Dear Clergy,
As we announced last week, the College of Bishops has unanimously consented to the Rev. Canon Dr. Kris McDaniel’s candidacy for Suffragan Bishop, allowing C4SO to proceed with his election at our Diocesan Convention on November 7. Four bishop examiners from other dioceses thoroughly interviewed Kris and heartily recommended him. If Kris is elected, the College will consider final consent in January. I am grateful for their initial affirmation and excited about this next step.
I have known Kris for a long time. As many of you know, he is a seasoned leader with 25 years of faithful, fruitful ministry for the sake of others. He has served C4SO in various capacities, helping to raise up planters and launch new congregations. After working closely with him over the past year, I trust both his pastoral heart and his theological convictions.
As you prepare to vote on November 7, I want to proactively address a question that has been circulating online about Kris’s teaching and communion practice.
Recently, an anonymous Substack post challenged Kris’ position on Holy Communion in relation to same-sex practice. The post drew on two sources: audio from a 2015 members’ meeting at Trinity in Atlanta, where Kris is rector; and a set of “white papers” Trinity wrote around that time. The question posed is whether they represent Kris’s teaching and Trinity’s practice today. In short, it does not. You can read Trinity’s beliefs on this issue here.
Trinity’s Teaching and the 2015 Comments
Trinity’s white papers in that period used “Side A” and “Side B” language, which was common among some evangelical and Anglican churches at that time. However, because the terminology was confusing, and tended to collapse several distinct questions (belief, attraction, conduct, repentance, membership, and sacramental discipline) into confusing or unstable categories, Trinity stopped using those labels some time ago.
At a members’ meeting in 2015—which followed a teaching series outlining Trinity’s commitment to a traditional, Biblical ethic on human sexuality—Kris spoke from a pastor’s desire to welcome people who experience same-sex attraction into the life of the church. But his words invited people to the Table without regard to conduct, as he himself now acknowledges.
Kris’s clarifying statement appears below
I am aware that comments I made at a Trinity member meeting in 2015 have recently resurfaced in connection with my nomination as Suffragan Bishop of C4SO. The audio that is circulating contains comments that are mine, and I want to respond to them directly.
That meeting took place 11 years ago, as we were trying to pastor our congregation through difficult and deeply personal questions around human sexuality. Trinity’s theological conviction then, as it is now, reflects the historic Christian understanding of marriage and sexual ethics: that marriage is the covenantal union of a man and a woman and that sexual intimacy belongs within that covenant—and that all sex outside of marriage is sinful. We have sought to teach and live faithfully within that conviction since the beginning of our church.
As I listen back to those comments, however, there are things I wish I had said differently.
In my desire to emphasize the grace of God and the ancient understanding of Communion as medicine for sinners, I spoke too broadly about inviting people to the Table regardless of whether they were actively living in ways contrary to Christian sexual teaching. I regret those comments.
My pastoral instinct was to make clear that none of us comes to the Table because we have somehow made ourselves worthy of it. That remains deeply important to me. But in emphasizing that truth, I did not give enough weight to another equally important one: we come to the Table as people who are called to examine ourselves, confess our sins, repent, and turn again toward Jesus. In the years since that meeting, I have learned to articulate and apply these truths together more clearly, and that balance is now well established in Trinity’s pastoral practice and rhythms.
Communion is indeed medicine for sinners—but it is not indifferent to repentance. Grace does not require us to arrive without sin; it does call us to bring our sin into the light and surrender it to Christ.
The materials associated with that 2015 conversation were revised and replaced on our website years ago, and no longer represent the way Trinity articulates or practices our pastoral theology of Communion. Our current teaching is clear about both Christian sexual ethics and the call of every Christian—married or single, regardless of sexual attraction—to submit our bodies, desires, relationships, and sexual lives to the lordship of Jesus.
A couple of years ago, our leadership team also established an annual rhythm in which our staff and vestry, as well as many of our ministry leaders and volunteers, are invited to reflect again on our statements of Christian orthodoxy and offer their assent to them. This has been one way for us to make sure that what we believe is not simply something written on a website, but something we continue to teach, practice, and hold together as a community.
I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify this. Eleven years of pastoral ministry since that member meeting have given me plenty of opportunities to recognize places where I have spoken imprecisely, emphasized one truth at the expense of another, or simply gotten something wrong. This is one of those places. I regret what I said, and I would not say it that way or give that pastoral direction today.
My conviction remains that the Church must be a place of extraordinary welcome and extraordinary faithfulness—a community where every person is treated with dignity and love, where no one is beyond the grace of Jesus, and where all of us are continually called to repentance, holiness, and new life in him.