In August of 2014 the denomination I was a part of released a 90 page position paper titled Pastoring LGBT Persons. I'm not sure why that title was given, because actually only 3 pages were given to actual pastoral thoughts, the rest was an explanation of why people in the LGBT community could not marry, and why pastors could not perform the ceremony.
In early September, of 2014 in a forum belonging to the denomination, a challenge was given to people who were open to marriage equality to say how they could be. The challenge went like this: What is your justification for that affirming position and what is your authority for that affirming position? The thread originally had to do with the frequent assertions in the paper was that one of the only ways towards an openness towards marriage equality was through embracing a form of gnosticism – which it turns out is a pretty bad ancient heresy. I remememer enough from seminary to remember that I didn’t want to be gnostic – so I responded – and that is why there are a couple of references to gnosticism. Also PP stands for the position paper put out by my former denomination.
1. People. In my actual, concrete (non-gnostic) life with actual non-gnostic embodied people who have same-sex attractions. I have not been all that happy with the fruit I have seen as I first lived from the not affirming position, and then as I have pastored from the not affirming position. Below are actual people from my life that I treated and pastored in ways that flowed fairly naturally from my conservative evangelical heritage. These are the people that have caused me to re-think my not affirming position. (I just used a single letter to represent a person’s name).
a) The first person I met who was attracted to people of the same sex was C. I met him in my junior year of college. My 6 housemates and I wanted to save on rent, so we advertised in the college paper and C. answered moved in. He was closely connected to the college chaplain and had a pretty deep interest in theology. To this day I am embarrassed by the tangible disgust my roommates and I showed towards him. I’m embarrassed that I stayed silent as my roommates forced him out of our house, (based on the fear that the girls on campus would think we were also gay – gay by association I guess). I’m embarrassed but I think my behavior flows pretty naturally from the ethos in conservative evangelical circles.
b) My brother-in-law D. When Kristine, my at the time girlfriend, first told me her brother was gay, I pretty much remained silent. The next day I broke loose with a “gay joke,” which was deeply hurtful to her, but flowed very much from the culture in which I was raised. Kristine and I married and a few years later D. met S. and they started dating, and eventually they wanted to have their union blessed/formalized. We were invited. I was hugely conflicted. By going would I be condoning sin? By not going I might risk the relationship that Kristine had with her brother and the relationship I did as well. I decided to go. Before the weekend of the ceremony I shared in the small group that I was leading about how I was going to a place of “deep, deep darkness” and asked for prayers of protection. After the group B. (a member of the group) came out to me – and told me he was one of ‘those people’ living in deep darkness.
c) I walked with B. for two years as he worked to be not-gay, or at least celibate. I watched him give-up and go deep into the “lifestyle.”
d) T. a man who was new to the vineyard. He worked as a big-brother with at-risk youth. He brought them to the Vineyard. He was sexually attracted to men. My job at the time was to take new people out to coffee. He told me about his “orientation” and that he felt God had made him that way. I in essence, told him that he needed to open every room of his house to Jesus, and opening every room would mean gayness would have to go. T. and the at-risk youth never returned to the Vineyard.
e) Back to my brother-in-law D. and his partner S. I watched as S. was with D for better for worse for 8 eight years, but especially over the last 3 as D. died the horrific death from AIDS related diseases. During that time Kristine talked with D. often about Jesus. D. talked about his love for Jesus and how Jesus had saved him from his sins. I thought there was some goodness in the commitment that S and D had made to each other. I thought perhaps D’s death was made more human by having S at his side for the final stages of his journey. I’m not sure the last years of his life would have been better by the church, insistently asking him to open every room of his house and separate from S.
f) The people I have been in conversation with who love Jesus, but are outside the church because they have same-sex attraction, and as near as they can tell have had that attraction all their lives. One of whom lived in a committed monogamous relationship with a man for a number of years. Then he got involved in a conservative evangelical church, who insisted that he break-up the relationship, which he did. He went through a whole bunch of reparative therapy, and eventually married. He gave testimony to being delivered, and on any number of occasions exhorted others still “struggling.” The only problem was the actual attraction never actually left …
g) Now some more actual people. I don’t have actual relationships with them, but I think there is some weight to their testimony and some pastoral implications. I give some weight to the testimony of the people at Exodus and other ex-gay ministries that are no more.
h) I’m troubled by how difficult it appears to be to have same –sex attractions as a teenager and grow up in a conservative evangelical community…
i) I’m troubled by the pastoral practice/evangelical culture that so celebrates conversion to “straightness” that it seems to push many people at best into a sort of denial, that appears to be very difficult to maintain. One of my friends said, “The church is where I really learned to lie, and keep secrets about what was happening with me.”
