By Jon Brown
The Episcopal Church is planning a multi-day event this fall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a resolution to affirm homosexual members in the denomination.
Church leaders will gather in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for “Full & Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise,” a three-day conference starting Sept. 3 to commemorate the September 1976 passage of Resolution A069 to “recognize the equal claims of homosexuals,” according to the Episcopal News Service.
The resolution, which was passed at the 65th General Convention in Minneapolis, affirmed “that it is the sense of this General Convention that homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church.”
The resolution passed four years after the United Church of Christ (UCC) became the first denomination to ordain an openly gay minister in 1972, and came at a time of intense debate among Episcopalians over women’s ordination and the Book of Common Prayer, which was ultimately revised in 1979 with modernized English.
The event this September was planned by the denomination’s Task Force on LGBTQ+ Inclusion, which is chaired by the Rev. Susan Russell, an openly lesbian priest who serves in the Diocese of Los Angeles.
“I think we look back at that 1976 resolution as really the beachhead of the struggle,” Russell told Episcopal News Service. “Up until then, it was not even possible to talk about inclusion. It was not even possible to imagine where we are today.”
When the resolution was debated by the church’s House of Deputies on Sept. 13, 1976, some members tried unsuccessfully to change the language by proposing to add references to “forgiveness” or say that “all” people are children of God, rather than specifically naming gay individuals.
The resolution passed as written and was later approved by the House of Bishops on Sept. 22, 1976.
Also slated to participate in the event are the Rev. Michael Hopkins and the Rev. Miquel Escobar, both of whom are openly gay, and the Rev. Cameron Partridge, who identifies as transgender and has preached at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe is expected to take part in a panel discussion at the event and preside at the closing Holy Eucharist at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Minneapolis.
“As we celebrate that milestone, we also acknowledge that the journey to achieve full inclusion for all of God’s children is not yet over,” Rowe said.
“As Pride Month begins, I am praying especially for our LGBTQ+ siblings, who are too often in harm’s way and targeted for their identity and gender expression. Their struggles reveal to us the kingdom of God, and we are committed to standing in solidarity with all those suffering from the evil of hatred and discrimination,” he added.
Also preaching will be the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the denomination when he was consecrated in 2003 by the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Robinson declared from the altar of the National Cathedral in 2021 that the LGBT community had “won” in the denomination amid backlash to Evangelical author and Pastor Max Lucado speaking there.
“We’ve won. We know how this is going to end,” he said. “This is going to end with the full inclusion of gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer people, nonbinary people, all kinds of people, in the church and into the society. We work every day to make that true, but we know how it ends.”
The Episcopal Church has been hemorrhaging members over recent decades and did not include overall membership totals in its most recent report released last fall.
