Category Archives: Bible

I’m in an Open Relationship with Jesus


Someone close to me was telling me this morning about her struggle to accept her rabbi’s teaching that she should love God more than anything or anyone. “I can’t help it,” she said, “I love my daughter more!”

In the past I might have given a neat response, paraphrasing Tim Keller, to the effect that idolizing any created thing puts unbearable pressure on yourself (because you can lose it through failure or mischance) and on the one idolized (who feels compelled to be impossibly perfect). C.S. Lewis illustrates this distortion in The Great Divorce, his fantasy of damned souls on a field trip to heaven, through the character of an old woman who mourned her dead son so obsessively that she neglected the surviving members of her family. Lewis suggests that over time, the object of her passion became her own identity as a mourner, rather than the real person she had lost.

To love someone properly, on the other hand, is to recognize that you are not the author of the universe, which sooner or later means that you must surrender to God’s will for the other person. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me” (Matt 10:37)?

And yet, my past year of queer activism makes me think that something is indeed amiss with the rabbi’s formulation of the question about how love of God relates to love of neighbor. This opposition between them is a common one in Christian apologetics, as the examples above show.

How many times have gay people been told that their loving partnerships are a form of idolatry, a choice to value their own desires more than God? Conservative Christian friends have warned me that I was imperfectly surrendered to God because I refused to leave my GLBT brothers and sisters outside the fellowship of believers. My friends hardened their hearts toward these people and called it “putting God first”. In a book I recently read about the ex-gay movement, the gay men in the “reparative therapy” program were encouraged to project all their longing for intimate companionship onto Jesus, the one relationship that would never let them down. I believe in Jesus, but this still sounds to me like a dangerous retreat into fantasy.

The mistake behind the question “Do you love God more than your husband, wife, child…?” is that it prescribes the via negativa as the norm when it’s probably not the healthiest spiritual path for most people. Some do find God through the path of asceticism, quieting down all human distractions in order to rest in the stillness of the Wholly Other, the “deep and dazzling darkness” of Henry Vaughan’s wonderful poem “The Night“.

But for most of us who don’t live in monasteries, God is mainly known through our interactions with His creatures. “For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) The formulation that puts God in competition with our human beloveds subtly encourages us to hold back a portion of our heart from them, to dampen down our feelings for them, in the name of religion. This is a “jealous God” in the crudest sense, a God whose evil eye we attract if we praise our child too much. To prefer this God is really to prefer ourselves, because we are putting a mental construct ahead of a living person who can challenge our preconceptions and agendas.

I would contend that the problem with idolatrous love, such as the old woman’s feelings about her dead son in The Great Divorce, is not too much love but too little. It does not see the other person for who he really is, and therefore cannot seek the highest good for him. It turns the lover away from caring for others, rather than producing an overflow of creative energy that seeks new outlets for service. (For a beautiful discussion of how marriage can generate neighbor-love, I recommend Sacred Unions by Thomas Breidenthal.)

To love anyone rightly–that is, skillfully, compassionately and unselfishly–is to love God. If you want to show that you love me, Jesus says to Peter, you will “feed my sheep” (John 21:17). Conversely, if our love for God isn’t increasing our love for other people, then it probably isn’t the real God that we’re worshipping.

So what was Jesus saying, in Matthew 10, if he wasn’t telling us to worry about loving our family and friends too deeply?

I don’t think he was prompting us to seek out conflict between our loyalty to God and our loyalty to our loved ones. Rather, he was warning us to make the right choice in the conflicts that would inevitably come as a by-product of kingdom living. Quoting the prophet Micah, Jesus says, “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.'” (Matt 10:35-36)

Sometimes our loved ones don’t understand the way we feel called to serve God. A career military man may feel rejected and dumbfounded when his son reads the Gospels and decides to be a pacifist. An evangelical mother may feel afraid when her daughter studies Buddhist meditation as a way to enrich her prayer life. A feminist mother might be angry that her daughter votes pro-life for religious reasons.

In such cases, to put God first means letting the other person work out his or her own salvation. When we can’t come to agreement on what the Bible says, we have to trust that somehow it’s God’s will that each of us sees the world from a particular angle. We’re part of a larger pattern where these differences will ultimately be transcended or reconciled without shame to those on the “wrong” side.

Every morning, in our separate homes, my conservative Christian friend and I pray the Daily Office. We read the same psalms and speak the same prayers. I am praying that she and others like her will open their hearts to the full equality of gay people and the salvation of non-Christians, and she is probably praying that I will return to an orthodoxy that anathematizes these views. This scares me, sometimes so much that I become angry and frightened by Christian talk in general. The word of God is indeed a double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). But if I’m so afraid to live without that friendship that I can’t follow my own sense of God’s will for me, then I am not obeying the command of Matthew 10.

Speaking Justice Versus Living It


One of my challenges as an activist, and as a Christian, is finding the proper balance between speaking about my values and living them out. Too much discussion keeps me unhealthily engaged with self-justification against opponents, while too little can be a form of selfish quietism in the face of widespread misinformation about what the Bible says.

The Epistle of James has a lot to say about closing the gap between hearing and doing God’s word. This recent installment of the Human Rights Campaign’s Out in Scripture lectionary e-newsletter includes some fruitful reflections on that text (boldface emphasis mine):

Our conversation about this week’s lectionary Bible passages began with James 1:17-27. What is the way of God’s wisdom? The book of James suggests that it is the “law of liberty” (James 2:12). And that law starts with doing. Doers of the law’s basic justice requirements place themselves in risky outreach settings in which we are inevitably challenged to know who we really are. Acts of justice hold up the mirror that enables our transformation of heart, while doctrinal obsessions and arguments merely keep us in bondage.

Deeds and words both matter in the book of James. And at the beginning of today’s reading, we are called to be quick to listen, not to speak (James 1:19). This is a kind of listening that calls for inward listening. Sarah, a transgender woman, reminds us: “Before my transition, I needed to step back and away from all the outside advice I was getting from people. I needed to really listen for God’s voice inside, in the midst of all the other voices.” Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people know that it is often a matter of life and death that we distinguish the voices and learn to trust inner listening. The author of James provokes us, however, to remember that such times of contemplation cannot be divorced from habits of service and justice.

Listening to others without a prayerful discerning heart can lead to powerlessness. Words can be hurtful, dangerous and affect others in ways that the speaker may not realize. Those in power in our denomination, local church or civic settings may have power to name the “tradition” or to label others: for example, when only men decide about women’s ordination or only heterosexuals decide about the ordination of LGBT people in the church. Fatigued by the struggle against endless pronouncements, LGBT people may come to this place: “I just don’t know if I can listen anymore.” We cannot ignore the reality of power by idealizing an uncritical, non-discerning listening posture. We can, instead, lift up a reminder that those in power may themselves be transformed when they have the courage to listen to LGBT people for God’s voice.

Visit the Out in Scripture archives and sign up here.

