I am a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church. I have worked in the church as a priest for 32 years and as a bishop for 10. I have lived actively with most of the ups and downs of this church during that time. It is my conviction now that the Episcopal Church is no longer one church but two churches. That division is no longer a dark possibility ahead of us, but is already upon us. We seem to be divided by the issues of human sexuality, but these are only the apparent dividers. I believe the real division lies at a much more profound level.

We indeed function as two churches at the level of sexuality. Church One believes what every General Convention since 1979 has affirmed and reaffirmed to be our standard, namely, that "the teaching of the church is that the normative context for sexual intimacy is lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage." Church One supports what General Conventions have, therefore, consistently said: that the ordination of non-celibate homosexual persons is "inadmissable" (House of Bishops' Theology Committee) and "inappropriate" (General Convention, 1979). Based on this same reiterated teaching, Church One also rejects sanctioning the blessing of same-gender unions.

In addition, Church One sees scripture as our primary source of authority and, because of that, it sees such ordinations and blessings as moral issues rather than issues of justice. Civil rights, including employment, housing, legal equality and health care, belong to everyone without distinction. The ordination and blessing issues are fundamentally different, however, since neither is an inherent right for anyone. What is at stake in this debate, this church believes, is not a seeking of justice but the making of a decision about the morality of a non-celibate homosexual lifestyle.

Church Two, in my view increasingly separated from the church just described, believes in the validity of and ordaining of non-celibate homosexual persons and blessing committed same-gender unions. Some of its members participate openly and publicly in such events and on a fairly regular basis. While I cannot speak for members of this church, they seem to justify their participation on the basis of: 1. a right to follow their personal consciences as they review the data available in spite of what the church as a whole has said; 2. a conviction that General Convention resolutions are only recommendatory and, therefore, do not need to be followed; 3. a view of scripture that makes it essentially a source of information equal to but no better than such other sources as modern psychology, sociology and contemporary personal experience; 4. a sense that these are issues of justice for an oppressed group and not issues of morality, and 5. an understanding of the church's polity that locates all authority to decide matters of conflicting data and opinions not in the resolutions of the national church but in the diocese.

The more I have pondered all this, however, the more I have come to understand that these sexuality issues are really secondary, and that a series of much larger and far more consequential issues are what is really before us. Those issues are the nature and authority of scripture and the nature of the polity of the church.

Church One understands scripture as the final and deepest authority. While this church reads scripture with all the resources of higher criticism and modern scholarship at hand, it is not convinced that data from any other source holds the same truth or the same authority. Scripture is, as the ordination vow still declares, "The word of God containing all things necessary to salvation," and must be acknowledged as such.

Church Two sees the scripture principally as a historic document subject to correction by contemporary learnings. Indeed, where a conflict of data between scripture and contemporary experience surfaces, Church Two relies on contemporary experience to judge the truth of scripture rather than vice versa.

Scripture has value as a historical document, but its major value, according to this church, is the way it describes the person of Jesus as a person of compassion. When this church looks at the person of Jesus in scripture, his compassion is the primary trait held to be of value.

In this church's use of scripture, one of two things seems to be happening. Having chosen an irreversible position on human sexuality, this church then interprets scripture to make it support or, at least, not rule out the position already chosen. If this is the case, this church's sexuality position is driving its view of scripture. Or perhaps this church is championing a new way of interpreting all of scripture that is applicable to all our theological and doctrinal positions.

The other major division is in the area of structural authority. Who has authority to decide major issues before the church? Is it the national church at General Convention and/or the House of Bishops meeting together, or can each diocese exercise "local option" and go its own way based on its own needs, standards and conscience? Or to put it where it is now focused, in the context of ordination, can we claim, on the one hand, that persons ordained are ordained for the whole church and, on the other hand, say that a diocese has a right to ordain whomever it sees as a fit candidate regardless of what the whole church has said is "inadmissable" and "inappropriate"?

I submit that neither of these are questions of diversity or of living with ambiguity. They are questions of order, of authority and of corporate integrity. On matters of this magnitude, we can't have it both ways and be honest. Indeed, we cannot have it both ways and remain one church. The fact is, we are walking an increasingly confusing and irrational path that demands that these things that divide us be addressed. In our failure to address them clearly, we have contributed nothing to the dialogue or to our grasp of diversity or to our tolerance for ambiguity. We have, in fact if not yet in form, divided ourselves into two churches. o

Next week: What is holding us together?