Guest post affirming same-sex relationships within the Church
Hi Dojo readers,
My previous post from a few weeks ago regarding the passing of Amendment One and charges of bigotry generated a lot of conversation in the comments section.
As a result, I’ve invited one of the participants, Sam, to summarize his response to my position (which is the official United Methodist position on the issue, as well as the historical orthodox Christian position) and post it here in the Dojo for discussion.
I invited Sam to share his view because I wanted readers to get a chance to hear firsthand the arguments many Christians in mainline churches find persuasive. I also invited him to post because in our discussion Same has been very cordial and has sought to better understand the view he is opposing rather than demonizing or becoming antagonistic. He does not caricature or belittle those with whom he disagrees (at least he has not in my discussion with him!), so for that reason I have much respect for him, despite disagreeing strongly with his conclusions.
In the coming week I will respond to Sam’s post, but in the meantime I invite Dojo readers to comment and share their responses in the comments section below.
This is an important issue, both within the Church as well as in wider society. It is also a controversial one that generates a lot of emotion…but often not much else. I hope discussions like this can help change that.
Here is Sam’s post:
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[Hello all! I’d like to thank JM for providing the space to have this important conversation and for being a patient and courteous conversation partner. We’ve carried on a lengthy discussion in the comments section of JM’s “Amendment One and Bigotry” post. Much more has been said and could be said about our previous comments than fits here, so I’ll synthesize what I consider to be most important to me in this conversation and JM will respond.]
Your initial post treated a secular argument but since then we’ve concerned ourselves principally with the question of queerness in the church, especially the United Methodist Church. If it’s all right, I’d like to continue to pursue that line of conversation. My overall position is that, responsive to the Holy Spirit’s call to universal holiness, the church should celebrate same-sex/gender marriage and the ordination of LGBTIQ people in the church (and advocate for the same in society). The major arguments I’d like to make here are grouped as follows.
1. Interpretation of the Bible alone cannot offer a moral vision for queerness as we speak about it in our time and place.
This is the first point I’d like to make because, among the arguments I’ll present, it’s both the most foundational to the divergence of our views and the least likely with respect to which we’re likely to change our minds. You’ve brought up before the large corpus of research you’ve done on the text and the level of certainty you have about the clearness and unanimity of Scripture on the subject of same-sex/gender relationships. I concede I’ve done less research on the subject, and in the same breath affirm my belief that the Bible doesn’t address queerness in such a way that we are obliged—out of the high regard to God’s authoritative corpus for the church we share—to regard queerness or queer “acts” as sinful.
It’s probably accurate, and at least charitable, to note that you’re arguing and that I’m asserting here. Would that I had the means to make an argument! Rather, I can only refer to scholarship that shares (indeed, that has provided the basis for) my view of Scripture just discussed. For example, I just learned that Michael Coogan at Harvard Divinity wrote a book in 2010 on the subject defending our position.
Again, it is so unlikely that I personally will change your mind on the Scriptural question, JM, that I have to settle for alleviating a sense of certainty or consensus among the people reading this. No one denies that the conversation is open in peer-reviewed, legitimate, faithful Christian scholarship addressing whether the Bible prohibits lesbians and gay men from marrying in the church. You and many others deny that the conversation is open in our interpretation of Scripture itself. Since I affirm both points above, I would like to argue below that the Bible speaks meaningfully to human sexuality in concert with other means, and that this is by God’s providence.
2. For Christians, judgments about the rightness or wrongness of sexual acts should and do always involve both Scriptural and extra-Scriptural data.
This argument is predicated on the principle that the Bible is not self-interpreting. As with all the mysteries entrusted by God to the church, we must in a certain sense live with Scripture in order to read Scripture. You’ve enacted this principle well when you discussed the “yes, but” dynamic present in reading Jesus on divorce; yes, Jesus is pretty harsh on divorce, but there are other places in the Bible where the Spirit has led authors to nuance the view, such that we don’t just read what Jesus says and nod our heads unquestioningly. And on top of all this, we know and love and live with divorced people in our daily lives. Though their decisions to obtain divorces are often tragic in some way, divorced people are people beloved by God and the community, and those who remarry in the UMC are rightly, and in the general sense, not considered sinful despite some Biblical evidence (some eight places in Scripture—a very small amount of textual discussion that we rightly regard as insufficient for a comprehensive moral position on divorce).