The Theology of Abuse (Part One)


Hugo, via Facebook, pointed me to today’s Washington Post story about a new study on clergy sexual abuse from Baylor University’s School of Social Work:

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.

“It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers,” said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance….

For its study, Baylor used the 2008 General Social Survey, a nationally representative sample of 3,559 respondents, to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. Women older than 18 who attended worship services at least once a month were asked in the survey whether they had received “sexual advances or propositions” from a religious leader.

The study found that close to one in 10 respondents — male and female — reported having known about clergy sexual misconduct occurring in a congregation they had attended.

Researchers say they don’t know whether the incidence of clergy sexual misconduct had changed over the years. Nor do they know whether sexual wrongdoing by clergy is more, or less, frequent than in other well-respected professions.

But, Garland said, “when you put it with a spiritual leader or moral leader, you’ve really added a power that we typically don’t think about in secular society — which is that this person speaks for God and interprets God for people. And that really adds a power.”

All power can be misused, and greater intimacy risks greater pain. In one way or another, the world’s religions aim at making the hard and selfish ego more permeable, creating more opportunities for love but also greater exposure to others’ unsafe emotions.

In the past few years, as I’ve become more deeply involved in Christian fellowship, I’ve also experienced some serious violations of trust. It’s driven me to re-examine my core beliefs through this lens: do some doctrines make the believer more vulnerable to exploitation?

Certainly the reverse has been true for me, earlier in my faith journey. I wouldn’t have valued or trusted myself enough to break free of some abusive family patterns, had I not discovered the loving and forgiving God of the New Testament. (Read Henry Cloud and John Townsend’s Boundaries for details.)

I would hate to be one of those smug secularists who accuse Christians of being immature people with Daddy issues. Nonetheless, lately I’ve dared to wonder whether the traditional emphasis on human insufficiency, dependence, and sinfulness has kept me from outgrowing the need for parental approval, instead merely projecting it onto God. That wouldn’t be so bad if it were just “me and Jesus”, but inevitably, my understanding of God is mediated and influenced by the spiritual leaders in whatever community I join–either clergy or lay people who seem to be more educated and advanced in the faith than I am.

Dr. Edward J. Cumella’s Barnabas Ministry website lists 12 signs of spiritual abuse in their article “The Yeast of the Pharisees”:

Authoritarianism. Rather than modeling and teaching obedience to God, abusive leaders expect believers to obey them. Councils of elders, deacons, etc., are expected to rubber stamp leaders’ intentions rather than provide accountability.

Coercion. Rather than respecting freedom and conscience, as God does, and offering messages that persuade based on scriptural integrity and reason, abusive leaders use strong-arm tactics to coerce believers into overruling better judgment and following their demands.

Intimidation. Rather than building up the Body in the bonds of love, abusive leaders use threats of punishment, excommunication, and condemnation to force people into submission and continued church membership.

Terrorism. Rather than inviting people to follow Christ with the Gospel of love and forgiveness, abusive leaders intensify believers’ fear, shame, and false guilt, teaching that problems in believers’ lives are due to the believers’ personal sins.

Condemnation. Rather than refraining from judgment lest they be judged, an abusive leader liberally condemns those who leave his church, outsiders, and those whom he defines as sinners. The message is that believers will join the ranks of the condemned should they deviate from the leader’s teachings or leave his church/denomination. Individual members become the scapegoat when something goes awry in the congregation.

Classism. Christ was no respecter of persons. Abusive leaders are preoccupied with power, promoting church hierarchy, referring to and treating people according to their titles and roles. Those lower on the hierarchy are taught that their needs don’t matter.

Conformity. Abusive leaders have the greatest hold over inexperienced, naïve, and dependent individuals who are seeking a strong leader. These individuals suppress their objections to the leaders’ teachings for fear of being shamed or ostracized. Hence, abusive churches often appear unified, but beneath the surface there is discontent, anguish, whispers, rumors, secrets, and a desire among many to leave.

Manipulation. Rather than taking scripture in context, interpreting the Bible with the Bible and according to long-held Christian beliefs, abusive leaders twist scripture to convey their personal opinion rather than God’s intent.

Irrationality. Because scripture is manipulated, one interpretation may contradict another. Interpretations may contradict reason and obvious reality. This requires suspension of critical thinking. Some abusive leaders claim to receive direct messages from God about their church or individual members, but these messages typically deviate from Scripture and reality.

Legalism. Rather than treating others with love, grace, and forgiveness, as Christ commanded, abusive leaders offer little grace. They communicate instead that one’s worth and the amount of love one deserves depend on performance and status in their church. Abusive leaders expect believers to make heroic financial, time, and emotional sacrifices for their church and its members.

Isolation. Rather than respecting family ties, community obligations, and friendships, abusive leaders are concerned that such influences will interfere with their control over believers, so they encourage isolation from family, friends, and the outside world, and wage war against the outside world as a sewer of sin devoid of anything redeeming.

Elitism. Rather than modeling and encouraging humility, abusive leaders beam with false pride and teach the same to believers. An attitude arises of, “We’re it! We’re special! Everyone else is condemned!,” partially compensating for the shame and worthlessness that believers feel because of other experiences in the abusive church. The leader instills that believers must protect the church’s image at any cost.

Ensnarement. Rather than promoting maturity among believers, abusive leaders inevitably promote self-dou
bt, guilt, and identity confusion, since believers struggle with the contradiction between what their conscience and reason tell them and what they are being taught. This ambivalence, coupled with fear of condemnation and loss of direction and fellowship, make it difficult and painful for believers to leave abusive churches.

Before you write this off as only applying to cults, consider how the above attitudes are encouraged by the doctrines of many mainstream churches:

Isolation: If you truly believe that God condemns all people to eternal conscious torment, except for the lucky few who have heard the gospel and been convinced by it, you either (1) are a compassionate person and go mad from the horror of all that suffering, or (2) teach yourself not to care about people outside your tribe. It has become impossible for me to trust Christians who can go through life smiling and making friends with unbelievers while inwardly holding, in fact cherishing, belief in a God who would torture these people forever.

Ensnarement: Isn’t this the experience of GLBT people in conservative churches–forced to choose between loss of fellowship and their own psychological self-understanding? Undermining people’s pleasure and pain signals is a classic technique to prime them for abuse. This happens, for instance, when leaders tell gays that their homosexuality is a delusion, or that their relationships aren’t genuine and loving.

Classism: Churches that exclude women from leadership, for example, send a broader message that inequality is acceptable in the body of Christ. We learn to justify our failures of moral imagination and our natural tendency to see others as less than fully human.

Conformity: Biblical inerrantists are among those who argue that any deviation from tradition will undermine our confidence in our entire relationship with God. In this model, the living always lose out to the dead; the flow of learning only goes in one direction. We are taught to venerate those who will not respond to us. Like the child of an abusive parent, we have only two alternatives: submission or loss of love. We have no way to make our suffering heard.

