This presentation was made by Bishop Michael as the first speaker in the discussion session of General Synod titled "A Presentation on Sexuality" on the evening of Friday, 6 July 2001.

Thank you your Grace, Mr. Chairman, members of Synod:

I thought it was very interesting today we spent a lot of time listening to the pastoral needs of people who want to get out of church buildings to have a blessing on their relationship. In the Diocese of New Westminster we've been dealing with the opposite problem.-- not really a problem but a request from people who would like to come into church and have their life-long, permanent and faithful relationships blessed by the church and who have experience rejection and exclusion and denial of those requests.

What I want to do in a few minutes is to try to interpret to you what has been happening in our diocese in the last few years, not to rehearse the arguments again as [Canon] Jim [Cowan] has said, but to share with you something of the pastoral urgency of this matter where we live.

The West Coast of Canada, as you may know, is a place to which people move. People move to Vancouver and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia from other parts of Canada, indeed from other parts of the world, and when they come there, they are seeking to build for themselves a better life. Often it is in an attempt to seek refuge from various kinds of oppression: whether a politically motivated oppression, or economic disadvantage, or religiously-based prejudice.

Some of these people who come to live where we are experience themselves to be marginalized or endangered, and some of them are gay and lesbian people. There is a large community of gay and lesbian people on the West Coast, as there is in many urban centres in Canada. Some of them have always lived on the West Coast, some have moved there, which is another way of saying some of them have moved from your Dioceses to our diocese; and they have come to us-- to the place where we live-- in search of acceptance, welcome, dignity, and a safer and more productive way of life.

The gay community by-and-large does not generally perceive the church as a place of acceptance. More often they experience among us judgement, condemnation. And though they are not sick, they are offered healing, on the presumption of some sort of defect. Many people who do not experience themselves as sick because of their sexual orientation are quite confused when the church offers healing to them as 'pastoral care'. In fact, it is often experienced as intrusive and spiritually abusive.

Nevertheless, there are many gay and lesbian people who have become members of our churches. They have found Christ in their lives; they have come into deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ, they have accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour; and they have discovered that Jesus Christ accepts them, and welcomes them as they are, without the need to change them.

Many of them have become active and valuable members of our churches, contributing with their time, talents, and certainly their money, to the mission of the church and to our work of evangelism. But the mission and evangelism of the church among this community is severely impeded by the church's historical understanding of homosexuality and its current pastoral practices.

In 1998, three parishes in our diocese brought a motion to our Diocesan Synod. The motion asked the bishop to authorize clergy in the diocese to bless covenanted same-sex unions, under such conditions as the bishop shall deem appropriate.

I want to draw attention to what the motion is asking for: it is not asking for marriage, not for ordination, it is not about promiscuity or casual sex. It was a request from members of our church committed themselves to the life in Christ that they be pastorally received in their partnerships with their life-long committed partners; and that that relationship-- which they themselves know to be blessed by God- would be blessed and recognized by the church.

We had a very fine debate, I thought, in 1998, certainly the Lambeth Conference later that year never even approached the dignity of the discussion in our diocesan synod. The motion passed by 179 votes to 170, but I withheld my consent out of concern for the unity of the diocese; for the impact that this move might have upon other dioceses in this church, and the wider communion.

I consulted a few weeks later with the House of Bishops-- we went to the Lambeth Conference and later on I invited parishes in our diocese to engage in a dialogue process. Every parish was twinned with another parish in the Diocese, and together for two years we studied the various and complex questions around the issue of homosexuality in scripture, reason, and tradition.

And most importantly, we listened to gay and lesbian people themselves, telling their stories, which was one of the stipulations of the [1998] Lambeth Conference, which was not widely and everywhere reported. And included in that group of gay and lesbian people telling their stories was the ex-gay experience, the experience of one brave person in our Diocese who came forward to tell the story of her life and how she chose to come out of that- um, of a gay relationship.

Now, a month ago, just a few weeks ago, the same resolution came back to our diocesan synod, and this time it passed by 226 votes to 174, a majority of 52 votes, up from 9 votes in 1998. Again I withheld my consent with some reluctance, but out of a pastoral concern now for people who found themselves as a new minority in our diocese, people who had not thought of themselves in that way, those of a 'traditional conscience' both within the church in our diocese and in the wider church who felt themselves out of step with this potential development.

I believe that in the nearly eight hours of debate that took place over our two synods on this one resolution- a debate characterized by Christian charity and listening and mutual respect at its very best, for the most part, I believe that in this discussion in our diocese, and in the decision that the diocese clearly wants to make, and has now made twice, there is no sense among us of rebelling against the Word of God, no sense among us of wanting to engage in doctrinal change or deviance, but rather in obedience to God's Word, to end religiously-based prejudice and discrimination against gay and lesbian people based on inherited cultural assumptions, or irrational fears, or misuse of scripture.

In some ways, the question in our Diocese has now changed. We began by asking ourselves "What is the place of gay and lesbian people in the church?" I think the question we are now asking ourselves is 'What is the place of people with a traditional conscience in our church? How do we express pastoral care to them?" and "How do we extend appropriate pastoral care to those persons who are gay and lesbian and who are asking for their life-long permanent and committed relationships to be blessed by the church as they are blessed by God.

I believe that pastoral care happens when people are listened to, when they are respected, and accepted for who they are. I believe that pastoral care happens when people know themselves not to be 'a problem to be fixed' or changed, but as human beings to be loved and cherished. And this is true for people on all sides of this question.

For gay and lesbian people, it means affirming their dignity as human beings, their committed relationships, their lives as sexual beings, persons created in the image of God, and desirous of a deeper relationship with God, and a recognition of their permanent and faithful commitments to the persons they love.

For those of a 'traditional conscience', I believe this means being respected for their honestly-held conscience, traditional conscience, backed by centuries of Christian teaching. I believe it means they should be free from coercion or imposition to change their conscience, and that they should be protected and affirmed in their right to hold to their historic beliefs.

If we go forward in this matter in our diocese, there will be a protection of conscience for those who hold a traditional position.

One of the things that happened in our synod after this debate was another resolution that was passed by the Synod: and it was a request that I apologize to gay and lesbian people for the slowness of the process for their full inclusion in the church; and I take this request to be not simply directed towards gay and lesbian people in our diocese, but in your diocese and everywhere in the Anglican Church.

And so I want to take the opportunity of this evening to offer that apology. At the request of the diocese of New Westminster and on my own behalf I would like to apologize to gay and lesbian members of our church for the slowness of the process for their full inclusion in the body of Christ. We apologize to you for your treatment, and sometimes mistreatment in the life of the church; for our slowness in recognizing you as sexual beings, created in the image of God, desiring a deeper communion with God, and the freedom and responsibility of life-long, permanent and committed unions in body, mind, and spirit, with those you love.

I ask your forgiveness when we have wronged you, knowingly or unknowingly; and I pray that we with you may one day know a time when it may truly be said that 'in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free, gay or straight' and that on that day we may be equal members of this church, and Christ will be all in all.

This text of Bishop Michael Ingham's presentation is posted with his authorization.