Toward a Focus on Queer Poverty

A short reflection offered at the Full & Equal: 50 Years in Pursuit of a Promise conference in Minneapolis, MN. 

I remember the first time I ever heard Bishop Gene Robinson. It was in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in July 2003. I was closeted, Roman Catholic, studying Latin American Liberation theology at a Roman Catholic university in Texas, and I remember feeling like he was speaking from somewhere over the rainbow. The interview focused on the split in the Anglican Communion, but what I recall is that he spoke of his life and faith in technicolor while I was still living in gray. I didn’t know then all that preceded to make that moment possible.

After college, I went to Union Theological Seminary in 2004, joined St. Mary’s Episcopal in West Harlem in 2005, and, on graduating became communications assistant to the new Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, in June 2007.

It was a time of both excitement and dread: the first woman to serve as a primate in the Anglican Communion; the last-minute, de-facto moratorium (or "pause", as Bishop Katharine put it) on the consecration of LGBTQ+ bishops; conservative efforts to gain alternative oversight; and the very live question of whether the Anglican Communion could hold together.

As a lowly communications assistant, my experience of this moment was as the recipient of the emails and phone calls that came through the Presiding Bishop’s office. Some were admiring, but it’s the rage—including some death threats—that I remember most. Rage at the reality of a female Presiding Bishop, rage at the Episcopal Church’s trajectory toward inclusion, and, frankly, frustration from all sides that the Presiding Bishop wasn’t doing enough.

In 2008, I was among the staff who went to the Lambeth Conference, and I spent the majority of my time on the margins of the event. But you can learn a lot on the margins. I remember attending the spouse’s conference where I heard a call to step away from male bishops’ obsession with sex and refocus on broad areas of agreement: poverty, climate change, debt relief. I also remember seeing Bishop Gene Robinson sitting on a stool in a cream-colored suit in the Lambeth Marketplace, and the word “marketplace” says it all: his person, his marriage, its suitability were, in so many ways, on display, and their value debated in excruciating detail.

I admired how Bishop Gene insisted on being a thorn in the side of all who tried their best to silence him. Almost 20 years later, I can appreciate how such witness comes at great personal cost.

While there, I remember seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. To me, he is a baffling, almost tragic figure. For despite his brilliance, and even in spite of his previously written theology of sexuality, he sought to hold the communion together through a convoluted concessionism and—as the video points out—threw LGBTQIA+ people under the bus more often than not. And was he effective? To risk a joke, he always struck me as the Anglican Charlie Brown to a Gafcon Lucy, who always moved the football at the very last minute.

One thing this video does not discuss is the conservative-led attempts to leave the Episcopal Church while retaining church property. I have to mention this because 1) this was a big deal and 2) as Patrick Cheng’s workshop pointed out, one theme of Queer Anglican History is how regularly Queerness has served as the pretext for absconding with property.

With the Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng, theologian
and teacher of Queer Anglican History

In 1533, Henry VIII used the excuse of “rampant buggery” to take monastic properties for himself; in 1604, Bishop John Atherton was accused of buggery and hanged, thus enabling the transfer of his properties to his accusers. The 1964-founded Council on Religion and the Homosexual, in San Francisco, was founded, in part, to combat extortion. And so, using the Episcopal Church’s Queerness as the excuse for stealing property—there’s a long history of that. Indeed, I’ve often wondered: Would the schism have been as vicious had the property been less valuable?

During my three years, I worked alongside Bishop Katharine and still today, I see her as an important, albeit quiet leader in this struggle. Bishop Katharine knew where we were headed even if the progress wasn’t as quick as we would like. Much of her time was spent making the hard, unpopular decisions that her male predecessors had avoided making, including on reactionary bishops. On property matters, Bishop Katharine’s response was firm: these were gifts given by generations of Episcopalians for the mission of the Church, and they would remain for the generations of Episcopalians yet to come.

I left after three years in that office, but if the PB inbox and office phone were any indication, the level of anxiety and rage had diminished greatly by 2010. In 2009, General Convention ended the de-facto moratorium, and in 2010, Bishop Mary Glasspool was consecrated, and the dreadful Anglican Covenant collapsed under its own weight, with the final blow coming from the Church of England itself. Closer to home, the House of Bishops—which had been so divided in 2007—was much more unified in its values, thanks in no small part to the long-overdue departures (voluntary and otherwise) of bishops who still hadn’t accepted women’s ordinations, much less LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Let me close with words of thanks, challenge, and hope. First, thanks: All this history came back to me in 2019 as my husband and I were preparing to get married, for when we got married, we used the language and service developed during these years. So thank you. Now to a challenge: I must point out, as a priest who committed to serving Spanish-speaking, immigrant communities, that the final, official liturgies on marriage and renaming are not yet available in Spanish. (Look up the liturgies page on the Episcopal Church website). We’re not yet at full and equal. 

And finally, hope. As we look to the next chapter, my hope is that we will take seriously that great insight from Latin American Liberation Theology about God’s preferential option for the poor. 

Queer Poverty is oftentimes hard to see for those of us who are married and cisgender, especially gay couples, who have among the highest median incomes of any household type. I also have seen how our denomination’s whiteness and wealth blinds us to the reality of Queer folks struggling at the economic margins of society. 

Queer people are disproportionately represented among people experiencing homelessness. Queer kids are overrepresented in our foster care systems. We know of the extreme vulnerability of sex workers, as well as of Queer asylum seekers and refugees. It is one thing to approach these matters through the lens of charity, as outreach, or even as the subject of an EPPN advocacy email blast. But on this fiftieth anniversary, I believe Christ is calling us to friendship and solidarity with Queer Poor folks as an essential matter of inclusion.