It’s convenient for my argument that Jesus Christ—the paradigmatic, once-for-all self-revelation of God among us—has nothing to say about queerness per se in the Bible. But the more crucial point for me is that we don’t only look at what Jesus, or St. Paul, or Moses, or any Biblical author, or all the Bible authors put together, say(s) about a question like this. We look at what God has given us to look at. God saw fit to inspire the composition and compilation of the Scripture for our edification, just as God saw fit to provide the Holy Spirit to guide our lives, to provide us with minds and an appropriate way of using them, to provide us with relationships with people who reflect the Image of God to us afresh, and so on. We could talk about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral at this point (and to anticipate what you’d say about this theological tool, yes, we can say that the other three concepts (tradition, reason, experience) contribute to theological understanding only by interpreting Scripture, not by constituting instances of revelation themselves). Whether one wants to use that specific framework matters less than the necessary admission that all Christians have to interpret the Bible and we have to read the world.
I imagine that you are at least provisionally on board with what I’ve just said, JM, so at this point I’ll elaborate on the payoff for my argument. You compared people in “same-sex sexual relationships” (quoted to capture your terminology, not to scare) to alcoholics, arguing that women’s desire for sex with women and men’s for men is like an addiction to a harmful substance that has the potential to physically destroy bodies and which is dangerous to one’s self and relationships. Of course the comparison is somewhat hyperbolic, but really, it’s something that those who maintain the sinfulness of queer people have to make at some point. You have to appeal to an outside normative source in order to make the case that woman-woman and man-man sexual experiences are sinful. Why? Because, as a responsible Christian, you know that Scripture is not arbitrary. God doesn’t inspire the first communities of faith to avoid idolatry or adultery or murder or usury or temple uncleanliness for no reason, but because they harm others (God included). In ethical matters like those I’ve mentioned God inspires the community to communicate the truth that is already present in God’s good creation and economy of grace, not to reveal the truth for the very first time. People’s ethical needs and God’s ethical commands have a non-arbitrary causal relationship. Though I make this argument on the historic and universal activity of the church, and of my own experience as a disciple of Christ, the Scriptural principle to which I might appeal is that Jeremiah 29:11 is the normative framework within which Isaiah 55:8 is in any way good news for us.
If that’s true, then we can’t throw our hands up in the air when talking about queerness and say something like, “Well, it’s just the way God made it. I don’t know why it’s sinful, but my hands are tied: Scripture doesn’t allow otherwise.” It may be the case that God forbids women from sex with women and men with men, but if God does, it’s pretty cheap for us to just refer to God’s inscrutable will. And it’s unfair to those whose sacred worth we affirm to bar their sexuality from them (in any case, but especially) if we don’t have an explanation for it.
So those who hold your view have to make an additional ethical claim not explicitly made in the Scriptural data that they claim applies to queerness—they have to find what harm lesbian and gay sex does, or they have to say God is ethically arbitrary/unknowable. As you may have found, finding such harm is pretty tough, because it’s not there. Being lesbian or gay isn’t really anything like being addicted to alcohol: with respect to necessity, it doesn’t hurt your body; it doesn’t destroy relationships; it doesn’t impede the use of your gifts for the promotion of holiness in society (unless holiness is somehow linked to an absence of queerness, which, again, would be logically circular). Monogamous queer couples don’t produce fewer children than sterile straight couples. Women married to women and men to men aren’t in any necessary way less faithful or supportive or committed to Christ.
So I guess my question to you, JM, is: How would you argue that same-sex/gender sexual relationships do non-arbitrary (as a conversation partner, my use of “arbitrary” here and elsewhere does entail that potential participants in this conversation are the subjects which determine the correlation between terms, not God) harm to others, including God? As noted before, I think you may have something interesting to say about the Imago Dei on this point.
3. A normative structure focused only on sexual acts between two people of the same sex and/or gender: a) is not the best means by which to do ministry as or with sexual minorities and b) does not obtain in the Discipline of the UMC.
You’re rightly opposed to condemning people for things they can’t help, JM. Acknowledging that lesbians and gay men are immutably attracted to those who belong to the same gender category, you’ve made a point of focusing only on the act of a woman having sex with a woman or a man with a man as sinful, not their orientation towards doing so. This is an example of the balance which you seek to strike between unreflective condemnation of queerness on the one hand and celebration of queerness in marriage and ordination on the other.