Terrorism: I am leaning toward the opinion that the Calvinist belief in total depravity is an abuse-enabling doctrine. It’s a “hazing” model of identity destruction and re-formation in which the lay person is convinced to radically mistrust and despise herself, making her so desperate for approval that she falls gratefully at the feet of the “God” who spares her the punishment she thinks she deserves (the “honeymoon phase” in this Cycle of Abuse diagram). Similarly, advocates of predestination speak as if God’s absolute and unquestioned sovereignty would be weakened by requiring His judgment to be leavened by compassion or fairness. This idolization of content-free obedience sets up psychological blocks against defending one’s self from an abusive leader.

The website Under Much Grace provides other resources for conceptualizing and healing from abuse-enabling doctrines. In a 2007 post on “Doctrine Over Person”, author Cindy Kunsman writes:

Members’ personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group. The end ideology of the group must be maintained by any means, even at the personal expense or the personal suffering of the group members. Love for the system or ideology supersedes that of the people, places or lesser causes. This promotes hatred and intolerance of all opposing critics or ideologies (sadly, often including those within the group).

This was my painful experience when I found myself in close fellowship with some Christians who were not affirming of gays and lesbians. At that time a novice in reading the Bible, I hoped that perhaps they had simply not heard a convincing case otherwise. After much study and soul-searching, I was able to make such a case, only to discover that they resisted hearing it. I don’t think my friends felt an animus toward gays so much as a general rigidity such as Cindy describes above. They thought personal emotions about fairness were less trustworthy than a System. These feelings were branded a sign of weakness and partiality, of incomplete submission to God. The irony is that their fear of being wrong is also an unacknowledged emotion, one which a relationship with Jesus is supposed to heal.

I’m struggling to hang onto that relationship myself, even as I see how a person’s love for God can be used as the ultimate weapon of emotional blackmail. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38, NIV)

Lean (Not?) on Your Own Understanding


John at Johnny’s Blog emailed me a thoughtful response to my recent post on balancing the authority of Scripture, tradition, and reason. I’ve quoted it below since comments are turned off:

What a fascinating article – it really made me think. I however keep on coming back to two particular verses which I find difficult to interpret in any other way than the straight forward meaning of the words.

The first is in Proverbs – Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. (3:5)

The second is in 2 Tim 3:16 – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

In the first case, it seems to definitely place human reason on a lower wrung, so to speak. In regard to the second – and other verses that refer to the Scriptures as “The Word of God,” – it would seem to me that it places Scripture (in terms of our understanding God’s will) as the ultimate and final authority. Even given these verses, the believer is faced with a conundrum, in fact a few conundrums – firstly – what constitutes Scripture, and secondly, even if we can all agree on what constitutes Scripture – how are these scriptures to be interpreted.

I had a discussion the other day with a friend with regard to the concept and word trinity. He quite rightly stated that the word ‘trinity’ does not appear in any scripture and is – to that extent Tradition rather that the Word of God. He preferred to use the word Godhead. I stated that the word Godhead was not in scripture – He quickly responded with three verses where the word “Godhead” does appear in certain English versions. I pointed out to him that the word is a translation of a word that is various translated as divinity or “God-ness” – and as such the word Godhead was in itself an effort to describe something that does not really translate well into a single English word. Suffice to say that the concept of a Godhead, exists in scripture, as does, the concept of Trinity – in fact – it not unreasonable to say that in fact “Godhead” and Trinity are really two sides of the same coin.

As I wrote in my blog post “XII Angry Men” – it becomes a question as to what qualifies an individual to be the authoritative interpreter of Scripture – we can look at a very many issues in the history of Church – the whole predestination verses freewill, baptism issues, issues about the meaning of communion (This is my body, this is my blood), to say nothing about the whole creation versus evolution debate, and debate regarding very ethical issues that challenge people today.

The conclusion I came to is that each individual must a) be willing to hear/read ALL sides of the discussion (I think many Christians fall down on this aspect), and then b) reach a conclusion that he or she can be satisfied is correct or justified and act accordingly. c) realise that people with strong opinions that differ with the stance taken by the individual may give fierce, even vociferous opposition, and may even call into question the person’s relationship with God, and d) must realise that it is possible that something may occur in the future which will unequivocally show that the wrong decision was arrived at, and at that point be willing to say, I was wrong, please forgive me. (This is not a defeatist point of view – simply being realistic. )

What I do believe as a thorough going evangelical protestant, is that no one gets into heaven, or is denied salvation on the strength of his or her right theology, as it is the Work of Christ on the Cross, that accomplished our salvation, and we play no part in that. We, are like the audience who stand back in wonder as God did it all. If I have wrong theology – as no doubt, I have somewhere along the line, The Lord will graciously point it out and still I will be his child.

I recommend the “XII Angry Men” post for a more detailed look at how to read Scripture with humility and awareness of multiple perspectives. I’m going to push back a little, though, against John’s use of the Proverbs and Timothy verses, because I’m not totally convinced that they’re really meant to address the question at hand.

“All Scripture is God-breathed.” First of all, what is Scripture? Can it be self-authenticating? In other words, the author of 2 Timothy is making a claim for the authority of Scripture, but it’s circular reasoning for us to prefer this claim over others solely because it’s in Scripture: “The Bible is true because the Bible says so.” Furthermore, by “Scripture” the epistle-writer would have meant the Hebrew Bible. We can’t assume that he knew that he himself was writing Scripture!

“God-breathed” is also capable of a broader meaning than “inerrant”, as John would appear to agree. A friend of mine has suggested that divine inspiration means “every word in the Bible is how God intended it to be”. Thus, for instance, the six-day creation story can be divinely inspired without needing to be literally, scientifically true; God put that in there to teach us about something other than science.

Could the second half of that quote from 2 Timothy give us some better guidance about the uses and meanings of Scripture? That is to say, look at the real-world consequences of your preferred interpretation and see whether it has proven itself useful, or counterproductive, for “training in righteousness” and equipping the hearer for “every good work”.

I’m not sure why we’re so eager to decide spiritual matters based on a priori logic. When it does touch on questions of hermeneutics, the Bible seems to me to have a stronger pragmatic streak than many of its conservative fans.

“Lean not on your own understanding.” As I’ve argued ad infinitum in this space, all knowledge of God (or of anything else) is filtered through some individual’s consciousness. It’s psychologically incoherent to trust God without relying on our own understanding–either our direct experience of God, or our perception that others are trustworthy sources of spiritual knowledge. So I don’t think this verse is referring to that epistemological problem at all. Besides which, the verse says “trust in the Lord“, not “in Scripture” nor “in the religious authorities”.

The author of Proverbs, I believe, is simply reminding us that God’s intentions toward us are steadfast, and His knowledge of our situation surpasses our own. In times of crisis, we may not see the way forward because “our own understanding” is limited, and so our hope rests in the one who promises that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Rom 8:28).

