Reformations

Because yesterday was the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation--marked by the publication of Martin Luther's 95 Theses--I've been thinking about the idea of reformation, and what significance that idea has for us today.

As a Lutheran, I belong to a church that was born through the efforts of Luther and Philip Melanchthon and others to reform the church. In taking that monumental step, not only did they stand against certain abuses of the church at the time while standing up for specific theological ideas, they also stood for the idea of reform itself.

Reform is not revolt or rejection. Reform begins with a spirit of allegiance. It begins with the idea that there is something here of value, but something that has become, we might say, deformed. We don't repair what we don't value. Instead, we throw it away. If a ship sets sail for a destination we don't want to arrive at, we may not be especially bothered if it has drifted off course.

The desire for reform is like the desire to heal the sick--something we wouldn't do if we didn't value them and their health.

In other words, there's something conservative about reform. When we heal the sick, we may try to cut out tumors or kill bacteria, but it's for the sake of the conserving the life of the patient.

But reformation is also about criticism and change. It is about identifying sickness and seeking a world where that sickness no longer distorts, no longer impedes, no longer puts us off course. It's about saying, "The way things are is imperfect. And these imperfections are not something we should just be content to live with. Even if perfection is beyond us, we can and must strive to move in its direction by identifying flaws and failures and correcting what we can."

Reform, in other words, is progressive. It is about valuing our inheritance enough to progressively identify and correct its flaws. To be a reformer is to criticize and correct.

And I don't think we can truly embrace the Reformation if all we do is embrace the specific criticisms and corrections of Luther and other reformers of that age.

Let me explore this point a little more deeply. Luther persistently declared that we are all in bondage to sin, and as my pastor reminded the congregation on Sunday, in the first of his 95 Theses Luther stressed that Christ "willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance."

Repentance, like reform, is an act of change. It is a change of direction--the Hebrew word for it means "return," and is about turning back to God; the Greek term is about changing one's mind, or perhaps rising above one's mind (something that can only be done with the help of what is greater than oneself). To repent is to correct one's course or even rise above one's limits. When Luther claimed that the Christian life is one of repentance, he seemed to be envisioning an ongoing process of turning ever back to the only thing that can lift us above our limits, turning ever back because so long as our limits remain we will drift off course.

To become what we are meant to be--children of God who consistently reflect in our lives and our souls the loving essence of our creator--we must continually turn away from the pettiness and jealousy and bigotry and egotism that our broken natures incline towards. We must turn instead towards the God who is love, the God who loves us and calls us to love one another, the God who fills us with the power to love when we turn to God in love.

Or perhaps, in the spirit of Luther, I should put the point a bit differently: we must stop turning away from God, stop choosing the pettiness and jealousy and bigotry and egotism, stop hugging these things close to our hearts as if they were our god. We should, instead, let God turn us toward the divine love; and whenever we notice ourselves rejecting that love, as we will, we should again just stop.

To suppose that this is the proper life for the Christian but not the proper life for the church is to suppose that a community of people is somehow immune to the limits of individuals. And while it is true that communities can stand firm against things that individuals fall before, it is also true--as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted in his book, Moral Man in Immoral Society, that humanity in its collective life can fall prey to evils of a magnitude that no individual could ever dream of.

Human flaws play out differently in collective life than in private, but they play out with as much inevitability. Within a group, members can encourage and support mutual care in a way that makes us better towards one another than we might otherwise be. But often, as Niebuhr pointed out, the effect is to inspire us to channel our moral impulses so fully towards other members of the group that we direct none of those impulses towards the "other," towards people at the margins and members of other tribes not our own. Our tribal origins can lead us to restrict our moral sentiments so that we are moral only within our group. We fall prey to us/them ideologies that pit our group against others and that represent salvation as found in the defeat--the destruction or humiliation or oppression--of rival groups and communities.

Human communities are organized around institutions and ideas, social structures and systems of belief. And because human communities are made up of finite human beings with tribal impulses that create us/them divisions and limit our moral sentiments to "us", we are always in danger of shaping our communal social structures and belief systems to serve these tribal instincts. The way to overcome that is to never stop criticizing and correcting our own social structures and belief systems. And this includes the ones that are precious to us. In fact, it especially applies to the most important, the most valuable, the most meaning-enriching systems for organizing our social lives.

If there is a communal aspect to Christian life (and there is), it is the church. And so, just as repentance is a never-ending need of the individual, reformation of the church is the never-ending call of the Christian community.

It didn't stop with Luther and his allies. Luther was well-positioned by his life circumstances and unique talents to discern and speak out against a distinct set of abuses within the church. But like all of us, he was in bondage to sin, as is evidenced by his tendency towards rhetorical excesses that strayed out of the domain of passion into that of verbal abuse. More importantly, it is evidenced by the virulent anti-Jewish diatribes of his later life--diatribes that were used and exploited by the Nazis in largely-Lutheran Germany to fuel one of the most horrific genocidal evils of human history: the Holocaust that systematically organized the murder of millions of Jews (as well as gypsies, gays, and others).

I am gratified that my denomination, the ELCA, along with the Lutheran World Federation, in 1994 clearly and unequivocally repudiated the evil of Luther's anti-Jewish hatred and the deeper evils that it helped to breed. This reforming act was late in coming, and one might wonder how history would have gone differently if this act of reformation had happened sooner. But this very question speaks to the urgency of the reforming project. We are blind to so much, and we trivialize or put off what is far more important than we know. It becomes especially easy for our churches to capitulate to evils when those evils have seeped into and found expression within the church itself, and we have failed to take seriously enough the duty of reformation.

If we honor only the specific reforms that Luther called out for but do not embrace the spirit of reformation that Luther embodied, then we become mired in the limitations of Luther's vision. Worse, without ongoing reformation, those limitations are compounded by the distinctive limitations of each subsequent generation. Without ongoing reformation, each generation of the church has an opportunity to let its own collective expression of human sinfulness twist and distort and corrupt what it has inherited. Rather that progressively working to improve an inheritance that is inevitably flawed by human sin, we cement the flaws with our lack of critical reflection, and we layer onto them our own generation's unique ways of going wrong.

