Steve’s Story, Part 2
Steve was a Wheaton College student when he started attending Church of the Resurrection in 2006. He alleges spiritually abusive behavior and pastoral malpractice by Resurrection leaders, including being targeted for excommunication despite adhering to church requirements that, as a gay person, he remain celibate. The story includes discussions of conversion therapy and the harmful teachings and practices surrounding it, which some readers may find disturbing.
Read Part 1 of Steve’s Story here.
Excommunication
I met with Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin and they laid it out for me: I’d posted publicly that I was affirming of same-sex unions, and this was in contradiction with my membership vows. By holding affirming theology, I’d nullified my membership at the church. Because of this, I could no longer serve on any pastoral ministries, which included the worship arts, technical arts, and choir. But, they stressed, beyond that, membership doesn’t mean much. You can still take Communion, and we still desire for you to be a part of this community – more than ever, in fact!
I immediately clarified that I don’t really hold an affirming view yet, but had decided that for integrity’s sake I should publicly align with one since I was doing work with organizations like OneWheaton. Fr. Kevin responded (I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory): “Steve, there’s some unfairness in all this, because it’s the personal conviction that matters to us, not the fact that you’ve gone public about your convictions. Your public post is just how we were made aware of your conviction. We suspect there are a large number of people at Rez who don’t actually believe in our sexual ethic, whether that’s chastity or porn or homosexuality, but most of them don’t speak up, so we never know about it. So there’s a real sense here where you’re facing consequences because you’ve behaved with more integrity than most, and I want to make sure that’s being said here.” That said, he continued, if you really are still conflicted in your views, it’s possible we could revisit this, but we’d ask you to take the post down, since it doesn’t honestly represent where you are.
While the situation was maddening for me, I felt at the time that, given their stance, Rez was acting with fairness in their decision to revoke my membership. I’d qualify that significantly now, however.
First, I believe matters of church discipline should be made extremely clear, early and often. While it wasn’t surprising to me that my stance would lead to discipline, it should’ve been something I knew explicitly while making these decisions. I should’ve known exactly why I was being called into the principal’s office. (For what it’s worth, I think Rez leadership later addressed this and changed course, possibly in part as a reaction to their experience with me.)
Second, I find it confusing that a ministry like choir should be off-limits to someone with views considered to be heterodox at a church like Rez. From an image-management standpoint in a church with an iconoclastic reputation in its denomination, it makes sense – there’s a microscope on your community, and you don’t want someone to appear to be a leader in your church when their views don’t align. You don’t want it to appear OK to believe certain things. But from a pastoral standpoint, it makes no sense.
Surely if someone in your community has heterodox views, you want them to have more community, not less. The process of excommunication serves a pastoral purpose – to bring someone to realization of their sin, so they can be loved and catechized into right belief by the community. Choir was my primary community at Rez, and I ended up functionally cut off from it at a time when, Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin had made clear, they wanted me right in the heart of the community so I could see the error of my ways.
Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin gave me two weeks to decide how I wanted to proceed, and those two weeks ended up being more eventful than planned.
The man I’d chosen not to date a year earlier had moved away, but we’d stayed in intermittent contact. I learned he was moving back to Chicago. My feelings for him hadn’t lessened, and a brief conversation confirmed his feelings had not either. Other than the drama at Rez, I felt ready to date him at this point. I was more discouraged than ever about a future at Rez. Given that the church discipline Band-Aid had already been peeled up ever so slightly, I decided now was the time to rip it off.
When I returned to meet with Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin, they were devastated to learn that not only was I not interested in taking down the blog post, but I was entering into a dating relationship. They urged caution and encouraged me to instead wait and enter a time of focused pastoral guidance to discuss things further. But I’d tried numerous avenues of pastoral ministry at Rez for years before reaching this point; I was pessimistic that there’d be any point in trying it again. I voiced as much, adding that this had dragged on for too long and I was reaching a point of exhaustion. With tears in his eyes, Dcn. Keith affirmed this: “Steve, nobody here is going to tell you you’ve been hasty about this; you’ve been methodical and honest.” Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin clarified that if I were to enter into a dating relationship (even a chaste one, like the relationship I was seeking) they would have to contact the Bishop and I would be barred from taking Communion.
