The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops, concluding its six-day retreat meeting at Camp Allen in Navasota, Texas, has posted a draft of the long-awaited 95-page report titled “Same-Sex Relationships in the Life of the Church” on the College of Bishops’ website here.
“For a generation and more the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion have been engaged in a challenging conversation about sexual ethics, especially regarding same-sex relationships in the life of the church,” Theology Committee Chair and Alabama Bishop Henry Parsley wrote in the report’s preface. “The hope of this work is that serious engagement in theological reflection across differences will build new bridges of understanding.”
A notation on the report’s table of contents page cautions that the report “has been edited in several places” following a discussion among the bishops on March 20. “The responses of several pan-Anglican and ecumenical theologians will be added to this study in the summer, along with some further editing, before a final edition is published,” the note concludes.
Read it all and follow the link to the report (warning, it is a 95 page pdf).
The link did not work for me after several tries.
Now that I actually clicked on the name of the report, it worked.
“We are convinced, however, that the church needs to move to a better place than we currently occupy.” The Epilogue.
Clearly. Towards Scripture and the Anglican Communion is not a move the HOB is willing to make. Not in 1994, not after 1998, not after the consequences of 2003 and 2010. Doublemindedness and its consequences are apparent to all save the HOB.
What was in the Kool-Aid at Camp Allen?
The report makes clear the very different theological assumptions held by the authors of the papers. I think the conservatives have the better of the argument.
The Liberal response p.85
[blockquote]”Our argument, on the other hand, does not reason from specific social teachings but from the moral patterns of Scripture. We do not, then, attempt to defeat biblical suspicions of various sexual relations, but rather to show how God uses marital faithfulness to heal and perfect sinners. Our argument does not seek to overturn biblical accounts of marriage and sexual morality; on the contrary, it upholds and deepens their theological meaning. We support our reading of marriage not by appealing to natural rights or to inclusive justice, but by showing how same-sex marriage fits within the scriptural liturgy and orthodox theology of the church.”[/blockquote]
I think the premise at the beginning of this work was to do
“creedal theology.” I think this section illustrates the use of “creative theology” instead. For example, when the authors write, “God uses marital faithfulness to heal and perfect sinners…” I, as a humble ignorant pewsitter, am left dumbfounded at such a blatant presentation of a totally made up new theology used as supporting evidence for their argument. What is alarming is that these are the people who are teaching the clergy of the future: Deirdre J. Good, General Theological Seminary
Cynthia B. Kittredge, Seminary of the Southwest
Eugene F. Rogers, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Willis J. Jenkins, Yale Divinity School.
I look forward to analysis of the “conservative” position presented in the paper. Did anyone see any major flaws?
U.P.
FWIW I like the liberal paper (not that I am persuaded by it) but, on first glance, I think it’s honest – recognizing that the “liberal” view at least “appears” transgressive and that it “exceeds the social forms assumed by biblical texts”. They confess that “we” (the Episcopal Church?) have “sometimes abandoned” the Global South, have “sometimes proceeded as if the rest of the church did not exist” and “too often we have…taken recourse to the law”. Those words are rarely spoken by liberals in the current morass and I am touched by their confession. (Of course acknowledgment and sorrow over sin must lead to a sincere intention not to sin in order to be drawn back into the Lord’s love. Nevertheless I, for one, appreciate their step towards penitence).
The argument they make is largely made on the basis of a theology of marriage in which embodied difference carries little or no theological weight. (Of course the relativization of embodied difference is an important element in Eastern ascetic theology – but it’s used without the accompanying careful guardianship of “purity” – and absent the theological significance given to “singleness” in such a theology. In other words, if they are to use Eastern ascetic theology they owe an account of the theological weightiness of singleness in that tradition as precisely a way in which our bodies may be given over to love).
I think also absent – as it is in the work of Eugene Rogers and Stephen Fowl who evidently hugely influenced them – is a “dense” ecclesiology of mutuality. Of course, one might justly say there is only so much that they were asked to do – but given their recognition of the transgressive nature of their exegesis – then some sense of how and by whom such novel exegesis ought to be received and tested, as they see it, would be hugely helpful.
Let me also add that the Traditionalist response to the Liberal case is excellent. They note its idiosyncrasy – in my words, using exegesis in which the meaning of Scripture is pluriform and plastic (attempting to parallel patristic exegesis) against patristic teaching about marriage. They identify too a tension between the liberal catholic progressives (Scripture is authoritative but its meaning underdetermined) and the liberationist progressives (Scripture is patriarchal). They rightly note that one core analogy of the liberal paper – namely, Acts 15 – fails to recognize that inclusion of the Gentiles is prefigured plainly in several Old Testament passages and in Jesus ministry as related by the Gospels, unlike same sex marriage.
