At “Theolog,” the blog of “The Christian Century,” Bromleigh McCleneghan has posted a piece on Purity balls, which, she writes, are “...events to which conservative Christian fathers take their daughters for dinner, dancing and promise-making.” (http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/08/purity-balls.html).
Below is the comment I posted on her piece:
Sex education is obviously necessary if we are to become responsible sexual beings, but it is not a one-time thing. Sex education must start early and continue onward – until we die, because everyone is sexual from birth to death. Because we are always sexual, all our relationships, overtly sexual or not, are part of our sex education. What do we learn in our relationships? Are we even aware that our relationships have something to teach us about sex and life?
Perhaps the basic lesson in sex education is that sexual desire is with us always, and it is not bad or sinful. The purity movement would counter desire with the denial of desire. However, among young people, this clearly doesn’t make them sexually abstinent. One study showed that those who took virginity pledges preserved their technical virginity about 18 months longer than teenagers who didn’t pledge, but they were six times more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins who hadn’t taken a pledge. They were also much less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Disease rates between those who pledged and those who didn’t were actually similar (“Students of Virginity,” “New York Times” magazine, March 30, 2008.)
It seems to me that a better approach to sex education and the sexually responsible life is to teach that sexual desire should be managed, not somehow eliminated. Of course, managing sexual desire is a tall order, especially for young people, but there are helpful approaches: Be as conscious as possible of the presence of desire. The goal is for the person to be in charge of the desire, not the reverse. Attempt to envision the outcomes of various courses of management. Be aware that not to act is to make a decision. These approaches can be more easily implemented if possible options can be discussed with trusted, nonjudgmental family members and friends. It follows that family and friends should listen and help clarify options, rather than demand courses of action or threaten dire consequences. Of course, Paul (or someone writing in his name) describes this approach beautifully in I Corinthians 13. Too bad that Christians so often fail to heed this advice.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
A review of "Reforming Christianity"
A few posts ago in “The New Yorker,” Theodicy, and Don Cupitt, on July 2nd, I mentioned "Reforming Christianity" by Don Cupitt (Polebridge Press, 2001). Below is a review by Graham Warren from November 2001 of that book on the blog, "Sofia, Sea of Faith in Australia" (http://www.sof-in-australia.org/blog.php?blog_id=140). I think the review provides a good overview of Cupitt's ideas and a challenge to us church members to move out of church Christianity into Kingdom religion, because for me the saddest idea in Warren's review is "The Church has condemned itself to the sideline of history." This is because the church refuses, as Jesus did, to stand with "God facing up to nihilism."
By the way, "Radicals and the Future of the Church" is another wonderful book that I recommend highly.
Here is Warren's review:
Don Cupitt's latest book "Reforming Christianity" is a post-script to his 1989 reformation book, "Radicals and the Future of the Church." His proposals for and sketches of a church of the future - how it will be organized and what it will actually do - were mocked. Now, sadly, he portrays himself as a man who does not mind losing the church and its version of Christianity. However, he fears the loss of Jesus - a serious blow. Jesus may not be rescued as a divine saviour but we may be able to do something with him as an ethical teacher - provided we don't mind seeing him not as a god who can't be wrong but as a man who might be right.
My first acquaintance with Don Cupitt was a life-altering reading in 1988 of "Sea of Faith - Christianity in Change" (1985). I then read backwards "Taking Leave of God" (1980), "Jesus and the Gospel of God" (1978), "The Leap of Reason" (1976), "Christ and Hiddenness of God" (1971). Somewhere along the way I read "The Long-Legged Fly" but I have lost my copy and with it the memories and thoughts evoked in the reading.
Don Cupitt prefers plain speech. He refuses to be an ecclesiastical apologist. He is a philosopher of religion and an heir to the Enlightenment exploring Kant's insight that we fabricate our world. Like Hegel he believes that reality emerges in our encounter with historical developments. Don Cupitt follows the critical path of Schopenhauer, Freud, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida. Cupitt does a more complete draft of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer intimated - religionless Christianity. He asks 'do we want to grow up?' Do we want to join the global shift away from authoritarianism and traditionalism? Are we prepared to move away from the assumption that the world is ready-made and all we are required to do is to be enthralled.
Can Christianity be reformed? It is a given, is it not? Only if one has a belief system which is immutable - “deposit of faith” as it is known in the Roman tradition wherein all is revealed from above. Contrast this with a voluntarist view where autonomy and responsibility are balanced one against the other.
This book may scandalize the faithful. With each new book Don Cupitt adopts a more urgent iconoclastic polemic with the church as a “deposit of faith” squarely in his sights. One constantly hears echoes of the forebears of Cupitt's ideas: "…faith as an act of will", "…religion is an attempt to familiarize the terrible" - Soren Kierkegaard; "…man’s last and highest parting occurs, when, for God's sake, he takes leave of god" - Meister Eckhart. This book is an urgent call to throw off "the painted veil", a metaphor as old as Plato, to describe that which hangs between the eternal world and us. This is not new material from Don Cupitt but it is the most urgent and latest call to act. As Church Christianity melts away there is an urgency: don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Don’t lose sight of what Jesus represented!
The Church has condemned itself to the sideline of history and Cupitt has analyzed the reasons for this over a lifetime of writing. But now we are in danger of losing the voice of Jesus - not the Christ of faith constructed by the church since first they puzzled over the delay in the parousia - but the Jesus as the original caller to the Kingdom. Don Cupitt preaches kingdom theology, kingdom values.
Jesus preached the Kingdom and we got the church. Now that the church has reached its use-by-date, we need to rescue core teachings.
Don Cupitt argues that reformation and renewal of Christianity are possible. Church Christianity, as we have received it, is handicapped in its view by two great errors – the mistaken interpretation of Jesus Christ as being co-equal Son of God incarnate, and a mistaken belief that there is a controlling supernatural place beyond this world.
To escape we need to start again with the message of Jesus about the Kingdom of God on this earth. In honest reflection on this message Don Cupitt argues for a religion that is immediate, beliefless and entirely based on the here and now. Religion is no longer how we relate ourselves to the supernatural realm, but rather how we relate ourselves to life. To reject the church is to reject a mediated view of God.
What power had the old mediated view? It promised reward later! History and maturity have stripped us of this as a credible belief and we stare in the face of nihilism. Don Cupitt embraces nihilist Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer but shows us God facing up to nihilism. This is the voice, resurrected after two millennia, of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus preached the Kingdom. Don Cupitt preached Kingdom religion. This is a combination of "solar spirituality" and humanitarian social ethics. It is autonomous and responsible. It embraces the end of belief in life after death. Why did Jesus express such eschatological urgency? Perhaps it is, and was, here and now. We need to embrace it. We are not called to prepare for it. It is now. "Solar spirituality" is lived not explained. If Jesus had so much trouble being understood, small wonder that Cupitt likewise does.
This is not a secular humanist rebellion against God nor a repudiation of Christianity. On the contrary, we see it as Christianity's own struggle to advance from its warped ecclesiastical stage to its final Kingdom stage of development. The church has always prayed "…thy Kingdom come (but not yet please!)”.
The church very early became locked into the view of Jesus as portrayed in John's gospel - a divinised Jesus Christ. This is in stark contrast to the human Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the other gospels. Why do church theologians in seminaries not cross the corridor to listen to their colleagues in scriptural study? New hermeneutical tools and analyses have given us a chance to hear the muffled voice of Jesus. Why has the institution remained deaf and mute to these new understandings of their founder?