I was given another two weeks to decide. During this time I told myself I would pray and discern, but I was too anxious and grief-stricken to even function. I showed up for the follow-up meeting and essentially told Dcn. Keith and Fr. Kevin, “Just get it over with.” Dcn. Keith later told me that when he called Fr. Stewart to tell him the news, Fr. Stewart cried. I wish that Keith’s decision to share this information felt neutral to me. It felt almost like a kind of special pleading: he wanted me to have sympathy for him and Fr. Stewart. My actions had brought them to a point of grief.
For several weeks, I kept attending Rez. I’d stand in the very back, against the wall, trying to be as invisible as possible and weep through the service of the Eucharist. Nearly every week, a close friend or two who knew me and my situation would find me, stand in the back with me, and abstain from Communion, standing with me instead. I kept attending Rez because I wanted to honor the process of church discipline.
I understand now that the practice of ex-communication is designed to bring the vilest of sinners to a point of repentance. At the time, I worried that perhaps I was still deluded about the severity of my actions, as my spiritual leaders suggested. If this were the case, I hoped that the shock of being denied Communion would serve its historical purpose and bring me to a moment of conviction about the error of my ways.
Likely for the same reason, Dcn. Keith continued meeting with me on a pastoral basis. If I was going to be restored back into Communion via a reconciliation process, it was going to happen through him. But our meetings were unhelpful and damaging. Regarding my new dating relationship, about which I was deeply ambivalent, Keith continued to provide a level of engagement that felt immature and was riddled with ‘gotcha’ moments. When I’d discuss the difficulty of chastity, he’d respond, “Wow. I’m impressed you’ve lasted this long. It’s almost like, at some level, you understand that there’s no turning back once you act out physically with someone.” I didn’t feel manipulated in these conversations, exactly – I suspect this was simply the level of maturity Dcn. Keith was capable of bringing to the table. I learned not to discuss my relationship with him.
My most pressing concerns were about the nature of the discipline I’d submitted to, and its spiritual implications, especially in a wider church context that was deeply divided over issues of sexuality. Dcn. Keith admitted many of these questions were above his pay grade, but had an “I’ll bite” attitude. He was the pastor to which I’d been assigned, so I felt that if he wasn’t going to set me up a meeting with someone else, he should bite. (In hindsight, I wish he hadn’t bitten.)
I mentioned a local Episcopal Church I’d started visiting that had remained in TEC, but did not perform gay marriages. It had declared that it would never split over issues of sexuality, and that both affirming and non-affirming views were welcome. Its congregation included the married lesbian couple who introduced me to the church, but it also included Wheaton professors, editors at Christianity Today, and a large number of professionals who were closely connected in para-church organizations with those in the Rez community. This church, as part of TEC, was in Communion with Rez under Canterbury. What did it mean that I had been barred from Communion at Rez but could take Communion at this TEC church? Keith replied, “That sounds like a lovely and intellectually complex community, but I have deep reservations about whether it should call itself a church or whether the Communion you receive there is valid. That’s why we’re in ACNA.”
I mentioned a local conservative PCUSA church where I had recently started a part time job leading worship, despite being open with leadership about my beliefs and my dating relationship. What did it mean that I could serve in leadership at a conservative church that was otherwise aligned with Church of the Resurrection’s views? Keith replied, “Again, I’d wonder about the validity of the Communion you’d receive there, and its validity as a church. Sadly, even many who call themselves conservatives are drifting into very dangerous territory.”
I mentioned my Side B Christian friends, and how part of my difficulty with Redeemed Lives had been its narrow vision for pastoral ministry and for holy living for gay Christians. What would be the place of someone who, like my friends, identified as gay and stood in solidarity with LGBT people, but chose to remain celibate in submission to church history? Keith was concerned about the part where they identify as gay. “You know, Steve, I have often wondered if where you went wrong was several years ago, when you came out publicly. We believe that sort of disclosure should only be made to trusted spiritual advisors.”
At this point I let the pastoral relationship with Keith fizzle, because it was profoundly unhelpful.
I ended my dating relationship after about three months. Just like qo’helet, the author of Ecclesiastes, I was not satisfied by the experience. (And looking back, I just wasn’t ready.) I was too wounded by everything that had gone down at church, and I was too confused about my views. For another two years I didn’t date, and I still was seriously considering the possibility that I may be suited to celibacy while attending affirming churches like those in TEC. But now this matter of excommunication was causing spiritual confusion so deep it undermined my ability to join TEC, too. Shouldn’t I go back to the source and try to reconcile?
