An open letter from the Zacchaeus Fellowship responding to the "Statement from the House of Bishops to the Members of General Synod"
May 14, 2007

To the National House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada:

We write to you out of our painful sense of rejection caused by the statement in the name of the Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada issued on April 30. Our response to your statement has taken two weeks as we have needed to recover from our shock and discouragement. One of our members wrote, "When I first read the HOB statement, it felt like someone had just spit in my face! I was not angry; just gravely disappointed and yes, surprised.

"What little comfort we can take is in the knowledge that some of you have encouraged us in the past and continue to assure us of your support. We thank you for standing with us. Sadly, though, it seems we are now the new marginalized minority.

On October 27, 2005, several members of the Zacchaeus Fellowship made a presentation to the House of Bishops (available at www.zacchaeus.ca/hob.html), in which we spoke about our pasts, our struggles, our hopes and our hurts. Every member of the House of Bishops has also received a copy of our booklet Transformed by an Encounter with Christ.

Your statement has betrayed our witness to the House of Bishops. You bent over backwards to express sympathy for our brothers and sisters who openly espouse the gay lifestyle, yet your statement held not one word of pastoral sensitivity towards us. In the name of pastoral care, you have left us feeling spiritually bulldozed and utterly deserted by our church. We are not at all able to agree with the statement's claim to consistency with paragraph 143 of the Windsor Report, which affirms "the duty of pastoral care that is laid upon all Christians to respond with love and understanding to people of all sexual orientations." We point to your lack of so much as an acknowledgment that the Anglican Church of Canada contains a constituency of individuals who are ex-gay, ex-lesbian, or living chastely with same-sex desires. the rest
h/t: Virtueonline