Open and Affirming: What does it mean and what does it mean for Douglass?
As part of Douglass's ongoing discernment of whether our congregation will adopt the mantle of an open and affirming congregation, we would like to address some frequently asked questions about the process.
1. Isn't Douglass already open and affirming? No. While Douglass has always been a very welcoming community of faith to anyone interested in worshipping with us, we are not an "open and affirming" faith community. That designation is reserved for a congregation that has undertaken a discernment process and has made the decision to state affirmetively that it will support gay, lesbian and transgendered members of the community and to allow its gay, lesbian and transgendered members to serve in all aspects of the church, whether it be as an elder, a child care worker or as a minister.
2. Why is our congregation considering this issue now? There are actually a few answers to that. First, we have been meeting with other congregations in the Highlands about partnering together on worship and social activities. Other churches in our area who wish to partner with us on these events have undergone discernment and are "open and affirming" congregations. They have raised the issues to Douglass because it is important to their faith community and may shape our future dealings with them. Second, we have been in the process of visioning at Douglass and are also looking for a senior minister. Since this is an issue that may be of concern to potential candidates for the post of senior minister, the Leadership Team and the elders felt like now was a natural time to look at this issue so that we can address it openly during the search process.
3. How will the designation of "open and affirming" change Douglass? It is difficult to predict. We may see little actual change in our day to day lives here at Douglass. However, I know from personal experience that the designation may make the difference to some potential members visiting Douglass. When I first visited the congregation, I wanted to know immediately what position Douglass had taken on the issue. I have close family members who are lesbian and I did not want my children brought up in a church which would teach intolerance or discrimination about a gay lifestyle. Dean was very reassurng but he had to admit that Douglass had not taken a stand on the issue and so he could not make any definite statement about the congregation's position. An "open and affirming" desigantion would let visitors and other congregations know that Douglass has considered and proclaimed its acceptance of gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals into our community as full members to serve in whatever capacity they felt called to undertake. There may also be some people who will be uncomfortable with allowing gay, lesbian and transgendered folk to serve in our church. That is why we are asking the congregation to participate fully in this discernment to to express its opinion by taking part in a written vote on the issue during a congregational Town Hall meeting. Since this discernment goes to the question of who we are as a faith community, we ask that all members of the congregation give the matter their serious and prayerful consideration.
4. What Biblical support is there for our church family to adopt this position? As always, it is important to remember that scripture is a product of human beings who are doing their best to write down God's message. Social norms and individual prejudices can color translations of the scriptures as they are handed down through the generations. In particular, the scattered references to homosexuality in the Old and New Testaments presuppose very different manifestations of homosexual behavior than the relationships between willing, consenting adults of the same sex with which we are familiar today, as well as different reasons for why homosexual practices of any sort would be morally blameworthy.
Let’s start with the Old Testament. In ancient Israel and the ancient Near East, our information on the nature and prevalence of homosexual practices is limited. It is clear, though, from the prohibitions against (male) homosexual behavior in Leviticus (18:22; 20:13) that they were motivated at least as much out of a perceived need to reproduce than they were out of a judgment that same-sex relations between men were inherently immoral. Given the nature of the case, same-sex intercourse between men cannot conceive a child, and so if one deems it a matter of overriding importance that sexual intercourse “bear fruit” whenever possible (that “no seed should be spilled” (Genesis 38:6-9)), same-sex intercourse between men appears needlessly wasteful.
Add to this the fact that people in the ancient Near East thought that in sexual reproduction women played a completely passive role—mere seed-beds for the male “seed,” which contained the entire potential of the human being—and we get a comprehensive explanation for the Torah’s prohibitions against same-sex relations between men, masturbation, and coitus interruptus (Leviticus 15:16-18) as well as its silence regarding same-sex relations between women.
Another frequently-cited text is the story of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis (19:1-29). This story has historically been interpreted to mean that God destroyed the cities of the plain because they engaged in same-sex relations, and indeed wanted to have such relations with God’s messengers. (The author of the book of Jude seems to interpret it in this way: see Jude 7.) Like the prohibitions in Leviticus, though, it is equally plausible to interpret God’s wrath at Sodom not as wrath at homosexual sex per se, but instead for Sodom’s rejection of hospitality and willingness to do violence to strangers. In a place as sparsely populated and free of stable, widespread governing institutions as the ancient Near East, the norm of hospitality to strangers and travelers was of overriding importance so as to prevent needless strife. Violating the norm of hospitality was thus a far more serious matter there and then than it is here and now, in which hospitality is considered a personal virtue unconnected with the maintenance of social order, and perhaps even threatening to it (as many parties to the recent political debates over immigration in the US seem to think).
Turning to the New Testament, the references in it to homosexuality definitely presuppose practices far different than the relationships between willing, consenting adults with which we are now familiar. While the Gospels are silent on the issue, there are scattered instances in the letters of Paul in which he categorizes homosexual practices as among groups of morally vicious actions like theft and murder (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10). However, Paul most likely has in mind the most prevalent homosexual practices of the ancient Roman and Hellenistic world. Those practices either involved prostitution or older men who maintained temporary relationships with young (teenage) men and boys. Those relationships were geared primarily towards the sexual pleasure and aesthetic enjoyment of the older man. Given that none of those relationships were between equals in power and status, a case can be made that why Paul thought they merited condemnation was not, again, the fact that they involved same-sex relations per se, but instead that they were exploitative for reasons not essentially related to the sexual practices involved.
This latter point may be difficult to appreciate, since Paul doesn’t parse his moral logic so finely. However, he wouldn’t have seen the need to. Committed, mutually fulfilling relationships of equals between same-sex partners would have been virtually unknown in the Hellenistic world, and the few that may have existed almost certainly met with widespread disapproval, even from those who practiced the more familiar “casual” kind of homosexuality. Why would Paul think to parse his moral reasoning finely enough to account for a case that would have been virtually unimaginable to him?
Another reference to homosexual practices in Paul (Romans 1:18-32) has historically given rise to the notion that Christians should condemn them because they are contrary to nature, which—so the argument runs—clearly ordains heterosexuality. While the debate over the natural law tradition in Christian ethics is far too wide-ranging to settle here, its application to the morality of homosexuality raises issues that ultimately go beyond Biblical interpretation. For instance, natural-law critics of homosexuality are prone to co-opt the above observation about the exploitative nature of ancient Hellenistic homosexuality Paul criticizes by saying that all homosexual relations are inherently exploitative, repressive, and harmful. They are inherently harmful, so the argument continues, since they all involve forcing human beings to act contrary to their (fundamentally heterosexual) nature. Whatever can be said in favor of this view, it is worth noting that it is in principle susceptible to empirical investigation outside the bounds of the Bible, since it claims that nature itself, independently of what any text says, is such that homosexuality is inherently harmful to all involved. (This is the most plausible way to interpret the “methodology” Paul himself had in mind; see Romans 1:18-20.) Thus, it seems that if homosexual practices are inherently harmful and disordered, we should be able to see that harm by looking directly at homosexual practices in the world. It is the present writer’s opinion, though, that there is ample evidence, both anecdotally and in the social science literature, to the contrary. The larger point, however, is that once the debate over homosexuality reaches this stage, it has left Biblical interpretation behind for another kind of discussion.
--Amy Elam-Krizan and Brian Cubbage
If you are intersted in joining one of the teams please contact the team leader.
