With the news that Bob Duncan has finally gotten himself made an archbishop, more discussion of the LGBT issue makes me wonder whether the conversation is not more preaching to the choir. What amount of articles and documents can take the place of sitting down with LGBT folks to see that fear is not warranted? And what amount of explanation or facts have changed anything? Frankly, and without any glibness intended, I think it is high time we moved forward and did the right thing without any thought of what it might cost. As a GLBT person, I am feeling a whole lot of insult that the church says it believes in the justice of all of this while it's actions still speak to me of fear. Like so many others, my bottom line is: "Do you love me or not?"

Peter, I totally agree with you. We can continue to do study after study and the outcome will remain the same -- "We cannot come to one response." There will never be a "one" response. Beyond, "Do you love me or not?" is the question of "Do you want me in the church or am I not welcome because of my sexuality?" The thought needs to be along the lines of God's love and our relationship with God, not what homophobic people think. We are told we are worthy of God's love and acceptance -- okay, church, do the same -- Love and accept us and allow us all the sacraments. We are worthy.

BJ,

No one is "worthy" of the Sacraments!

The issue is not one of sexuality or sexual orientation. The issue is actually muli-layered. First, we have to ask what is God. Second, we ask what is man - more particularly, we ask if man is, in his natural state, inclined towards God or away from God. Next we ask what is the Church. Then we ask what how do we determine what is essential to the faith. (n.b. this is not an exercise in individual thinking.) We ask how do we know what God's self-revelation is and how do we know what God's will is. Finally, we come down to the question of authority. Who has the authority to change the teaching of the Church? Does the Anglican Communion? A province of the Communion? A diocese? A congregation? An individual? Why is the authority at the level you place it and what, if any, are the limits of that authority?

When we come to consensus on those questions, we will be ready to debate blessing same sex unions. Unfortunatley, we have been debating the SSBs without first defining our terms. Conservatives and progressives use the same words, but I doubt very much if they mean the same things by them.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

"No one is worthy"? I believe Christ made us worthy.

As for the layers that must be addressed, this is often the argument used to prevent change. It is usually spoken by those in power rather than those who are suffering and dying. To these ears it is a bit hollow.

Peter Pearson,

Christ is making us worthy, but we are not yet worthy. That's why it's called "Grace." If we were worthy, the Sacraments would not be outward and visible signs of "an inward and spiritual grace."

I am a conservative in TEC. I am defintely not in power and I am not trying to prevent change, per se. I am trying to discern that the change is God's will. I do not believe it is, but simply saying "it is God's will" rings a bit hollow to my ears.

All these layers need to be discussed because, otherwise, we have not engaged in discernment. I believe that we have rushed the discussion of SSBs because we have not yet agreed on the terms of the debate. It's like you and I being engaged in a commercial transaction where we don't use a common currency. Neither of us knows what is happening.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Phil, your questions are important. I would, however, argue about the order and the steps. I think coming to understanding of God's self-revelation is prior to discussing what is "essential" to the faith - a step that is inseparable to discussing what God's will is generally, and having a foundation to discussing what God's will is in specific historical contexts. Then, the question of who has authority to change "the teaching of the Church" is dependent on whether what the Church has taught is reflective of what is "essential" to the faith. So, for most of us God's self-revelation in Christ, expressed in words spoken by Christ, would allow the Church, and perhaps the individual Christian, to disagree with, say, lex talionis, or levirate marriage. God's self-revelation in Christ, expressed in issues that he chooses to address or not address, has allowed the Church, and individual Christians, to deny a literal understanding of six-day special creation. God's self-revelation in Christ, expressed in John's statement that Christ "did not into the world to condemn the world but so that the world might be saved through him," and reflected in Paul's teaching in Romans 8 that "nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Jesus Christ, can allow the Church, and perhaps the individual Christian, to consider that Jesus' "other sheep of which you know nothing" might well be broader than our own tradition.

