I am grateful that the Episcopal Church has approved having a liturgy for same-sex unions, and has approved transgendered persons for the clergy. (This was done at the 77th General Convention, held this week at Indianapolis.) I am glad to belong to a church that is welcoming and accepting to gay people as well as transgendered people, and I am glad to belong to a church with a modern understanding of these issues as well as the relevant scriptures and theology.
Naturally, not everyone is so glad. I found a link on realclearreligion.com (a religion news aggregation site) to an opinion piece by Mark Tooley, "A transgendered Episcopal Church." (This appeared on the Institute for Religion and Democracy blogjuicyecumenism.com.) Tooley seems to have problems understanding transgendered people. He writes: "Each self-actualized individual can in fact perpetually reinvent himself or herself into endlessly possible new sexual identities. Male today, female tomorrow, then some yet to be determined new gender next week." Later, he sees a sad, cloudy future for the Episcopal Church "absent a massive influx of cross dressing spiritual seekers." The notion that transgendered people are just cross dressers or wish to perpetually reinvent themselves into new sexual identities is emphatically incorrect, and Tooley's use of this language shows his ignorance and bigotry.
But Tooley brings up another point: the Episcopal Church as being in steep decline due to what he labels its abandonment of theological orthodoxy. It is true that the Episcopal Church has lost membership, down something like 25% in the last 10 years, and this is in part due to conservatives leaving the church. But the traffic goes both ways---there are plenty of former conservatives who have left the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical churches who now are in the Episcopal Church. Typical Episcopal parishes have plenty of these folks. It's also important to understand that conservative churches are also losing members; even the Southern Baptists (the largest evangelical group in the country) are now losing members, and the Roman Catholic Church would be losing members rapidly but for immigration. (The only religious categories that are gaining are "none" and "atheist or agnostic.") It's even more important to understand that young people are much less likely than earlier generations to have a favorable view of conservative Christian churches; they view them as intolerant or hypocritical. Much of that cohort will probably return to church (people tend to return to church when they form families and have children), but it's very likely that overall numbers for conservative churches will drop substantially in the coming years. It may well be that the Episcopal Church keeps its membership, as more former conservatives---tired of discrimination against women and intolerant attitudes towards gay and transgendered people---find their way to the Episcopal Church. To many people, conservative churches are like Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen admonishes Alice that she isn't trying hard enough to believe in impossible things ("When I was your age, I could believe in six impossible things before breakfast!"). I am very glad that the Episcopal Church is here as an alternative to simply leaving the church entirely, for people who realize they can no longer remain in conservative churches. I am glad too that the Episcopal Church has affirmed the sanctity of committed, caring, loving same-sex relationships---contrary to the insinuations of conservatives that the Episcopal Church endorses an anything-goes hedonism or an idolatry of sexuality. This is a message not just for conservatives but also for gay people, who may be alienated by the promiscuity and superficiality in much of the gay culture.
But how unorthodox is the Episcopal Church in its theology? If by 'orthodox' you mean belief in Biblical inerrancy or specific doctrines such as the necessity to be Christian to be saved, Episcopalians are not orthodox. The truth of the matter is that the Episcopal Church does not make many demands on its members in terms of belief, and it tolerates a wide spectrum of belief. Some parishes are quite conservative, with a distinctly evangelical theology; other parishes are very liberal, and you're hard-pressed to tell if the clergy believe in a distinct hereafter much less in Heaven or Hell. But the hope shared by most Episcopalians is that the church can hold together as a community that shares in a truly catholic, international church. The church is under stress, but most Episcopalians are still willing to participate in the ongoing project of the church community. And I think all Episcopalians seek to follow Christ in helping the people in their lives.
As far as my own understanding of theology, I do have trouble believing in some doctrines many regard as orthodox, but I believe in deeper, more essential truths that these doctrines point to, truths that are completely orthodox. For example, conservatives teach the atonement theology, that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. I find this theology disturbing; it seems to bring back into Judeo-Christian theology human sacrifice, something that was done away with at least six centuries before Christ in Jewish practice and theology. (The rather dramatic story of the destruction by King Josiah of the cults that practiced human sacrifices is told in 2 Kings 23; the Topheth mentioned in that passage was a place of human sacrifice, as indicated elsewhere in the Bible.) But I do believe in redemption, in the reality of changed lives, and I believe that this is available to each of us as the Holy Spirit works in our hearts.
I also believe in the Resurrection---there are elements of fiction in the Gospels (the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, for example) but it is clear that the disciples of Jesus were convinced that he appeared to them in an objective way (not as a ghost or hallucination), and this empowered the disciples to spread this Good News. (The reality of the Resurrection is expressed in the earliest Christian writings we have, the letters of St. Paul, written within three decades after the death of Christ. This doesn't prove the Resurrection actually happened, but it does establish that the original followers of Jesus believed it had.) But this good news was not that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, although beliefs of that kind soon arose in the new religion (as did the doctrine of the Trinity, which is never directly expressed in the Bible except for the spurious Johannine Comma of 1 John 5:7-8). Instead the Good News was an emphatic demonstration through the Resurrection that God's love for us is more powerful than death and that God will be with us before, during and after we ourselves die, just as he was with Jesus. And we can believe and work to oppose the forces of spiritual oppression without fear.
Likewise, conservatives believe in Hell or eternal separation from God (or in annihilationism, the idea that if you are not saved, you suffer permanent extinction when you die), but I cannot believe these things, because it makes God cruel (infinite or permanent punishment for a finite lifetime of sin). But I do believe that we will experience judgment and profound regret for the wrongs we have done in this life. (There is evidence for this in "life-after-life" experiences. Apparently, "past life reviews" are a common features of these experiences, and people who have had these experiences report intense feelings of regret for what their past life reviews show them. However, I am not prepared to assert that these experiences have any objective reality.)
By the way, a leading evolutionary biologist, Joan Roughgarden (a retired Stanford professor), is a transgendered woman and also an Episcopalian. She is the author of an interesting little book,Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist.
Added 2012-07-15: The conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat described the Episcopal Church as "friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form" today in a column titled "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" This seems to repeats the slur that the Episcopal Church endorsesan anything-goes hedonism or an idolatry of sexuality. As I mentioned above, the Episcopal Church instead affirms committed, caring, loving relationships. In particular, the Episcopal Church recognizes relationships that are monogamous, whether same-sex or opposite-sex.