[Kendall] Harmon\u2019s comment on holiness is surprising given the recent admission of Alan Chambers, president of Exodus international, that they cannot \u201ccure\u201d\u009d homosexuality after all. If I understand Harmon correctly he is saying that Jesus Christ transforms us to a holiness which is defined by the norms of the last two thousand years of Christianity. The problem with that statement is that the Holy Spirit hasn\u2019t done that for me. And I know an awful lot of other people who haven\u2019t been transformed into the shape defined by two thousand years of history; twenty centuries that have been wrought with conflict, war and oppression (I\u2019m thinking Crusades, Inquisition, Thirty Years war, slavery). I have stopped trying to be heterosexual, I have stopped trying to be changed into that restrictive shape of holiness. Instead I look for the fruits of the Spirit in my life and ministry. And I see them.<\/p>\n
So does the Episcopal Church. \u201cTo Set Our Hope on Christ\u201d\u009d, an important theological statement written for the Nottingham meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2005, says, \u201cwe note that members of our Church have begun to discern genuine holiness in the lives of persons of same-sex affection\u201d\u009d. How much more so now we have experienced the gifts of ministry in the life and person of two bishops, as well as in the lives of the LGBT people we know and love.<\/p>\n
We cannot and will not go back into the cookie-cutter holiness that demands that we conform to the social norms of a bygone era. Wasn\u2019t that why Jesus constantly challenged the Pharisees? Wasn\u2019t that why Paul was so opposed to circumcision and a return to the Jewish law?<\/p>\n