The opposite is also true. Frequently, people do the wrong thing for the right reasons. An impoverished man may steal food in order to provide for a destitute mother. We've all heard of deeply confused teen-agers who commit suicide because they can't imagine going through life as a burden to their parents. Then there is the more complex case of the person who commits perjury to spare a loved one from the consequences of their actions. Stealing, suicide, and perjury are all wrong. But they are sometimes done for the best of reasons.

Equally, when sex is the temptation, wrong things may be done for the right reasons-or at least for reasons that those who do them perceive to be right. A lonely 40-year-old widower shares his bed with his adoring 18-year-old daughter. Do they love each other? Of course. Ask them. A man takes a second wife and claims that he loves both wives equally. They in turn seem happy with the arrangement. Two teens, deeply in love but not yet ready for marriage, very discreetly share a summer of sexual intimacy. There have been places and times in history when incest, polygamy, and fornication were socially acceptable. But how many moral codes would openly say so? For a host of reasons, the vast majority of moral people would consider these actions wrong.

I am making a plea to you, the Fathers (and Mothers) in God for our Church, heirs to the Apostles and guardians of the Faith. My plea is simply this: that you prayerfully consider whether or not the decision of the House of Bishops to consecrate an openly gay man as bishop in the Church of God, a decision endorsed by the General Convention of 2003, was not the wrong thing-done for the right reasons.

The worldwide Church, of which we are a part, has asked us to "express our regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached" in the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. It has also requested a moratorium on public blessings of same sex couples and on the election, confirmation, and consecration of any man or woman to the episcopate who is not living in a way consistent with the Church's historic understanding of singleness or marriage. These requests amount to an admission that the decision of GC2003 was wrong.

We are all aware of the costs of that decision. Donations have been lost, parishes have become disaffected, overseas bishops have crossed diocesan boundaries, and gifted clergy-even theologians-have departed our Communion. Now ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada have been suspended from the Anglican Consultative Council. The specter of 35 Anglican Primates meeting together for five days and not sharing in the Table of the Lord is almost beyond our comprehension. But it happened.

Who knows what unhappiness throughout the Communion awaits us all if we cannot find a way to walk together? Who knows how profoundly our mission will be affected by our disunity? Who knows how the dissolution of a family that-despite many differences on secondary matters-has stayed together for nearly 500 years will affect the global Christian movement?

The stakes are high by any reckoning. The world is watching. People inside the Church and out have questions about the future of the Anglican Communion. The news media are filled with articles about the inner tensions with which the Church lives daily. AP and Reuters send out a constant flow of stories about what this bishop or that meeting has decided, or not decided. As I travel to the far corners of the globe visiting Anglican seminarians, people immediately want to know my take on our future.

Immediately after the Primates' meeting at the Dromantine Center in Newry, Ireland, Archbishop Rowan Williams was quoted as saying, "Any lasting solution [to our present impasse] will require people to say somewhere along the line, yes they were wrong." No matter how one spins that statement, it is widely read as a plea to the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to do what some in the House of Bishops say is "inconceivable"-admit that electing a man as a bishop who was living outside the parameters of Christian marriage and approving the concept of public blessings of same-sex relationships are wrong.

As a child, I always found it difficult to say I was sorry, especially when the demand came after a fight with an older brother who had the advantages of age and strength. As a newly married man adjusting to the merging of two separate lives, I recall confessing to my bride: "I've never said I was sorry so much in my whole life as I have during the first year of marriage!" When conflicts emerged over the years in the various parishes, parachurch ministries, or seminaries where I have worked, I found that getting the various parties to admit wrong was laborious, delicate, and seemingly impossible. Why is it so difficult to apologize for wrong actions when perhaps thousands of times we have said to God that we have "erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep"?

One reason some may find it so difficult to admit that they may have erred lies in the conviction that in the election, confirmation, and consecration of V. Gene Robinson, the motives were basically right. I'll agree that it is not hard to come up with what seem to have been "right" reasons. Is it surprising to you that someone on the other side of the theological aisle from yourself might recognize many right reasons for this action?

For example, some people are motivated by compassion. Anyone who has attended one of our historic Episcopal all-boys boarding schools, as I did, finds no difficulty recalling incidents where those who were perceived as less than fully masculine were ridiculed, ostracized, and demeaned. Outside that rarefied atmosphere, it's only a guess what life must be like for a gay person growing up in the rough and tumble of an urban environment, or the hyper-masculine world of rural North America, or the oversexed suburban high school. Only those who have experienced that can tell the rest of us. But by the time adulthood is reached, and the passage through the turbulent adolescent years is passed, almost any person attracted to his or her own sex finds it easy to be filled with self-hatred, shame, and fear.