Excerpt from the 2021 ACNA Sexuality and Identity Statement, developed under a task force chaired by Bp. Stewart Ruch
Going Back
Before resolving all this, I found myself at a Rez service with some friends who still attended the church, and my friend leaned over and said, “You know, I think you can take Communion now that you’re no longer in a relationship, right? Since you could take it while you were affirming but not dating?” It occurred to me that I had no idea what my status was at this point. I decided the quickest way to find out was to get in Fr. Stewart’s Communion line and follow his lead. As I walked toward the front of the sanctuary and approached Fr. Stewart, his face broke into horror and sadness. I shifted my stance from the outstretched palms that signify a reception to the elements, to holding my hands crossed over my chest, which signified a desire for prayer. Father Stewart prayed for me, and then, before I moved on, whispered, “Let’s talk.”
In our meeting, I laid out my current dilemma: I had ended my relationship and wasn’t actively dating anyone; I still leaned strongly affirming but was considering my options: perhaps I was still being invited to pursue celibacy, perhaps I would seek out a Christian gay marriage, but it was going to take some significant time and healing and discernment before that was possible. I was also trying to attend TEC churches but felt squeamish about never having reconciled with Rez. My relationship with another man, which had occasioned the church discipline, was over. What would it look like to be restored to Communion?
With kind and grieved eyes, Fr. Stewart spoke for about twenty minutes with a more radical and divisive attitude than I’d ever heard from him. (I can’t help but compare it to our meeting several years earlier during which he invited me to lean into the Rez community despite friction in our views.) He expressed deep concern over every element of my discernment process. He reminded me that gay Christian marriage isn’t marriage, and questioned whether pursuing celibacy while identifying as gay and attending an affirming church would be honoring to God either.
He reiterated that all TEC churches are in “profound peril” and urged me not to attend one. He was also concerned that I’d been away from Rez for so long. To be restored to Communion, I’d have to start attending Rez again, enter into another pastoral relationship to reassess my views and future behavior, and repent of my past sinful relationship and of my heterodoxy, at which point we’d revisit things. He reminded me that repentance included an earnest desire to change and move forward with a new mind, heart, and spirit.
Is there room, I asked, for divergent views on some of these lesser matters, especially from allied traditionalist voices in the church? “Would it be possible,” I asked, “for me to repent of entering into a relationship prematurely? Would it be possible to believe that I’m seeking the heart of God, in pastoral relationships with trusted voices, and that I just wasn’t a good fit for Rez’s pastoral care program? Is it possible to send me off with a blessing and a prayer, as you do with others who leave Rez? Would it be possible for me to repent of failing to submit to pastoral leadership, with the intention of restoring a pastoral relationship at a different church as I continue my discernment process?” Fr. Stewart softened even further in posture and manner, but hardened in rhetoric. He expressed concern about traditionalists who didn’t share Rez’s views on gender and sexuality. He reminded me that he and the rest of Rez’s leadership would be doing me a disservice if they let me settle for anything other than God’s desire for me: complete healing. I realized this predicament would be permanent. I wondered if he thought he saw the rich young ruler in my posture as I walked away.
My understanding is that the process of excommunication should serve a pastoral purpose in bringing a person out of sin and heterodoxy, not remove a person from the community entirely. Wes Hill has written in detail about this. Because of the narrowness of Rez’s teaching but the wide authority of their discipline, I felt as though I was in a double-bind.
Because of my respect for their spiritual office I was unwilling to ignore church discipline, but my conversations with Fr. Stewart and Dcn. Keith had left me with the impression of a litmus test that still haunts me: the invalid churches are all the ones who would offer the Eucharist to me. (I frequently wonder if the litmus test was actually: the invalid churches are all the ones that aren’t Rez.)
I didn’t hear much more about Rez until 2014, when a person I’d just met at a party mentioned that they’d considered attending Rez until, during a membership class, they realized that Rez excommunicates affirming people. “Dcn. Keith told this story about a young guy, I think he was a musician and he blogged about sexuality and his dad had just died, and he was considering affirming theology and then he started dating someone, and it was so sad for everybody but they had to excommunicate him.” This woman had just met me, so she didn’t realize she was talking to the person she was describing.