I have experienced the fulfillment of that promise in my own life, and I am working hard to keep that memory alive despite bitterness about how Christians have used Scripture to abuse vulnerable people and drive them to despair. Leaning only on my own understanding–my experience of hard-heartedness among those who are thoroughly schooled in Scripture–I might venture down the well-trodden path of rejecting Bible, creed, and church. God has been good enough to save me from self-hatred and emotional breakdown at several key points in my life, so that I might have the fidelity to say “No–I will not let Pharisees capture the name of ‘Christian’ and define you in ways that are less loving than what I have experienced.” It’s not theology that leads me forward; I know this in my heart and I struggle to find arguments that will give me permission to know what I know.

Am I trusting God, or leaning on my own understanding? In the healthy life of faith, I believe, these two are one and the same.

Scripture, Tradition, and…?


Anglicans’ faith is said to rest on the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. In a recent discussion on the Creedal Christian blog (one of the few places in the blogosphere where gay-affirming and traditionalist Anglicans can carry on a civil and sophisticated dialogue), one commenter sought understanding and advice for Christians who may be convinced of the pro-gay position according to reason, but can’t find warrant for it in Scripture and tradition.

I’m not going to try to answer that question here. Rather, I would like to explore some ways in which this whole debate has made me doubt my old assumptions about Scripture. Consider the following ideas not as the ex cathedra pronouncement of Reiter’s Block but as experiments in finding a way forward.

Power in the New Testament

The human understanding of power is antagonistic and zero-sum–what James Alison would call “over-against another”. We keep reverting to this understanding, even within the church, despite what I see as the strong message of the New Testament that God’s idea of power is wholly different.

Jesus appropriated Roman imperial rhetoric in an ironic, subversive way. “King of kings” and “son of God” were titles belonging to Caesar. The “kingdom of heaven”, unlike the kingdoms of earth, is best understood by looking at the lowliest things, from a mustard seed to a beggar, and seeing the infinite riches they contain.

If one believes that God revealed His true nature in Jesus, by becoming human and dying on a cross, think about what this means for the definition of power. No one is more powerful than God. But when He wanted to show us what was most essential about Himself, He became a vulnerable and marginalized human being–a peasant baby born to an unwed mother–and then submitted to an ignominious death at the hands of secular and religious authorities whose power was based on violence, exclusion, fear and pride. By rising from the dead, He showed that the power of self-giving love is ultimately more real than the power of domination.

While the picture is more complex in the Epistles, I believe they also support this view, on the whole. At times, Paul and the other authors seem to be encouraging Christians to accept existing social hierarchies, so as not to provoke unnecessary conflicts. Anyone whose way of life challenges mainstream cultural values must make careful moment-by-moment decisions about how to balance the imperatives of peace and justice. Impatience for change can make us prideful and unkind to those who don’t see what we see; on the other hand, conflict-avoidance isn’t always the most loving course of action.

But overall, when Paul is not dispensing merely pragmatic advice but talking about spiritual fundamentals, he often returns to the theme of mutual submission, in personal relationships and also within the church. And he relates this ideal to Christ’s self-emptying in the Incarnation:

1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
    taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

12Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Phil 2:1-13, NIV)

The doctrine of the Trinity is not fully worked out in the Bible, but within the first few centuries of the early church, Christians were developing the idea of perichoresis–God’s very nature as a dance of loving, reciprocal submission. (Buy the book from the 2008 Wheaton College conference to read excellent essays on this and other Trinitarian concepts.)

Scripture’s “Authority”?

Returning to our opening question of Anglican Biblical hermeneutics, it seems to me that the debate nearly always relapses into the human understanding of power. We treat “Scripture, Tradition, and Reason” like “Rock, Paper, Scissors”–which one “beats” the other?

I am still searching for a better alternative, but I believe there is one. Much as it would be nice and simple to pretend otherwise, the three voices in this conversation don’t always agree neatly. I just sense that something’s wrong with the way we play them off against one another. Those who always come down on the side of Scripture or tradition may do violence to the facts of a changing world (not to mention the people living in it), whereas those who brag about unfettered reason can be hurtful and dismissive toward Christians who have experienced the Bible and the church as life-saving.

Would it be so wrong (warning: this is where I really drive the bus off-road) to work out a model of cooperation and mutual deference among the three authorities? In other words:

Why must Scripture always win?

(Substitute “Tradition” if you’re a neo-conservative Catholic and “Reason” if you’re a liberal-modernist Protestant, and resume being infuriated.)

First-Hand and Second-Hand Knowledge

Psychologically speaking, Scripture and Tradition are second-hand sources of knowledge about God. They are the record of how God has communicated with other human beings. If we understand “Reason” broadly as the independent judgment of the individual Christian, encompassing emotional and experiential knowledge as well as intellectual understanding, we can see that it adds an element not found in the other two: how God personally and directly speaks to me.

That God does speak to me, without requiring permission or mediation from other humans, is the promise I’m given by my justification in Christ. His gracious forgiveness has set me free to trust myself, not because I will always be right, but because I must live obediently the life I’ve been given and the perspective that arises from it, leaving the final verdict up to Him. I don’t need to hide in the herd. Their assent or dissent adds nothing to whether God will forgive me for getting His intentions wrong–which is always a possibility, whether we are on our own or part of a collective.

“Reason” could also be understood as the present-day response of the church to changing factual conditions or information that was not available when the Scriptures or traditions were being formed. Reason is the ability to process information outside of “Christianity” that is nonetheless pa
rt of God’s creation: biology, history, psychology, and the facts to which these disciplines are applied. It balances timeless revelations and past wisdom with open-minded awareness of the present. It reminds us of our ongoing responsibility to interpret God’s word, and our concomitant need for His mercy because of the fallibility of our interpretations. Grace, too, risks becoming merely second-hand information if we have never felt the awful weight of that responsibility.

Taken alone, reason-worship can degenerate into pure individualism and trend-following in a culture already inclined in that direction. Scripture and tradition (Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead”) remind us that our faith is part of a fellowship that spans geography and time. The consciousness of the individual is never a purely autonomous creation; it picks up its structures of thought from the contemporary community, though critical reflection can reshape the given framework up to a point. Scripture and tradition help ensure that when we do rely on second-hand knowledge, we’re resting on Christian ideas rather than unexamined values and assumptions from an antithetical culture.

Science provides a good model of how first-hand and second-hand knowledge cooperate in the search for truth. Science moves forward by direct experimental observation. However, the backdrop for any experiment is a vast body of other knowledge, not directly observed by this individual scientist, which enables her to frame the hypothesis and understand what would prove or disprove it. She takes this knowledge on “faith” in the sense that she has good reason to believe that her predecessors’ observations were reliable, and it would be impossible for her to test them all first-hand. At the same time, there is the chance that her experiment will expose a flaw in the original “tradition” and prompt its revision.