By the way, "Radicals and the Future of the Church" is another wonderful book that I recommend highly.
Here is Warren's review:
Don Cupitt's latest book "Reforming Christianity" is a post-script to his 1989 reformation book, "Radicals and the Future of the Church." His proposals for and sketches of a church of the future - how it will be organized and what it will actually do - were mocked. Now, sadly, he portrays himself as a man who does not mind losing the church and its version of Christianity. However, he fears the loss of Jesus - a serious blow. Jesus may not be rescued as a divine saviour but we may be able to do something with him as an ethical teacher - provided we don't mind seeing him not as a god who can't be wrong but as a man who might be right.
My first acquaintance with Don Cupitt was a life-altering reading in 1988 of "Sea of Faith - Christianity in Change" (1985). I then read backwards "Taking Leave of God" (1980), "Jesus and the Gospel of God" (1978), "The Leap of Reason" (1976), "Christ and Hiddenness of God" (1971). Somewhere along the way I read "The Long-Legged Fly" but I have lost my copy and with it the memories and thoughts evoked in the reading.
Don Cupitt prefers plain speech. He refuses to be an ecclesiastical apologist. He is a philosopher of religion and an heir to the Enlightenment exploring Kant's insight that we fabricate our world. Like Hegel he believes that reality emerges in our encounter with historical developments. Don Cupitt follows the critical path of Schopenhauer, Freud, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida. Cupitt does a more complete draft of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer intimated - religionless Christianity. He asks 'do we want to grow up?' Do we want to join the global shift away from authoritarianism and traditionalism? Are we prepared to move away from the assumption that the world is ready-made and all we are required to do is to be enthralled.
Can Christianity be reformed? It is a given, is it not? Only if one has a belief system which is immutable - “deposit of faith” as it is known in the Roman tradition wherein all is revealed from above. Contrast this with a voluntarist view where autonomy and responsibility are balanced one against the other.
This book may scandalize the faithful. With each new book Don Cupitt adopts a more urgent iconoclastic polemic with the church as a “deposit of faith” squarely in his sights. One constantly hears echoes of the forebears of Cupitt's ideas: "…faith as an act of will", "…religion is an attempt to familiarize the terrible" - Soren Kierkegaard; "…man’s last and highest parting occurs, when, for God's sake, he takes leave of god" - Meister Eckhart. This book is an urgent call to throw off "the painted veil", a metaphor as old as Plato, to describe that which hangs between the eternal world and us. This is not new material from Don Cupitt but it is the most urgent and latest call to act. As Church Christianity melts away there is an urgency: don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Don’t lose sight of what Jesus represented!
The Church has condemned itself to the sideline of history and Cupitt has analyzed the reasons for this over a lifetime of writing. But now we are in danger of losing the voice of Jesus - not the Christ of faith constructed by the church since first they puzzled over the delay in the parousia - but the Jesus as the original caller to the Kingdom. Don Cupitt preaches kingdom theology, kingdom values.
Jesus preached the Kingdom and we got the church. Now that the church has reached its use-by-date, we need to rescue core teachings.
Don Cupitt argues that reformation and renewal of Christianity are possible. Church Christianity, as we have received it, is handicapped in its view by two great errors – the mistaken interpretation of Jesus Christ as being co-equal Son of God incarnate, and a mistaken belief that there is a controlling supernatural place beyond this world.
To escape we need to start again with the message of Jesus about the Kingdom of God on this earth. In honest reflection on this message Don Cupitt argues for a religion that is immediate, beliefless and entirely based on the here and now. Religion is no longer how we relate ourselves to the supernatural realm, but rather how we relate ourselves to life. To reject the church is to reject a mediated view of God.
What power had the old mediated view? It promised reward later! History and maturity have stripped us of this as a credible belief and we stare in the face of nihilism. Don Cupitt embraces nihilist Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer but shows us God facing up to nihilism. This is the voice, resurrected after two millennia, of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus preached the Kingdom. Don Cupitt preached Kingdom religion. This is a combination of "solar spirituality" and humanitarian social ethics. It is autonomous and responsible. It embraces the end of belief in life after death. Why did Jesus express such eschatological urgency? Perhaps it is, and was, here and now. We need to embrace it. We are not called to prepare for it. It is now. "Solar spirituality" is lived not explained. If Jesus had so much trouble being understood, small wonder that Cupitt likewise does.
This is not a secular humanist rebellion against God nor a repudiation of Christianity. On the contrary, we see it as Christianity's own struggle to advance from its warped ecclesiastical stage to its final Kingdom stage of development. The church has always prayed "…thy Kingdom come (but not yet please!)”.
The church very early became locked into the view of Jesus as portrayed in John's gospel - a divinised Jesus Christ. This is in stark contrast to the human Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the other gospels. Why do church theologians in seminaries not cross the corridor to listen to their colleagues in scriptural study? New hermeneutical tools and analyses have given us a chance to hear the muffled voice of Jesus. Why has the institution remained deaf and mute to these new understandings of their founder?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Policing: A Middle Way between War and Pacifism
An international police force may be a way between war and pacifism that can reduce violence in the world. This is the thesis of a new book of essays, “Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World,” reviewed by Donald W. Shiver Jr. in the July 29, 2008 issue of the “Christian Century.” Ivan J. Kauffman, an author of one of book’s essays, points out the defects of both the just war tradition and pacifism. The former assumes that violence can achieve justice, while the latter assumes that opposing violence is the way to justice. However, merely opposing violence does not produce peace. Peacemaking is a larger effort, in which policing can play a major part. Policing, Shiver points out, is unlikely to eliminate violence in the world, but policing can diminish violence, subject it to judicial restraint, and treat life as worth preserving, and thus lead us toward a world that deserves the name “civilized.”
I haven’t yet read the book. Shiver’s review makes me want to read it, but more broadly, I’m drawn to reconsider the role of policing in the world, especially as undertaken by international organizations like the United Nations. I hope these essays lead our policy makers to see policing as an important alternative to both war, which is rarely if ever just, and pacifism, which often seems merely oppositional rather than actively peace seeking.
I haven’t yet read the book. Shiver’s review makes me want to read it, but more broadly, I’m drawn to reconsider the role of policing in the world, especially as undertaken by international organizations like the United Nations. I hope these essays lead our policy makers to see policing as an important alternative to both war, which is rarely if ever just, and pacifism, which often seems merely oppositional rather than actively peace seeking.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Same-Sex Marriage: The ELCA and California, Compared
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in its Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality (http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney/draft/draftstatement.pdf) maintains the tradition that “Marriage is a structure of mutual promises between a man and woman blessed by God (Mark 10:7-9) and authorized in a legal arrangement required by the state.” (lines 1005 - 1007) The draft continues: “After many years of study and conversation, this church does not have consensus regarding loving and committed same-gender relationships.” (lines 1116 - 1117) And, further, “This church recognizes the historic origin of the term “marriage” as a life-long and committed relationship between a woman and man, and does not wish to alter this understanding.” (lines 1151 - 1153)
Compare this with the opinion of Chief Justice George of the California Supreme Count who, in May, 2008, wrote in the majority opinion overturning the ban on same-sex marriage that “The right to marry represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.” Like the ELCA, Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But, unlike the ELCA, he maintained that “tradition alone” does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Furthermore, when lawyers for the state identified two interests to justify reserving the term marriage for heterosexual unions - tradition and the will of the majority. Chief Justice George said neither was sufficient. (“New York Times” May 16, 2008) Apparently Justice George thinks that equality and justice are more important than tradition and consensus.
