A calm voice

Offering a calm voice in the midst of "a bitter battle"

[8-20-01]

We recently received an e-mail from a person who expressed concern about some things that have been said on this web site, since he felt they were contributing to the climate of tension in our church, and he, as a conservative, is anxious to find ways to get through those tensions.

Our brief correspondence led him to elaborate on his thoughts, and we're happy to share them here. And grateful to him for contributing them - and for the tone in which he states them.

The author, Kurt Norlin, has attended Irvine Presbyterian Church in Southern California since 1989. He currently serves as co-moderator of the deacon ministry.

If you have comments or other responses, please send 'em along!

A number of people have responded appreciatively to these reflections. Here are two notes we've received. [8-22-01]

The current fight within the PCUSA is an ugly, depressing spectacle. Liberals condemn conservatives as uncaring, exclusionary, and even schismatic, while conservatives vilify liberals as theologically bankrupt and even apostate. It may already be too late for us to reconcile and function as one body. But still, I'd like to make some comments from the conservative side. If nothing else, perhaps they can serve as a sort of peaceable farewell gesture, before things get so bad that communication breaks down altogether.

I want to offer two things: an acknowledgment and an observation. I acknowledge that many persons of homosexual and bisexual orientation love Jesus Christ, and thus merit loving embrace as members of his church. I acknowledge that among them, those who are open about their sexuality are instead, often, wrongly met with hostility. I also acknowledge that some conservatives enjoy standing against heresy, not because it is right to do, but because it allows them to see themselves as better than other people, and to indulge their love of anger. These conservatives often prefer to concentrate on sexual sin, which they can pretend to be free of, rather than on sins of pride and uncharity, even though our Lord clearly thought these more serious. All these things I acknowledge, with sadness and regret.

But now the observation. If conservatives are ever to be persuaded to accept gay unions or marriages, and to accept the ordination of persons who are sexually active outside heterosexual marriage (orientation being one thing, but behavior another) then admonitions to be loving and inclusive will not be enough. Most conservatives understand that love is the central Christian virtue and duty. In fact, I am pretty sure most conservatives would endorse everything I said in the preceding paragraph. But conservatives also understand that love is not blind to sin and error. Adulterers, for instance, should be welcome in church--welcome to worship, to pray, and to receive prayer and counsel. Biblically, however, an adulterer cannot expect to be welcomed into full and comfortable fellowship, and into positions of leadership, with nothing said about his or her sin--not, that is, until after a time of repentance, forgiveness, and restoration. If, then, conservatives are to accept gay unions, and ordination for practicing homosexuals and bisexuals, then the conservatives must first be persuaded, on Biblical grounds, that homosexual behavior is not wrong, the way adultery is.

A friend of mine, a thoughtful and compassionate man, has reservations about the Confessing Church movement. He rejects the connection, implied by the name, between conservative Christians in America and Christians in Germany who resisted the Nazis. The conservatives don't live in mortal fear, and liberals aren't Nazis. My friend is also sure that within the Confessing Church movement there are many acting from sinful motives. And yet, on balance, he hopes his church's session will, in a couple of weeks, vote to join the movement. He thinks it is time to insist that Biblical instruction about sexuality not be brushed aside. "The liberals really are acting from good intentions, in a way," he said, reflectively, a month or so ago. "They want to be caring and inclusive. But their arguments always focus on that. The arguments are never about what God's word says."

Now, I know (and he knows) that technically this isn't quite true. Some liberal scholars do contend that the Biblical passages about homosexuality don't really condemn it, or are culturally bound, or the like. Such assertions warrant attention, and I won't claim to know where a serious, honest discussion of them would lead. But my friend is right, I think, in judging that liberals rely much less on scriptural exegesis than they do on the simple idea of inclusion. This concept is trusted to do the heavy lifting. And it is, somehow, pretended that inclusion is a binary, all-or-nothing affair; that there is no such thing as inclusion shaped and constrained by moral judgment. This won't do. Conservatives won't be won over by being admonished, again and again, to be loving, welcoming, and inclusive. Questions about what the Bible does or does not teach, specifically about homosexuality, must receive far more attention than they have so far.[1] To be fair, I should add that conservatives could do a much better job of contributing to an atmosphere in which honest discussion could take place. (Indeed, almost any effort in that direction would be an improvement.)

I don't pretend fully to understand why the Bible would forbid homosexuality. Nor do I minimize the hardship a prohibition lays on people whose sexual desires don't match the traditionally understood Biblical model. One of the failings on the conservative side, arguably, is a lack of practical teaching on how people with different sexual orientations can come together and support a unitary model of sexual relationship, namely heterosexual marriage. But until conservatives are convinced through Biblically-based argument that such a consensus is the wrong goal to aim at, they can't be expected to embrace a radically different ideal instead.

1. For an example of the sort of argument conservatives require, see Charles D. Myers's "Common Ground for an Uncommon Day" on this site. But even Myers ends up relying heavily on the simplistic, black-or-white appeal to the ideal of inclusion.

Kurt Norlin
Knorlin@aol.com