Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you. God surely loves and accepts you. Know that you are, by God's love and grace, made complete members of this Church and are called to a life of full discipleship.

I also know that for many of you the resolution and reporting of the debate on sexuality from the recent Lambeth Conference was confusing and hurtful. On your behalf it was very painful for myself and Bishop Talton as well.

To this letter I am attaching a letter and a short reflection.

1. The letter, "a Pastoral Statement to Lesbian and Gay Anglicans from Some Member Bishops of the Lambeth Conference", was sent out by a number of us the day after the debate.
2. The reflection on sexuality is part of a longer reflection I have written on the 1998 Lambeth Conference and is an attempt to give some perspective on what took place --including the recognition that the reports and resolutions of the Lambeth Conference, while, of course, they all are to be taken seriously, are advisory to the several Churches of the Anglican Communion as they seek the Spirit's will and guidance in their own part of God's world.

I am pleased that Bishop Talton and I will be meeting with a number of you on the morning of September 12th at the Cathedral Center. I am grateful to the Bishop's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Ministry for calling this meeting, for its opportunity to hear about your reactions to Lambeth, and to talk about our faith in the Lord Jesus and our future together with all Christians as God's people.

You have bishops who will stand with all gay and lesbian Christians, supporting not only their civil rights and right to be free from all persecution and discrimination but their full place as lay and ordained members of the Body of Christ. We wholly support the official church teaching that human sexual expression and activity are blessed by God and find their sanctified place in the faithful covenant of marriage between man and woman. While it is not now included in that teaching, we and many other members of the Episcopal Church believe that God's blessing can also come to the covenant of others. We believe and all Christians striving to live lives in accordance with the gospel's fundamental message, and so seeking to lead lives of faithfulness and purity in which their sexuality, as in all areas of life is committed to dedicated singleness with friends and in community, or entrusted to another in a fully committed and mutually caring relationship, may also here know God's blessing and that some of the these persons will be rightly called to ordained ministry.

Be of good courage. We are challenged, but by the grace of God, not overcome.

Let me close by assuring you of my prayers for your lives and ministries, as I ask for yours, and with these words of Desmond Tutu:

"Let us go forth, then as the followers of this Jesus, ready to celebrate life that can't be lived by rote. Let's luxuriate in its complexities, in its bewildering ambiguities, excited by the thrill of working things out for ourselves. Let us celebrate our diversity, opposing the new xenophobia that is abroad, knocking down the walls that would keep the stranger out. Let us go forth ready to be surprised by a God who gives us some strange fellow workers -- just look at the Archbishop of Capetown!-- to be ready to cooperate with such a God as we seek to follow his set of priorities to make our community, our society, our world more caring, more gentle, more compassionate... Let ours be inclusive communities, welcoming and embracing, refusing to exclude people on the basis of culture, ethnicity, faith, gender, or sexual orientation. Go forth to celebrate that we are indeed the rainbow people of God."

Yours faithfully,

Fred

• Return to Louie Crew's collection of materials on the Lambeth Conference.
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