It is natural then to argue out of sheer compassion that the only right thing to do is to declare war on the irrational hatred of people who are homophobic, and provide a safe haven for a minority that has suffered enough. When people within our own families, or extended families, or among our close friends define themselves as homosexual, the most compassionate reaction is to come to a place of acceptance and understanding. Surely, within the church there should be room for people who are different, and most especially for those whose difference has exposed them to discrimination.

Does anybody doubt that the election of Bishop Robinson was motivated in part by a deep-seated compassion? Why, it is argued, must those with obvious gifts for ministry, with solid training, and with an exemplary spirituality be denied a place in the leadership of the Church? It is cruel to contemplate any alternative. Therefore compassion dictates acceptance. Could anything be simpler?

I also see people motivated by a commitment to civil rights. As a young couple, my wife and I sold the first house we owned to two lesbians. We didn't think twice about it. But as the issue of rights for homosexuals began to come to the forefront of our national attention, I had to think again about the many ways in which this subculture in our midst is denied basic rights. There has been discrimination regarding employment, housing, the military, visitation of partners in hospitals, and inheritance. There has been unkind stereotyping of gays in the popular media, in jokes, and-yes-in sermons. These injustices have all contributed to the marginalization of gays and lesbians and have driven some back into the closets from which they began to emerge, and in which many still hide.

I believe that Christians can differ on whether or not the state should sanction civil unions, permit adoption of children by gay couples, and advance people who are open and unashamed of their homosexual lifestyle to positions of public trust. Our differences will reveal the extent to which we believe corporate society, and particularly youth, needs to be protected from role models that discourage the development of normal heterosexual relationships in later life. Behind these differences lies the old nature/nurture debate: Is human behavior more influenced by one's genetic makeup or by the environmental forces that shape one's life? Where we come down on that question will influence how we view society's corporate acceptance or rejection of homosexuality in the public square.

Clearly, unless a so-called "gay gene" is discovered, we all have to be somewhat agnostic about the causes of homoerotic behavior. Moreover, if a "gay gene" were discovered, imagine how our problems would multiply. Who would determine how much behavior is genetically determined and how much environmentally influenced? The debate could be endless. And if a "gay gene" were discovered, should there be laws against the aborting fetuses known to be carrying such? Legislation prohibiting such abortions is currently being promoted in Maine, leading to a surprising new alliance of pro-lifers with gay and lesbian groups.

And so the argument goes: What better way is there to promote basic civil rights for homosexuals than to elevate to a position of leadership within a mainline denomination someone who is living in a same-sex relationship? And how better to overcome deeply ingrained prejudice than to encourage the public blessing of same-sex relationships in churches? Whatever one says of the decision, the motivation has some merit.

Closely allied to the concern for civil rights is the issue of justice. When any group of people has suffered, there is a natural feeling that justice is owed them in the form of reparation. To this day the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of Jews who suffered under the Nazis are compensated for properties confiscated when claims of loss have been substantiated. Why, then, should the same not be true for those who have been unjustly treated because of their sexual orientation?

Justice is an elusive concept. Ask any judge. It is likely that many in the Church who voted for or approved the election of an openly gay bishop, or claimed that same sex relationships are in some way "sacred," are doing so out of a deep sense that justice is due to a whole underclass that has been mistreated through the ages-not only by society as a whole, but most specifically by the Church?

When a coalition of Les/Bi/Gays and Wiccans staged a Halloween protest on the steps of my parish in the mid 1990s demanding justice, a young woman in our youth group just happened to be walking by and recognized her high school teacher in the crowd. After greeting her teacher, she asked-somewhat naively-what he and the others were demanding. "An apology for 2000 years of church discrimination against gays and witches," he said to her. "Well, I'm a part of this church," said the girl, "and I'm sorry." Taken aback, the teacher replied: "Well, then, I forgive you." The two parted amicably. Later I commended the girl. There are times when the church does need to say it is sorry, as the Roman Catholic Church has been doing to the Jews in past decades.

By citing these three examples of sincere motivation, I am not saying that all the motivations that led to the consecration of an openly gay man as bishop were pure. When General Convention voted in 2003 to confirm V. Gene Robinson, I wrote at the time that the action was hubristic. I stand by that statement, but not to impugn the motives of the individuals who voted as they did. Rather, I believe that the Church corporately was expressing a sense of entitlement that the rest of the Communion would neither understand nor accept.