Marshall Scott

Marshall,

I think before we start talking about God's self-revelation, we need to come to an understanding about God's nature so that we can know about whose self-revelation we are discussing. And we are given our first paradox - we can't know God without His Self-revelation.
Before we discuss the Church, we have to know what we are. Are we good or evil by nature? Do we naturally turn to God (good) or turn away from God (evil)?

I believe that we have a disconnect on the basic definitions of the terms. What does it mean to bless? How do we know what is sinful? Are there actions that are always sinful (e.g. idolatry)? There are situations where we have no choice but to sin. Should we bless the choice that has the least sin, even if it is sin?

One of the big issues that I see on this is that we talk two different languages. The progressives tend to talk about civil rights (it's not fair that ....). Conservatives tend to talk about morals (on this issue). So, we don't even agree if this is an issue of "civil rights" within the Church or an issue of morality within the Chuch.

Until we decide that, we cannot come to any agreement on the presenting issue.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

This conversation has raised a number of significant questions, questions that theologians have been discussing for centuries, and for which there are different answers that fall within the bounds of Christian tradition. Anglicanism in particular has valued “a comprehension for the sake of truth.” We find (and express) our unity in common prayer, rather than a common confessional statement other than the creeds.

The questions coming to General Convention, about the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians in the life and ministry of the Episcopal Church, are both about theological understanding and about practice. It is not unusual for theological reflection to develop on the basis of practice, and for the church’s practice to change first because of a particular situation. The apostle Peter had a vision, hearing God say, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” From there, he saw evidence of the Holy Spirit falling upon the Gentile Cornelius, and on that basis decided to baptize Cornelius. Only after that had happened did the apostles convene a council to decide their policies about incorporating Gentiles into the Christian community.

Many in the church (myself included) have recognized the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of same-sex couples who have made lifelong, monogamous commitments similar to the one I have made in a heterosexual marriage. That has prompted us to reflect theologically and consider scripture and tradition in new ways. Yes, the argument can be made from the basis of civil rights. But it can be – and has been – made as well from biblical, theological, and liturgical bases. I encourage you to take a look at Kathy Grieb’s essay in “We Will, with God’s Help.”

I recognize that others have also studied scripture and come to a different conclusion. Yet I believe that this should not be a church-dividing issue, that there is room in the church for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians to participate fully, and for those who oppose their full inclusion. I know Anglicans in other parts of the communion who do not agree with me on the questions of full inclusion, yet our relationships continue to thrive because we share a common baptism, a common Anglican heritage, and a commitment to Christ. God’s love is wide enough to encompass us all, and God’s gift of unity is one that we must struggle to receive in the midst of our current disagreements.

First, we have to ask what is God.[?] ... Then we have to come to consensus on those questions?

How about this from Thomas Aquinas: "All we can say accurately is that God is, not what God is." And this from St. Augustine: "If you can understand it then it is not God. If you were able to understand then you understood something other than God."

Ruth Meyers' response is quite to the point that trying to force a cut-and-dried consensus on these questions violates the essence of Anglicanism.

It is our responsibility as Christians to try to discern where the Spirit is leading us. Phil Snyder is right that this is not an exercise in individual thinking (alone), but neither is it acceptable to resist the leadership of the Spirit until everyone is in agreement--which is to say never.

I apologize if my comments offended. As much as that may be a bad feeling, imagine what it's like for LGBT folks. Can you imagine that? I am at peace with God, it is God's "representatives" I do not understand.

Respectfully Phil,

Some of us so-called "progressives," a term I despise as it makes sexuality the litmus test for one's theology overall, have been talking about ascesis, discipleship, and morals for quite a long time. You disagree with our conclusions. Fair enough. But the broadbrush of two camps is inaccurate and unfair.

Further, our tradition does not divide off Church and general society in such a way that they do not interact, so that we can dismiss as secular "civil rights" as having nothing to do with the Church. The Church has erred terribly in the past both in its internal behavior and in general society, and it has sometimes been from within general society that the Church has found itself reformed by the Word active in both.