While membership classes are not published online, it only took 15 minutes of searching to find a similar talk Dcn. Keith had given at a healing conference, which was available publicly online. In it, he told what was unmistakably my story, with far more identifying details than were appropriate. I was well-known in the community as a musician, and I’ve written songs and essays about my father’s death. While I chose not to share the details of my excommunication with anyone other than a few close friends, anyone involved in membership or the healing conference who knew me tangentially would be able to put the pieces together.
One other element that didn’t sit well with me about Keith’s talk was that you got the impression everyone was more or less happy with the outcome. The young excommunicated man had realized this wasn’t the community for him, and it was best for everybody if we parted ways. It was a hard discussion, Dcn. Keith seemed to suggest, but we believe we handled the situation kindly and with grace.
I was frustrated about this, so I sent an email to Keith, and cc’d Fr. Kevin, who I understood to be his boss, and who had been the other party present when I was barred from receiving Communion at Rez.
Hi Fr. Keith and Fr. Kevin,
I hope you’re both well. Congratulations on ordination, Keith!
I'm settled into a new church in Chicago, but I'm still processing my years at Rez. It comes up in articles and songs I'm writing, and I wanted to talk to you about that as a courtesy before I publish or release anything. Also, complete strangers have told me that my story comes up in CORE, and I would like to know from you, Keith, how and if you're telling it, rather than relying on rumors.
Is there a time in the next few weeks that would work for you? I work Monday - Friday 9-6 but may be able to request off if those are the only times you're available.
Fr. Keith replied, still cc’ing Fr. Kevin:
Steve, we love you and miss you. We would be happy to sit down together at any time that you decide you want to return to Resurrection under the conditions we had discussed. I don't share anything with your name or identifying details so I'm not sure what's prompting people to think my CORE talk involves you.
I replied, removing Fr. Kevin from the thread as a courtesy, which I now regret. I was worried my first email had come off too combative and that cc-ing Fr. Keith’s boss was too much of a power move. I now assume Fr. Keith did not loop in Fr. Kevin on the rest of our conversation.
Hi Keith, sorry for the late reply.
I was a bit confused by your email. I'm not planning to return to Resurrection, but I would still really like to chat with you in person. Are you open to that?
Fr. Keith’s reply:
I'm leaving for sabbatical right after Easter Sunday for 3 months. I cant[sic] make it happen. But also, I don't want to talk about what you plan to publish from your time at Rez, or process that with you. I would be willing to do that if you were making your way back to Rez.
Sometime between this and my next email, the specific talk I’d found online (which I had not yet referenced to Keith) was removed from the church’s website. But it’s still streamable on Wayback Machine.
It took a couple weeks, but I sent a long reply to Fr. Keith, which I’ve excerpted below:
Because you are not open to meeting with me, I'll raise my concerns via email.
At a social event in Wheaton I met a woman whose family briefly attended Resurrection. She mentioned that she had been interested in joining the church and had attended CORE classes. She decided not to join, however, when a pastor--she mentioned your name, although she seemed hazy on which pastor was which--shared about a young man who was denied Communion when he entered into a relationship with another man. I had literally just met this woman. She knew nothing of my story or even that I had attended Rez.
It did not take long after that to find, posted on Rez's website, a talk you gave at a healing conference in June 2013. In this talk, you tell what is unmistakably my story, with enough identifying details that I know it's me rather than a pastoral composite. (I found this in mid-February, and the talk isn't online anymore, but this WAS the link: http://churchrez.org/sermon/healing-conference-workshop-leading-a-healing-ministry-and-dealing-with-the-tough-issues/)
There's a lot about this that I'm NOT upset about. Like you mentioned in your email, you don't use my name. And I'm glad you're talking about the possibility of excommunication to other pastors leading healing ministries (and presumably to potential new Resurrection members). It's important and instructive to demonstrate how committed Rez is to tradition and to illustrate the possible consequences of working that commitment out in community.
But I'm also bothered, for three reasons:
1) I wish you'd asked me. This is a sensitive topic for me, and I haven't chosen to speak out about it beyond a small group of close friends and my current church home. It was pretty jarring to hear my story paraphrased to me by a stranger, though I eventually came around to understanding why it's good that she heard it.