Such an event does not call into question the entire practice of relying on others’ scientific conclusions; it is, in fact, the way those conclusions themselves were generated. In a sense, the practice of science is one of Christlike humility and gracious boldness. The scientist submits to the discipline of her tradition in order to ask a meaningful question in the first place, but shows no disrespect by improving past knowledge in a way that is broadly consistent with that discipline. She, in turn, knows that her achievement is not a once-for-all monument to her ego, but an invitation to future scientists to improve upon it further. (Thanks to Prof. Larry Alexander’s law review article “Liberalism, Religion, and the Unity of Epistemology,” 30 San Diego L. Rev. 763 (1993) for some of these ideas about the philosophy of science.)

This brings me back to my original question: why must we assume that Scripture’s “authority” depends on never deferring to or being influenced by the other two? Must we always prefer second-hand knowledge of God’s will?

To say yes, it seems to me, is to act as if God’s grace is merely formal–as if my mind is still darkened and my will still depraved, but God accepts the “legal fiction” of my righteousness thanks to Christ. I know a lot of Protestants believe this, but it’s logically incoherent, because Scripture always requires interpretation, and to mistrust one’s self simply means to trust other, equally depraved humans. (For a truly slam-dunk explanation of this point, read the philosopher Eric Reitan’s “authority without inerrancy” blog post series, particularly this one.

Beyond a Hermeneutics of Patriarchy?

Pushing the Trinitarian analogy a bit more, let’s assume that Scripture is like the Father, the prime authority. Nonetheless, when we defend Scripture against contradiction or reinterpretation from outside sources, aren’t we really acting more like a defensive human father–the elite men of priesthood and empire who saw their prerogatives threatened by the radically egalitarian Jesus movement? And might not this insistence on Scripture’s impermeability–I would even say, impenetrability–be more than coincidentally related to the fear of submission and penetration, the loss of the traditionally dominant male identity, that has always fueled homophobia?

Christianity messes with physical and social boundaries in ways that Christians have never quite found comfortable. The Lord of the universe took the form of a slave. While on earth, he continually overrode purity laws to show that social order was not as important as extending healing, economic justice, and God’s love to all. Where Jesus does speak as a rigorous and passionate moralist, his temper is always exercised about actual harms to others. I can’t recall a place where he treats obedience to authority and tradition as an end in itself. I’m sure he never views rule-breaking as a sin so great that in order to avoid it, we can ignore the suffering of our neighbor–even when the rule seems to come from Scripture.

And now, of course, we eat the flesh of this Lord and Father and drink His blood, a sensual ritual that combines destruction and healing, the ultimate reciprocal exchange of power. God trusts us enough to be consumed and transformed by us. Why should the Bible be afraid of us, when He isn’t?


Anglican Allies: The Chicago Consultation


The Chicago Consultation is a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people who support the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Their website offers theological essays, Bible studies, videos and links to other materials that support an inclusive reading of Scripture. Their support for GLBT Christians is part of their wider mission to “strengthen the Anglican Communion’s witness against racism, poverty, sexism, heterosexism, and other interlocking oppressions.”

Here’s an excerpt from the sixth of a series of articles on sexuality and Scripture, by the Rev. Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, the Vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church Fordham:

…Several biblical authors use marriage as a symbol for the relationship between God and Israel, and Christ and the Church. But, as with many of the issues surrounding sexuality, the picture is far more complex than mere equivalence. Not only is marriage only one of many symbols for this relationship, but the marriage symbolism itself is ambivalent, capable of standing for both good and bad relationships between God and God’s people.

There are many earthly phenomena — and Jesus assures us (Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35) that marriage is an earthly phenomenon! — that the biblical authors use (in addition to marriage) to represent the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the Church: monarch and people, tree and branches, father and children, shepherd and sheep, master and slaves, head and body, cornerstone and building. These symbols all depend on the cultural understanding of those to whom they speak. As noted in an earlier portion of this series of essays, the Letter to the Ephesians collects and intertwines a number of these symbols, in addition to marriage. As Paul himself recognizes, his blending of these symbols gets a bit confusing, as he spins out the various cultural themes of leadership and authority, the relationship of one to many, the nature of organic or bodily union, and love and care.

Thus the Scripture does not single out marriage as a unique symbol for the divine/human relationship — and one can carry the analogy or symbol too far — as some have suggested Paul does — as if women should literally treat their husbands as if they were God. Nor should one carry away from this symbolic usage the notion that because marriage is a symbol for the divine/human interaction it is therefore in itself divine — it remains, according to Jesus, a terrestrial phenomenon. (Luke 20:34-35) So to confuse the symbol with what it symbolizes is a category error. More than a few theologians have of late wandered off in a direction more suggestive of pagan notions of hieros gamos than is warranted by strictly orthodox theology. This includes suggestions that the relationship of a male and female somehow more perfectly embody the imago dei than either does individually. This is very shaky theological ground upon which to tread, as I noted in an earlier section of this series, for it undercuts the doctrine of the Incarnation….

…Given that heterosexual relationships can be used as such multivalent symbols, positive or negative, single and plural, and even with a degree of sexual ambiguity, can faithful, monogamous, life-long same-sex relationships also serve in symbolic capacity — towards good? I will explore the negative imagery in later reflections on Leviticus and Romans, but will note here that the same linkage between idolatry and harlotry is made there between idolatry and some specific forms of same-sexuality. But what might a faithful, loving same-sex relationship (as opposed to the cultic activity described in Leviticus or the orgiastic in Romans) stand for as a symbol — not in the cultures of those times, but in our own?

It is clear that the prevailing biblical symbol for heterosexual relationships is intimately (!) connected with the assumption of male “headship” — thus the related analogies with master and slave, head and body, and so forth, assume a cultural notion of male authority, likened to the authority of Christ over the church. So powerful is this imagery that men become “feminine” in relation to God — as C.S. Lewis noted in his emendation to the conclusion of Goethe’s Faust.

But what of Christ — who voluntarily (and temporarily) assumes the position of a subordinate — not only in the great kenosis of the Incarnation, but in the symbolic act of the Maundy footwashing — while remaining Lord and God? When Jesus assumes the position of a servant to wash his disciples’ feet, he is also assuming the position of the woman who washed his feet with her tears. It is no accident that Jesus uses this powerful acted symbol to show his disciples the danger of assuming the position of authority over rather than assuming the position of service to. (It is perhaps ironic that in the Roman Catholic Church only men are to take part in the Maundy ritual as either foot-washers or as those whose feet are washed. How much more powerful a symbol it would be if a bishop were to wash the feet of women?)