The Reformation isn't something that happened five hundred years ago; it's something that needs to happen over and over again. The Reformation was a reminder of a responsibility that all of us have at all times--something that the church did in fits and starts before Luther's 95 Theses were nailed to the Wittenberg Cathedral door, and something that we are called to do today. 

Those Pesky Protestant Progressives

Apparently, the Church of England's recent approval of a plan to raise women to the episcopate was something of a last straw for at least one Catholic priest.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, seemingly outraged by the General Synod's resounding vote in favor of women bishops, posted a strident attack on the "insidious, dangerous, and relentless" pursuit of progress within Protestant churches. Labeling Protestant progressives "bullies," Longenecker opines that once the progressive fight for same-sex marriage is won, a fight for "child sex" may be next.

(I hope he has the good sense to apologize for this last bit of rhetorical excess, if for nothing else. Obviously, the pursuit of equality for a minority group that has been systematically marginalized--however misguided he thinks that might be--is not a slippery slope to advocacy for child sexual abuse).

Longenecker's article is heavy on shrill put-downs (Protestant progressives are not merely bullies but "tyrants", "(i)nsecure, immature people with a persecution complex", and "like a teenager with a hissy fit"). Such name-calling is not exactly an invitation to thoughtful discussion about any ideas that might be hidden amid the verbal abuse, suggesting that Longenecker is more interested in attacking Protestant progressives than in discussing his ideas with them. Nevertheless, he may have ideas worth discussing.

So what are his substantive claims? There appear to be three:

1. Protestant progressives are driven to pursue change for the sake of change--regarding the new as good just because it's new, and the old as bad just because it's old. In other words, their pursuit of change is indiscriminate.

2. Protestant progressives' pursuit of "progress" is so relentlessly single-minded that they pay no attention to stability and peace and the welfare of countless people who do not want the changes foisted on them. Thus, their idea of progress is achieved at a high cost in terms of social division and bitterness.

3. This indiscriminate pursuit of "progress" is motivated by the fact that it is through the pursuit of "causes" that progressive Protestants find subjective meaning in their lives. Without a cause to fight for, they "prowl around restlessly", like a teenage rebel without a cause...until they find one.

Let me look more closely at each of these claims.

Claim 1: Protestant progressives are driven to pursue change for the sake of change--regarding the new as good just because it's new, and the old as bad just because it's old.

There are people who pursue change for the sake of change. And there are those who pursue change for the sake of charity and justice. You won't tell them apart by the fact that they keep finding new causes to pursue. Given human finitude, our institutions will always be imperfect--and those moved by a spirit of compassion and justice will always find places where improvements can and should be made. While a restless desire for change for change's sake is surely to be found in some Protestants, it is far from being Protestantism's defining element. And an ongoing commitment to making existing institutions better, more loving, more just, should not be misconstrued as an indiscriminate identification of the new with the good.

Protestantism began with Luther's fiery protest against abuses within the Church, abuses that had real victims who were damaged by them. The spirit of that protest was one of reform. And reform is about love for that which is being reformed. The "new" is sought for the sake of making the beloved "old" thing better.

I belong to one of the denominations Longenecker mentions as being "on the relentless progress train": I'm a Lutheran, and specifically a Lutheran in the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). We're one of those denominations that recently changed its stance on the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian clergy. We've had women in the ministry for years. And recently, we elected a new Presiding Bishop: a woman.

Did we pursue these things just because they're new, and jettison the old ways just because they're old? No. Lutheran worship is shaped by ancient liturgies. We affirm and recite the ancient creeds of the church. We love old hymns. Lutheran clergy wear the kinds of vestments that have been worn by Christian clergy for centuries. Every week we say the prayer Jesus taught us to pay, and bow at the altar and participate in the sacrament instituted by Jesus some two millenia ago.

Gays and lesbians within the Lutheran communion have not sought access to marriage because they hate the old. Marriage is old. It's really, really old. They value this old thing enough to want it for themselves. Likewise for the priesthood. Likewise for the episcopate. It is love for these old institutions, appreciation for their value, that inspires a desire to make access to them broader than it has been before. You don't fight hard to expand access to something if you don't value it. Anywhere you see the pursuit of broadened access to an old institution, what you are observing is a reform movement in the true sense: A change to the old that is motivated by an appreciation of the old.

And progressive Protestantism has been defined most obviously by such efforts at broadening access to established institutions. Hence, to claim that progressive Protestantism is defined most essentially by the pursuit of change for change's sake, by the indiscriminate love of the new and disdain for the old, is to miss the obvious. Longenecker gets the heart of progressive Protestantism dead-wrong, even if he correctly identifies a worry that all progressive movements should be conscious of and guard against.

Claim 2:  Protestant progressives' pursuit of "progress" is so relentlessly single-minded that they pay no attention to stability and peace and the welfare of countless people who do not want the changes foisted on them. 

Here's the thing about reform: it's routinely resisted, especially by those who benefit from the status quo. And so efforts to reform the imperfections in old institutions for the sake of those who are harmed by them will inevitably generate conflict. Finding the best path through that conflict is hard. Nor is it easy to know when the costs, in terms of stability and social harmony, are worth the conflict...and when they're not.

Progressive Protestants are as imperfect as the institutions they seek to reform, and so are prone to make mistakes. Protest is sometimes done in ways more likely to produce reactionary hostility than transformative introspection. Reformers can get carried away, willing to take actions that needlessly hurt defenders of the status quo.

Insofar as Longenecker's claim serves as an invitation for reformers to reflect on their methods, it has value. Certainly there are those within progressive Protestantism who are guilty as charged, and all of us need to keep in mind the risks of being too goal-oriented to see the damaging ripple effects of our actions.

But I think it is too easy to see one's opponent's methods as relentlessly single-minded (or as "bullying") when in fact they are not.

I believe strongly in the methods of social change advocated by Gandhi and King--relentless nonviolent resistance that begins with efforts at dialogue and strives to rely on methods that never shut down the hope of reconciliation and community. Reform efforts that spring from love for the victims of the status quo--victims of its inevitable imperfections--must also express love for those who are afraid of change or opposed to it because they see things differently.

Loving your opponents is always hard.