The way I see it, the broad brush paints this as an issue wherein one side is always talking about sex while the other is talking about who a person loves. But I think it's all a smoke screen. Frankly it's an issue of power and it has always been an issue of power in most of the stuff the church has 'wrestled with.' The haves do not easliy give power away to the less powerful. If you can paint it as a morality issue and put God in your camp it is easier to maintain power and the status quo. The Biblical and moral arguments have all sorts of holes in them and we all know it. Jesus taught us about the reckless love of God, but we can't seem to be that bold. Instead we choose to study the problem so we can be right. This isn't new; we've been through this whole scenario before on lots of issues wherein God was invoked to keep "them" in their place. How moral is that? And if civil rights are not about morality I don't know what is. So if we're going to use broad brushes, let's be really honest about what we're doing.

I just read the Chicago Consultation's document "We will with God's Help."

I must say that I am underwhelmed. There is nothing said about whether homosexual sex is blessed or good. All that the document does is say that since LGBT persons are baptized, we should allow them to be ordained. That far, I agree. However, if they are sexually active outside of marriage (as the Church has defined it for the last 2500 or so years) then they should not be ordained. Likewise, the relationship between two men or two women should not be blessed until the Church says that it is not sinful.

The crux of the matter is not whether God loves LGBT persons. He does. The Crux of the matter is what behavior is acceptable to God? Is homosexual sex within the confines of a male/male or female/female relationship good and blessed? Currently the Church teaches what it has always taught - it is not. There is no argument in WWWGH that cannot be made for any other sin. An adulterer has been baptized. Should he be ordained while still committing adultery? An alcoholic has been baptized. Should she be ordained while still drinking? A cleptomaniac has been baptized. Should he be ordained while still enslaved to theft? After all, the Scriptures don't speak about people with a compulsion to steal. They don't speak about alcoholism or drug dependency and they don't speak about men who are sexually addicted to multiple partners.

You can use the same logic used to justify SSBs to justify the same hyperboles I mentioned above.

Show me something from Holy Scripture that shows God blessing same sex unions. Show me, from Scripture, where the Church's teaching on homosexual expression (not orientation) is wrong. All I am seeing now is "I've been baptized, so I am a full member of the Church, so you must bless what I do."

That does not give glory to God nor does it move us closer to God.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Wow, again with the sex thing. Why this one issue?
What is the right's obsession with other people's sex lives?
And the alcoholic analogy doesn't even deserve any response because of its absurdity.

Phil, if you are really serious in wanting to know how people who take scripture seriously have come to believe "that the church is able to provide for and support faithful and loving relationships between persons of the same sex, not as a departure from [the Anglican] tradition, but as a reasonable extension of it," then you owe it to yourself to read Tobias Haller's new book Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-sexuality.

It is available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Reasonable-Holy-Tobias-Stanislas-Haller/dp/1596271108

Here is a description of the book from the Amazon site:

Reasonable and Holy addresses the conflict over homosexuality within the Anglican tradition, demonstrating that the church is able to provide for and support faithful and loving relationships between persons of the same sex, not as a departure from that tradition, but as a reasonable extension of it. It offers a carefully argued, but accessible means of engagement with Scripture, the Jewish and Christian traditions, and the use of reason in dealing with the experience and lives of fellow-Christians. Unlike most reflections on the topic of homosexuality, Reasonable and Holy examines same-sex relationships through the lens of the traditional teaching on the ends or goods of marriage: procreation, union, the upbuilding of society, the symbolic representation of Christ and the Church, and the now often unmentioned remedy for fornication. Throughout, it responds to objections based on reason, tradition and Scripture. Based on a series of popular blog posts, it includes a number of independent, but related resources in the form of side-bars and single-page expansions of particular themes, suitable for reproduction as handouts.