As I’ve argued, such a balance isn’t the best way to go about doing things. Here’s one example of why: claiming that an act is sinful but that the desire to commit the act is unproblematic really kind of puts queerness in its own moral category. Adultery is an evil act, and desire to commit it is sinful too, as Jesus said. I think we’d think the same thing about murder, theft, etc. And if we didn’t want to use the word “sinful” (fraught with cultural meaning as it is) to talk about pathologies like compulsively stealing or committing arson, we at least acknowledge that that person’s desires are out of whack. People who have a persistent desire to commit major sins, like pathological arsonists, shouldn’t be condemned as sinners but are in serious need of medical/psychological attention. People who have a compulsion to engage in minor inconsiderate acts, like those who insist on doing everything an even number of times, are rightly seen as harmless and loved in spite of the compulsive condition they exhibit. But you probably don’t want to argue that queerness is anything like pathological arson that requires serious psychotherapy since you’re likely aware of how abjectly wrong it is to try to change someone’s sexual orientation. And you probably don’t want to argue that being lesbian or gay is a trivial (with respect to those outside the subject) orientation that has no relevant bearing on one’s potential ordination or marriage in the church. So it’s a third thing: some sort of a disordering of God’s creation that we must ecclesially oppose acting upon but never attempt to change the desire to do. I submit to you that that is a little bit strange, though it would be interesting to see if you feel like this paragraph holds any argumentative water.
The larger point I want to make is that any Christian consideration of the fact that many of us are queer must do so precisely as a consideration of queer people as queer and as people. As we’ve discussed, the terminology here is important, and no one is qualified to apply terms to minorities whose self-identification is crucial to a healthy way of being in the world. Feminists, for example, have problematized the term “feminist,” especially in its application to women of color, yet retained its use as a powerful term when rightly taken on. American Indians have undergone a similar process, and so have queer people. I’m not going to fight hard to defend my use of the word “queer”—indeed, to those in the LGBTI community who are offended by my use of the word, I sincerely apologize. I’ll take this opportunity to self-identify as a straight man and therefore acknowledge I have no prerogative to assign labels to anyone without their consent, especially not sexual minorities. Yet I use “queer” because it’s a person-focused term; sexual minorities (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender persons, intersex persons) share a common experience at the margins of society because of their immutable, unchosen sexual identity and use “queer” as a term linking them one to the other. Speaking about sexual acts without any regard to sexual actors is, frankly, somewhat incoherent. We must be people-focused, and if it’s not a sin or a pathology just to be lesbian or gay, it’s not a sin or a pathological act to do what lesbians and gay men who are Christian do: get married to the one to whom you’re called to get married.
It is, on the other hand, important to consider sexual orientation carefully when we draw out a sexual ethic. You and I probably agree that the church has the privilege and duty, to a greater degree and with a greater competency than we individually have, to create a discipline to order the Christian life in the interconnected fields of faith, liturgy, ethics, and polity—including an authoritative Christian understanding of human sexuality to which we are responsible. Our own United Methodist Church hasn’t shirked its responsibility to do just that in the Social Principles and elsewhere. And, of course, you and I haven’t shirked our responsibility to critically engage that witness and to challenge it when appropriate, at the direction of the Holy Spirit. (Though I do not love our failure to confirm the holiness of queer Christians, I still love our church as an authentic expression of the Body of Christ.)
Yet the UMC has failed to focus either on persons or on acts. Instead, its focus is on orientation, indicated by its consistent use of “homosexual(ity)” in the Book of Discipline. Failing to speak about acts falls short of your aim to embrace persons and simply to condemn their concrete sexual actions—the Church is concerned with the self-avowal and practice of an orientation, of which a person is partly constituted! And at the same time, the UMC also fails to do what I try to do: namely, to hold to (what I should like to think is) the logical conclusion that if it isn’t a sin to will it, it isn’t a sin to do it. Instead we have a murky third thing that suggests to me that, in ministry and theology, a lack of careful attention to language is really a lack of careful attention to the Spirit to whom we are responsible.