Equality and justice are hallmarks of the Gospel. In “Reforming Christianity" (2001), Don Cupitt points out that as the Church loses influence because of its ridigity and fear, signs of the Kingdom often appear “on earth” in secular society. Justice George’s ruling is such a sign. In contrast, the ELCA, fearful of losing its conservative base, has forsaken the Gospel in regard to same-sex marriage and is hiding behind “tradition and lack of consensus.” If Jesus had based his ministry on tradition and consensus, he would be long forgotten. As equality and justice prevail for gay people, the ELCA will be ignored and then forgotten. The ELCA should hear the Gospel and proclaim it, because the Gospel is to way to life. If the ELCA proclaims the Gospel, it will live. Otherwise, it’s dead.
Compare this with the opinion of Chief Justice George of the California Supreme Count who, in May, 2008, wrote in the majority opinion overturning the ban on same-sex marriage that “The right to marry represents the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with a person of one’s choice and, as such, is of fundamental significance both to society and to the individual.” Like the ELCA, Chief Justice George conceded that “as an historical matter in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman.” But, unlike the ELCA, he maintained that “tradition alone” does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right. Furthermore, when lawyers for the state identified two interests to justify reserving the term marriage for heterosexual unions - tradition and the will of the majority. Chief Justice George said neither was sufficient. (“New York Times” May 16, 2008) Apparently Justice George thinks that equality and justice are more important than tradition and consensus.
Equality and justice are hallmarks of the Gospel. In “Reforming Christianity" (2001), Don Cupitt points out that as the Church loses influence because of its ridigity and fear, signs of the Kingdom often appear “on earth” in secular society. Justice George’s ruling is such a sign. In contrast, the ELCA, fearful of losing its conservative base, has forsaken the Gospel in regard to same-sex marriage and is hiding behind “tradition and lack of consensus.” If Jesus had based his ministry on tradition and consensus, he would be long forgotten. As equality and justice prevail for gay people, the ELCA will be ignored and then forgotten. The ELCA should hear the Gospel and proclaim it, because the Gospel is to way to life. If the ELCA proclaims the Gospel, it will live. Otherwise, it’s dead.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
“The New Yorker,” Theodicy, and Don Cupitt
“The New Yorker” didn’t publish my letter, below, so I’m posting it today:
Although James Wood cites Nietzsche at the beginning of his article, “Holiday in Hellmouth” (June 9th & 16th), he seems to yearn for the return of the theistic God, whom Nietzsche so famously declared dead, to solve the problem of theodicy. Such a supernatural, otherworldly, almighty God no longer captures the imagination of many people. Rather, as Don Cupitt writes in “Radicals and the Future of the Church,” some of us are coming to “... believe in an historically-evolving, human, and culturally-established God.” Further, “...we now have become responsible for our God. We’ve got to appraise him, update him, rewrite him continually.” Cupitt points out, following Hegel, that the doctrine of the Trinity is an obvious beginning for reinterpretation: “The co-equality of the second person (Christ, the Son) with the third person (The Holy Spirit) is an invitation to demythologize, because the full coequality and coeternity of the Son means that everything the Father is, the Son is also. And when the Son completely and irrevocably commits himself to becoming human then God has become human, without remainder. So everything that God is, this fellow human being beside me now is.” Also, “... the God of Pentecost (The Holy Spirit) is a postmodern God who has ceased to be a substance and has instead become the interrelatedness of everything.... the medium in which we live and move and have our being, the dance of signs.” Therefore, we are not passive bystanders in God’s world waiting for God to overcome evil, but rather we humans can be God incarnate, expressing the Spirit through (as the old prayer has it) “our life and conversation.” We know all too well that we have the ability to bring about evil. The challenge lies in whether we can express God to foster good.
This letter is an outcome of my re-reading “Radicals and the Future of the Church,” which, I think, 19 years after its publication, is still an excellent description of what the church could be like if non-realism were adopted. It is out of print, but Amazon has 6 used paperback copies from $7. It’s well worth the read.
Although James Wood cites Nietzsche at the beginning of his article, “Holiday in Hellmouth” (June 9th & 16th), he seems to yearn for the return of the theistic God, whom Nietzsche so famously declared dead, to solve the problem of theodicy. Such a supernatural, otherworldly, almighty God no longer captures the imagination of many people. Rather, as Don Cupitt writes in “Radicals and the Future of the Church,” some of us are coming to “... believe in an historically-evolving, human, and culturally-established God.” Further, “...we now have become responsible for our God. We’ve got to appraise him, update him, rewrite him continually.” Cupitt points out, following Hegel, that the doctrine of the Trinity is an obvious beginning for reinterpretation: “The co-equality of the second person (Christ, the Son) with the third person (The Holy Spirit) is an invitation to demythologize, because the full coequality and coeternity of the Son means that everything the Father is, the Son is also. And when the Son completely and irrevocably commits himself to becoming human then God has become human, without remainder. So everything that God is, this fellow human being beside me now is.” Also, “... the God of Pentecost (The Holy Spirit) is a postmodern God who has ceased to be a substance and has instead become the interrelatedness of everything.... the medium in which we live and move and have our being, the dance of signs.” Therefore, we are not passive bystanders in God’s world waiting for God to overcome evil, but rather we humans can be God incarnate, expressing the Spirit through (as the old prayer has it) “our life and conversation.” We know all too well that we have the ability to bring about evil. The challenge lies in whether we can express God to foster good.
This letter is an outcome of my re-reading “Radicals and the Future of the Church,” which, I think, 19 years after its publication, is still an excellent description of what the church could be like if non-realism were adopted. It is out of print, but Amazon has 6 used paperback copies from $7. It’s well worth the read.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
My Response to the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality
On March 13th, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) published a draft of a “Social Statement on Human Sexuality” and asked for responses. The draft is available at: http://www.elca.org/faithfuljourney/draft/draftstatement.pdf. My response to the draft is below. My response is best understood in conjunction with the draft, but I think that my comments are understandable by themselves.
I hope you will read the draft and my response and provide your own responses to me, to the ELCA, or to me and the ELCA. Thanks.
A Response to the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality
This response comes from an individual.
Overall Rating
1. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality provide a useful and adequate framework to help this church discern what it means to live faithfully with our neighbors in the increasing complex sphere of human sexuality?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
General Comment:
Overall, the draft continues the traditional church practice of demanding sexual renunciation of many of its members, specifically those not in a heterosexual marriage. As a result, it reinforces the heterosexual domination system by privileging heterosexuals. Thus, the draft does not proclaim the Gospel.
2. How helpful is each sub-section in Section II in explaining how Lutherans approach ethics?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What if anything is a specific strength of Section II?
The draft recognizes that those participating in sexual activity should be responsible.
3. How helpful is each sub-section in Section III at interpreting why Lutherans regard our sexuality as one of the contributing blessings of God's good creation while acknowledging the complexities and difficulties that people experience in the sexual dimension of their lives?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What, if anything, would you hope to see added to Section III?