This looks like a very valuable resource for reflection and debate within our communities and among them as well. I am concerned that no amount of reason will convince as much as having an ongoing and caring friendship with someone who is GLBT. God and God's will is best discovered in our encounters with people.

Theology is useless speculation because none of it can ever be proved. Appealing to tradition in order to justify tradition is a tautology at best and sheer bigotry at worst. The question is whether all members of the social club called the Episcopal Church are to have the same rights and obligations. If a nonLGBT clergyperson is to be allowed to marry the person he or she loves, then, for logical consistency, an LGBT clergyperson should be allowed to marry the person he or she loves. The tradition, alas, has failed the logical consistency test for centuries. Instead of ventriloquizing a puppet God of so-called orthodoxy, it would be better to work on making the tradition on ethics logically consistent.

Gary Paul Gilbert

"Show me something from Holy Scripture that shows God blessing same sex unions. Show me, from Scripture, where the Church's teaching on homosexual expression (not orientation) is wrong."--P.Snyder

A significant difference between the Matthean and Lukan texts (Mt. 8:5-13 / Luke 7:1-10) is Matthew's use of the Greek word, pais, meaning ‘son’, ‘serving boy’ or ‘servant’, compared to Luke's use of doulos, meaning ‘slave’, to refer to the centurion's serving boy.Pais is the derivative noun in paidika, used to refer to the beloved youth in pederastic relationships. Hence the interpretation that the centurion’s serving boy is his catamite slave, the "beloved youth" in a pederastic relationship, here euphemistically called his ‘son’. Significantly, Luke’s version of the story makes specific reference to the centurion's affection for the boy (Luke 7:2b), something that the Matthean text does not require, for that understanding is already carried in the use of the word pais. [http://fou.uniting.com.au/pais.html]

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. --Romans 1:19-20

Worse, Paul goes on to offer an example of what he's talking about:

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the degrading of their bodies among themselves . . . Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.

P. Pearson raises the question, "What is the right's obsession with other people's sex lives?" First, it permits the right to keep the discussion on the level of individual acts, which can be presented as unnatural, outrageous, and antisocial. When the so-called Rainbow Curriculum was being discussed in New York City, gays and lesbians tried to talk about their relationships and communities. Opponents shouted them down with "SEX! SEX! SEX!" Right-wingers are still objecting to mention of gay people in grade school because they see gay as naming a sex act.

Second, straight males fear being demoted from their position of privilege as penetrators -- to be raped is to be made into a woman or a slave. This horror seems to be present in Leviticus, whose prohibition seems to be about anal intercourse, males lying with males as with women. (Some rabbis suggest that gay males who don't practice anal intercourse -- about half of them, actually -- aren't covered by Leviticus.) It's not far from the thought of Paul, who goes into an ecstasy of name-calling at the end of Romans 1. Yell SEX and rational discussion stops and visceral reactions take over.

The suggestion of sex ("that we may know them") has twisted modern understanding of the Sodom story. Obviously the men of Sodom didn't want to make love to Lot's guests, or even to seek pleasure with them -- they were out to abuse and humiliate them. In fact, Genesis describes an incipient gay-bashing. Jesus and Ezekiel are obviously right in seeing the sin of Sodom as inhospitality to the stranger.

Murdoch Matthew

BIC Phil,

You outline above the basic steps of systematic theology, from the nature of God through the authority of the church. Many systematic theologians in all of the various strands of Christian tradition have studied these matters at great length. While there is general consensus on the earlier items in the list, divergence of opinion sets in fairly early as you move on through, especially on that last question of authority -- there is no single world-wide authority on Christian doctrine recognized by all Christians. There are convergences and divergences aplenty.

However, it is very important to note that one of the issues on which there is significant (if not total) agreement, even among those who would oppose same-sex relationships, is that such relationships are not a question of systematic theology, but of moral or pastoral theology.