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[Stay tuned for my response to Sam… -JM]
Categories: Biblical Theology, Blog, Ministry, Political/Social issues, Relationships, Theological issues
[…] If you’re just joining us, Sam’s initial guest post can be read HERE. […]
by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » The Church and Same-Sex Relationships: My response to Sam (part 2) on Jun 6, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Regarding the parallel made between the person who may have been born with a tendency toward alcoholism and the person who may have been born with homosexual tendencies, you said, “You have to appeal to an outside normative source in order to make the case that woman-woman and man-man sexual experiences are sinful.” No, he appealed to Scripture to make the case that homosexual experiences are sinful. He appealed to the parallel experience of the alcoholic to respond to the unproven and extra-biblical assertion that “I was born this way.”
The comparison is not really hyperbolic, as you suggest, but instructive. Both alcoholics and homosexuals find themselves with certain desires they did not consciously choose. Both can make choices about how they will deal with those desires. Both will probably need help and support to consistently say “No” to their desires. Just because there is an unchosen desire does not mean acting on it is acceptable or to be celebrated.
I see these unchosen desires as a manifestation of the brokeness of God’s good creation due to the ripple effects of sin. Every individual has some such manifestation in their life. Some men claim to have an inborn tendency toward promiscuity (or at least Roving Eye Syndrome), others a habitual pattern of gossip, anger, jealousy, etc. There’s something in all of us. The question is: What will we do with that? Let it run its own course, or bring it into submission to Christ?
by David Trawick on Jun 6, 2012 at 9:02 pm
Thanks for your input here, David. You’re right that the term “hyperbolic” is an overreach and I apologize.
I’ll put it as straightforwardly as I can in this paragraph. You and I agree that JM has not appealed to a source outside Scripture; my point is that he needs to do so to free the Scripture prohibitions (that he perceives, and that I don’t) from moral arbitrariness. Alcohol abuse is sinful because it hurts people, as we can demonstrate with data outside Scripture. Ditto promiscuity (a practice of using people for their sexuality), gossip (wherein information that is harmful or untrue is disseminated inappropriately), anger (which I take to mean inappropriate anger, whereby one harms someone else in word or deed), and jealousy (wherein someone is reduced simply to her possessions in value). Queer marriage is not sinful because it does not hurt people or God as those practices do.
To answer your question: we will submit our lives to Christ thoughtfully, in discipline and in love. We will not let our sexual desires, straight or queer, spiral into situations which harm others but order them into convenanted relationships that we celebrate as a church. Does that make sense?
by Sam on Jun 11, 2012 at 4:35 am
Yes, Sam, that does make sense. And, yes, I would concede that consensual homosexual sex does not cause biological harm to another person. However, I am of the belief that some things may be wrong/sinful simply because they are not what God intended for us from creation. For instance, polygamy was not part of God’s original design as described in Genesis 1-2, and every time it’s portrayed in Scripture it is accompanied by jealousy, giving it a negative tinge, but without any explicit divine prohibition. I would suggest (against my Mormon and Muslim friends) that polygamy is sinful because it is outside of God’s creation design for humanity. For the same reason I would conclude that homosexual sex is sinful. Not because it is harmful, but because it is outside of God’s creational design.
by David Trawick on Jun 11, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Again, good points, David. Looking at the “book of nature” is often helpful for Christian ethics but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful for your case. For a treatment of queer marriage and polygamy, see JM’s post “Amendment One and Bigotry,” which discusses this topic thoughtfully.
The status of an act/object’s being “outside God’s creation design” can’t be established without evidence, and I don’t see a whole lot of such evidence in Creation. Maybe you can point me to some, David.
by Sam on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:15 am
[…] If you’re just joining us, Sam’s initial guest post can be read HERE. […]
by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » The Church and Same-Sex Relationships (Conclusion) on Jun 7, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Regarding creation design, I’m not suggesting anything complex or mysterious. Biblically speaking, the creation design is stated in Genesis 1-2 as one man and one woman becoming one flesh. Biologically speaking it is simply the complementarity of male and female anatomy suggesting the two belong together.
On a side note: Some people insist on the importance of procreation as a part of God’s creational design, but I know plenty of heterosexual couples who cannot have children and others do not intend to have children (and some who probably should not!). But that does not suggest to me they should not be married. There were childless couples in biblical history who had no children, and were not judged as sinful because of it.
by David Trawick on Jun 13, 2012 at 4:18 pm
I agree with you on the subject of procreation, David, which is why I am a little puzzled by the biological “complementarity” of the male and female bodies. Any suggestion that anatomies belong together must necessarily be made by thinking persons and not by nature or biology itself, I should think.
by Sam on Jun 19, 2012 at 10:05 pm
I am going to chime in here for several reasons.