The discussion is much better than I had expected – though what happens with it now? As the traditionalists point out, in diocese after diocese action has already been taken, action that for all their sorrow the liberals wholeheartedly support. Normally, as the conservatives argue, decisions are only taken after discussion. When the reverse is the case – what is the aim of discusison?
Perhaps someone who knows him could persuade Rob Gagnon to review and comment on both parts of this document. I think he knows both sets of arguments as well or better than anyone else.
I’m in agreement with “driver8” on the Traditionalist response. I was particularly pleased to note a sense of impatience with ongoing ad hoc nature and incompleteness of liberal arguments. As the introduction correctly notes, this is not really a balanced presentation. One case is thorough, the other merely energetic.
The trajectory of liberal argumentation does, however, continue to fascinate. Gone are the divide-and-conquer biblical arguments that dominated the liberal case for so long – and good riddence to them. Boswell & company’s claims about the Old Testament passages have been thoroughly discredited. In fact, gone entirely in this case is any attempt to argue against the Traditionalists. Reasons are not hard to come by – political domination in the US, lack of a need for that particular arrow in the quivver. It is to be noted that liberal arguments have been entirely ad hoc all along.
And so they are here. The paens to marriage are pretty, but the substance of what is being done will swallow them up. The approach herein demands that accommodation be made for bisexuals whose “orientation” is every bit as involuntary as homosexuals and heterosexuals. Polyamory necessarily follows and marriage loses more and more meaning. Interesting how making too much of something results in its destruction.
That’s not the biggest problem I had with the liberal case. The bigger one is that they simply assume – without any real effort at demonstration – that God makes some people homosexual on purpose. This is a very extreme claim and is highly essential to their case. Note that. The liberal argument entirely disintegrates if homosexuality is not God’s intention for at least some segment of the population. It seems to be so thoroughly accepted n their circles that the involuntary nature of homosexual inclinations stems from divine intention and divine intention only, that the authors of the liberal case saw little or no reason to bother defending it. This they had and have a positive duty to do. It is manifestly *not* self-evident that unchosen desires necessarily result from divine intention any more than that diseases, hurricanes and earthquakes are necessarily signs of divine judgement or even activity. The case needs to be made that this particular involuntary inclination is of divine origin and not just an accident of nature and life in a sinful, broken world. Since it is the central matter being debated, liberals have a duty to defend it. Thus far, this they have failed utterly to do. In this case they don’t even make the attempt. It continues to look like they don’t because they can’t, as I’ve thought all along.
This paper will do little to advance the conversation, I think.
Truthfully, this exercize comes across as equivocation – which on a subject as foundational as theological anthropology, is breathtaking. It’s no wonder people are leaving TEC in droves, when there is no clear message on the most basic of Christian doctrine.
And – as Christopher Johnson aptly says over on his site, it’s not a selling point to broadcast theological incoherence.
Fr Darin Lovelace+
St Johns Anglican
Park City UT
Fr. Lovelace – I agree completely. One thing we can be sure of: the reappraisers will abandon this paper in almost no time just as they have abandoned the arguments of [i]To Set Our Hope on Christ[/i], the historical claims made by Boswell, the bibical exegesis of Countryman, ad nauseum. At no time has the “pro-gay” position been self-understood as a result of serious scholarship – indeed underlying this entire project is an assumption that theology does not deal in actual knowledge – but rather the desired end is predetermined and ad hoc arguments are proffered of whatever hue is determined necessary to advance the goal at the particular time in the particular circumstances. The goal has never been to establish the objective truth of the matter – after all, wouldn’t the lefties need some sort of explanation for how God would be so slipshod that He created gay people and then spent thousands of years covering up the fact and going out of His way to give the opposite impression, with absolutely no attempt at correction, not one single prophetic voice, until now? – but rather to establish facts on the ground that achieve the desired outcome regardless of the cost. The homosexual movement in the Church has never been intellectually serious and hence is not serious about this paper. They decided the right answer up front. Argumentation is intended solely to win politically, not actually reach any level of actual understanding. This won’t advance the conversation because there is none.
The “traditionalists” state, “… the inherent procreative purpose of sexual relationships must be respected and embodied in Christian marriage. This does not require the unnecessarily stringent requirement of respect for procreation in every sexual act.” How can an inherent procreative purpose be embodied in an intentionally contraceptive act?