The fact is that actions are not necessarily right or wrong because of the motivations that prompt them. Here we get to the nub of the issue, as I see it. Somewhere back in the Sixties and Seventies, under the influence of Joseph Fletcher's widely-read book Situation Ethics, as well as other efforts to bring the Church into line with existentialist thinking, the Church in North America lost sight of the fact that actions can be rightly motivated but still wrong.

Ethicists use the term voluntarism to describe the approach to moral decision-making that locates the goodness or badness of any action purely in the motivation behind it. If voluntarism were right, then of course any action can be potentially good, given a right motive. This new thinking was, at the time, perceived as a liberation from stifling objective views of right and wrong that seemed to take little or no account of human intentions, and minimized the real quandaries people face in a complex modern world.

One problem with voluntarism, however, is that it takes no account of unintended consequences. Voluntarism is fundamentally simplistic in its myopic failure to consider the wider context of ethical decisions. Actions are never taken in a vacuum. They provoke other actions. They produce reactions; and they provide models that others use to justify questionable behaviors. Furthermore, when was a motivation 100% pure? Given the perversity of human nature and our tendency to approve our own actions, the potential for self-justification is limitless.

My plea, then, asks you to rethink the basis on which you judge actions good or bad. Specifically, I am urging you to reject voluntarism for the earlier, and time-tested, approach that alone has the power to free us from captivity to the reflexive subjectivism that has brought us to this present crisis.

What if we postulate a moral order to the universe? What if we assume for a moment that the skies are not silent, and that we have not been left to figure out the riddles of the cosmos all by ourselves? There really is a word from God. This word comes from one who combines holiness and love in ways that are supra-human. It is a word that has been revealed completely only in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

This moral order traces its origin to Genesis, the Decalogue and the Holiness Code of Leviticus, amplified in Deuteronomy. It was forged in the context of a theocracy intended to regulate personal and corporate behavior. As time passed, and as the theocracy yielded to a Diaspora and eventually to a global community living under many different legal and political systems, some of these laws ceased to be binding. The Church has always recognized this, and hence does not stone rebellious children or forbid the boiling of calves in their mothers' milk, to take two examples. Even the narrowest fundamentalist recognizes development in the ways in which biblical principles are applied to new situations.

As the Windsor Report underscores, we Anglicans are committed to a holistic approach to Scripture that encourages the Church to listen afresh to what the Spirit is saying in Scripture, while respecting what the "Scripture-reading church has understood Scripture to have been saying in the past." We do this in the knowledge that through the wisdom that comes from the Holy Spirit, Scripture applies to the problems of today. We do not sit above Scripture to judge it. Rather we sit under it, and permit it to judge us. I believe it was Jürgen Moltmann who said, "When I read Scripture...for the next half hour God is going to ask the questions."

Only if we assume that there is a moral order to the universe do we even ask the question: "Does God have an intention for our sexuality?" Such a question assumes an objective framework for right and wrong that-even if it cannot and will not answer all questions-gives structure to our choices. Where things are clear in Scripture, a normative morality kicks in. Where things are ambiguous, we are left to work things out as best we can. Christian reflection on the "just war theory" is an example of the latter.

At this point, you may well expect me to begin quoting Scripture. But I have found that quoting Scripture, however useful to all of us in ministry, rarely changes behavior when change is not wanted. Yet it is precisely change that our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion are asking of us. They have called for a change of heart and mind, a true metanoia, in order to break the logjam that is preventing us from flowing downstream together.

It will not surprise you to discover that I believe the trajectory of Scripture is toward the restriction of sexual behavior to heterosexual marriage. Within the framework of God's call to us to honor him with our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, Scripture proscribes all forms of sexual expression outside that norm. As Jewish writer Dennis Praeger has argued, this Hebrew/Christian sexual revolution elevated the status of women, enhanced family life, reined in the polymorphous male sexual desire, and promoted a host of civilizing tendencies. This classical ethic conforms to the canonical interpretation of the Bible and is the view that is officially embraced by the Romans, the Orthodox, the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, most Mainline Protestants, and now quite clearly the overwhelming majority of Anglicans worldwide.

It is possible that they are wrong. Some are prepared to say that these believers are unenlightened, bigoted, homophobic, and legalistic. But are we really prepared to say that? They, and I, would argue that such a view of sexual behavior is actually liberating and that outside of marriage even the single, chaste, and celibate can be truly fulfilled human beings. If we don't believe that, how can we see Jesus as the true fulfillment of humanity? Do we really think that our current context is so drastically different from all others that centuries of Christian reflection on Scripture can be swept aside?