2. History. The conservative evangelical stream that seems to me to flow from a certain view of what Biblical authority means - is the stream I have swam in all my life. As I look back at history, I’m not sure about all the past fruit and some of the current fruit:
a) Slavery – I’ll simply again recommend Mark Noll’s the Civil War as Theological crisis. The PP is right to point out that the much of the Abolition movement did not come from Chicago style inerrancy culture. Sadly much of the defense of slavery did/does
b) Women in all levels of leadership. To me the PP seems to be in denial about the actual history within the Vineyard of arriving at Women in all levels of leadership. I find the arguments from Scriptural Authority in the women in leadership discussion similar to those that are made in this discussion. The PP seems to want to say we have merely acted on Biblical Authority in opening all levels of leadership, and we are merely acting on Biblical Authority here in being non-affirming.
c) My personal history. 2 and a half years ago I simply grew exhausted from the mental gymnastics I felt I had to do to hold onto a Chicago Statement type Inerrancy – particularly while being an egalitarian and working to move the church I was pastoring in that direction. Chicago type of inerrancy seems to be embedded in the Vineyard USA statement. I was exhausted by trying to answer the more conservative members of our community from a CSI standpoint as we continued to move towards egalitarian leadership. (I’m completely open to the possibility that I am a complete dunderhead hermeneutically, and really CSI does lead to: the abolition of slavery; women in all levels of leadership; woman speaking and prophesying without their heads covered; why we don’t greet each other with a holy kiss etc… I’m sure that someone with even a modicum of hermeneutical skill can effortlessly hold all those things, all I’m saying is that I was exhausted and couldn’t (and can't) do it any more). I realized I was going to have to choose between: holding onto CSI type inerrancy and going back to some form of complementarianism; or holding onto egalitarianism and continuing to move the Vineyard I was pastoring, while deeply re-thinking Biblical inerrancy/authority. I chose the latter and started reading Christian Smith, Pete Enns, Kent Sparks and Carlos Bovell (among others) and started to feel less alone and that maybe I wasn’t out of my mind. I came to the place where I simply couldn’t buy into the CSI ways of thinking. This of course doesn’t soIve the question of how is the Bible authoritative or authority in general. But, one thing moving from CSI style thinking certainly did was cultivate some space for me to re-think my 12 plus years of pastoring (and the fruit) from a welcoming but not affirming position.
Brief pause to reflect a little more on CSI. I sometimes wonder if I am tilting at windmills. Maybe there isn’t a problem with CSI and the Vineyard statement. Maybe if I just read one more defense of CSI I would understand, and see that all the problems I see are actually not that big. They are actually solvable. Some of my Vineyard pastor friends in my area certainly think so. But my impression is that the problems are actually there, maybe they are not as big as I think, but they are there. I read and hear about too many Aha moments to think that this conversation will go away.
Jesus as quoted by the Bible in Matthew 28 seems to actually think He (not original autographs – which at present only exist in some abstract ideal form apart from the actual Bible we have – gnostic? platonic?) has had all authority given to him (which I think would include Faith and practice), and that he will be actually with us until the close of the age. One question that I think would be interesting is: What justification could be given or by what by what authority does the Vineyard statement of faith include this:
We believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the human authors of Holy Scripture so that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. We receive the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments as our final, absolute authority, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
3. Hermeneutical questions/observations in no particular order:
a) I don’t think the reasoning of Acts 15 (or a lot of the Bible for that matter) flows from CSI or Vineyard statement on the Bible type thinking.
b) I do think Biblically speaking there are “greater” themes.
c) I think @Daniel L Heck is asking some good questions about headcovering… (I think the rebuttals will be appeals to larger or greater themes). I would note Paul also makes arguments from creation/nature regarding women having authority over a man - as complementarians are quick to point out.
d) I’m not sure you get just from reading Paul that there is a moral law and a ceremonial law. The Sabbath might be problematic there because it is in the Decalogue.
e) By the logic of the position paper, Heterosexual married intercourse while the wife is menstruating would also appear to be porneia.
f) By the logic of the position paper it seems to me that whatever was considered porneia still needs to be. It is likely (not certain) that this would include, even within marriage: mutual masturbation, oral sex, positions besides the missionary position.
g) (This is more practical/pastoral than hermeneutical) Should some decide that those practices listed above are porneia (as many have and still do), are we obligated to talk with our married friends regarding that conviction to ask if every room of their house is open? My gut is we would agree good Christians could disagree on this, and not try to enforce this on our married friend. But I’m not sure we would use CSI style logic, or the logic of the PP to get to that stance.
h) I’m convinced the PP has demonstrated that Paul could have known of something close to life-long same-sex adult relationships. I’m not so sure it has demonstrated that these type of relationships would have been at the front of his mind, or those of his readers, and the paper seems to concede this.
i) The N.T. Wright quote while punchy is misleading: "“At this point there can be no dispute, no room for divergent opinions: no room, in other words, for someone to say ‘some Christians practice fornication, others think it’s wrong, so we should be tolerant of one another,’..." Again, the third way is making an agnostic argument – saying we don’t know if same-sex acts within a committed covenanted relationship are porneia. The “third way” would be saying sex is powerful and does create a soul tie. It would be asking people to confine sexual expression (again about which we are agnostic – perhaps like we are about oral sex within marriage) to one person for the rest of their life for better or for worse. It is explicitly not “yay" for porneia.
These are some of the justifications that I think about for being open to the possibility that in certain situations the most biblical, loving, spirit-led, communally discerning thing to do, would be in “a third way” manner bless two people of the same sex who desire before God to make a lifelong commitment to each other.
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