Reformers must be conscious of their own fallibility not only in this respect, but with respect to their judgments about what needs reform. Some things need to change, but other things are better off left the way they are. We can make mistakes about which is which. Longenecker apparently believes that progressive Protestants are routinely guilty of this error. I think he and others are guilty of it--but erring the other way.

One of us is wrong. I think it's him. He thinks it's me. I'm pretty sure I'm right, He's pretty sure he is. In other words, one of us is confident he's in the right...when he's wrong. What do we do in a world where that is so often true? Suspending judgment means inaction, which amounts to favoring the status quo. If we let our fallibilism take us there, we have a recipe for unchecked injustice.

Suppose you are convinced, based on experience and sustained reflection, that it is wrong to systematically exclude persons with a homosexual orientation from participation in the bedrock social institution of marriage. Suppose you have heard the suffering of your gay and lesbian neighbors and seen some of them driven to suicide by the alienation and despair created by the status quo.

The mere fact of human fallibility shouldn't be enough to paralyze you into inaction. In all of our human endeavors, there are two ways to go wrong: we can mistake falsehood for truth and act in error; and we can fail to see a truth we need to act on, and so do nothing when action is urgently required. The most strident opponents of reform are often those who are so afraid of the first kind of mistake that they persistently fall headlong into the second. It's important for reformers not to do the same thing in reverse. But it's even more important to act on conscience.

When we do, we should seek dialogue with those who resist the changes we are trying to make. We should seek to understand the human needs and feelings that underlie that resistance. And where there is truth to be found in our opponent's concerns, we should integrate that truth into our reform efforts.

But sometimes resistance is so strident and entrenched that no such dialogue is possible. What then? Do we give up? Do we "wait" until the society is "ready"? Martin Luther King's words about "why we can't wait" resonate with authority for all who stand witness to grave injustice. But so do his words about nonviolence and love, about reliance on methods of pushing for change that do not shut the door to future dialogue, that do not shut out the prospect of the Beloved Community.

King was prepared to use methods that weren't "nice." They were confrontational. They imposed costs on those who opposed the goals of the movement. But they didn't rely on the use or threat of violence. Those who refused to give in found themselves without customers, or with more customers than they could ever hope for (but all from a group they were unwilling to serve). Eventually, they found themselves living in a society whose rules had changed--a society whose rules and leaders no longer officially sanctioned their preferred form of discrimination. But that didn't turn the participants in the civil rights movement into bullies or tyrants.

If you want to discriminate against women and gays, you aren't being bullied if advocates for equality win the day through nonviolent action and moral suasion, such that your community's policies no longer reflect or sanction your discriminatory wishes. And if, committed to your wish to keep excluding some people, you break away from the community to form your own separatist group, it is oversimplified to treat the reformers as so trenchantly focused on their cause that they are willing to tear the community apart in its pursuit.

Longenecker has a legitimate concern if he insists that reformers need to pay attention to community and stability, and hence should seek change only when there are important moral or pragmatic reasons for doing so, and then in ways that seek to preserve community in the midst of disagreement. And there is no doubt that all human efforts at reform reflect this concern imperfectly. But this is not a reason to abandon a commitment to reforming imperfect human institutions, or to stop reforming them after one or two victories. We don't stop--or shouldn't stop--trying to improve ourselves morally after we overcome one or two vices. Moral improvement is a lifelong endeavor. Likewise for our human institutions.

Claim 3:  This indiscriminate pursuit of "progress" is motivated by the fact that it is through the pursuit of such causes that progressive Protestants find subjective meaning in their lives.

This claim is something of an exercise in mind-reading. I can testify, as a self-defined Protestant progressive, that Longenecker has not read my mind accurately. And his sense of what drives Protestant progressives in general has little substantiation in my experience of progressive friends and relatives--suggesting to me that he is projecting his own biases onto his progressive brothers and sisters, rather than discerning what is there.

Admittedly, my evidence is anecdotal--and Longenecker can probably offer his own array of anecdotes that support his assessment. But at the very least, my experience leads me to conclude that his take on what motivates progressive Protestantism is way too sweeping.

My progressive Protestant friends and relatives have rich, meaningful lives apart from their pursuit of social causes. They dance and sing and play sports. They have jobs they love. They find joy in their children or their intimate relationships. When they find themselves standing in a protest line or writing a letter to the editor or joining a social justice movement, it's not because they are empty inside and therefore need to "prowl around restlessly" for some social cause to give them meaning.

Rather, it's because they have seen a suffering neighbor, heard a heart-wrenching cry, witnessed the way that some feature of the status quo has injured or alienated or left people at the margins. And their compassion has not allowed them to stand by and do nothing. At first they may focus merely on binding the wounds of those who have been damaged. But as the existing policies keep grinding out new injuries, they find themselves driven to change the system if they can.

They nail some theses to a church door. When that fails to inspire the reform-from-within they might have hoped for, they find themselves part of a movement to bring about change.

Consider, for example, my cousins: Phil and Randi Reitan. When their son, Jake, came out to them in high school, they were leading a happy, comfortable life in the Midwest. They were financially comfortable. They were active in their church, active raising four bright and talented children. Their lives were good.

But when Jake came out, they struggled to understand what it meant. What it meant for Jake. What it meant for them and their family. And in so doing they became progressively aware of what gays and lesbians go through every day: the peer rejection and abuse, the social marginalization, the prospect of permanent exclusion from participation in the social institution by which new families are established and recognized. Phil and Randi reflected on how their own unconsidered beliefs, formed primarily by the teachings of their church, helped to perpetuate the harms they witnessed. Out of love for their son, they found they had to oppose those teachings--and the bitter fruits they bore.

Their love for their son expanded outward, taking shape as an inclusive advocacy for sexual minorities. They wrote letters. They became active in Soulforce. They participated in civil disobedience. They got arrested. And as the astonishing social changes started to sweep across the country, as one state after another started to embrace marriage equality, they celebrated with their expanded family.

Did their participation in this struggle add meaning to their lives? Absolutely. But it added meaning because it reflected their deep and abiding values. It wasn't some cause they seized upon at random, just because they needed some cause to give purpose to their lives. It was a cause they were compelled to pursue, because the deep values that already gave purpose to their lives required it of them.