An acknowledgement at least that sex is not always so fraught, solemn, frightening, and exalted as this section would have us believe. Although sex can certainly lead to all the miseries that are cataloged in this section, sex can also be pleasurable, fun, silly, frivolous, and romantic. Sex is not as grim as the draft would have it.
How helpful is each sub-section in Section IV in exploring matters of sexuality and relationships?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What, if anything, would you hope to see added to Section IV?
Line 773 states that “Children are targets of sexual bullying, destructive language, and vicious humor.” This statement does not go on to point out that many bullied children are gay or perceived to be gay. Bullies justify their bullying by calling upon heterosexual privilege, as in “Queers deserve to be beaten up.” Persons in authority, such as teachers, principals, school boards, and legislators, often participate in or are afraid to go against the implicit heterosexual privilege in the community. Therefore, they do not work to stop bullying. Because the draft endorses heterosexual privilege, it also shies away from the truth that gay children are often the targets of bullies. The draft aids and abets gay bullying.
Line 797 indicates that violent and degrading pornography is a threat to children and adults. It should be obvious that it is the violence and degradation in such pornography that has potential for harm, because violence and degradation are usually harmful. Whether sexually explicit images and writing that are not violent and degrading are harmful is much less certain. Sexually explicit material that shows care and concern for people of the same sex can, in my opinion, be very helpful, particularly to gay people who are told that homosexuality is unacceptable. This, of course, has been the traditional Christian message for centuries, as expressed pithily by Fred Phelps: “God hates fags.” The church’s constant emphasis on “purity” has made many a gay child hate his sexuality and try to hide it and change it. With the advent of the internet and the sexually explicit material available there, children can see and experience a different perspective on their homosexuality. They can learn that it is not bad and sinful as the church has taught, but good, beautiful, and life-affirming. I say: “Thank God for the sexually explicit material on the Internet.” Such material is a way of envisioning the future when people are not hounded and ostracized because they don’t conform to the church’s version of “purity.” I wish that as a 13 year old boy in 1947, I could have seen on a computer men making love. If I had, I wouldn’t have felt so alone, abandoned, and evil. Even now the disapproval of sex coming from the churches, as in this draft, is a good part of the reason that sexually explicit material is watched “obsessively and in secret” (lines 799 and 801). Society is obsessed with sex because it is forbidden and church people are the principle forbidders. As long as the churches have an influence in society and use that influence to make people feel “impure” about their sex lives, people’s interest in sex will be obsessive and secret. The draft should encourage a view of sex that is neither so exalted that no one could ever have “good” sex nor so base that anyone who has sex outside of heterosexual marriage is branded as a sinner. Sex feels good, which is why people have sex and why they should have sex. There is enough misery in the world; sex can be a way of finding some happiness in a messy world. That said, not every sexual encounter is a sacred union, nor does it need to be. Likewise, not every sexual encounter is bestial exploitation. In fact, the litany of miseries in the draft has very little to do with sex, but rather the exploitation that is possible when sex is seen to be bad by the watchdogs of society. Someone is always available to make money on perceived sin.
Line 814 indicates that sex education should emphasize responsibility, mutuality, and abstinence. Responsibility and mutuality are, of course, are necessary in any sexual or for that matter, nonsexual, encounter, but abstinence may be more of a problem than a solution for sexual issues. Here is an excerpt from “Students of Virginity” in the March 30, 2008 issue of the “New York Times” magazine that shows that abstinence is not a sex-free zone, nor necessarily a way for people to exercise responsibility and mutuality:
“Millions of teenagers have since pledged to remain sexually abstinent until marriage, mainly on the grounds that premarital sex is sin.
At the same time, Congress and the Bush administration have directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward abstinence-only education in the public middle schools and high schools — classes that have been roundly criticized for blurring the line between science and religion. A 2004 report issued by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, found that 11 of 13 abstinence curriculums that his government-reform committee examined were rife with scientific errors and false and misleading information about the risks of sexual activity. Many states are now rejecting federal financing for such classes, on evidence that they fail to limit sexual behavior or reduce teen pregnancy.
In a follow-up study to a 1995 national survey of close to 12,000 students in grades 7 through 12, two sociologists, Peter Bearman at Columbia University and Hannah Brückner at Yale, found that while those who took virginity pledges preserved their technical virginity about 18 months longer than teenagers who didn’t pledge, they were six times more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins who hadn’t taken a pledge. They were also much less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Disease rates between those who pledged and those who didn’t were actually similar. The authors, who published their findings in 2005, concluded that the emphasis on premarital abstinence was insufficient to fend off disease and ‘collides with the realities of adolescents’ and young adults’ lives.’”
My guess is that the writers of the draft were pressured by the right to include the mention of abstinence.
5. How helpful is each sub-section in Section V in understanding matters of sexuality related to life in society?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
6. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality balance the need to speak to issues in intimate personal relationships with the need to address social issues that are broader and structural?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
7. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality helpfully address the needs and questions of all people in this church?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
8. The proposed social statement on human sexuality will have a series of implementing resolutions. Such resolutions provide an opportunity to commit the church to the development of additional resources or programs relevant to the concerns of the social statement. Please list up to three topics you think it would be essential to include among the implementing resolutions for this social statement.
Resolved: Sexual renunciation, as advocated in the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality, is a form of works-righteousness.
9. If there is anything else you particularly want to share with the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality, please use the space below:
The ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality is cowardly, cynical, and political.
First, the draft is cowardly because it is not the long-hoped-for announcement of a new sex ethic for the church. Instead, the draft attempts to reinforce the old, failed, discredited sex ethic that, probably more than any other single factor, causes people to leave the church. The old sex ethic would require people not in heterosexual marriage to renounce sex. This approach to sex is profoundly non-Lutheran. We Lutherans say that we cannot win God’s approval by what we do; God loves us unreservedly. However, the history of the church, including the Lutheran church, shows that there is one work traditionally required for acceptance into the church family: sexual renunciation, which is often encoded in Christian scripture, liturgy, and hymns as: “purity.” The flip side of purity, in this view, is fornication and impurity. St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, denounces fornication and impurity without defining either (Galatians 5: 19). The draft quotes Paul’s angry words without any interpretation, stating that St. Paul writes that fornication and impurity shred the bonds of trust (Line 1222).
The draft asks no questions about this passage, such as: What was happening in Galatia that led Paul to write these words? Or: Why was Paul so hostile to sex? In contrast to Paul, Webster’s dictionary defines fornication as “consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other.” This seems quite nonjudgmental, particularly the “consensual” part, but it hardly seems to fit with Paul’s condemnatory tone.
One website, “Liberated Christians” (http://www.libchrist.com), takes a different approach toward Paul and “fornication,” suggesting that “I Corinthians 6:9 badly mistranslates ‘porneia’ as fornication. English translations use ‘fornication’ for Paul's original Greek word ‘porneia,’ which means to sell and refers to slaves bought and sold for cultic prostitution. In Corinth, farmers would visit the temple priestesses who represented the fertility gods. By having sex with these prostitutes, the farmers believed that their fields would be more fertile. This wasn’t simply going to prostitutes, but pagan cultic worship. So, perhaps fornication in the Bible is not “consensual sex,” but religious sex with gods (or their representatives) who are not the God of Abraham.