Jesus is secure in his knowledge of himself, yet is free to set aside the role of authority to assume the role of a slave, a role played elsewhere in the passion narrative by a woman. As is obvious, in a same-sex relationship there are no stereotypical sex roles for the partners. They are, like Jesus, free to take upon themselves, in a dynamic interchange, various opportunities to love and to serve. This flexibility is no doubt one of the reasons same-sexuality is seen as a threat to entrenched systems of automatic deferral to culturally established hierarchies. Like Christianity itself, same-sexuality “turns the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) by challenging the “natural” roles assigned by culture. Same-sex couples are thus capable of being truly natural symbols for the mutuality of equals, free from the traditional roles assigned by the culture to men and women. Whether the culture sees this as a threat or a promise will depend upon what they value.

Read the whole essay here.

Clergy Unite to Protest Oppression of Sexual Minorities in Uganda


Diana Sands, LGBT Program Associate of the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, has gathered signatures from 80 religious leaders, representing a variety of denominations around the world, for an open letter protesting the Ugandan government’s recent initiative to step up persecution of homosexuals and transgender persons.

UU-UNO is seeking donations to pay for publication of this letter as a paid editorial in Ugandan newspapers. To help, visit the donation page on their website, choose the “Your Choice” donation amount option, and write in the “Your Choice” box the amount to be donated followed by the word “Uganda” (Ex. “25 Uganda”). Or send a check to UU-UNO, 777 UN Plaza, suite 7G, New York, NY 10017. Make sure that “Uganda Project” is noted in the memo line or in an attached note.

If you’re on Facebook, join the Cause “Support Publication of Uganda Letter from Religious Leaders”.

Thanks to Diana for permission to reprint the letter on this blog, and to Steve and Jose at Other Sheep for bringing this project to my attention in their e-newsletter.

Open Letter to Hon. Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity

Hon. Dr. James Nsaba Buturo
Minister of Ethics and Integrity
Office of the President, Parliamentary Building
P. O. Box 7168
Kampala, Uganda

Honorable Minister Buturo:
As leaders and members of faith-based communities we are gravely concerned about recent events which endanger the lives and human rights of many Ugandans. Faith-based groups from Uganda and the United States called for the formation of an official anti-homosexuality task force after a three day seminar organized by Family Life Network (FLN), a Ugandan organization with U.S. support that since 2002 represents itself as working for “the restoration of Ugandan family and values.”

According to news reports, this task force would lobby to create a special division in the police force to persecute lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. It would also seek to lobby for harsher penalties for homosexual conduct and “out” people in different spheres. These actions would create an atmosphere of fear, driving essential family and community members underground, and would tear apart families and communities on the basis of gender identities and sexual orientations.

As people of faith, we believe that perfect love casts out all fear {I John 4}. We believe that all people are created in the image of God, and that honesty before God and our fellow human beings is essential to a just and equitable society. We cannot condone any position or practice, which in the name of faith, seeks to do less than extend this perfect love and work for this just society.

Prior to the seminar, Stephen Langa, Executive Director of FLN, and Dr. Scott Lively, a US spokesperson at the seminar, met with members of parliament and the Ugandan Christian Lawyers Association. According to Dr. Lively, he also met with you and other influential leaders.

We are concerned that the allegations raised by Dr. Lively and Mr. Langa, wrongly associating sexual minorities and human rights defenders with sexual abuse of people, will lead to violence against people on the grounds of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. This in turn will work against building communities of openness and trust and families where all members are valued and cherished.

With many people of faith throughout the world, we hold that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are created in the image of God and are loved by God. We further believe that the scriptural responsibility incumbent upon people of faith and good will across the globe is to respond to hate with compassion, charity and love. We strive to do that with this letter and our appeal to you as a person of good will and a public servant.

Uganda stands out as a nation which fosters spiritual diversity among its diverse population. As people of faith, we believe, as we trust you do, that state impartiality on spiritual matters is critical for the maintenance of peace and the enjoyment of religious freedom for all Ugandans.

The FLN brings into Uganda, with the support of a few US faith-based organizations, attitudes of hatred and intolerance that digress from the attitudes of compassion and tolerance advocated by most religious organizations globally. What we share in common as members of diverse traditions and co-signers of this letter is our firm conviction that we are called to love all people completely and equally, and to accept the place of every person in God’s creation.

As Minister for Ethics and Integrity, you represent the government of Uganda and as such you have an obligation to resist calls to limit the human rights of any group of people based on the beliefs of another group of people. We write to you seeking your pledge to honor the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights which affirms the equality of all people. We pledge our continued witness to the truth of God’s unconditional and universal love for all humanity, and to a more accurate and just representation of the faith we serve.

As people of faith, we believe it is the responsibility of the government to set the standard in matters of civil and human equality by investing time and resources into education about the diversity of human sexuality and gender identity. It is the responsibility of the government to facilitate a productive and respectful dialogue between people of differing religious and civic views. A peaceful and nonviolent society in which the rights of all are equally recognized and protected is achieved when the government takes a strong stand to defend religious liberty and diversity of belief.

We call on you today, as we did in a previous letter [14/2/2008 tinyurl.com/upendouganda] to publicly lead Uganda in becoming a model nation, working towards ending all discrimination against its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and replacing judgmentalism and oppression with acceptance of diversity; hatred and violence with love and compassion for all.