These are not "immature, insecure people with a persecution complex" throwing a teenage "hissy fit." These aren't rebels searching for anything they can find to rebel against. These are, rather, people acting with integrity and conviction, refusing to hide from hard changes when their principles demand it.

This is the problem with sweeping generalizations, especially caricatured ones. When we consider what is revealed by any sustained encounter with Phil or Randi or countless others, Longenecker's characterization of progressive Protestant motivations is so far off the mark--so jarringly at odds with the real human beings I know--that it would inspire laughter if it weren't so offensive.

Orwellian Obfuscation and the Christian Struggle over Homosexuality

As part of my research for my new book project, I’ve recently been looking into the “Biblical Witness Fellowship” (BWF) within the United Church of Christ (UCC)—a denomination I and my family belonged to for four years when we left the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) to protest its failure to allow for the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian clergy. We chose the UCC then because of its inclusive stance towards gays and lesbians.


But that inclusiveness has not gone uncontested within the UCC—and the clearest, most organized voice of protest appears to be the BWF. The Biblical Witness Fellowship describes itself as a “confessing movement within the United Church of Christ” committed to opposing what its members see as “decades of continued denominational decline that has resulted from the UCC’s theological surrender to the moral and spiritual confusion of contemporary culture.”

This last bit grates on me, because I've heard it so many times. It seems to be something of a defining narrative that conservative Christians carry with them into disputes with their more progressive brethren: the commitments of progressive Christians spring from “theological surrender” to modern culture.

But is this narrative right? Probably sometimes. But always?

For members of the BWF, one of the clearest signs of this supposed “theological surrender” came in the form of the UCC’s 2005 resolution in support of same-sex marriage, which the BWF blog describes as an “idolatrous decision…to attempt to tell God that marriage was whatever we, in our human delusions, wanted it to be,” a decision that “placed the UCC beyond the boundaries of reality.”

In opposition to this “idolatrous” betrayal, the BWF offers the following position statement on human sexuality:

Human sexuality is a gift from God, a reflection of His creative plan. God ordained sexual intimacy to be expressed within the covenant of heterosexual marriage. Sex outside of that covenant dehumanizes, destroys and leads to fragmentation, social chaos, violence, and death. We believe our contemporary culture to be a vivid parable of this truth.

What are we to make of this statement? First of all, given my own experience in the UCC, I can attest that the less conservative majority would agree with much that is said in the statement. Specifically, they’d be inclined to agree, right along with the BWF, that sexuality expressed outside the confines of marital commitment is fraught with dangers, risking personal and social harms that the covenant of marriage helps to ward against.

In fact, this is a main reason they support same-sex marriage. Excluding gays and lesbians from access to the marital covenant deprives them of the option to express their sexuality within the stable, intimacy-building context of marriage. Without the social supports of marriage, it’s far easier for sexuality to fall into promiscuity and the various harms this entails—including, arguably, social and psychological fragmentation (as intimacy and sexual pleasure become severed), increases in relational instability and emotional volatility (jealousy and heartbreak and the forms of inner and outer violence these things engender), not to mention the potentially lethal effects of sexually transmitted disease.

But implicit in the BWF statement is the conviction that were the covenant of marriage to become generally available to same-sex couples, sex within the covenant of such marriages would then somehow contribute to the same dire results. Here is where progressives in the UCC differ sharply with the BWF. Both agree that the covenant of marriage plays a crucial role in securing a healthy and life-affirming sexuality—sexuality as God intended it. But while progressives argue that for this very reason the covenant should be available to gays and lesbians, members of the BWF think that extending the marital covenant to same-sex couples would sanctify a kind of relationship that (somehow) brings fragmentation and death even when it otherwise embodies all the virtues of an ideal marriage.

The BWF statement obscures this point by treating “heterosexual marriage” as a single monolithic norm—that is, by attempting to frame our thinking such that we are discouraged from thinking about the heterosexuality of a relationship apart from its conformity to what might be called the "marital ideal," by which I mean the relational ideal that is held up in the institution of marriage and that married couples strive to approximate: lifelong loving commitment, life partnership, sexual fidelity in a monogamous bond in which sexuality nurtures and expresses a multifaceted love that is also nurtured and expressed through emotional openness and honest sharing of oneself with the partner.

Anyone who has known a loving same-sex couple knows that this marital ideal can be pursued by them as well as by any heterosexual couple. But by lumping the marital ideal and heterosexuality together, as if they couldn't be promoted apart from each other, we are discouraged from distinguishing between two very different questions. The questions I have in mind are these:

(a) Are there long-term and pervasive social costs for rejecting the marital ideal as the normative model for expressing sexual intimacy?

(b) Are there such costs for expanding the marital ideal to encompass non-heterosexual couples?

If we do distinguish these two questions, it becomes clear that the framers of the BWF statement want to answer “yes” to both—but this seems highly implausible. If broad cultural rejection of the marital ideal leads to “fragmentation, social chaos, violence, and death,” then it would seem that the more we expand the scope within which this ideal holds sway, the better off we are in terms of reducing these harms.

Think about it. If communities that aren’t bound by the marital ideal are more likely to exhibit promiscuity and fickleness in their sexual lives—and if this brings with it both tangible health costs in terms of the spread of STD’s and less tangible social and psychological costs—then shouldn’t we conclude that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples will mean greater promiscuity and fickleness—and concomitant costs—in the non-heterosexual subculture (a subculture that is in part created by the exclusion of sexual minorities from a social institution as foundational and pervasive as marriage)?

Let’s spell it out clearly. To extend the marriage covenant to same-sex couples would mean that these couples are afforded the same social supports for practicing fidelity in a monogamous life partnership that heterosexuals enjoy. Such supports can only reduce promiscuity and encourage relational stability—thereby both reducing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS and reducing various forms of relational and psychological fragmentation.

