c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A lesbian member of an American delegation giving a spiritual defense of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion says she sees the church reaching a crucial milestone on gay issues.

“We’ve come to the point where we can stand up and say, `Let me tell you about my life and faith, and out of the particularity that I happen to be a gay Christian,”’ the Rev. Susan Russell said in a telephone interview from Nottingham, England.

Russell, 50, a priest at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., is the only gay or lesbian member of a six-person delegation from the Episcopal Church that traveled to Nottingham to make the case for Episcopalians’ support of same-sex unions and an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Their report was presented Tuesday (June 21) to the Anglican Consultative Council, which helps set policy for the 77 million-member Anglican Communion and its 38 autonomous provinces, including the Episcopal Church in the United States. With conservatives around the world outraged over decisions of the American church, homosexuality threatens to put the Anglican Communion into schism.

But Russell is not apologetic about creating controversy.

She rejoiced at the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire, as well as the American church’s nod to liturgies to bless same-sex unions. She celebrated because she had spent years advocating for the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the U.S. church, most recently as president of Integrity USA, the church’s main group for gays and lesbians.

“If I have to choose between unity and justice, I’m going to choose justice,” Russell said.

She calls the conflict in the church “the cost of discipleship.” The actions at the 2003 General Convention represent a huge step forward, she said. In a sense, she says the American church came out of the closet after 30 years of talking about sexuality.

The outcry has parallels to the experience of any gay or lesbian person who has come out to family and friends, she said. There may be regret for the pain caused to those who do not understand, but there is no going back.

The Americans were asked to explain how gay unions and an openly gay bishop are consistent with Scripture and Anglican tradition. Critics say the actions were contrary to the Bible, the past 2,000 years of church history and the official stance of the Anglican Communion.

More to the point, the conservative American Anglican Council said it is “blasphemous” to suggest the Bible condones homosexuality, or that God would “lead any Christian to accept or embrace doctrine or behavior contradicted thoughout the body of Scripture.”

But the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Church, said Russell positively represents all the issues at stake in the controversy. Thinking theologically, Bacon said that just as Jesus came into the world as God in the flesh, “so here Susan represents the embodiment of justice for gay and lesbian people in the church.”

Bacon ticked off the attributes that make Russell the ideal representative in Nottingham: she is an ordained priest in good standing, working in a parish, and she’s openly gay and in a relationship with another woman. It’s important to have Russell share her experience, spirituality and theology with the Anglican Communion, Bacon said.

“We believe she is an exemplary image of the Kingdom of God,” Bacon said.

Raised in the Episcopal church, Russell came out as a lesbian in 1996, the same year she was ordained. Previously, she had been married and raised two children.

“I’m convinced that without my spiritual journey I would not have come to terms with my sexual orientation,” she said.

To Russell, the actions of the U.S. church are “not a gay issue, but a Gospel issue.” Jesus called all people to be in relationship with God and sexual orientation is morally neutral, she said. Including homosexuals in the church is part of the call to evangelism, to reach out to those who may feel God is not for them, she said.

Russell told Anglican leaders in Nottingham that she was speaking for gays and lesbians out of a response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not a political agenda or a capitulation to culture.

“Our charge was not to change people’s minds, but change hearts so they would be open to what we have to say,” Russell said. “I think we succeeded.”

Conservatives, meanwhile, said the American delegation in Nottingham was hand-picked by liberals and represented only a “narrow voice” in the church.

“Susan Russell certainly represents the voice of gays and lesbians in the United States,” said Cynthia Brust, a spokeswoman for the American Anglican Council. “That’s a very small minority.”

Russell said her presence in Nottingham shows how far the church has come toward inclusion of gays and lesbians. Before, she said, straight people who were allies in the cause had to advocate on behalf of gays at official gatherings.

Russell compares the acceptance of gays in the Anglican Communion to the experience of the early church, when leaders realized the Gospel of Jesus Christ was also for Gentiles, not just Jews. Its expansion to the Gentiles, featured in the New Testament book of Acts, was an alien concept to many Jews at the time, she said.

The same comparison is the focus of a booklet called “To Set Our Hope on Christ,” the American church’s theological response for its actions on homosexuality, which was released Tuesday.

Brust said the analogy doesn’t work.

“From the beginning of Scripture the unfolding of salvation history had always been for the Gentiles,” Brust said. “Yes, God showed that to Peter in Acts, but that was his plan all along.”

MO/KRE/PH END ALLEN

(Marshall Allen covers religion for The Pasadena Star-News in Pasadena, Calif. Portions of this article first appeared in that paper.)

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Russell to accompany this story.