The traditional Christian message has not considered possibilities like this, rather, as in the draft, it has condemned any sex, in thought, word, or deed, outside heterosexual marriage as sinful. Augustine went further, claiming that even within heterosexual marriage, sex was sinful if not entered into with the intention of procreation. The idea that fornication might refer to idolatry is lost on most Christians, and, because of this, church teaching, reinforced in the draft, states that in order to be good Christians, acceptable Christians, church people should renounce sex outside of heterosexual marriage. They have been asked, since the church began, to perform this work, this obviously very difficult work, to be good Christians and, it follows, to gain salvation.
Where did this emphasis on sexual renunciation in the church come from? In “The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity” (1988), Peter Brown traces the development of the thinking and practice of men and women in late antiquity, starting with Paul and concluding with Augustine, as they defined and sought sanctity. The result of their frequently very strenuous efforts at ascetic renunciation was that it moved to the center of Christian life early in the church’s history. Brown shows that the church, from its early period right into the Middle Ages, opted to make sex and contact with sex one of the main benchmarks of the hierarchy of the Christian life. Celibacy for men and virginity for women took on great importance.
We church people live with this works-righteousness (the idea that our works will save us) even today. Although celibacy and chastity for men have always been important, it is women’s virginity that is emblematic of sexual renunciation. It is only a translator’s slip that has given us Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a virgin. Isaiah 7:14, the passage in the Hebrew Bible that speaks of the mother of a deliverer like Jesus, uses the words, “a young woman” not “virgin.” However “virgin” was the word chosen in the Greek translation, and virginity very early in the church became the ideal state for all. Of course, the cult of virginity brings the concept of purity to its fullest flower (to use a sexually fraught metaphor). The Virgin Mary is revered not so much for her role as the mother of Jesus, but as an exemplar of virginity and, thus, purity. Mary becomes the exemplar of virginity, rather than, as in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), the servant of God, who, while noting her lowliness, is quite assertive, presenting a quite liberal, if not socialist, vision of a world where the poor are fed while the rich are pulled from their thrones of privilege. This is not the traditional virgin, meek and mild, but a strong woman with a radical program for social change.
Virginity, or, more precisely, what it implies, is the curse of Christianity, making us, as sexual beings, always guilty and never “pure” enough. Rather than being guilty about our sexuality, we should embrace it, and learn how to be responsible sexual people. The draft is cowardly in that it embraces renunciation and works righteousness, giving no guidance on how all of us, not just married heterosexuals, can be both actively sexual and responsible.
Second, the draft is cowardly because it does not abide by the second great commandment that the draft cites as foundational (line 8). The draft refuses to go where the Gospel is always leading us: To the conviction that God loves all creation and, in response, we are lead by the Spirit to love all people without partiality (Acts 10:34). Instead, the draft implies that God is partial to heterosexuals, blessing their marriages (line 1005), but not those of same-sex couples (line 1117). The draft claims that the church does not have consensus regarding same-gender relationships (line 1117). Without this consensus, the draft refuses to proclaim the Gospel: God calls for fairness and equality for all people and this should be without regard to their sexual orientation. Instead the writers of the draft, politically and cynically, have put their fingers in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing, and, lo and behold, they have discovered that the right wing is blowing to keep marriage for heterosexuals only, thus attempting to maintain and strengthen the heterosexual hegemony build into traditional society. The possibility of gay marriage challenges this hegemony, eliciting strong, often violent, reactions against those who name and oppose heterosexual privilege. The draft upholds heterosexualism when it merely recognizes controversy without providing leadership toward a position of sexual and marriage equality.
The plight of the Anglican Communion today should be instructive for Lutherans. Archbishop Rowan Williams has consistently tried to placate the Communion’s right wing by shunning gays, notably Bishop Gene Robinson. If, at Robinson’s election, Williams had welcomed him as a fellow bishop, a message would have been sent to the right that gays are not to be made scapegoats in the church to “satisfy the crowd” (Mark 15:15). Now that openly gay people are being shunned in the Anglican Communion, violence and hatred against gays have been released because they are seen as convenient scapegoats. For example, in 2006, Nigerian Archbishop, Peter J. Akinola supported a proposed Draconian law in Nigeria that would have effectively banned the "promotion" of homosexuality - punishing violators with up to five years imprisonment. (Wayne Besen: 365Gay.com, 2008).
So, for the ELCA to deny gays church marriage because popular opinion seems to be against it, is to fall into the same trap as the Anglicans have. Homosexuals in the ELCA may not marry in the church because some in the church might object. The draft appeases these objectors in a manner similar to Williams’ appeasement.
It wouldn’t work, because the point of Christ’s passion is that his scapegoating is called out and pointed to as wrong. That is why Christians “proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” at communion (I Corinthians 11:26): To proclaim publicly that scapegoating is wrong and God wants people to stop it. Christians should be saying: “Don’t satisfy the crowd, don’t throw the crowd another scapegoat in an attempt to avoid controversy, but proclaim the Gospel that God loves all people equally.
Thirdly, the draft is cowardly because, by privileging heterosexuals, it makes it harder for homosexuals to embrace their sexuality in the face of social hostility. This cowardice has real life consequences, particularly among gay youth. The Rev. Dr. Janet L. Parker of Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ has provided evidence concerning the hardships faced by gay youth. On June 10, 2007, she wrote that: “Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children account for up to 40% of the youth living in homeless shelters and foster homes in our nation’s cities. Gay, lesbian and bisexual youth are three times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide. Queer youth are much more likely to run away, end up as teen prostitutes, attempt suicide and suffer beatings and abuse inside and outside of their homes than heterosexual youth.” (http://www.rockspringcongucc.org/html/sermons.html). In the face of these findings, the draft goes along with heterosexualism making the lives of gay people harder than they need to be.
Because there is no consensus, the draft takes the easy way out and satisfies the crowd. The draft accomplishes nothing but the reinforcement of the status quo. It provides no leadership; it does not proclaim the Gospel.
I hope you will read the draft and my response and provide your own responses to me, to the ELCA, or to me and the ELCA. Thanks.
A Response to the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality
This response comes from an individual.
Overall Rating
1. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality provide a useful and adequate framework to help this church discern what it means to live faithfully with our neighbors in the increasing complex sphere of human sexuality?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
General Comment:
Overall, the draft continues the traditional church practice of demanding sexual renunciation of many of its members, specifically those not in a heterosexual marriage. As a result, it reinforces the heterosexual domination system by privileging heterosexuals. Thus, the draft does not proclaim the Gospel.
2. How helpful is each sub-section in Section II in explaining how Lutherans approach ethics?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What if anything is a specific strength of Section II?
The draft recognizes that those participating in sexual activity should be responsible.
3. How helpful is each sub-section in Section III at interpreting why Lutherans regard our sexuality as one of the contributing blessings of God's good creation while acknowledging the complexities and difficulties that people experience in the sexual dimension of their lives?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What, if anything, would you hope to see added to Section III?
An acknowledgement at least that sex is not always so fraught, solemn, frightening, and exalted as this section would have us believe. Although sex can certainly lead to all the miseries that are cataloged in this section, sex can also be pleasurable, fun, silly, frivolous, and romantic. Sex is not as grim as the draft would have it.
How helpful is each sub-section in Section IV in exploring matters of sexuality and relationships?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
What, if anything, would you hope to see added to Section IV?