Excluding gays and lesbians from marriage, by contrast, means excluding them from two things: first, the basic unit of social life in our culture; second, our primary model of responsible sexuality. By virtue of the former, gays and lesbians feel excluded from society and so gravitate to one another, forming a subculture of their own at society’s margins. Society as a whole becomes more…fragmented. By virtue of the latter, the sexual constraints characteristic of the broader society are less likely to be carried into the LGBT subculture. Their sexual relationships thus become less permanent, more…chaotic and fragmented. And with greater promiscuity comes dissociation of emotional and physical intimacy—an inner psychological fragmentation. Not to mention the spread of deadly diseases.

If sexuality without marriage really does have the negative costs that the BWF identifies, then this will be as true for gays and lesbians as it is for heterosexuals. Which means that restricting marriage to heterosexuals will promote greater “fragmentation, social chaos, violence, and death” within the LGBT community.

In short, a “yes” answer to question (a) above would seem to call for a “no” answer to question (b). The BWF’s capacity to say otherwise depends on obscuring the distinction between these two questions. By obscuring them, the “yes” answer to (a) can be implicitly attributed to (b) in a way that is simply not plausible when we are clear about the distinction.

The obfuscation here makes possible a kind of Orwellian double-speak. An institution is identified as a necessary guard against fragmentation and death; and so, in the name of avoiding fragmentation and death, some people are denied access to this very institution. True means false. Peace means war. Language has become a smokescreen for motivating people to embrace the opposite of reality.

But why throw up such a smokescreen at all? The reason, I think, is this: the BWF is committed to a strong view of biblical authority, one which requires them to treat as inerrant the negative judgment of homosexual relationships coming out of Paul’s epistles. And if such relationships really do embody everything that Paul apparently attributes to them--if they really are just an expression of "shameful lusts" inspiring "unnatural" acts that are "indecent" and "perverted" (Romans 1:26-27)--then how could we officially sanction them by enshrining and uplifting them with the same legal institution that we use to honor the marital relationship that we treat as having such positive worth? Taking Paul's comments here as literally authoritative seems to have some clear implications for how we should and shouldn't treat same-sex relationships.

But the progressive majority within the UCC is concerned that such biblical literalism can be and often is a source of unloving behavior. In effect, the view of the UCC's majority is something like this: If we really pay attention to the actual effects that following through on certain biblical teachings have, we see that those effects are harmful to our neighbors. Using love for our neighbors as the measuring stick for making judgments of “good” and “bad,” what can we say about the categorical condemnation of homosexuality that springs from an uncritical appropriation of isolated scriptural passages? All we can say is that they bear bad fruit.

And so, if we are to be faithful both to the core scriptural call to love our neighbors and to Jesus’ injunction to distinguish true prophecies from false ones by their fruits, we have to set aside certain teachings that seem to flow from an inerrantist approach to Scripture.

This is a deeply Christian—and, in a way, deeply biblical—critique of certain teachings that seem to flow from certain ways of approaching the Bible as a source of moral teachings. At the same time, it is a deeply Christian and biblical challenge to those ways of approaching the Bible. But conservatives have embraced a narrative according to which progressives are not motivated by deeply Christian concerns or by a fidelity to the actual content of Scripture. They are have, instead, “sold out” or "surrendered" to secular culture.

But the actual motives of Christian progressives (at least many of them) don’t fit with this narrative. Instead, progressives are (generally) motivated by a spirit of Christian love, and they look at the world and their neighbors through loving eyes…and find themselves noticing the “bad fruits” of some very traditional Christian teachings.

The harm that is done to gays and lesbians by the traditional condemnation of homosexuality is a case in point. The eyes of love see bad fruit growing from the tree of Paul’s un-nuanced treatment of same-sex relationships. The eyes of love give an empathetic appreciation of what it's like to be gay, an appreciation that is nowhere in evidence in Paul's comments in Romans. It's as if (surprise, surprise) Paul were writing his comments out of a deep well of ignorance, as if he had no notion of homosexuality as an orientation, no notion that some people might actually pursue monogamous same-sex relations out of such an orientation as opposed to being driven by an excess of lust to have sex with anything that moves, even someone of the same sex. And those of us who have paid compassionate attention to our gay and lesbian neighbors know the kind of debilitating effects that result from being told that their impulses to love, to build romantically intimate relationships, can never be anything but sinful (since they can never be towards people of the opposite sex). We know the potentially crushing psychological effects of being systematically excluded from participation in the bedrock social institution of marriage, of being set at the margins of society.

What is going on in the BWF position statement is, if you will, an attempt to turn the tables on this way of approaching the subject—to argue that if we look into the world with the eyes of Christian love, we will see the bad fruit that results from turning away from “heterosexual marriage.” The modern world becomes a “vivid parable” that attests to the costly consequences of rejecting traditional Christian teachings--including Christian teachings about restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

There is an attempt, if you will, to show that this approach of loving attention to our world—one with deep Christian roots—has implications which converge with those that result when we approach the Bible in the way conservatives are inclined to do: as inspired by God from cover to cover, as the ultimate authority for Christians, as authoritative in its “plain sense” at least when the meaning and authorial intentions are clear. In short, the BWF seeks here to reconcile two deeply Christian ways of reaching moral conclusions: the path of compassionate attention to how practices and policies actually affect individual and social life; and the path of appealing to the authority of clear biblical teachings.

If that argument can be sustained, then progressives who claim to be challenging the latter path on the basis of the former will be exposed as disingenuous. The conservative narrative—according to which progressive Christian ideas are ultimately the result (however unconscious) of selling out to secular culture—can be rehabilitated. Unfortunately, that argument is convincing only with the help of Orwellian obfuscations of the sort we find occurring (perhaps inadvertently) in the BWF's position statement.

Once such obfuscation is cleared away, I think we are left with the following picture: There is a real tension within traditional Christianity, one that has been brought to light by our current understanding of what it's like to be gay. Christian conservatives on the issue of homosexuality think that a certain traditional way of approaching the Bible, a certain way of approaching its authority for the purpose of reaching moral conclusions, is utterly central to an authentic Christian faith. Among other things, they believe that this sort of allegiance to the Bible and to the resultant teachings have to trump the lessons that emerge when we carefully attend, with compassion, to the actual effects of such teachings. Christian progressive, by contrast, think that the lessons of compassionate attention--a deeply traditional Christian approach to engaging with the world, one which is rooted in core biblical teachings--should trump the traditional approach to the Bible that conservatives cleave to. Progressives argue, furthermore, that a different kind of allegiance to the Bible favors giving compassionate attention such trump-card status.

