While I am pleased the Episcopal Church has decided to look at growth, in light of the possibility we will indeed seek new members, some things come to mind.

It seems pretty clear our fall to a 30-year low in membership - worse even than it seems given the explosive population growth in America - is more than coincidentally related to our neurotic, introspective and unholy preoccupation with gender roles and sexuality, a trend that took off in the 1970s. Our unilateral actions in this area have brought us to a state of impaired communion with our mother church. Who are we, a mere 2.5-million-member corner of the Anglican Communion, that we dare to try and redefine such issues without the concurrence of our Anglican family, let alone the more than a billion Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians with whom we claim to see rapprochement?

Having placed ourselves in such an extreme minority position, having placed the Episcopal Church in jeopardy of being cut off from the vast bulk of Christianity, by what right do we call others to join a weak, tiny, and likely soon to be schismatic church? Irrespective of what God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church may one day decide on various gender and sexual issues, who are we to break faith as persistently as we have done and continue to do?

The current year is a jubilee year for Rome. I think 2001 ought to be a repentance and renewal year for us, a year in which we ask forgiveness for turning our backs on other Christians and for trampling their beliefs without waiting for their assent to such changes, or apparent concern for opposition from them. After a year of penance, if we can then look out to the world and not in at our body parts, we may be justified in calling others to Christ through the physical medium of the Episcopal Church.

(The Rev.) Bob Woods

St. Peter's Church

Kernville, Calif.