Line 773 states that “Children are targets of sexual bullying, destructive language, and vicious humor.” This statement does not go on to point out that many bullied children are gay or perceived to be gay. Bullies justify their bullying by calling upon heterosexual privilege, as in “Queers deserve to be beaten up.” Persons in authority, such as teachers, principals, school boards, and legislators, often participate in or are afraid to go against the implicit heterosexual privilege in the community. Therefore, they do not work to stop bullying. Because the draft endorses heterosexual privilege, it also shies away from the truth that gay children are often the targets of bullies. The draft aids and abets gay bullying.
Line 797 indicates that violent and degrading pornography is a threat to children and adults. It should be obvious that it is the violence and degradation in such pornography that has potential for harm, because violence and degradation are usually harmful. Whether sexually explicit images and writing that are not violent and degrading are harmful is much less certain. Sexually explicit material that shows care and concern for people of the same sex can, in my opinion, be very helpful, particularly to gay people who are told that homosexuality is unacceptable. This, of course, has been the traditional Christian message for centuries, as expressed pithily by Fred Phelps: “God hates fags.” The church’s constant emphasis on “purity” has made many a gay child hate his sexuality and try to hide it and change it. With the advent of the internet and the sexually explicit material available there, children can see and experience a different perspective on their homosexuality. They can learn that it is not bad and sinful as the church has taught, but good, beautiful, and life-affirming. I say: “Thank God for the sexually explicit material on the Internet.” Such material is a way of envisioning the future when people are not hounded and ostracized because they don’t conform to the church’s version of “purity.” I wish that as a 13 year old boy in 1947, I could have seen on a computer men making love. If I had, I wouldn’t have felt so alone, abandoned, and evil. Even now the disapproval of sex coming from the churches, as in this draft, is a good part of the reason that sexually explicit material is watched “obsessively and in secret” (lines 799 and 801). Society is obsessed with sex because it is forbidden and church people are the principle forbidders. As long as the churches have an influence in society and use that influence to make people feel “impure” about their sex lives, people’s interest in sex will be obsessive and secret. The draft should encourage a view of sex that is neither so exalted that no one could ever have “good” sex nor so base that anyone who has sex outside of heterosexual marriage is branded as a sinner. Sex feels good, which is why people have sex and why they should have sex. There is enough misery in the world; sex can be a way of finding some happiness in a messy world. That said, not every sexual encounter is a sacred union, nor does it need to be. Likewise, not every sexual encounter is bestial exploitation. In fact, the litany of miseries in the draft has very little to do with sex, but rather the exploitation that is possible when sex is seen to be bad by the watchdogs of society. Someone is always available to make money on perceived sin.
Line 814 indicates that sex education should emphasize responsibility, mutuality, and abstinence. Responsibility and mutuality are, of course, are necessary in any sexual or for that matter, nonsexual, encounter, but abstinence may be more of a problem than a solution for sexual issues. Here is an excerpt from “Students of Virginity” in the March 30, 2008 issue of the “New York Times” magazine that shows that abstinence is not a sex-free zone, nor necessarily a way for people to exercise responsibility and mutuality:
“Millions of teenagers have since pledged to remain sexually abstinent until marriage, mainly on the grounds that premarital sex is sin.
At the same time, Congress and the Bush administration have directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward abstinence-only education in the public middle schools and high schools — classes that have been roundly criticized for blurring the line between science and religion. A 2004 report issued by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, found that 11 of 13 abstinence curriculums that his government-reform committee examined were rife with scientific errors and false and misleading information about the risks of sexual activity. Many states are now rejecting federal financing for such classes, on evidence that they fail to limit sexual behavior or reduce teen pregnancy.
In a follow-up study to a 1995 national survey of close to 12,000 students in grades 7 through 12, two sociologists, Peter Bearman at Columbia University and Hannah Brückner at Yale, found that while those who took virginity pledges preserved their technical virginity about 18 months longer than teenagers who didn’t pledge, they were six times more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins who hadn’t taken a pledge. They were also much less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Disease rates between those who pledged and those who didn’t were actually similar. The authors, who published their findings in 2005, concluded that the emphasis on premarital abstinence was insufficient to fend off disease and ‘collides with the realities of adolescents’ and young adults’ lives.’”
My guess is that the writers of the draft were pressured by the right to include the mention of abstinence.
5. How helpful is each sub-section in Section V in understanding matters of sexuality related to life in society?
I did not find the rating system helpful.
6. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality balance the need to speak to issues in intimate personal relationships with the need to address social issues that are broader and structural?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
7. How well does the Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality helpfully address the needs and questions of all people in this church?
1 - Not Very Well (I checked this option.)
2
3
4
5 - Very Well
8. The proposed social statement on human sexuality will have a series of implementing resolutions. Such resolutions provide an opportunity to commit the church to the development of additional resources or programs relevant to the concerns of the social statement. Please list up to three topics you think it would be essential to include among the implementing resolutions for this social statement.
Resolved: Sexual renunciation, as advocated in the ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality, is a form of works-righteousness.
9. If there is anything else you particularly want to share with the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality, please use the space below:
The ELCA’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality is cowardly, cynical, and political.
First, the draft is cowardly because it is not the long-hoped-for announcement of a new sex ethic for the church. Instead, the draft attempts to reinforce the old, failed, discredited sex ethic that, probably more than any other single factor, causes people to leave the church. The old sex ethic would require people not in heterosexual marriage to renounce sex. This approach to sex is profoundly non-Lutheran. We Lutherans say that we cannot win God’s approval by what we do; God loves us unreservedly. However, the history of the church, including the Lutheran church, shows that there is one work traditionally required for acceptance into the church family: sexual renunciation, which is often encoded in Christian scripture, liturgy, and hymns as: “purity.” The flip side of purity, in this view, is fornication and impurity. St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, denounces fornication and impurity without defining either (Galatians 5: 19). The draft quotes Paul’s angry words without any interpretation, stating that St. Paul writes that fornication and impurity shred the bonds of trust (Line 1222).
The draft asks no questions about this passage, such as: What was happening in Galatia that led Paul to write these words? Or: Why was Paul so hostile to sex? In contrast to Paul, Webster’s dictionary defines fornication as “consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other.” This seems quite nonjudgmental, particularly the “consensual” part, but it hardly seems to fit with Paul’s condemnatory tone.
One website, “Liberated Christians” (http://www.libchrist.com), takes a different approach toward Paul and “fornication,” suggesting that “I Corinthians 6:9 badly mistranslates ‘porneia’ as fornication. English translations use ‘fornication’ for Paul's original Greek word ‘porneia,’ which means to sell and refers to slaves bought and sold for cultic prostitution. In Corinth, farmers would visit the temple priestesses who represented the fertility gods. By having sex with these prostitutes, the farmers believed that their fields would be more fertile. This wasn’t simply going to prostitutes, but pagan cultic worship. So, perhaps fornication in the Bible is not “consensual sex,” but religious sex with gods (or their representatives) who are not the God of Abraham.
The traditional Christian message has not considered possibilities like this, rather, as in the draft, it has condemned any sex, in thought, word, or deed, outside heterosexual marriage as sinful. Augustine went further, claiming that even within heterosexual marriage, sex was sinful if not entered into with the intention of procreation. The idea that fornication might refer to idolatry is lost on most Christians, and, because of this, church teaching, reinforced in the draft, states that in order to be good Christians, acceptable Christians, church people should renounce sex outside of heterosexual marriage. They have been asked, since the church began, to perform this work, this obviously very difficult work, to be good Christians and, it follows, to gain salvation.