1. Homosexuality and full inclusion of is the single most divisive subject the Christian Church has had to deal with in a long time.
2. In my pursuit of truth I have studied the issue inside scripture and out of scripture. In other words I have read the gays positions, leaders writings, books and listened carefully to those that have lived the life and left the lifestyle and the defenders of the gay community. I have read their interpretation of scripture.
3. I am convinced that the UMC will at some point in the future split if they do not take a firm position soon because the present position of the UMC is intolerable, hurtful and irritating to both sides
I will share with you one founding principle I learned a long time ago. If one holds a position on any subject and tackles scripture with a closed heart and mind and if that position is the guiding principle on any given subject that leads and directs the search for answers the Spirit of God can not work.
Until one is ready to relinquish all long or short held positions on any one subject and approach scripture with an open mind and sincere heart they are unable to hear. You must with all sincerity and repentant heart confess to God your will to lay down all long held positions.
Pray God you are tired of the fighting and arguing and ask God to teach you the truth no matter where it may lead even if that truth leads one down a different path than you expected.
In that environment God can teach. He can work. Then God is in the lead and you have set yourself, your prejudices, your agendas and your truths under Gods authority.
This is not a “I’m right and your are wrong” issue. This is an issue that is deadly serious. It is a position that effects peoples lives, their walk with God and their eternal security.
You cannot put new wine in old wineskins and God can not fill a vessel with truth if that vessel is already filled with agenda’s and man truths. Empty the vessel first and then watch God do his work.
So…The second step is all parties must have and make known , “What position does scripture hold?’. Is scripture inspired or not, in your mind? Does the written Word of God have authority?
If the parties in dispute are not in agreement on what scripture is, there is no fair starting point. So “what say you?”
by d on Jun 15, 2012 at 11:03 am
Thanks for chiming in, D. I too am afraid of the possibility of a UM split, which is why we have to have these conversations with a lot of charity and care.
I’m very glad to hear your exhortation to open up one’s heart and be prepared to relinquish long-held notions in God’s name, because of course it’s exactly what I am trying to convince our church to do. And on an autobiographical aside, that very thing happened to me, having been raised in the faith to believe that it’s plainly sinful to live as a lesbian or gay man. I believe that God opened up my heart and allowed me to lay down that conviction in humility, in obedience to the Spirit.
That said, the process of sanctification is never a “one-and-done” sort of thing but a life-long call to responsibility, and I appreciate your advice to continually open my heart and mind to new arguments and new testimony. Taken under advisement, D, and thanks for your sage wisdom.
by Sam on Jun 19, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Actually I am not in favour of same sex marriage in the church and do not support full inclusion.
I am also not afriad of a split at UMC.
I believe that may be the best course of action IF UMC continues to send mixed messages.
That open mind comment of mine works both ways.
The open mind is an open mind to the message of the gospel and the willingness to listen to opposing positions.
I have had the exact opposite reaction as you being raised in a very liberal thinking family.
by D on Jun 20, 2012 at 11:18 am
Well said, D. It’s always helpful to be held accountable for conversational charity, and I thank you for doing so.
We part ways on the issue of support for full inclusion of all God’s people in the church but we may yet march side-by-side for the cause of open-mindedness.
by Sam on Jun 21, 2012 at 7:14 pm
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by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » Christians and same-sex discussion – Round 2: My response to Sam on Jun 18, 2012 at 5:42 pm
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by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » Christians and same-sex discussion – Round 2: My response (continued) on Jun 20, 2012 at 7:14 pm
[…] Sam’s initial guest post – https://jmsmith.org/blog/same-sex-1 […]
by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » Christians and same-sex discussion – Round 2: My response (continued, 2) on Jun 23, 2012 at 5:29 pm
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by Disciple Dojo dialogue on homosexuality | John Meunier on Nov 28, 2013 at 2:26 pm
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by Disciple Dojo – JMSmith.org » A respectful Methodist dialogue on Christian LGBT ethics (Part 1) on Jul 8, 2015 at 5:28 pm