Sincerely,

1. The Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, Moderator, Metropolitan Community Churches
2. The Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ
3. The Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, General Minister and President, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada
4. The Rev. M. Linda Jaramillo, Executive Minister, Justice and Witness Ministries, United Church of Christ
5. The Rev. Pat Bumgardner, Chair, Global Justice Ministry, Metropolitan Community Churches
6. The Rev. Peter Morales, President, Unitarian Universalist Association
7. The Most Rev. Craig Bergland, EFR, Presiding Bishop, The Universal Anglican Church
8. Maria Jespen, Bishop of Hamburg and Luebeck in the Northelbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Germany
9. The Rev. Mark Kiyimba, Unitarian Universalist Association of Uganda
10. The Rev. Samuel Waweru, Presbyterian Church of East Africa PCEA, Nairobi, Kenya
11. The Rev. Steve Parelli, Other Sheep East Africa
12. Mel White, Soulforce
13. The Rev. William G. Sinkford, Past President, Unitarian Universalist Association
14. The Rev. Michael Schuenemeyer, Executive for Health and Wholeness Advocacy, Wider Church Ministries, United Church of Christ
15. The Rev. Robert B. Coleman, Minister of Mission and Social Justice, The Riverside Church in the City of New York
16. The Rev. David Vargas, Co-Executive, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, President, Division of Overseas Ministries, Christian Church (Discipl
es of Christ), Indianapolis, IN
17. The Rev. Cally Rogers-Witte, Co-Executive, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, Executive Minister, Wider Church Ministries, United Church of Christ, Cleveland, OH
18. The Reverend Eric M. Cherry, Director of International Resources, Unitarian Universalist Association
19. The Reverend Keith Kron, Director of the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Concerns, Unitarian Universalist Association
20. The Rev. Mark Worth, Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Castine, Maine, USA
21. The Rev. Ann Marie Alderman, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greenville, NC, USA
22. The Rev Rowland Jide Macaulay, House Of Rainbow MCC, Lagos, Nigeria
23. The Reverend Krishna Stone, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, USA
24. The Rev. Cn. Mary June Nestler, Canon for Ministry Formation, Episcopal Diocese of Utah
25. The Rev. Jared R. Stahler, Pastor, Saint Peter’s Church, NY
26. Rabbi Laurence Edwards, Congregation Or Chadash, Chicago
27. The Rev Deniray Mueller, Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio, Assistant to the Canon for Public Policy
28. The Rev. Dámaris E. Ortega, United Church of Christ
29. Sister Betty Obal, Sisters of Loretto
30. Sister Mary Peter Bruce, Sisters of Loretto Community
31. The Rev. H. Scott Matheney, Chaplain and Dean of Religious Life, Elmhurst College, Chicago
32. Christian Albers, Pastor in the Protestant Altstadt Congregation, Hachenburg, Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, Germany
33. Rabbi Renni S. Altman, Great Neck, NY
34. The Rev. Renee (Maurine) C. Waun, D.Min., Pittsburgh, PA
35. The Rev. Edith Gause, Consultant for Transitional Ministries, Pasadena, CA
36. The Reverend Lynn M. Acquafondata, Unitarian Universalist minister, Pittsburgh, PA
37. The Rev. Rebecca Booher, Minister
38. John Clinton Bradley, Acting Executive Director, Integrity USA
39. The Rev. Dr. Joan Kavanaugh, the Executive Director of the Counseling Center at The Riverside Church, NY
40. The Rev. Fr. Japé Mokgethi-Heath, Acting Executive Director ANERELA+ and INERELA+, South Africa & United Kingdom
41. The Rev Dee Cooper, Pastor, Head of Staff, Church of the Hills PCUSA
42. Anivaldo Padilha, KOINONIA Presença Ecumênica e Serviço, Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil
43. Malte Lei, Vicar, Northelbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Germany
44. The Rev. C. Edward Geiger, United Church of Christ
45. The Rev. Patricia Ackerman, Anglican Women’s Empowerment, New York City
46. Dr. Arnold Thomas, Minister of Education, The Riverside Church in the City of New York
47. Dr. Brad Braxton, Senior Minister, The Riverside Church in the City of New York
48. Penelope McMullen, Sisters of Loretto, New Mexico
49. The Rev. LaMarco A. Cable, Associate for Global Advocacy and Education, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, Indianapolis, IN
50. The Rev. Robert Galloway, Metropolitan Community Church of Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee
51. The Rev. Mieke Vandersall, Presbyterian Welcome, Minister Director, NY
52. The Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch, Pastor, Northside Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, MI
53. Harry Knox, Director, Religion and Faith Program, Human Rights Campaign Foundation
54. The Rev. Laurel Hallman, Unitarian Universalist Minister, Dallas, TX
55. The Rev. Robert C. Hastings, United Methodist Church
56. The Rev. Ray Neal, Pastor, Metropolitan Community Church, Seattle, WA
57. The Rev. Dr. Neil G Thomas, Metropolitan Community Church, Los Angeles, CA
58. The Rev. Hugh Wire, Presbyterian Church, USA
59. The Rev. Janine C. Stock, D.Min, JD, All Saints American Catholic Church
60. The Rev. David E. Cobb, Sr. Minister, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Lynchburg, VA
61. Lowell O. Erdahl, Bishop Emeritus, St. Paul Area Synod, The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
62. The Rev. Allan B. Jones, Retired United Methodist Clergy, Santa Rosa, CA
63. The Rev. Doug Johnson, Presbyterian minister and hospital chaplain, Billings, MT
64. The Rev. Christopher Eshelman, United Methodist Church, Wichita, KS
65. The Rev. Gary Mitchener, Pastor, St.Alban Episcopal (Anglican) Church, Cleveland Heights, OH
66. The Rev. Father Andrew Gentry, FCSF (Faithful Companions of St. Francis), Chaplain to the Bethlehem Community, Liverpool UK
67. The Rev. Marilyn Chilcote, Beacon Presbyterian Fellowship, Oakland, CA
68. The Rev. Jonathan Wright-Gray, Senior Minister, The First Church in Sterling, MA
69. The Rev. Dr. Penny Christianson, pastor, Tualatin United Methodist Church, Tualatin, OR
70. The Rev. Galen Guengerich, Senior Minister, All Souls Unitarian Church, New York
71. The Rev. LaTeasha A. Richardson, MAR, United Church of Christ, Minnesota
72. The Rev. Robert Forsberg, High St. Presbyterian Church, Oakland, CA
73. The Rev. Kerry Boese, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
74. The Rev. Mary Jane Donohue, Episcopal Priest, Diocese of Connecticut
75. The Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal)
World Officers of the World Federation of Methodist & Uniting Church Women
76. Chita R. Millan, World President – Philippines
77. Shunila Ruth, World Secretary, Pakistan
78. Lyra P. Richards, World Treasurer, West Indies
79. Rosemary Wass, President Emerita, United Kingdom
80. Brenda Smith, UN Representative, USA

Episcopal General Convention Rejects Moratorium on Gay Clergy, Supports Transgender Inclusion


I’m proud to be an Episcopalian today.

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA is meeting this week in Anaheim, CA. You can follow all the news about General Convention at our official website, EpiscopalChurch.org. (Stop by and say thanks to St. John’s parish member Solange De Santis who edits Episcopal Life Online.)

Yesterday the House of Bishops approved Resolution D025, which affirms that “any ordained ministry” is open to gays and lesbians. The amended resolution now returns to the House of Deputies for approval, defeat, or further revision. D025 was first introduced in the House of Deputies as an apparent response to the last Convention’s Resolution B033, which recommended “restraint” in consecrating bishops whose “manner of life” challenged other churches in the Anglican Communion.

Read the full story at Episcopal Life Online.

In other news, General Convention is also discussing various resolutions to make the Episcopal Church more welcoming to transgender Christians. Today, the House of Deputies voted by a large margin to add “gender identity and expression” to the ministry canons regarding non-discrimination. This year marks the first time that General Convention has conducted such an in-depth study of trans issues. Follow Rev. Cameron Partridge’s TransEpiscopal blog for detailed updates.

When we say “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You”, we mean it!

Postmodernism, Judicial Empathy, and the Bible


Law professor and Milton expert Stanley Fish changed my life one semester in 1995, when he co-taught my First Amendment class at Columbia Law School. By demolishing the liberal-modernist ideal of perspective-free knowledge, Fish showed me that I could commit my life to my nascent Christian beliefs in the absence of airtight intellectual proof. At the same time, his writings on legal interpretation convinced me that I didn’t need to seek another form of false certainty by ignoring the role of personal experience in how the Bible is read.

