear that voice of Love say to me: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And so Bishops of the church who shredded my vocation and lacerated my faith-

I love you, and I am praying for you.

I pray that you ground yourselves in compassion, even when you are disgusted by the person in front of you. I pray that you tell the truth even if your voice trembles. I pray you courage and tenderness. I pray that you may be so drenched by Love that fear makes no sense. I pray you strength this week of long meetings and hard choices. I pray for your joy. I pray for your thriving.

I love you.

Kerlin (ex-priest)