Here are some points I made (edited somewhat) in a debate over at the TitusOneNine blog.
1. In a letter to the L.A. Times, the estimable Dr. Kendall Harmon claims that The Current Dispute in the church concerning homosexual activity “ is not a debate about inclusion but about holiness.”
Kendall is half right: It is, as he says, a debate about holiness. But indeed it is also about inclusiveness.
Many modernists accept the premise that same-sex unions can in fact be holy, to some degree or another. They conclude that SSU should therefore be included — there’s that word — in the catalog of things eligible for the church’s blessing and support. Traditionalists deny the premise and therefore the conclusion – and are willing to sunder the church rather than be associated with those who think otherwise.
2. An anonymous commenter opined that it’s not the traditionalists who are causing the split, but rather that “the provocative elevation of VGR [Bishop Gene Robinson] was the act which sundered the church.”
Following that line of reasoning to its logical extreme, it was the “provocative” election of Abraham Lincoln – which likewise took place in accordance with an established, agreed, democratic process – that sundered the Union. I doubt many people, other than perhaps a few remaining “Fergit, hell!” folks, would see it that way. (Another commenter took me to task for using this analogy, but it seems to me to be a useful one.)
We can also analogize to the events recounted in Acts 15. Recall that
the early church had a debate, seemingly a fierce one, about
whether to allow uncircumcised Gentiles to share table fellowship with
the Jewish Christians. James the brother of Jesus ruled that yes, uncircumcised Gentiles would indeed be admitted to fellowship, provided that they observed certain key elements of the Law.
From Galatians 2, we know that James’s decision was not greeted with
universal approved by all in the Jewish church. Suppose the Judaizing party had refused to accept that decision,
and instead had refused to associate with anyone who shared the table with
uncircumcised Gentiles.
That seems much like what many
traditionalists in ECUSA are doing today, when they call for schism in
response to the prayerful, democractically-made decisions of GC 2003.
3. The same anonymous commenter also wrote: “Recall that the
primates said the elevation of VGR would ‘tear the sacramental unity of
the church at a fundamental level. That was the sundering.”
That’s only true if one defines “the church” as the broader Anglican
Communion. As has been noted many times before, many Episcopalians
don’t.
I think we can safely presume that the GC 2003 delegates
prayerfully took the views of “the primates” into consideration, and
decided that others factors carried more weight. That’s the nature of decisionmaking – somebody has to weigh the competing factors and make the tough decisions. Not everyone will be happy with those
decisions; the question is, what do they do about it?
4. Some traditionalists claim that it’s not them, but the modernists, who are choosing to walk apart from the Anglican Communion. That’s a very easy argument to resolve. All we have to do is look at who now refuses to take
Communion with whom, when they would have done so in the past. (Hint: It
ain’t us modernists.)
5. Traditionalists seem to demand that, always and everywhere, we must use Scripture as the ultimate, authoritative standard to define “normal.” Modernists, in contrast, are willing to look to Scripture for guidance,
but not as the ultimate authority. By my definition, modernists face the
facts. When dealing with a set of all-too-human writings from 1,900+
years ago, modernists don’t cavalierly disregard obvious reliability
issues. Neither do they elevate the writings as a verbal golden calf to
which all spiritual and moral thinking must conform.
That’s a fundamental difference in approaches to life. I’m afraid I don’t see it ever getting worked out; as Thomas Kuhn (?) once said, old
theories never die until old theorists do.
6. Of course we have tradition and reason as well as Scripture. Where does "tradition" end? With Nicaea? Chalcedon? Augustine? Aquinas? Newman? Harmon?
Zahl? If Harmon and Zahl, why not Borg and Macquarrie?
7. Modernists typically regard tradition as an evolving body of
knowledge, the sum total of humanity’s experience filtered and
understood by the community, sometimes with different streams that can
diverge from and even contradict one another. I tend to think of
tradition as akin to scientific knowledge – just as new theories often
have to fight for acceptance, so too do new accretions to tradition.
8. The definition of ‘good’ seems to be at the heart of the
dispute. Probably we all agree that it is meet and right to look to
Scripture and tradition for guidance.
But it seems to me that we need
to differentiate between (i) rules of behavior that prevent us from
doing harm to others or ourselves, versus (ii) rules that simply remind us of our
relationship with God. Two rules in the latter category come to mind from the Roman church: Priestly celibacy, and abstaining from meat on Fridays, echoed in our
own tradition of fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Many
modernists regard a rule of celibacy outside of man-woman marriage to be mostly in the
latter category. To be sure, it’s a good rule to follow, especially when you’re young (I certainly want my teen-agers to follow it). Moreover, not following the rule can be risky if you’re not careful. But it’s hard to say that failing to follow the rule is per se a bad thing.
Rules in the latter category are great as voluntary disciplines. But I don’t see how we
can justify demanding adherence to such rules as a condition of being a
“good” or “faithful” Christian.
In particular, for the church to tell committed, consenting-adult homosexuals
that they cannot be “good” Episcopalians unless they remain celibate, seems very much arbitrary and capricious.
And then there’s the question of sheer efficacy. If we want to set out disciplinary rules for people’s own good (as opposed to for the purpose of protecting others), I can think of better ones than telling homosexuals to stay celibate. We’d likely have a far more beneficial impact on people’s lives if we proclaimed that you can’t be a good Episcopalian unless you quit smoking,
drink no more than one drink per day, exercise at least four times a
week, and go to church at least three Sundays a month.
9. A commenter asks, since I regard some portions of the Bible as unreliable, “[w]hy does this same objection not apply to everything in the Bible, no matter how consistently it is stated?”
Here we see yet another example of traditionalist black-or-white
thinking. (Some educational psychologist really ought to do a study of
why this fallacy of the false dichotomy is so pandemic among traditionalists.) You might as well ask me why I decline to throw the baby out with the bath water.
By analogy, we know that Galen’s ancient writings on anatomy are
flawed in many respects. We also know that the laws of physics
expressed in Newton’s Principia break down when we consider relativistic or quantum phenomena. I could go on and on with more examples, but there’s no need.
Do we reject and scorn the writings of Galen and Newton because we
now know them to be partly unreliable? By no means! Instead, we try
to build on their legacies, while acknowledging their limitations, and
while honoring their authors as being among the giants, on whose shoulders we
stand (as Newton put it) to see just a little farther than they did. There’s no reason not to do likewise with the Bible.
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