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1. Introduction
A word of introduction as to why I am making
this presentation today.
What I will say today comes about from an
attempt to write something on the issue of the blessing of
same-sex unions in a pastoral way for the parishes for which I
am the rector. I kept promising the parishes to say something
in our quarterly newsletter and every time I sat down to think
about it it became more and more complex.
I also began to see the limitations of my own
response to the issue, which was, to be angered by the writings
of those in favour of this issue, and discouraged from seriously
engaging in their positions because it just seemed so clear to
my mind.
I come to this question not just as a priest
but as a scientist (I am formally trained and did practice as a
Chemical Engineer before becoming a priest) – I have been
unsatisfied with the quick assumptions people make about the
science related to this question.
While I don’t think any of us expect to leave
here unified in our understanding of the issue, I hope we might
begin to work through a way forward on this subject together in
charity. I want to thank Fr. Gary Thorne, Chaplain at King’s
College and Dalhousie for organizing a listening process last
Spring among students and others interested that showed such
discussion is possible in a respectful way.
I have come to believe that our Communion has
been greatly blessed by facing in a very public way this current
controversy. It is forcing us to deepen our compassion for one
another, to learn patience with one another, and to recognize
the inadequacies of our current structures of decision making in
our church—who can bear with the tension in Synods as we try to
debate highly complex questions with time limited back and forth
at the microphone? Do individual synods or even provinces in
the Anglican Communion have authority to decide independently on
matters of doctrine? We are learning just how very confused we
are as a communion. But most importantly, it is making us
struggle to bring to the light of Christ and in
the light of Christ our hypocrisies as a Church and oppressive
structures of thinking, speaking and acting. I don’t believe we
should stop talking about this and get on with other
things—people are being hurt.
Two remarks about what I will say:
1. Our language often carries with it our
assumptions. When the terms “gay” or “lesbian” or “homosexual”
or “bisexual” are used in today’s speech, there is very often an
assumption that this is the state of a person “by nature” (born
that way). Since I am contesting this assumption on the part of
many, I will use a term which I think all people can agree is
true but doesn’t carry with it the assumption. I will speak of
people who have same-sex desire.
2. The second assumption is related to my
view of Scripture. I understand it to be reasonable. And when
something seems unreasonable, I don’t assume that it is wrong,
or that it reflects a society’s sinful prejudices, but I believe
I must sit with it until it makes sense. I will try to argue
less from particular texts, to general trends, not because
particular texts are unimportant (to my mind they are clear) but
that getting too specific has not proved to be a fruitful avenue
in these discussions.
My presentation begins with a discussion of
the Law, since this is where the division arises from within the
Church, and then moves to consider various ideas in the modern
world that contribute to us demanding a just resolution of this
issue, and concludes with suggestions for a pastoral response
and questions that need to be considered further.
2. Law and Gospel
How do we know what is right or wrong in the
moral realm? In the Christian tradition, there has been an
understanding that we have innate sense of what is right in our
hearts – God has “imprinted on every human soul by general
revelation” our understanding of what is right and wrong
[Sayers]. This Natural Law, this innate sense of what is right
and wrong in our relations with one another, can be violated.
When these laws are repeatedly violated they can be forgotten.
We can think of the horrific example of isolated communities
where it is discovered that incest has become the norm. Those
involved had lost all sense that what they were doing was
wrong. Whole societies can embrace certain injustices, lies
that need to be unearthed and exposed for what they are – e.g.
practices of slavery, or ideas of revenge, or of racial or
gender superiority. So our own sense of what is right and wrong
needs always to be questioned – this applies to both sides on
this current issue. To oppose the blessing of same-sex unions –
is it simply reinforcing human prejudice or is it a genuine
desire to uphold Natural law.
The Church has always understood the giving
of the Law of Moses to be a step along the way in the recovery
of Natural Law. Jesus says the Law is all about loving God and
our neighbour (Mt 22:35-40). But how do we deal with all those
613 laws?
Anglican Reformers in the 16th
century, summarized the Anglican position at that time about the
Laws of Moses [Article VII, see p. 701 of the BCP]. There are
three kinds of laws: (1) Laws related to “Ceremonies and Rites”
such as laws governing sacrifices and laws related to purity -
food laws, washings, circumcision. These were pointing to and
are fulfilled in Christ by his sacrifice [e.g Mk 7:19; Acts
11:5-10]. (2) “Civil precepts” relate to how a society orders
itself such as whether there is a king, or how to punish
violators. These can change, something demonstrated within the
Old Testament itself. (3) There is a third category, about
which Article VII states, “no Christian…is free from the
obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral.” It has
been understood that these moral laws point to, recall us to,
Natural Law. They teach us what love looks like.