This picture of things doesn’t support what, for conservatives, is surely a rather comforting narrative: “Progressives are sell-outs to modernity, while we conservatives are faithful to tradition.” Instead, we are left with a picture of things according to which the current Christian debate about homosexuality is a debate about what should be held as most central to Christianity—at a time when it is becoming increasingly clear that some deeply traditional elements of the faith are in conflict.

My "Manifesto"--An Open Letter Written in 2005, on the Occasion of my Leaving the ELCA

What follows is an open letter, written in 2005 within days of officially leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) for a congregation in the United Church of Christ. The move was in part an act of protest, a way of expressing my moral opposition to ELCA policies that, in my understanding, made God’s gay and lesbian children into second-class citizens within the life of the church. It was also made for a range of personal reasons, some of which are described in this letter. The letter was distributed via e-mail and I have really no idea how many have read it since 2005. I post it now in recognition of the historic votes that were made last week during the 2009 General Assembly of the ELCA, votes which overturned the policies that drove me into “exile.”

Dear Friends,

The other day, I officially became a Lutheran in exile. My family and I joined Fellowship Congregational Church in Tulsa, OK, making a commitment to drive one hour from home to attend a church that is open and affirming in its stance towards sexual minorities. Our experience at Fellowship has been wonderful, and I know that my family has found what is already proving to be a spiritually enriching church home.

Even so, my heart aches over this decision. In my heart and by my theology I am Lutheran. My heritage is half-Lutheran, and it is this heritage that I came to embrace in my adult faith journey. I have had and will always have a Lutheran identity and a personal commitment to the central Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith, a doctrine which has been so beautifully and powerfully developed within the Lutheran tradition. I will always be committed to the future of the Lutheran Church. And yet I find that I must, for the sake of my conscience and the spiritual welfare of my family, worship elsewhere. I have resigned my position on the church council of my home congregation and said goodbye to a community that has been my church home since moving to Oklahoma in June of 2000. My heart aches, but I cannot see another way to proceed.

Why do I leave? There are many answers. Here is one: I leave because my wife and I cannot imagine raising our son in a denomination whose policies formally exclude non-celibate gays and lesbians from the ministry and withhold from same-sex couples the kind of sacramental recognition that heterosexual couples take for granted. We believe that such policies formally endorse the marginalization of human beings based on their unchosen sexuality, excluding some of God’s children from full participation in the life of the church. Our hopes that these policies might be change at the 2005 General Assembly were dashed, compromised from the start by timid recommendations from the ELCA Task Force on Sexuality, a procedural decision by the ELCA Church Council that would require a supermajority to effect any changes in current policies, and a clear indication that the majority within the ELCA stands on the side of perpetuating these policies. And so we left.

That is one answer. But it is superficial. It expresses controversial ideas as if they were matters of fact. It doesn’t explain why I think the current policies are wrong or why I think that the ELCA’s error is so significant that I, at least, must worship elsewhere. And so I offer a deeper answer in the hope that someone might hear, perhaps even be moved to fight for change.

Here are some things that I know: the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians is such that they can know fulfilling romantic intimacy only with those of the same sex. For most gays and lesbians, if not all, a change of sexual orientation is impossible—even for those of faith who for years fall on their knees and pray fervently for such change. If God miraculously transforms the sexuality of some, he is rather sparing with this so-called miracle. And, as Luther noted, celibacy is a gift given to few. As such, it is a gift given to few gays and lesbians.

How do I know these things? The social scientific research supports these views, but that is not the main reason why I believe them. I believe them because my gay and lesbian friends and neighbors have shared their stories with me, have told me what it is like to be gay and a Christian. I have tried to listen to them with the kind of compassion and attention that I think is demanded by a commitment to an ethic of love. I know that these things are true because my gay and lesbian friends have told me so, and I know them well enough to know they are not lying, that they have no reason to lie.

The ELCA’s policies relating to homosexuality are not nearly as offensive as those of other Christian denominations. The Southern Baptists, for example, declare with a confidence bordering on arrogance that “homosexual conduct is always a gross moral and spiritual abomination for any person, whether male or female, under any circumstance, without exception.” They hold that even the desire for same-sex relations is “always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent and perverted.” For a time it seemed to me that it was enough that the ELCA’s stance was more nuanced than this, more fallibilistic. But it is not enough.

Historically, Christians have held that all forms of homosexual conduct are sinful. The implications of this teaching for gays and lesbians has been clear: they must suppress their sexuality. They must either enter into marriages with persons they cannot love, doing both themselves and their partners a profound injustice; or they must forego romantic intimacy whether they have the gift of celibacy or not. The current policies of the ELCA impose a requirement of celibacy on gay and lesbian clergy, a requirement that those fortunate enough to be straight need not observe. The ELCA imposes this requirement even though the Lutheran church has historically stood against clerical celibacy. Luther thought it was presumptuous to assume that God would call to ministry only those to whom He also gave the rare gift of celibacy. But the current policies of the ELCA formally declare that gays and lesbians in committed relationships shall not be ordained—declaring, in effect, that God would never call to ministry anyone who fits this description (as if we could know what God will or will not do).

The current policies of the ELCA also officially exclude gays and lesbians from participation in the only model of responsible sexuality that the Christian community has historically recognized: holy matrimony. As such, Christian gays and lesbians, as well as gays and lesbians more generally, grow up feeling fundamentally disconnected from their community, knowing that when they grow up, their dreams of life partnership and romantic intimacy will never receive the kind of social affirmation and support that their straight friends take for granted. Many feel like outsiders looking in a window at a feast they cannot join, like the little match girl in Hans Christian Anderson’s famous story. They feel cut off, and their sexuality is given no framework for its development and expression. Or, perhaps better, the only framework for understanding and expressing their sexuality that they are left with is the model offered by the secular world: media images that glorify objectification and reckless self-gratification, that say “do whatever feels good.”