Where did this emphasis on sexual renunciation in the church come from? In “The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity” (1988), Peter Brown traces the development of the thinking and practice of men and women in late antiquity, starting with Paul and concluding with Augustine, as they defined and sought sanctity. The result of their frequently very strenuous efforts at ascetic renunciation was that it moved to the center of Christian life early in the church’s history. Brown shows that the church, from its early period right into the Middle Ages, opted to make sex and contact with sex one of the main benchmarks of the hierarchy of the Christian life. Celibacy for men and virginity for women took on great importance.
We church people live with this works-righteousness (the idea that our works will save us) even today. Although celibacy and chastity for men have always been important, it is women’s virginity that is emblematic of sexual renunciation. It is only a translator’s slip that has given us Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a virgin. Isaiah 7:14, the passage in the Hebrew Bible that speaks of the mother of a deliverer like Jesus, uses the words, “a young woman” not “virgin.” However “virgin” was the word chosen in the Greek translation, and virginity very early in the church became the ideal state for all. Of course, the cult of virginity brings the concept of purity to its fullest flower (to use a sexually fraught metaphor). The Virgin Mary is revered not so much for her role as the mother of Jesus, but as an exemplar of virginity and, thus, purity. Mary becomes the exemplar of virginity, rather than, as in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), the servant of God, who, while noting her lowliness, is quite assertive, presenting a quite liberal, if not socialist, vision of a world where the poor are fed while the rich are pulled from their thrones of privilege. This is not the traditional virgin, meek and mild, but a strong woman with a radical program for social change.
Virginity, or, more precisely, what it implies, is the curse of Christianity, making us, as sexual beings, always guilty and never “pure” enough. Rather than being guilty about our sexuality, we should embrace it, and learn how to be responsible sexual people. The draft is cowardly in that it embraces renunciation and works righteousness, giving no guidance on how all of us, not just married heterosexuals, can be both actively sexual and responsible.
Second, the draft is cowardly because it does not abide by the second great commandment that the draft cites as foundational (line 8). The draft refuses to go where the Gospel is always leading us: To the conviction that God loves all creation and, in response, we are lead by the Spirit to love all people without partiality (Acts 10:34). Instead, the draft implies that God is partial to heterosexuals, blessing their marriages (line 1005), but not those of same-sex couples (line 1117). The draft claims that the church does not have consensus regarding same-gender relationships (line 1117). Without this consensus, the draft refuses to proclaim the Gospel: God calls for fairness and equality for all people and this should be without regard to their sexual orientation. Instead the writers of the draft, politically and cynically, have put their fingers in the air to determine which way the wind is blowing, and, lo and behold, they have discovered that the right wing is blowing to keep marriage for heterosexuals only, thus attempting to maintain and strengthen the heterosexual hegemony build into traditional society. The possibility of gay marriage challenges this hegemony, eliciting strong, often violent, reactions against those who name and oppose heterosexual privilege. The draft upholds heterosexualism when it merely recognizes controversy without providing leadership toward a position of sexual and marriage equality.
The plight of the Anglican Communion today should be instructive for Lutherans. Archbishop Rowan Williams has consistently tried to placate the Communion’s right wing by shunning gays, notably Bishop Gene Robinson. If, at Robinson’s election, Williams had welcomed him as a fellow bishop, a message would have been sent to the right that gays are not to be made scapegoats in the church to “satisfy the crowd” (Mark 15:15). Now that openly gay people are being shunned in the Anglican Communion, violence and hatred against gays have been released because they are seen as convenient scapegoats. For example, in 2006, Nigerian Archbishop, Peter J. Akinola supported a proposed Draconian law in Nigeria that would have effectively banned the "promotion" of homosexuality - punishing violators with up to five years imprisonment. (Wayne Besen: 365Gay.com, 2008).
So, for the ELCA to deny gays church marriage because popular opinion seems to be against it, is to fall into the same trap as the Anglicans have. Homosexuals in the ELCA may not marry in the church because some in the church might object. The draft appeases these objectors in a manner similar to Williams’ appeasement.
It wouldn’t work, because the point of Christ’s passion is that his scapegoating is called out and pointed to as wrong. That is why Christians “proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” at communion (I Corinthians 11:26): To proclaim publicly that scapegoating is wrong and God wants people to stop it. Christians should be saying: “Don’t satisfy the crowd, don’t throw the crowd another scapegoat in an attempt to avoid controversy, but proclaim the Gospel that God loves all people equally.
Thirdly, the draft is cowardly because, by privileging heterosexuals, it makes it harder for homosexuals to embrace their sexuality in the face of social hostility. This cowardice has real life consequences, particularly among gay youth. The Rev. Dr. Janet L. Parker of Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ has provided evidence concerning the hardships faced by gay youth. On June 10, 2007, she wrote that: “Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children account for up to 40% of the youth living in homeless shelters and foster homes in our nation’s cities. Gay, lesbian and bisexual youth are three times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide. Queer youth are much more likely to run away, end up as teen prostitutes, attempt suicide and suffer beatings and abuse inside and outside of their homes than heterosexual youth.” (http://www.rockspringcongucc.org/html/sermons.html). In the face of these findings, the draft goes along with heterosexualism making the lives of gay people harder than they need to be.
Because there is no consensus, the draft takes the easy way out and satisfies the crowd. The draft accomplishes nothing but the reinforcement of the status quo. It provides no leadership; it does not proclaim the Gospel.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Understanding Resurrection
Below is an article from yesterday's "New York Times" about resurrection. Next Sunday, March 23rd, is, in the Western Church, Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection.
Beliefs
Resurrection Is Often Misunderstood by Christians and Jews
By PETER STEINFELS
Published in the "New York Times" on March 15, 2008
As Christians in most of the world approach the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, it is startling to find three distinguished scholars, all known for scrupulous attention to theological tradition and biblical sources, agreeing that the very idea of resurrection is widely and badly misunderstood.
Misunderstood not just by those whose contemporary sensibilities restrain them from saying much more about resurrection than that it symbolizes some vague (and probably temporary) victory of life over death. But also misunderstood by many devout believers who consider themselves thoroughly faithful to traditional religious teachings.
Kevin J. Madigan is a Roman Catholic who teaches Christian history at Harvard Divinity School. Jon D. Levenson, a colleague at Harvard, is a Jew who teaches Jewish studies. Together they have written “Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews.”
The book, which will be published next month by Yale University Press, argues that the idea that God will raise the dead to life at the end of time is central to both Jewish and Christian traditions.
N. T. Wright is a noted New Testament scholar who has continued to churn out academic and popular works, even after moving from Oxford in 2003 to become the Anglican bishop of Durham. Last month he published “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” (HarperOne).
These two books are different in tone and agenda. Professors Madigan and Levenson are particularly interested in countering the assumption that resurrection is solely a Christian belief, rather than one deeply rooted in the Judaism from which Jesus emerged. Bishop Wright has written a more popular and pastoral book, with practical proposals for church renewal.
But both books converge in challenging several widespread notions. Resurrection, they maintain, does not simply mean going to heaven or life after death.
Resurrection is not a belief that divides an other-worldly Christianity from a this-worldly Judaism.