2) Contrary to your most recent email to me, you do use identifying details in telling my story--more details than I'm comfortable with you using. You mention I blogged publicly about sexuality and came out as affirming online. You also mention that my father had recently died. That may not seem like much, but let me give you a bit of background: If you Google my name the first two things you'd learn about me are that my father died while I attended an Anglican church (I recorded and promoted an album of songs about this) and that I blogged publicly about sexuality. Many people in the Rez community and at Wheaton College knew these things about me, and if they were present during this healing conference or (presumably) your CORE talk, or if they listened to your healing talk while it was posted online, they now also know I was excommunicated from Resurrection. It would be unfair to expect you to have magically known that those two details would be pain points for me; however, if you’d asked I would’ve told you.
A note about my father's death: that story is not yours to tell, Keith. You make a connection in your talk between his death and my shift to an affirming position. As I remember, we never discussed my dad's death in a pastoral conversation beyond perhaps a brief outline of my story--he died in 2007, around the time I started attending Rez in earnest; you and I began meeting in 2010, just before I shifted my position. Even if we had (or did--my memory isn't perfect) discussed that in a pastoral setting it would be inappropriate for you to share it. Listening to a publicly available recording of you sharing that with a roomful of strangers felt like a punch in the gut, and I was reeling from it for days. That really hurt, Keith.
3) Something about your last email felt dishonest and dismissive. You chose your words carefully too: "I don't share anything with your name or identifying details so I'm not sure what's prompting people to think my CORE talk involves you.”
I realize that my story isn't mine alone. Being at Rez taught me that my life is one stroke in a larger painting; my actions are intimately interconnected with those of the whole Church. It would be inappropriate for me to ask you to tell only a version of my story that I approve; it’s not like I get exclusive ownership over events that happened in community. I certainly don't consider myself above reproach here. I chose not to submit to church authority, and I'm still dealing with the consequences of that choice. I am asking you, though, as a kindness, to respect my wishes by no longer mentioning the identifying details I mentioned above when you do use my story for pastoral illustration.
Fr. Keith actually replied to this, expressing that he was open to hearing my thoughts and that he may owe me an apology. But he ghosted during the process of confirming a time.
I regret not including Fr. Kevin on my longer reply, as I suspect there would’ve been more follow-up and possibly teaching if I’d included Keith’s colleague and (by that time, former) boss. (Fr. Keith returned from sabbatical no longer at Rez and working for The Greenhouse Movement, an organization planting churches within the diocese.) But I was committed to trying to resolve the issue directly.
By this point I was eager to put Rez behind me forever, but that has proven hard to do. I still have not managed to join The Episcopal Church because of ongoing difficulty receiving discipline, however compromised, from one church and then joining another church in the same global Communion. At times I worry that I’m overthinking this (and I have surely tried to under-think it, but it doesn’t seem to work). But at other times, I wonder if I am taking the sacraments and the life of the church more seriously than Resurrection’s leadership did.
Screenshot from Church of the Resurrection’s website
After Rez
After Rez, it took nearly ten years before I was able to get involved or serve in any capacity at a church, though I never stopped regularly attending. I’d tend to lurk and leave early, so I was the type of person who could attend for two years and people would ask me, “are you new?” During my time at Rez, my desire was to deepen in the faith and in Anglican spirituality, and to grow in my commitment and service to a church community. That has remained my wish, and it still is, but I’m learning that healing and recovery is maddeningly slow. I continually underestimate how challenging it is to move on from spiritual trauma. I’m frustrated by the failure of my time at Rez, and at how significant a setback it has posed in my ongoing life with the church. I’d hoped to grow in faith, and I shared my whole self, willing to be pruned. Instead it felt like I was deemed toxic and thrown out.
Because I am now affirming and in a same-sex marriage, I understand that ACNA will not be my church home again, at least for many years. But some questions remain: I’m genuinely unsure of my Communion status in the Upper Midwest Diocese or ACNA in general. I strongly suspect that my story would’ve played out very differently had I attended a different ACNA church. But I’ve also assumed that I should not receive the Eucharist if I visit an ACNA church, since I was excommunicated by an ACNA diocese. However, I was excommunicated by Bishop Sandy Greene in a diocese that no longer exists (it was replaced by UMD shortly after I was excommunicated). So perhaps my excommunication is meaningless now?
While Fr. Mario is no longer with Rez or UMD, and Redeemed Lives is no longer an active pastoral ministry within Rez, Rez is still practicing narrow pastoral ministry toward its LGBT congregants focused on healing from same-sex sexuality and movement away from identification as LGBT, as evidenced by a 2021 statement, co-authored by Bp. Stewart Ruch, from the College of Bishops, and a message given at the recent Fully Alive healing conference. I believe my case study illustrates numerous problems with this limited approach to pastoral care. It is too easy for rogue clergy to add to the gospel when vulnerable parishioners come to them. When pastoral care is narrow and pastoral authority is wide, deeply troubling problems arise.