And in that arena, there is also a considerable lack of consensus throughout the Christian world on any number of issues related to sexuality -- such as birth control, abortion, and divorce and remarriage, to name just three. (Few, I take it, would still hold to the biblical prohibition on a man having relations with his wife during her period, even though the Scripture treats this as a crime of significant magnitude. But there may be Christian churches out there who do take that commandment seriously and argue against it.)

In short, your argument that some kind of consensus in Christendom (or even the Anglican Communion) must be reached before any individual Province or Church can act on a moral issue may well represent your fervent opinion, but it does not reflect the reality of the church, either past or present.

Also YBIC, Tobias.

(PS: thanks for the "plug" Bill! I've also recommended my book to Phil.)

Murdoch Matthew,

Let's take the story of the Centurian's pais. The Greek means "boy" or servant. The author of Matthew uses that word "pais" again as "servant" in 12:18 quoting Isaiah's 1st servant song (Isaiah 42). Are you suggesting that Jesus is God's catamite? That word is also the word in Isaiah 42 in the Septuagint (which is why Matthew uses it). It is used in Acts 4:30 "while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of thy holy servant (pais) Jesus."

I submit that selecting this one passage to translate pais as "sex slave" is an exercise in isogesis and not what the author of Matthew intended.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that you are right. Everywhere else in Scripture, pais is "servant" or "boy" or "child" or "girl" and in this one verse, it is "sex slave." Are you now saying that the master-slave relationship is our biblical paradigm for same sex unions? I sure hope not because there are no other voices saying that.

God can be known through His creation, so Paul is right. It is just that too many people decide that they don't want to know God or that they don't like what they see about God as He is revealed in what many Christians called "The Book of Nature."

It is not the "right" that is constantly bringing up sex or homosexual sex at General Convention. It has been those who want to change the moral teaching of the Church that have constantly done so. It is no the right who, on their own authority, started acting on some new teaching regarding homosexual sex. It is not the right who told the Anglican Communion to get lost and that, while we value their friendship, we don't really care what they think.

I suppose that you are going to bring up David and Jonathon next. Are you willing to say that David is our example of biblical sexual morality (gay or straight)?

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

"God can be known through His creation, so Paul is right."

But how can you know Paul's reading is right? As I pointed out, people in all ages have meditated on nature and come up with many stories. They're all stories, or theories, as is Paul's. Nowadays we look for evidence.

Am I willing to say that David is our example of biblical sexual morality?
No, just a prime example of how our concept of marriage has changed (one man, many wives, some concubines, and a possible guy on the side).

Murdoch

So, can I infer from your silence that the term "pais" does not connote sex slave in Matthew?

ISTM that you are simply admitting that you can't find a biblical example of homosexual sex being blessed by God.

How do I know that Paul is right? I don't know that Paul is right. I faith (= trust or belief) that Paul is right. At my ordination, I declared that I beleived the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be (not include or contain, but to be) the Word of God. Paul is writing to a combined Jewish and Greek congregation. He is simply saying that God has a design for how to live. That design can be deduced by nature. But man doesn't want to live by that design (he later goes on to day that man can't live by that design in chapter 7). Man's sin causes him to be unwilling and unable to know that design - leading man into even darker sins. It is the genesis of Natural Law and you can see evidence of the Natural Law in the simularities between the moral laws common between different religions.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

Phil, I have no dog in the centurion fight, but I am not sure where winning this argument would get you. There are any number of human behaviors not endorsed in Scirpture that mainline Christian churches now consider moral, and any number that are condemned by scripture that we now conside at least netural. Additionally, there are any number of horrific behaviors in Scripture that are either endorsed or that pass without comment. The Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches have never relied on this proof-text-y approach in donig their moral theology.

Thanks, Jim. I was raised a Southern Baptist, so this kind of argument comes all too naturally to me. Of course, I know that words have no set definitions and meaning depends on context. But I have read that the word pais was commonly used in Greek in the sense I cited, and it's fun to hang a whole argument on a word, given the weight people have allotted to abomination, an outdated translation of a Hebrew term that means something like "not kosher."

Murdoch