The Churchwide (aka national) Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) starts August 17 and runs through August 23 at the Convention Center in Minneapolis. I was elected a Voting Member (like a delegate, but we do not use that term because we don’t go to the Assembly bound by a regional opinion or something). I will be staying full-time that week at the Hilton Hotel near the Convention Center.
This is a really huge matter because the ELCA will be consider a proposal to adopt what has turned out to be a pretty good Social Statement (34 pp.) on Human Sexuality, and then a momentous policy change on how pastors and lay professional people are allowed to be on the "roster" of the ELCA. The big proposed change, if adopted, would be that gay and lesbian persons who are in committed relationships would be allowed to be ordained, or if lay professionals, appointed, and fully recognized in the ELCA.
As you might imagine, there are quite a few people lining up in opposition. I am on a national team that has been working on this stuff for the last six years. We have monthly conference calls, and for the last month, weekly calls or even more often. We meet face-to-face from time to time. There are about a dozen of us. Strategizing for this is amazingly complex. One has to know Roberts Rules of Order inside and out, which I pretty much do. We work on how to offer counter-arguments to those who say "the Bible is against homosexuals," also theological studies that have been done. We recently read new documents that have come out from the American Psychological Association (APA) regarding what is called "reparative therapy" - groups who want to use methods, some pretty awful, to convince gay or lesbian persons that they can be "changed" to be straight. APA has said for years that reparative therapy is bogus and does not work.
On August 5, just a few days ago, the American Psychological Association, meeting in Toronto, adopted a resolution stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments. This is based on new studies they have done on this matter.
The matter of how gay and lesbian persons are treated and included in society and the church has been very important for me, because I believe that they have been unjustly treated and excluded and that from the point of view of God’s grace and love, there is no reason for the church to keep them from full participation in the church, including as pastors. Of course, the experience of my brothers, James and John, as identical twins who were gay, is a personal reason for me to have been working on this for all these years.
I think we have a pretty good chance that the ELCA will change its policy by action of this Assembly. I will be hard at work to make this happen.
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Hi Paul-I will claim that I was the first to respond to your blog. Dixie and I were in England when the Anglicans did battle in Anaheim. Only cricket and Tom Watson's amazing golf feat competed for space in the press. The comment, "The suffering of all sides of the homosexuality debate must be borne by the entire church" stuck me as suggesting a context for discussion that I hadn't thought of much before. Common suffering may be the 'unity' that's possible at this moment.
ReplyDeleteI thought of you immediately as I sat at a coffee shop in Oxford reading The Guardian. If the article doesn't sustain you any, I hope my thinking of you does. Do well next week, but don't put too much trust in Robert's Rules. Peace, Rick
Saturday 18 July 2009
(there are) those who assert that the Episcopal Church's desire to move toward ecclesial equality for gay Christians increases the strain in the Anglican communion, in this case, to the breaking point. But this formulation assumes that gays and lesbians are not themselves part of the communion and that the rejection and demonising they have endured at Anglican hands somehow doesn't count.
Our church has not sought to increase the strain in the communion, but to redistribute it. The suffering on all sides of the debate over homosexuality must be borne by the entire church. Ideally, it would be borne by the entire communion in the form of generous pastoral discretion and respect for the discernment of individual provinces, but Williams and a majority of the primates have rejected this most Anglican of accommodations in favour of a single-issue magisterium on the issue of homosexuality.
Gradually, tentatively, the Episcopal Church has begun to push back. The result, in Anaheim, was a pair of resolutions that attempted to be firm yet conciliatory, recognising the need to move, but move slowly, in order to bring along as much of the church as possible. A resolution that touches obliquely on the consecration of gay bishops is best understood as a description of the conflicted state in which we find ourselves, and the tortuous road we took to get here. It recognises that gay and lesbian Christians are called to ministry in our church, notes that some people oppose their participation at certain levels, and makes clear that as we work through this issue, we aren't in a position to guarantee the outcome.
Members of the communion unhappy with this legislation will be even less pleased by a resolution that will allow bishops to practice pastoral generosity in dealing with gay couples who want their unions blessed. This same resolution also authorised the collection and development of "theological and liturgical resources" regarding the "holy unions" of same-sex couples. These "resources" could not be adopted by the church until 2012, at the earliest, but they might be deployed in dioceses in which the bishop is offering pastoral generosity.
In passing this legislation, the Episcopal Church asserts the false nature of the choice we are being offered by Williams and other leaders of the communion. It is not necessary to toe a narrow doctrinal line of the archbishop's choosing to enjoy deep fellowship in the Anglican communion. Fifteen primates, along with priests, theologians and lay leaders from around the communion, were with us in Anaheim. These relationships, parish to parish, diocese to diocese, are unlikely to founder whether we get invited to the next big Anglican purple party or not.
In short, we did not resolve the tensions either in our church or in the communion, but we learned better how to bear with one another as we attempt to discern the will of God. I'd like to think that is a contribution to the larger church.
Jim Naughton is the canon for communications and advancement at the Episcopal diocese of Washington