The revolutionary changes we seek are matters of human rights and social justice. We in TEC are better informed than those who went before in discerning God's hidden plan for his Church.

The Holy Spirit guides us and sets us free from the past, so all we do will be consistent with the will of God. If some in our church resist our prophetic changes, we will push the change ahead anyway to

demonstrate the rightness of our views.

Eventually the rest of the Anglican Communion will recognize our wisdom and imitate us.'

Not 2003 but 1976

If any reader thinks I have just outlined how the 2003 General Convention rationalized its consent to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson and winked at the blessing of homosexual unions, think again. The principles just outlined did not first appear in 2003. Rather they are the exact principles The Episcopal Church acted on when it approved the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate in 1976.

A close examination of the principles will reveal that several run contrary to classical Anglican formularies, and others reveal nothing more than American arrogance.

These principles emerged with clarity in 1973 just after the General Convention in Louisville declined to authorize the ordination of women to the priesthood.

On 29 July 1974, the principle of 'push ahead anyway' was activated when 11 female deacons were ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia, in defiance of the General Convention and contrary to
the Constitution and Canons.

How did the church respond? The 1976 General Convention (Minneapolis I) was persuaded that the illegal ordinations in Philadelphia, and four more in Washington, were prophetic rather than defiant.

By the margin of a hair's breadth, the 1976 convention consented to a minor change in the canons that allowed the ordination of women as priests and bishops.

Contrary to recent assertions of Bonnie Anderson, the new president of the House of Deputies, this change was only pushed through because it was understood that the ordination of women would be permissive only, never mandatory. No bishop or diocese, we were assured at the time, would ever be forced to adopt this new practice which was contrary to the theology of holy orders held by many in our own church, and also flew in the face of Roman Catholics and Orthodox with whom we were actively pursuing ecumenism.

A firm assurance

Consequently, after witnessing the firestorm unleashed by the 1976 convention, as individuals and whole parishes began to head for the door, the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter in October, 1977,

On The Matter of Conscience, which said in part, 'We have sought to recognize that many were dismayed because of General Convention's action concerning the ordination of women... We do affirm that one is not a disloyal Episcopalian if he or she abstains from supporting the decision or continues to be convinced it was an error.

We call for careful avoidance of any kind of pressure which might lead either an advocate or an opponent of the action to offend against his or her conscience...

The Minnesota Convention sought to permit but not to coerce. We affirm that no members of the Church should be penalized for conscientious objection to, or support of, the ordination of women.

A vivid personal example is the Presiding Bishop himself. He has acknowledged his inability thus far to affirm such ordinations.'

Despite such assurances, the principles of revolutionary change outlined here took deep root and now hold TEC in an iron - and apparently unbreakable - grip.

They are the operative principles behind many of the actions of some of our bishops and others since Minneapolis I.

So it should have been no surprise when Minneapolis II (2003) consented to the consecration of a man living in a homosexual partnership, and tacitly approved the ongoing practice (of many years) of priests and bishops publicly endorsing homosexual conduct and blessing homosexual relationships.

While that same 1977 pastoral letter said 'this Church confines its nuptial blessing to the union of male and female,' and that the bishops 'agree to deny ordination to an advocating and/or practicing homosexual person,' arguing that 'in each case we must not condone what we believe God wills to redeem,' the gay-rights lobby continued its unrelenting assault.

Its goal was to force acceptance of not only homosexual orientation but also of homosexual conduct, and to demand further that such conduct be not only tolerated but also blessed by the church.

Unrelenting pressure

This badgering wore down the resistance and carried the day when the 2003 convention consented to the consecration of a man who in many dioceses not many years before would have been deposed for immorality. The Episcopal Church had swallowed the 'gay-rights' lure hook, line, and sinker.

Why the surprise? Have we lost our minds, or only our memories? Have Episcopalians forgotten that at least one of the 'Philadelphia 11' illegally ordained to the priesthood in 1974, Carter Heyward, was a lesbian? The same Dr Heyward, described in a Sept. 10, 1981, Episcopal News Service article as 'an openly avowed lesbian priest on the faculty of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., who has done much to speak out for justice for gay/lesbian people in the Church and elsewhere,' concelebrated at the altar during the consecration of Bishop Barbara Harris, in 1989.

So the outcry over Gene Robinson's consecration rings hollow, and comes too late. Let's tune up our memories.

The principles of revolutionary change that reached full bloom at Minneapolis II were planted at Minneapolis I, where credulous Episcopalians either knowingly - or unwittingly - planted the seeds
of destruction for apostolic faith and order in this part of God's Church.

Though many will continue to deny it, the principles used to justify the ordination of women as priests and bishops, when watered and cultivated, grew into the justification for homosexual priests (and bishops) and for homosexual 'marriage.'

Those who cannot see the clear connection and progression are, I suspect, simply blinding themselves to the plain, glaring facts of history.

The Very Revd John R. Spencer is the vicar of St Francis' Church, Dunlap, Illinois. This article first appeared in The Living Church, 17 June 2007