Center Aisle is an opinion journal offered by the Diocese of Virginia as a gift to General Convention. We offer analysis and opinions from a variety of sources that reflect the transformational center of our church.

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Center Aisle takes its name from the central architectural feature of so many of our churches: the center aisle that welcomes all people to follow it to the altar where God’s people, in all their particularities and even peculiarities, are nourished and sent back out into the world, transformed by the nourishing love of Christ.

Center Aisle is an expression of the Christian discipleship of Episcopalians in the Diocese of Virginia. Next year, in 2007, we will mark the beginning of the Anglican experience in North America when Jamestown was settled. Our center aisle began then, offering a way to Christ that is welcoming, nourishing and transformative. From that long experience, we hope to offer in these pages reflections on the General Convention that are welcoming, nourishing and transformative. We find the center not a bland compromise point between extremes but more as a solid foundation on the rock of faith in Christ where we can stand in life’s midst with arms open to all in welcome, in an invitation to nourishment and as an encouragement for the transformation of Christ’s people.

Like the church across the ages, Virginians have often erred grievously. A Virginia researcher will report in our pages that a majority of our clergy in the 1850s were slaveholders. We know what it is to be wrong and of the need for all Christians to live lives of repentance.

We believe this Convention has a God-given opportunity through our response to the Windsor Report to affirm our solidarity with the other churches of the Anglican Communion by expressing our regret for the offenses caused by our 2003 Convention actions. That regret needs to be in the context of reaffirming to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters that we have too often marginalized them and silently acquiesced when they have been denied their humanity in too many of the world’s cultures.

We think coming down the center aisle to the foot of the cross is far more a spiritual than a political process. We hope that pilgrimage will guide our reflections as people called to welcoming, nourishing and transforming ministries, and contribute to this Convention.