Dear People of Christ Church,
This Sunday, our Episcopal Church class meets with the oh-so-exciting topic of “Contemporary Moral Issues.” We’ll tackle all the hot questions, from the death penalty to the environment to sexuality to whatever else anyone brings to the table. We’ll also talk Scripture, and by necessity Episcopal polity will get thrown in too, since that’s some of how we do our work. How we organize ourselves as a church and how we read the Bible are both part of how we discern together the mind of the church.

Or, probably more accurately: minds. Sometimes we’re not of one mind. By design—and since the beginning of Anglicanism with King Henry, we’ve had dissent built into our DNA, with no expectation that the individual consciences of Episcopalians must agree with some higher authority (apart from, you know, God).

Our own branch of the Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church, makes decisions together by meeting every three years. The next General Convention is this summer, when representatives from every diocese—bishops, priests, deacons, and lay people—will meet together, this year in Salt Lake City. Six years ago at General Convention a decision was made to acknowledge diversity in the church on the practice of marriage and representatives voted that in places where equal marriage was the law, bishops could decide to permit clergy to officiate at all marriages. Our bishops said yes—our partners in Western Massachusetts at the time said no (finally, in 2013 that changed to yes).

How does Scripture help us reason through this stuff?
Well, if we’re going to read the Bible literally, we are in trouble. If instead of saying the opening prayer on Sunday I mutely held up a sign saying that the Bible forbids me to speak in church (1 Cor 14:34; 1 Tim 2:12), the wardens would have my head. Although since they’re women, too, it’s not like they could step up and lead the service.

So the Episcopal tradition of Biblical interpretation is not literalist. There is no neutral, “interpretation free” way to read the Bible. No matter what, we are always reading from somewhere. One of my favorite texts about this happens when the Ethiopian eunuch meets the apostle Philip on the road, reading the book of Isaiah. Lest we think a spectrum of gender expression is a new invention, the eunuch was a castrated man who served in the court of the Queen (unfortunately in this case, it was probably not a chosen life path). “Do you understand what you’re reading?” Philip asks him. “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” the eunuch answers. This work of explanation and interpretation happened in that chariot 2000 years ago, and happens now. We read Scripture with all of our senses—we look at history and politics and language—and we read the rest of Scripture! If the Gospel of John tells us that God is love, then how do we interpret loving partnership in expansive ways? If, as Galatians 3:28 says, in Christ there is no male or female, and in Genesis humankind is made in God’s image, then how do we reason gender equity next to those passages from Corinthians and Timothy? Scripture argues with itself just as much as we do. And what a gift it is to be part of that conversation!

Blessings,
Sara+