This Christian understanding of the Law of
Moses is being challenged today. It is of course legitimate to
question if Anglicans need to come up with a new synthesis, a
new principle, of how the Law in the Old Testament relates to
the New Testament. I am open to seeing such a proposal, but it
must take into account all of the New Testament passages which
speak about the Law in a coherent way. I have not seen one.
(see e.g. Mt 5:17-20; Jn 10:35; Rom 2-8)
Jesus fulfilled the Moral law perfectly,
because his heart is perfect and in all his walking about on
earth he was without sin. But Jesus did not fulfil the Law so
that we needn’t bother with the commandments anymore, but that
we would not be condemned in our failure to try to attain them –
they are expressions of perfect love.
What about the Levitical law forbidding
same-sex sexual activity? Is it a moral law? Does it refer to
any such sexual activity? These are debated in our times. New
suggested interpretations of thou shalt not lie with a man as
with a woman have received little support among Biblical
scholars. Maybe we can agree on what does it not say?
It is not saying that deep loving friendships cannot exist
between men and between women, where affection is shown and love
expressed. There is nothing in the Law that says friends cannot
chose to live together, care for one another for life. And we
have examples in Church history of covenanted friendships. The
only thing that the law speaks of and, I would suggest, the
Gospel would bring out further is that sexual relations in these
friendships and lustful thoughts (in any relationship) are
destructive in some way and inhibit us from knowing the fullness
of joy.
Where does this traditional interpretation
leave the person who has only or predominantly same-sex desire?
Abstain from sex or marry someone of the opposite sex. There is
something in this conclusion, if simply left like that, that
strikes modern ears and hearts as highly unjust. I would like
to suggest a few ideas that our society and many of us in the
Church hold that contribute to this sense of injustice: a
misunderstanding of the purpose of sex; modern improper
distinctions made between two kinds of love eros and
agape; and confusions about the question of nurture or
nature in relation to same-sex desire.
3. The Purpose of Sex
It is hard for us to remember sometimes the
profound changes that have happened in the understanding of the
purpose of sex in modern Western societies in the last 50
years. Popular TV shows, movies, novels and the examples in our
midst encapsulate and in turn sustain these new understandings,
and promote them. These new ways of looking at sex become the
very air we breathe and we are not surprised or shocked any
more, they have become the norm.
Rowan Williams, in an influential article
The Body’s Grace from 1989, tried to articulate what might
be the fruit of a sexual relationship that doesn’t intend
procreation. He speculates that it is for healing, for human
growth, for making sense of ourselves, and about learning to be
human.
It is in this way of understanding why sex
matters, that it seems to many in the modern world as a great
injustice to deny those with same-sex desire, the possibility of
a sexual relationship that they too might grow. Many think that
for young people growing up, the pattern will probably be or
even should be that they will have various relationships
involving sex until they discover the right person. It is just
a necessary part of coming to maturity, and “thanks” to
technology we’ve worked out some of the kinks - unwanted
pregnancy and minimizing of sexually transmitted diseases. This
is a sea change. Some will say immediately – yes, and for good
reasons. I believe it is a cause for weeping.
I would argue that sexual relations are not
needed for human growth, for spiritual maturity or to know one’s
self or another – they can only be a reflection of love, of an
intimacy, that already exists. [In a longer paper more could be
said about the purpose of sex within marriage.]
These new ideas of the purpose of sex are a
radical departure from Scriptural norms. Throughout Scripture
there is the call to chastity – in the Law of Moses, sexual
desire is restrained and directed to within heterosexual
marriage and lust is covered by the 10th commandment
(thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife). In the New
Testament, Jesus recalls us to the ideal of one marriage (e.g.
Mt 19:3-12) and says that to lust after another is not a problem
because it leads to adultery, it is adultery (Mt.
5:27-30). St. Paul counsels treating one another in the Church
as brother, sister, mother – without lust (1 Tim 5:1-2).
If you are not married you
are not to have sex, if you are married you are free to have
sexual relations, and lustful thoughts are to be put to death by
all.
Chastity
seems to be everybody’s business. Why? Why do Jesus and St.