Nor is resurrection something that refers only — or even primarily — to the individual’s survival after death.
Instead, both books emphasize that in classic Jewish and Christian teachings, resurrection refers to a collective resurrection of people and renewal of all creation at the end of time.
Resurrection was linked to the expectation of judgment and a final triumph of justice. This was the idea of resurrection that had evolved as Jews returned from exile and struggled under foreign domination in the period before Jesus. It was this idea of resurrection that Christians had in mind when they declared that what occurred on Easter was the “first fruits” of what was to come.
If there is a key to the convergence among these authors, it lies, first of all, in their insistence on the bodily and communal character of resurrection, a view that has long competed with a Hellenistic philosophical and especially Platonic dualism, in which an individual disembodied intellect or spirit could be saved from its corruptible and corrupting body.
Even as great a Jewish sage as Maimonides seemed to be tempted in this direction, and Bishop Wright sees the legacy of this dualism in the storehouse of Christian images, from Dante to classic hymns, in which souls shorn of bodies find their final destiny in a heavenly region quite elsewhere than on earth.
This Hellenistic dualism had earlier reached its apogee in Gnosticism, which almost always taught the incompatibility of spirit and matter and sought salvation in the shucking off of the material body. Professor Madigan, Professor Levenson and Bishop Wright view the anti-Gnostic stances of early church fathers and rabbinic sages alike as a proper defense of their traditions’ core beliefs and not, as recently argued, a tactic in religious power politics.
Unlike Gnosticism, Judaism and Christianity, in different ways, held to the goodness of creation and the flawed nature of humans. This equips both traditions, in these writers’ opinions, to avoid the illusion that humans can build a perfect world on their own while yet instilling in humans the confidence that the good they do will finally be affirmed and completed by the God of Resurrection.
Both these books build on their authors’ previous works. In “Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel” (Yale University Press, 2006), Professor Levenson argued that belief in resurrection was much more deeply rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish tradition than many Jews today realized.
Five years ago, Bishop Wright, whose important contributions to the scholarly debate over the historical Jesus have emphasized Jesus’ place within Judaism’s expectations for a divine restoration of Israel, published “The Resurrection of the Son of God” (Fortress).
Although both books emphasize resurrection as the final expression of divine power, vindicating those faithful to God’s promises and regenerating all creation, neither is indifferent to the question of the immediate destinies of the departed.
Professors Madigan and Levenson do not think that their explanation of resurrection entails “a disbelief in the immortality of some aspect of the person or in the notion that the departed righteous even now enjoy a blissful communion with God.” And though Bishop Wright can be rather impatient with much of the talk of “souls” and “immortality” and “heaven” thoroughly embedded in Christian prayer and ritual, he has no problem when heaven as a “postmortem destination” is seen as a “temporary stage on the way to eventual resurrection of the body.”
This eventual resurrection, he writes, is not “life after death” so much as “life after life after death.”
Beliefs
Resurrection Is Often Misunderstood by Christians and Jews
By PETER STEINFELS
Published in the "New York Times" on March 15, 2008
As Christians in most of the world approach the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, it is startling to find three distinguished scholars, all known for scrupulous attention to theological tradition and biblical sources, agreeing that the very idea of resurrection is widely and badly misunderstood.
Misunderstood not just by those whose contemporary sensibilities restrain them from saying much more about resurrection than that it symbolizes some vague (and probably temporary) victory of life over death. But also misunderstood by many devout believers who consider themselves thoroughly faithful to traditional religious teachings.
Kevin J. Madigan is a Roman Catholic who teaches Christian history at Harvard Divinity School. Jon D. Levenson, a colleague at Harvard, is a Jew who teaches Jewish studies. Together they have written “Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews.”
The book, which will be published next month by Yale University Press, argues that the idea that God will raise the dead to life at the end of time is central to both Jewish and Christian traditions.
N. T. Wright is a noted New Testament scholar who has continued to churn out academic and popular works, even after moving from Oxford in 2003 to become the Anglican bishop of Durham. Last month he published “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church” (HarperOne).
These two books are different in tone and agenda. Professors Madigan and Levenson are particularly interested in countering the assumption that resurrection is solely a Christian belief, rather than one deeply rooted in the Judaism from which Jesus emerged. Bishop Wright has written a more popular and pastoral book, with practical proposals for church renewal.
But both books converge in challenging several widespread notions. Resurrection, they maintain, does not simply mean going to heaven or life after death.
Resurrection is not a belief that divides an other-worldly Christianity from a this-worldly Judaism.
Nor is resurrection something that refers only — or even primarily — to the individual’s survival after death.
Instead, both books emphasize that in classic Jewish and Christian teachings, resurrection refers to a collective resurrection of people and renewal of all creation at the end of time.
Resurrection was linked to the expectation of judgment and a final triumph of justice. This was the idea of resurrection that had evolved as Jews returned from exile and struggled under foreign domination in the period before Jesus. It was this idea of resurrection that Christians had in mind when they declared that what occurred on Easter was the “first fruits” of what was to come.
If there is a key to the convergence among these authors, it lies, first of all, in their insistence on the bodily and communal character of resurrection, a view that has long competed with a Hellenistic philosophical and especially Platonic dualism, in which an individual disembodied intellect or spirit could be saved from its corruptible and corrupting body.
Even as great a Jewish sage as Maimonides seemed to be tempted in this direction, and Bishop Wright sees the legacy of this dualism in the storehouse of Christian images, from Dante to classic hymns, in which souls shorn of bodies find their final destiny in a heavenly region quite elsewhere than on earth.
This Hellenistic dualism had earlier reached its apogee in Gnosticism, which almost always taught the incompatibility of spirit and matter and sought salvation in the shucking off of the material body. Professor Madigan, Professor Levenson and Bishop Wright view the anti-Gnostic stances of early church fathers and rabbinic sages alike as a proper defense of their traditions’ core beliefs and not, as recently argued, a tactic in religious power politics.
Unlike Gnosticism, Judaism and Christianity, in different ways, held to the goodness of creation and the flawed nature of humans. This equips both traditions, in these writers’ opinions, to avoid the illusion that humans can build a perfect world on their own while yet instilling in humans the confidence that the good they do will finally be affirmed and completed by the God of Resurrection.
Both these books build on their authors’ previous works. In “Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel” (Yale University Press, 2006), Professor Levenson argued that belief in resurrection was much more deeply rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and Jewish tradition than many Jews today realized.
Five years ago, Bishop Wright, whose important contributions to the scholarly debate over the historical Jesus have emphasized Jesus’ place within Judaism’s expectations for a divine restoration of Israel, published “The Resurrection of the Son of God” (Fortress).
Although both books emphasize resurrection as the final expression of divine power, vindicating those faithful to God’s promises and regenerating all creation, neither is indifferent to the question of the immediate destinies of the departed.
Professors Madigan and Levenson do not think that their explanation of resurrection entails “a disbelief in the immortality of some aspect of the person or in the notion that the departed righteous even now enjoy a blissful communion with God.” And though Bishop Wright can be rather impatient with much of the talk of “souls” and “immortality” and “heaven” thoroughly embedded in Christian prayer and ritual, he has no problem when heaven as a “postmortem destination” is seen as a “temporary stage on the way to eventual resurrection of the body.”
This eventual resurrection, he writes, is not “life after death” so much as “life after life after death.”
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