Six views of homosexuality precede a closed meeting to discuss them
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, August 4, 2004
DALLAS – William Stacy Johnson, a Princeton theologian, cut the varying viewpoints about ordaining practicing homosexuals into six slices Wednesday, but when the time came for other members of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity to deal with the denomination’s most tumultuous issue, they decided to go behind closed doors.
After Johnson’s presentation, the members of the task force met Wednesday afternoon in an executive session, the first time they have used the 215th General Assembly’s authorization to exclude the press and observers from their deliberations.
Vicky Curtiss of Ames, Iowa, made the motion for the closed meeting on Tuesday night. The vote was 16-1 in favor of her motion, with two abstentions. John “Mike” Loudon of Lakeland, Fla., the only task force member who has said unequivocally that he opposes changing Presbyterian law that prohibits the ordination of practicing homosexuals, cast the only vote against the motion.
The Layman Online asked Curtiss whether she called for the closed meeting because of her concern about the press or the reaction of Presbyterians. She said neither was the case. She said members of the task force wanted to speak candidly about the ordination issue and to use names of people affected by it, adding that she was personally worried about the press publishing those names.
Johnson seemed to lay the groundwork for the executive session. He outlined and critiqued what he described as six prevailing views about ordination, emphasizing that he gleaned them from many writers and that they did not necessarily represent his own position.
“The purpose of this session,” he said, “is for us to have a clear grasp of the issues regarding the place of homosexual people in the church.” He emphasized that he was not taking sides during the presentation – his attempt to prevent the recurrence of a predicament he encountered during his first year as a member of the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary.
“I was asked to speak in a panel discussion and to represent the traditional position on ordination,” he said. “Immediately, there were calls demanding my resignation.”
The six viewpoints covered by Johnson were:
1. Categorical prohibition.
2. Welcoming but not affirming.
3. It’s a justice issue.
4. It’s a pastoral-care issue.
5. Celebrationists
6. Consecrationalists.
Categorical prohibition
Those who would categorically prohibit the ordination of homosexuals take literally Biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior. “This view is not the view of definitive guidance,” Johnson said, referring to the General Assembly’s 1978 (Northern denomination) and 1979 (Southern denomination) declarations.
People engaged in homosexual behavior, he said, “are to be categorically prohibited [from church membership] as a violation of creation. They argue that homosexual activity is deficient, that it does not conform to ‘Biblical complementarity'” – a phrase he used to describe the relationship between a man and a woman as established by God in the Genesis creation story.
Johnson said those who favor categorical prohibition agree with the late Karl Barth, whose arguments against homosexuals was based on “gender complementary” as being the distinguishing mark of men and women being created in the image of God.
However, he added, Barth’s depiction of what constituted the image of God is “novel and quite unusual” because single people, including Jesus, would not adequately express the image of God. Yet, he said, Jesus is the image of God.
Johnson guessed that maybe 5 percent of the members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) would favor categorical prohibition of homosexuals being members of churches.
“Worst of all,” he said, “if being heterosexual defines what is normative, it is hard to avoid the question that homosexual people are not normal humans, but subhuman.”
Welcoming but not affirming
This is essentially the viewpoint expressed by the 1978-79 definitive guidance, which was reaffirmed by the 216th General Assembly last month.
Johnson termed that guidance “a polity solution rather than a theological solution.” He said it also broke new ground by “embracing the category of sexual orientation” and signaling a “clear recognition that the church’s teaching on this subject had to change. It moved the church toward a welcoming stance toward homosexuals.”
Once “sexual orientation” is accepted as a category for considering homosexual issues, he added, “one has made a decision to exit the worldview of the Biblical writers who focused on sex acts.”
Instead of condemning homosexual acts as a perversion, the definitive guidance viewed homosexuality as a “tragedy” in a fallen world, he said.
Johnson pointed out that the definitive guidance requires double repentance: repentance by “homophobic persons” who condemn people with homosexual orientation and repentance by homosexuals “who must repent of acting out their being gay.”
It’s a justice issue
“Many justice advocates accept the notion in the definitive guidance that homosexuality is a tragedy,” he said. “What they focus on is the logic of inviting homosexuals into membership and excluding them from leadership.”
To the justice advocates, Johnson added, “same-sex orientation may be a tragedy, but it is no different from any other sinful condition.”
Justice advocates argue that in the Protestant church “far more damage has been done by heterosexuals than homosexuals” and that reconciliation with homosexuals is a civil rights issue. “Justice advocates consider it unseemly that the church would exempt itself from extending similar rights within its own walls, either in ordination or employment practices. Yet, in our churches, employees are still being fired for being gay, even if they are not.”