Paul seem to be tightening the screws on the expression of our
love for one another in sexual relations outwardly and in our
minds? Such an understanding just seems unreasonably unfair to
everybody! Why does this seem so strange, so un-liberated, to
our modern sensibility?
4. The Unity of Loves
In the
Bible and in Western culture there are different terms used to
describe the different kinds of love – love of family,
friendship love, romantic love and love of God. (see for example
C.S.Lewis’ The Four Loves)
Usually
when we think of eros, we think of that love which is
involved in earthly romance. We are moved by the beauty of
another person, and we desire to move towards the object of our
love and possess her or him - to be united, in friendship, and
to be fulfilled. Traditionally, the consummation of that love
includes sexual relations, but only in the context of marriage.
If we
think that there is one kind of love which moves us to fulfil
human romantic love, another kind that moves us to friendship,
and another kind of love that is reserved for God or is more
God-like, then we think that, if I am to be fully human I must
satisfy all these loves to be whole. That we hold this idea is
demonstrated by our attitude towards the celibate life – to
think of commending it to ourselves or to friends may strike us
with horror and sadness, like a failure, a diminishment of our
humanity.
The
reason that Jesus and St. Paul call on us to tighten the
restrictions on the expression of sexual desire, to restrain
ourselves, is not to put that desire to death, but so that we
can redirect that same longing, that same love towards God. If
we are completely satisfying our desire here, dissipating it
here, we will not grow in Christ. We need that very eros,
that desire, to lift us heavenward - our eros becomes our
wings, and grace is the increase of that desire for God needed
to bring us home. It is why the Church counsels fasting
sometimes, or St. Paul counsels couples to stop having sex by
agreement sometimes to pray – it is taking that same desire and
redirecting it heavenward.
When one
turns inwardly, in faithfulness, with purity of heart, we are
promised by Jesus that we will discover the well spring of
living water welling up in us, renewing us inwardly, giving us
new life – that is the consummation of eros (of desire or
love) when directed to God.
In the
modern understanding, the call to crucify the passions of the
flesh, a putting to death of earthly desire sounds morbid and
simply about killing joy [Ingham] - a sure formula for
depression and despair [O’Donovan]. Well, Jesus says to his
disciples, if you don’t want to commit to one woman for life,
you could always be a eunuch (Mt 19:1-12). And St. Paul, our
citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20) - what? that
place where they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are
like the angels (Mt 22:23-33) - who wants that? Do Jesus and
St. Paul just not understand basic human psychology?
But in
the light of the general call to chastity and with the
understanding that all love has one source and one final end and
that you need that very same desire, by grace, to ascend the
heights, the call to be chaste (which for someone with only
same-sex desire is the call to abstain), is not about never
being able to have what others have, but more like an expedited
call to go up first, where all others must follow. It is
the same call for those with opposite-sex desire who are
unmarried and for the many widows and widowers who decide not to
marry again – it includes many people. It is the inward and
upward call to find God, to know our citizenship is in heaven.
It is not a citizenship which is a diminishment of our humanity
but fullness of being. It is to be filled with all the
fullness of God, to be on fire with love - it is being like
Jesus, doing like Jesus, and knowing the world like Jesus. (Eph
3:14-21)
This is
not to say that the call to be chaste is in any way easy – it is
a real dying to ourselves to curb our desire that it may be
redirected. But it is done so that we might rise anew in
Christ, it is that we might find true life even now. It is a
dying, but it not unlike the many deaths that we are called to
if we would be a follower of Jesus and ascend to God [e.g. other
ways our love misses the mark - pride, envy, anger, sloth,
greed, gluttony].
5. “Nature” versus “Nurture”
What is
the reason that some people experience same-sex desire? Is it
by nature (people are just born that way) or nurture (their
desire is shaped by their environment and chosen)?
When one
enters a discussion with anyone on the question of the blessing
of same-sex unions, it quickly becomes apparent what are the
underlying assumptions being made with regard to “nurture”
versus “nature”. If one believes it is a matter of nature, then
it seems clearly a matter of justice and fairness that he or she
should be able to have the same opportunity as those born with
heterosexual desire to enter a relationship with the one he or
she desires and to participate in an activity which brings joy
(because they have also made modern assumptions raised earlier
about the purpose of sex). If one believes that sexual
orientation is a matter of nurture, i.e. that sexual preference
is something that is chosen by a person, it presumably can be
un-chosen or re-chosen, and should be. This position seems to
carry with it a kind of judgement on the individual that the
understanding that it is a matter of “nature” does not.