Screenshot from the Church of the Resurrection website
I also hope traditionalists within ACNA would question, with thinkers like Wes Hill, whether (and when) church discipline is appropriate in the context of a pluralistic world and a church in an ongoing crisis over issues of sexuality. In a 2018 piece on church discipline regarding matters of sexual purity and identity, Hill quotes Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics and its urgent warning against overreach:
“If [the church’s] work is not done or done badly, then contrary to its task the community closes the kingdom of heaven and excludes men from it instead of pointing to the door which is open to all. It holds where it should release.”
Hill’s inclusion of Barth’s warning in his piece suggests bracing stakes for clergy considering discipline over matters of sexual morality: that when LGBTQ people (and others) describe as ‘exclusion’ what pastors insist is ‘discipline’, we are naming a spiritual reality our pastors are denying, in fact one they brought into existence.
While he was ostensibly the most pastoral and thoughtful clergy member I interacted with at Rez, I've had difficulty with some of Fr. Kevin Miller's published writing since my excommunication in 2011. Fr. Miller has written enough on the topic of church discipline, specifically toward LGBT people, to be considered an authority on the matter. In this piece in 2009 (two years before I was excommunicated), he describes the withholding of Eucharist as a practice reserved for extreme cases (abuse is the cited example) and with a restorative purpose. The longest period of withholding he cites lasted one year. In this piece in 2015, the possibility of withholding Communion for reasons of sexual sin is discussed, but again, the purpose is restorative and the cited example involves a person who stayed in the church.
A heavy throughline in these pieces is that church discipline works – people come to an understanding of their sin, they usually repent, and they rarely leave the church. I'm not sure if I think Miller's arguments here are inconsistent or simply sentimental and naive, given that he was an actor in an instance of church discipline which did not fit the mold he describes.
Another throughline in Fr. Miller's writing is that church discipline must hold all to a consistent standard – the standard he articulates is that all exclusively same-sex attracted people are called to celibacy and all others are called to chastity within marriage or celibacy outside of it. I've illustrated how church discipline as it was practiced by clergy at Rez, including Fr. Miller, did not meet this standard of consistency, as it held LGBT people to an unfair and for many, untenable, standard.
As I've explained, Fr. Miller was not the primary actor in my case and was not fully in the know about pastoral conversations I had with Dcn. Hartsell and Fr. Ruch. He even graciously articulated a sense of unfairness to me in our earliest conversation about church discipline. If only he knew the extent to which he was right to call that out. It's possible, not knowing the pastoral care I was receiving from his colleagues, that he genuinely thought the church discipline he was practicing met the standard he writes about. And yet, he did know that I was disciplined against my conscience while still practicing celibacy, left the church in great distress, attempted multiple times to initiate reconciliation and find a way to submit to discipline despite the qualms of my conscience, and never returned.
He also knew he was working with colleagues who held people to a different standard than the one he articulates as consistent and fair: namely, orientation change and movement away from identifying as LGBT. Stories like mine do not appear in his writings on church discipline. I hope this case serves as a caution to pastors and to readers: beware articulations of a pastoral standard when you don't have the whole story. While I don't think he acted with ill intent, Fr. Miller has articulated a standard for church discipline that he himself did not meet in my case.
In fact, in light of his writing, I wonder if he even remembers cases like mine (surely I'm not the only one) at all, because I think if he did, they would trouble him, and he'd write differently about this topic. I mean this as a genuine question of pastoral ethics and polity: should a priest ever forget about someone they've excommunicated? If the act is to be undertaken as gravely as Fr. Miller (or indeed, the New Testament writers and Church forebears) have written, you'd hope the priest would be even more tortured by it than the parishioner. It makes me wonder who else has been excommunicated and then forgotten.
As significant concerns have come to light over Church of the Resurrection’s pastoral care, and Bp. Stewart’s fitness for ministry, I find myself returning to my concerns about the fitness of my own excommunication. I hope, reading my account, that members of ACNA consider this case study in pastoral malpractice as they determine how to make ACNA a safe and pastorally vital denomination, specifically for LGBT Christians.