A Postcard from the Sundance Film Festival

From

Harry Knox

Executive Director

Integrity, USA

The beautiful people! The paparazzi! And that was at church!


I’m having a wonderful time representing Integrity at events tied to the premiere of Macky Alston’s new film, Love Free or Die, at the Sundance Film Festival. LFOD tells the story of Bp. Gene Robinson’s election to the episcopacy and highlights his courageous struggle to help the Episcopal Church and the whole Anglican Communion to make real Christ’s universal welcome. The film will debut tonight, but yesterday was a gorgeous sunny, snow-capped Sunday at St. Luke’s, Park City, UT, where The Rev. Charles Robinson is rector.

Bp. Otis Charles filled in for +Gene, who was in Kentucky celebrating the life of his dear mother, Imogene. +Gene will join us this evening. +Otis shared a winsome sermon on his own experience coming out as a gay man. He focused his sermon on the value of integrity; on truth-telling as a discipline that leads to freedom and joy. I was gratified to hear him describe how Integrity USA helped him find his own voice and companions on the journey out of the closet in the 1990s.

The congregation stayed for our panel discussion on graceful engagement of our neighbors around the need for full inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the Church and the gift that blessings of same-sex unions in our congregations will be.

Love Free or Die will be a vehicle for expanding that conversation in local parishes and Integrity chapters nationwide in 2012. Keep an eye out for more on that in coming days. In the meantime, check out : http://www.sundance.org/video/meet-the-artists-12-macky-alston/.