Until now, our fellow Christians around the world have been relatively silent about our innovations. Perhaps they were overly impressed by our North American wealth, our purported high level of education, and our prominence in our respective nations' histories. But they have now found a voice, and they are calling to us to change, to realize that while we may have done certain things for the right reasons, the things we did were wrong.

How will you respond? The easy route is to vote to "walk apart." That is, one solution is for ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada to simply withdraw from the Communion and pursue the path of sectarian denominationalism. In reality, this route is not quite so easy because it will most surely provoke endless litigation over property and irreparably hamper our mission to the world. This is the route we will almost certainly follow if our insistence on making a "prophetic witness" overrides our commitment to the common mind of the Church.

Elsewhere I have proposed a 15-year trial separation during which so-called liberal Anglicans coalesce under the leadership of one international Primate, while traditional Anglicans coalesce under the leadership of another. Each group of Anglicans would pursue their own mission strategies for the duration while disputes over property are temporarily put on hold. At one point, I wondered if these two primates might be the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. But events have precluded this approach. The Windsor Report, followed by the Primates' Communiqué, has given us a more limited window of opportunity and period of separation. Will we respond with a full heart, or will we postpone making a decision until we have passed the point of no return?

A third alternative is for a solid majority of our two Houses of Bishops to exercise their God-given leadership and agree formally, in writing, to all the requirements of the Windsor Report: a moratorium on public gay blessings, a moratorium on more gay bishops, a frank and forthright apology for our actions (not just for the pain caused by those actions), and a willingness to commit to a global Anglican covenant. I fear that efforts to justify our actions biblically, theologically, and pastorally in Nottingham this June will only backfire. But, of course, we must now appear to fulfill the requirements of the Windsor Report.

My own sense is that if a majority of our American and Canadian bishops comply, even should a minority refuse, we will have passed a tipping point in the eyes of the worldwide Church. Future episcopal elections will no doubt reflect the desire of our churches to remain part of the Communion and to conform to the mind of the Church. Seminarians who presently object to the liberal drift of the Church will no longer be marginalized, but will be welcomed as mainstream Anglicans. Parishes that cannot work under revisionist bishops will find a home within the wider Communion, and will no longer be at war with ECUSA and the ACC as a whole. Quite likely, parishes that have sought protection from offshore bishops and archbishops will return to the fold, and once again become willing participants in diocesan life. Donations will return and increase. Parishes will grow and the precipitous decline in our memberships will hopefully be reversed.

I believe that this third alternative would be a benefit to all Episcopalians, including gay and lesbian Episcopalians. How many of them really want to accept responsibility for the breakup of a worldwide Christian family that has weathered ups and downs together for centuries? It may even be that Bishop Robinson will be retained, secure in his see in New Hampshire. While his status in the worldwide Communion would probably not be recognized, his ongoing role in the life of the Diocese of New Hampshire might not necessarily be disrupted. But those are decisions for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other Primates.

When the New Testament church threatened to break apart over the full inclusion of Gentiles in the fellowship, one party to the dispute had to admit that it had been wrong. Peter and James and their Jerusalem believers did just that in Acts 15. As a result, circumcision was longer required for full membership. The new community was not required to conform to the predominant (Jewish) culture. It would be distinctly counter-cultural. This landmark decision exposed the Jerusalem Christians to derision and ultimate expulsion from the Jewish community. (This seems to be why Galatians 6:12 says that some were forcing new believers to be circumcised, out of a fear of persecution.) Departing from the norms of one's culture has its dangers; but Christians have had to do it through the centuries to be faithful.

The Church of North America today is being called to radical obedience. While we extend a loving hand to those who struggle with various sexual confusions and impulses, and while we welcome into the life of the fellowship all fellow penitents, we are being asked to suspend our approval of homosexual behavior. This will most certainly expose us to derision and persecution in some quarters. But the New Testament Christians were willing to pay that price, and so must we. Fear must not guide our decisions nor overwhelm those in leadership.

You are being asked to make a choice at a time when it may pit you against the drift of our culture. This may be frightening. But it is not new to many of our brothers and sisters around the world. I plead with you, then, for their sakes and for the Gospel's, as well as for the sake of worldwide Anglican unity, do the right thing for the right reasons.

--Peter C. Moore is the Dean/President Emeritus of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry and the Chairman of the Board of Anglican Relief and Development Fund.