Seminary professor says PCUSA task force will follow Lutherans on ordaining active homosexuals
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, June 18, 2005
EDINA, Minn. – “All mainline denominations are heading toward the rapids,” said Robert A.J. Gagnon as he opened his workshop on “Scriptural Authority, Church Unity and Sexual Conduct” at the New Wineskins Convocation on Thursday.
Gagnon at his Thursday workshop.“The United Church of Christ is has already gone over,” he said, then asked, “Who’s next?”
His opinion – in order: The Episcopal Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of American, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and then the United Methodist Church.
“Who knows when the Baptists and others will come on down.”
Gagnon, associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, then gave an update on where the PCUSA is today.
“The church continues to want to hear all the voices until we get it right,” Gagnon said. “And once that happens we won’t hear the rhetoric of hearing the voices anymore. We will hear that the church has spoken.”
Gagnon said that those in favor of ordaining homosexuals and blessing same-sex unions are using “incrementalism” or incremental coercion, which means they get as much as they can go for, take that gain, and then take new steps.
Task force predictions
The Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity is “not going to recommend a complete eradication of the current policy on sexuality,” Gagnon said.
He predicts that the task force will follow the example of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, which is recommending that the church not change its current policy that expects unmarried ministers to abstain from sexual relations and defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. But a Lutheran task force says the ELCA should allow exceptions from that policy.
“And what are the exceptions?” he asked? “If you are in a committed homosexual union and you want to be ordained or have that union blessed, that is the exception.”
“To me that sounds like they gutted their whole policy,” he said.
Gagnon said that the PCUSA’s task force was “selected to achieve a desired result – the loudest voices tend to be on Covenant Network side,” he said, adding that the PCUSA is “not going to appoint me to task force.”
If the PCUSA follows the lead of the ELCA, then the denomination’s standards on ordination becoms “merely a matter of local option … a sneaky local option variant,” he said. “That is the kind of thing we can expect from the task force. … I hope and pray that they affirm the current policy, but I don’t think they will.”
Gagnon said that since the main policy would still be in place, the membership of the PCUSA might let its guard down. The General Assembly, he predicts, will approve the task force’s recommendation, “and then it will be up to the courage of the people in the presbyteries, and there I have no idea what will happen.”
“I want to think presbyteries will be smart enough to turn it back,” he said. His odds on that: 60-40. But if presbyteries approve allowing exceptions, “Then it is all over.”
Gagnon said there needs to be “a holy agitation about this issue in the church … these are things that matter … the church itself is at stake on this.”
He recommended fighting in a loving way and a holy way. “We are engaged in a battle not against flesh and blood but about principalities – people are being used in this.”
Gagnon said that the best analogy for homosexuality in Scripture is incest. “It’s a good example because it is held with similar revulsion in Scripture.”
He said the requirement for a sexual counterpart – a sexual other half – is the most foundational sexual requirement given in Scripture.
In I Corinthians 5, the Corinthian church has a problem – “a man has his father’s wife.” And Paul’s response in verses 4-5: “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
“Paul doesn’t ask if it is a committed union, or do you intend it to be long-term and monogamous,” Gagnon said.
“We know based on Paul that the whole issues of love and commitment and permanence of the union is secondary to meeting certain requirements,” he said. Paul didn’t want the relationship to be long term – he wanted to end it.
“And it is the same thing with homosexual practice,” Gagnon said. “Making it long-term or committed doesn’t make it okay. … The Scriptural requirements have to be met.”
Scripture
In I Thessalonians, Gagnon said that Paul spends the first three chapters giving thanks for the Gentile converts. Then he gets around to discussing moral expectations.
Chapter 4:2-8: “For you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us his Holy Spirit.”
“It’s quite clear in looking at this text that it is an extreme offense to violate these commands,” Gagnon said. “If you reject these commands and say ‘I’m going to do what I want to do,’ then you reject the God who gave you the Holy Spirit.”
Another Scripture reference cited by Gagnon was I Corinthians 6:9-11: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
“And the church is currently deceiving people,” Gagnon said.
He quoted from verses 18-20: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Sex, Gagnon said, is a holistic experience and when you merge with another and Jesus is in you, then you involve Jesus in immorality.
Gagnon used the example that if his daughter wanted to touch a hot stove, and he said “go ahead, knock yourself out,” then he would be jailed, or his daughter would be taken away. “But we think nothing of people engaging in behavior that has eternal repercussions.”
Another Scripture cited by Gagnon was Ephesians 5:3-6: “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. … For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person … has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.”
“And the task force, that is already talking positively about committed same-sex relationships, has already violated this passage,” said Gagnon.
The task force, he said, should be disbanded and the ordination policy should be left in the constitution.
“Grace isn’t about saying you can do what you want – it is your business,” he said. “Grace is about coming alongside people and helping them along the journey to the kingdom of God. … Jesus said if anyone wants to be my disciple let him or her take up his cross … that doesn’t seem to me like a mild reform of one’s life. Nothing less than death is being asked of us. There is a part of the Christian life that involves denying intractable innate urges.”
“What we are fighting for – in the sexual issues – it nothing less than the meaning of grace … nothing less than the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives,” Gagnon said. The fight over homosexual ordination and same-sex unions just happens to be the presenting issue.
“Jesus is asking right now – how faithful do you want to be?” Gagnon asked. Allowing exceptions, he said is only going to intensify the struggle.
“Think about do you want to lead people to a church that puts them in jeopardy of their eternal life if the church does go over on this issue? Is it OK to engage in behavior that is duplicitous in God’s eyes?”