Other characteristics of justice advocates, Johnson said, is their focus on giftedness for ministry and not sexual identity, and that the “model of what redeemed life looks like should not be taken from Ozzie and Harriet, but should be taken from Jesus Christ, who invited sinners.”
It’s a pastoral-care issue
Johnson led off this approach with three real-life stories, in which, he said, he changed the names.
The first one was about Joe, who left his wife after 14 years of marriage, telling her he was gay. The second was about Rick, a corporate executive, whose wife, Michelle, discovered that she was a lesbian and left him to live with another woman. “Three years later, Michelle and Jane are sitting on the back row of a Presbyterian Church wondering if they would be accepted.” The third was about Ryan, who wrestled with homosexual tendencies from youth, became a psychiatrist and formed “a powerful emotional bond with a young man named Neal. They’ve been together for 21 years. Ryan and Neal have never had sexual relations.”
He used those stories “and countless others” as the “experiential lens” through which many Presbyterians agree that same-sex acts are not the intention for humanity but “nevertheless, they are convinced that we should encourage same-sex partnerships as the lesser evil.”
Johnson equated their predicament with other issues in which the church has made accommodation through pastoral care. “We know war is not God’s will, but sometimes war is the lesser of evils. We know that the Bible speaks ill of divorce, but we know the church permits divorce.”
“The pastoral approach is looking for real solutions for real people,” he said. Even before Northern and Southern mainline Presbyterians reunited in 1983, the Southern denomination had planted “some of the seeds for this pastorally focused position … in its version of this definitive guidance document.”
“It does not speak of the homosexual condition as a sin. Rather, to avoid falling into a shallow and moralistic view, it takes the homosexual condition to be an effect of sin. It does not preclude the possibility of relatively loving and faithful actions even within the framework of such a condition as sin,” he added.
Johnson said the rejection of Amendment O, which would have prohibited Presbyterians from conducting services to bless same-gender couples, reflected the pastoral approach, viewing committed same-sex partnerships as “better than promiscuity.”
Celebrationists (Welcome and affirming)
Advocates of this view do not believe homosexuality contradicts God’s creative purposes. “Homosexuality is not considered to be a part of fallen nature, but a more or less consistent fact of created nature. The approach here is to replace a grudging accommodation with a gracious acceptance.”
Presbyterians in the welcome and affirming camp argue that nature does not always conform to the condemnation of homosexual behavior. “There are some 471 animals that exhibit forms of same-sex sexuality,” Johnson said.
“If it is so abundantly manifest in the animal world, then arguments about same-sex among humans” lose their force “and it will no longer do to make sweeping generalizations about what homosexuality is.”
He said the welcoming and affirming view regards homosexuality “as God’s good gift” that should be celebrated, not repressed or condemned.
Instead of repenting of their sexual orientation, “homosexual people should cease to live alienated lives and should instead become reconciled to their own sexuality.”
“Celebrationists also acknowledge the need to confess when this good gift is abused and take responsibility for the healing of relationships,” Johnson said.
Johnson indicated that he believed the celebrationists constituted the most aggressive movement for homosexual ordination in the denomination. He also said they frequently adopt a “politics of protests” and “contempt for allies who want to move more slowly.”
“One of the challenges is to what extent the celebrationists can remain distinctly Christian … and not transgress traditional Christian theological boundaries,” he said. “It is one thing to say gays and lesbians can fulfill or approximate fidelity and chastity; it’s another thing to say fidelity and chastity are wrong.”
He said celebrationists have a tendency to “use language that sometimes romanticizes sexuality.”
Consecrationists
“The consecrationists are urging the church to reflect more deeply on what sexuality was created for, what constitutes sexual wholeness,” Johnson said.
“Consecrationists argue that the purpose of sexual desire, when properly understood and practiced, is to lift us up to God’s desire for us in Christ.”
They also argue that there is “nothing distinctly theological about focusing on the sex act itself. Consecrationists do not agree that a homosexual orientation is good in and of itself. They agree that all sexuality has the potential to be rendered perverse and tragic.”
Consecrationists support homosexual marriage as a means to order their lives as a part of God’s covenant community, Johnson said. They would say, “To define ourselves as straight and gay is wrong; we are brothers and sisters in Christ.”
“Consecrationists are convinced that the issue of same-sex unions is prior to and ultimately more important than ordination,” he added. “Sin does not reside in orientation, but in how one orders one’s life.”