In a recent New York Times column on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, Fish makes some important points about judicial “empathy” and multiculturalism that are, as usual, relevant to Biblical hermeneutics as well:

…[I]f a judge’s understanding of the nuts and bolts of the legal machinery is itself interpretive, the sympathies and allegiances she has will be in play from the very beginning of her consideration.

That is what Sotomayor’s critics are worried about. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) complains, “She seems willing to accept that a judge’s rulings may be influenced by the judge’s personal backgrounds or feelings.” But whether this is a matter of concern depends on just what Sotomayor is imagined to be accepting. Is she accepting an account of the way human beings invariably perform? Is she endorsing a psychology? Or is she accepting a view of how judging should be done? Is she endorsing a method? Is she being descriptive or prescriptive?

If Sotomayor is being prescriptive, if she is saying, “I will actively (as opposed to involuntarily) consult the influences that have shaped me at every point of decision,” she is announcing a method of judging that invites Sessions’s criticism.

But if she is being descriptive, if she is saying only that no one can completely divest herself of the experiences life has delivered or function as an actor without a history, she is announcing no method at all. She is merely acknowledging a truth (as she sees it) about the human condition: the influences Sessions laments are unavoidable, which means that no one can be faulted for viewing things from one or another of the limited perspectives to which we are all (differently) confined.

In fact – and this is what Sotomayor means when she talks about reaching a better conclusion than a white man who hasn’t lived her life – rather than distorting reality, perspectives illuminate it or at least that part of it they make manifest. It follows that no one perspective suffices to capture all aspects of reality and that, therefore, the presence in the interpretive arena of multiple perspectives is a good thing. In a given instance, the “Latina Judge” might reach a better decision not because she was better in some absolute, racial sense, but because she was better acquainted than her brethren with some aspects of the situation they were considering. (As many have observed in the context of the issue of gender differences, among the current justices, only Ruth Bader Ginsburg knows what it’s like to be a 13-year-old girl and might, by virtue of that knowledge, be better able to assess the impact on such a girl of a strip-search.)

Book Notes: GLBT Nonfiction in Brief


Back to June pride-blogging with brief reviews of three nonfiction books that offer insightful writing on GLBT themes.

Written from within the evangelical community and addressed to that community, David G. Myers and Letha Dawson Scanzoni’s What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) makes a welcome contribution to the dialogue about faith and sexuality. Myers is a psychology professor at Michigan’s Hope College, while Scanzoni is a professional journalist and nonfiction author. Her commercial magazine experience is evident in the book’s concise, approachable style.

The book’s argument proceeds in stages: Committed relationships have proven essential to human flourishing. Marriage benefits couples, families, and society as a whole. More and more scientific evidence is showing that homosexuality is a naturally occurring human variation, probably caused by some combination of genetic and prenatal factors, and that sexual orientation is nearly always resistant to change. (The authors document the general failure of “ex-gay therapy” and denounce the suffering it causes.) In addition, the Bible verses most often cited against same-sex intimacy have been taken out of context, when they really refer to specific abuses such as temple prostitution and rape. There is therefore no reason to oppose marriage for committed gay couples on the same terms as straight couples. “Marriage lite” options like domestic partnerships and civil unions actually do more to undermine a culture of marriage, by suggesting that less-committed relationships are equally good for couples and their families.

Readers familiar with gay-affirming theology won’t find a lot that’s new here, but that’s not a bad thing. Seeing the same reinterpretations of Romans 1:26, etc., pop up in many places, one has to conclude that this is no longer a “fringe” viewpoint. It’s a viable alternate view, supported by scholarship, that at the very least deserves to be admitted to the conversation at evangelical colleges, publishing houses, and places of worship. Hopefully, the fact that What God Has Joined Together was written by two straight allies will enhance its credibility in those circles.

I recommend the paperback edition because it includes a dialogue between the authors, discussing reactions to the book and how they themselves came to change their views on homosexuality. Scanzoni observes at one point:

I think when we keep a subject such as homosexuality distant from us, seeing it only in the abstract, it’s easy to believe false information, accept stereotypes, and act accordingly. Homosexual people are then seen as an “out-group,” a category distinctly different from the heterosexual “in-group.” A blind spot makes it hard to see gay people as human beings, as persons who want the same things as straight people do–to love and belong and just go about their lives with dignity, as persons made in God’s image.

But when a heterosexual person learns that what had been only a generalized abstract mental construct is actually embodied in an admired person who reveals his or her sexual orientation, something begins to happen. How can you continue to believe gay relationships don’t last after getting to know Pete and Tom, who have been together 50 years, and have watched Pete tenderly caring for Tom, who now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease? How can you claim that homosexual people are rejecting God when that life-transforming sermon you can’t get out of your mind was preached by a lesbian minister? How can you believe that homosexual people are unfit parents when you see the love and care that Elaine and Laura shower on their baby, or the fun little Joey has as he plays and laughs with his two dads, whom he adores? Meeting gay people replaces an abstract topic with real people and with the universality of human experience.


As Harvey Milk said… “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

****

Whereas one might say that Myers and Scanzoni’s work seeks to integrate gay and lesbian couples into the bourgeois mainstream, Marjorie Garber’s Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993) celebrates the deconstruction of social norms in the figure of the transvestite. Tracing the theme of cross-dressing through historical anecdotes, legends, high art and popular culture, Garber argues that wherever it occurs, it signals anxiety about the instability of some other social category, not only gender but (at various times) race, class, religion, or colonial power. “[T]ransvestitism is a space of possibility structuring and confounding culture: the disruptive element that intervenes, not just a category crisis of male and female, but the crisis of category itself.” (p.17) A little further on, she writes, “there can be no culture without the transvestite because the transvestite marks the entrance into the Symbolic” (p.34) The rest of the book works out this simple thesis at great length.

Garber’s book comes from that mid-1990s postmodernist period when everything looked like a text. She’s a Shakespeare expert, so it makes sense that she’d use the tools of literary criticism to investigate the cross-dressing phenomenon. However, I found myself wondering whether her romance with transgression fits the experience of most trans-people. From what I’ve read on their blogs (and I admit that I’m a beginner here), at least some of them are quite eager to resolve their “third-sex” status into something as close to “male” or “female” as possible. They want to pass for a particular gender, maybe not the one they were born with, but also not some liminal category between.

Bottom line: I wasn’t always satisfied with Garber’s analysis, but I’m still thinking about the book, months after reading it, and that’s enough for me to recommend it.

****

Wrestling with the Angel: Faith and Religion in the Lives of Gay Men, edited by Brian Bouldrey (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), is a profound and heartfelt anthology of spiritual memoirs, with contributors including Mark Doty, Andrew Holleran, Kevin Killian, Alfred Corn, Fenton Johnson, and Lev Raphael. The authors touch on such topics as the connection between spiritual and erotic ecstasy, family secrets and reconciliations, and AIDS as a modern crucible of faith. Several Jewish and Christian denominations are represented, as well as Eastern spiritual traditions.