These policies of exclusion are justified by two kinds of traditional appeals: appeals to Scripture interpreted in a conservative way, and appeals to inherited Christian theories about the nature and purpose of human sexuality. The ELCA, while acknowledging the controversy over traditional teachings, has chosen to err on the side of fidelity to these traditions rather than on the side of full inclusion. This choice strikes me as a dangerous mistake, in part because I think that commitment to a love ethic requires erring on the side of inclusion, but more significantly because I do not think that the justifications for the traditional views on homosexuality are very compelling.

The appeal to sparse biblical passages strikes me as a tragic misuse of Scripture, a misuse similar in kind to the historic use of Scripture to subordinate women. Yes, there are scriptural passages that put women in a subordinated place, that even preclude them from speaking in church. Yes, the subtext of Old Testament laws and stories is fundamentally patriarchal. But to treat these facts as sufficient to justify the subordination of women is to turn Scripture into a text suitable for the justification of moral horrors. And it is to ignore the broader themes of Scripture: themes of liberation, themes of compassion and love.

Any sincere holistic reading of Scripture reveals a clear commitment to an ethic of love. As such, it seems utterly clear to me that we must reject any approach to Scripture that leads to the endorsement of teachings that marginalize some of God’s children, that contribute to suicidal depression in gay teens, that stifle compassion and inspire otherwise good people not to hear the anguished cry of their gay and lesbian neighbors. Traditional teachings about homosexuality do all of these things. If our approach to understanding Scripture and its authority leads to these teachings, then it violates the ethic of love, and hence is a profound violation of the spirit of Scripture itself.

Scripture calls for us to love our gay and lesbian neighbors, to treat their needs as if they were those of Christ Himself. In other words, Scripture calls us to look beyond Scripture, to God and to our neighbor. If we attend to our gay and lesbian neighbors, we will hear stories of how traditional Christian teachings on homosexuality have crushed their souls. We will hear stories of how, rather than coming to them as a joyous chorus proclaiming the good news of reconciliation and redemption, the Christian church comes to them as a force of oppression and pain, as a life-deadening power. We will hear stories whose implications are more than clear: teaching that homosexuality is always a sin is itself a sin, because it poisons the lives of our gay and lesbian neighbors.

We do not hear these stories. While our gay and lesbian neighbors are crying out to be heard, to be received as full members in the life of the church, we ignore them in favor of discussing and debating the significance of Romans 1:26-27. This is a tragedy. We cannot afford to shout out Bible verses so loudly that we drown out the voice of Christ when He comes to us in the person of our neighbor. Any religion that, in the name of a high doctrine of Holy Scripture, cares more for isolated sentences on a page than it does about the anguished cry of our neighbors is, to borrow Martin Luther King’s language, a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried.

But what about tradition, some may ask? What about the historic witness of the church? For two thousand years the church has taught that homosexuality is a sin. Can we so lightly ignore two thousand years of Christian witness? Isn’t the acceptance of homosexuality nothing more than the act of abandoning traditional Christian values in response to current trends in secular culture?

To these questions, I respond with a question of my own: Isn’t it more loving to begin our reasoning about homosexuality with sustained sensitive attention to the lived experience of those most affected by our doctrines on the issue—gays and lesbians—than it is to rely on traditional teachings that were fashioned at a time when the social and historical realities made it impossible to have anything approaching an adequate concept of what it is like to be gay? The sexual mores we have inherited from our Christian forebears were formulated at a time in history when no one really knew anything at all about homosexuality. Those who had a homosexual orientation would not have had any name for their experience, no readily available concepts for describing it, and no opportunity to receive a fair hearing. The conditions under which it has become possible to understand the gay and lesbian experience have emerged only very recently in history. To simply assume that our inherited theories and doctrines adequately account for this new data, without careful critical reflection, goes beyond respect for tradition and treads headlong into blind dogmatism.

For these reasons, I cannot condone current policies in the ELCA. For these reasons, it is not enough for me and my family that the ELCA agrees (at the discretion of the local bishops) to deliberately turn a blind eye to violations of existing policies while keeping those policies in place. It is certainly not enough to have a few ELCA congregations defy the policy with the understanding that they won’t be prosecuted for it so long as they do it quietly and do not make a public stand for the cause of our gay and lesbian neighbors. And it is simply naïve to think that the needs of pastoral care for our gay and lesbian neighbors can be satisfied by a scattered and localized embrace of them, one that occurs in a context that officially denounces any kind of unqualified embrace of who they are.

These are the reasons why I cannot accept the current perspective of the ELCA. By themselves, however, these things do not explain why I leave. After all, there are many who share my views who have chosen to stay and fight. A part of me wants to do the same. A part of me fears that leaving will mean handing the ELCA over to those who, out of a misguided devotion to tradition or scriptural authority, perpetuate the oppression of sexual minorities. A part of me fears that if too many like me leave the church, ELCA congregations will become even more hostile to sexual minorities, and children who grow up gay in the ELCA will feel even more excluded, even more rejected. A part of me fears that, because of this choice, some child I might have lifted up will be beaten too far down by the messages of exclusion, and in a moment of despair will choose death.

So why do I leave? There are many reasons. I have two-year-old son. I do not know what his sexual orientation will be. But if he should turn out to be gay, I do not want him to be that child who is beaten down by messages of exclusion. I do not want him to be told that belief in God and Christianity requires us to make second-class citizens of our gay and lesbian neighbors. I do not want him to be fed an understanding of the nature of Scripture and its authority which has us exalt two sentences from Romans above the life stories of countless gay and lesbian people who have experienced those sentences as a strangling yoke.

Such practical injustice infects even the most beautiful theology, degrading and distorting its meaning. The Lutheran doctrines about Christ and our justification before God have, as their backdrop, a normative understanding of God as a creator whose essence is love. The normative centrality of love is fundamental to Lutheran theology, without which none of that theology makes sense. But it seems to me that current Lutheran practice with respect to our gay and lesbian neighbors lifts up certain beliefs about the sources of divine authority (Scripture and tradition) higher than the law of love, thereby fundamentally infecting the heart of Lutheran theology: its understanding of God and the justification wrought by Jesus of Nazareth.

I cannot help but believe that practice speaks louder than words, and that when a formally endorsed policy violates the law of love, the implications for how core theological principles are understood by the faith community—how they will be understood by my son—cannot help but be compromised. The fact that so many Lutherans today have no authentic understanding of the meaning and significance of Lutheran theology, that their theologies are often closer to those of moralistic televangelists even though their pastors preach traditional Lutheran theology from the pulpit, speaks powerfully to these dangers. It seems to me that my son is more likely to understand and appreciate the essence of Lutheran theology if I share that theology with him while attending a non-Lutheran faith community whose explicit teachings may be less powerful articulations of that theology but whose practices, worship life, and social commitments are fully consonant with it.

There are other reasons why we leave, reasons that have more to do with our emotional lives than with reasoned reflection. After a difficult, often emotionally trying process of going through the “Journey Together Faithfully” study at our church, my wife and I were drained and in need of spiritual renewal. What we received instead from the ELCA was a dashing of our hopes. Worship in our home congregation became tainted by those dashed hopes. It became increasingly difficult to find there the spiritual sustenance and rejuvenation that we so urgently needed as a family. We were worn out by the fight, and because the ELCA was the battleground it was not the place where we could find the spiritual food needed to fight on. And because the ELCA refused to provide so many of our loved ones with the kind of unqualified welcome and affirmation that makes a place feel like home, it could no longer feel like home to us.

I believe that it is possible for people to disagree vigorously about important issues and yet still be fully participating members of the same community of faith. But the “issue” of gay and lesbian ordination, of holy unions, is precisely about who gets to be a fully participating member of ELCA. The policies of the ELCA say that I have that privilege but my cousin Jake does not. My best friend John does not. Other people I love do not. Can I disagree and still be a fully participating member of the ELCA? Yes, but only because I have the good fortune to be straight.

And this is the final reason why I must leave. The ironic truth is this: Were I gay, I would stay and fight for change. I would clamor at the gate for full inclusion. Were I gay, to leave the church would be to embrace the message of exclusion that current ELCA policies convey. And so, as a way to protest that message, I would refuse to leave. But because I am straight, the only way I can clamor at the gate in solidarity with my gay and lesbian loved ones is to deliberately step outside. The ELCA policies are discriminatory, but they discriminate in my favor. They do not exclude me because of who I am. And so, because I am straight, I must leave under my own power. To fight for change alongside my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, I must become an outsider with them. I must become a Lutheran in exile.

ELCA Vote for Greater Inclusivity Stirs Up a Storm

In Minneapolis on Wednesday, the General Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed an important social statement. The statement acknowledges the lack of consensus within the ELCA concerning the ethics of homosexual relationships and essentially extends to individual congregations the right to decide for themselves whether and in what ways they will recognize or bless same-sex unions. The vote passed by precisely the two-thirds majority that was required. And when I say “precisely,” I mean exactly that. A single vote the other way, and the measure wouldn’t have passed.

At the time that deliberations on this agenda item were about to start, an unexpected tornadic storm passed through Minneapolis, causing significant damage in several parts of the city. A confirmed tornado went through an area south of downtown. The Electric Fetus record store had its windows blown out…and the storm also caused damage to the convention center where the General Assembly was being held as well as to the spire of nearby Central Lutheran Church.

Predictably, these last two facts have caused a number of conservative religious pundits such as John Piper to paint the storm as a divine warning: it was, they claim, God’s way of telling the ELCA General Assembly not to pass the social statement.

That’s one theory--a theory which inspires me to wonder what the First Baptist Church in Mena, AK did wrong to warrant a million dollars worth of tornado-related damage back in April. Since the tornado hit on Maundy Thursday (the day during Holy Week when churches around the world remember Jesus' Last Supper), maybe God was trying to urge the church to rethink its theory that Holy Communion is merely a symbolic memorial. How dare they deny the ancient Church's doctrine of transubstantiation on the very day when the event which instituted Holy Communion is commemorated? Outrageous! How could God not smite them?

Oh wait. Lots of churches treat Holy Communion as just a memorial, and most of them weren't hit by tornadoes on Maundy Thursday. Hmm. And then there's the fact that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church approved some even stronger measures towards gay and lesbian inclusion back in July, and even though the convention took place in Anaheim, CA, not a single earthquake shook up the proceedings.

So maybe Piper's theory isn't the best one. Here's another: The storm was God’s way of warning opponents of the ELCA social statement that He is not happy with those who stand in the way of expanding the scope of agapic love. Because He knew that the vote would be so close, God rattled the rafters of the convention center to put the fear of God in those assembly delegates who were thinking about blocking this move towards greater inclusion and compassion.

Then again, maybe the ELCA General Assembly wasn't God's target at all. Maybe God was furious with the Electric Fetus record store. Who knows why? Maybe He thought the name was in bad taste. Or, since the Electric Fetus has been described as "iconic," He may have been expressing His wrath against graven images. More likely, it was because one of its employees is a secret fan of Air Supply.

Or maybe one of the drivers on I-35W, where the tornado touched down, was actually listening to Air Supply, inspiring even greater divine outrage. Perhaps the Electric Fetus employee hooked him up with the CD.

Of course, it might be that God was mad at the trees that were knocked down at 42nd and Portland. There is some biblical support for this. Jesus did, after all, curse an olive tree. Then again, since the storm system spawned tornado touchdowns in other parts of Minnesota, as well as in Iowa and other states, it may be that there are Air Supply fans elsewhere who inspired God’s wrath.

Or perhaps we should conclude that since no one was harmed in the convention center, God was actually protecting the members of the assembly from the storm so that they might complete the important work they had before them. Since injuries would have been more likely to take out delegates who voted with the two-third majority in favor of the measure, and since the measure would have failed if even one of these delegates hadn’t been present for the vote (had the storm taken out a few of the opponents, it wouldn’t have changed the result), we might conclude that God’s protection ended up saving the day for the advocates of greater inclusion.

We might even suppose, given the precipitous and unexpected nature of the tornadic storm, that it was spawned by Satan in an attempt to preserve policies of exclusion in the ELCA. Thankfully, God protected the good delegates of the assembly. Satan, furious at having his malign will thwarted, petulantly swatted Central Lutheran’s steeple on his way out of town.

Then again, maybe it was just a storm.