Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: PCUSA report on human sexuality Message-ID: Date: 6 May 91 03:42:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 149 Approved: christian@geneva.rutgers.edu By now many of you know that the upcoming (June) General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is going receive a report from a special committee on human sexuality. I've already summarized the majority report in a comment I made on a posting yesterday. I'd like to make a couple of personal comments that are more appropriate under my own name than as moderator. First, Jennifer Irani seems to think that the GA is going to be asked to endorse liberal policies on sexuality. It is not. The majority report calls for three things: (1) a set of actions that are noncontroversial, at least within the PCUSA, (2) approval of the reports (majority and minority) for study by individual congregations and other groups, (3) a set of actions that are based on the report, which are being referred for action by the GA that meets in 1993, i.e. after the proposed study. So what the GA is actually being asked to do is primarily to get the churches to study the issues. I think this is the right thing to do. It's hard to predict what will happen. While the PCUSA is among the more "liberal" denominations, I believe there are things in the report that the church will find unacceptable. Indeed I know of one incident of negative personal consequences for one of the authors of the report, in a part of the country that is relatively liberal. (I am reluctant to be more specific, because I don't know whether the information is public. I will probably be in a position to be more specific in a week or so.) The PCUSA as an institution takes a somewhat "flexible" view of Scripture. We are willing to consider that Paul's advice to 1st Cent. churches may not apply to us. My own position is a fairly radical one: I believe that Christians are not under laws, either OT Law, or laws derived from Paul's advice. Thus I believe that Christian ethics must be constructed from Christian principles, such as love of our neighbor. The majority report is a very interesting attempt to do exactly this. They proceed from principles such as fidelity to commitments, and a justice based on mutual responsibility. Thus I start out being sympathetic to the way the committee proceeded. Indeed some of their detailed analysis is valuable. However I have some problems with the results. First, the results sound suspiciously like "situation ethics". This was an attempt to get rid of rules, saying that Christianity means to act in each situation as lovingly as possible. While this sounds good, there are some problems with it. Most seriously, it produces an ethics that fails to do one of the most important things ethics should do: provide guidelines that protect us against the tendency to rationalize things that we want to do. There are actions that seem very attractive, but which have bad long-run consequences. One of the purposes of ethics is to consider actions and their consequences in advance, and allow us to make judgements calmly, in advance of the situation and in conjunction with other people who have more experience. Reducing ethics to "do what looks loving" is an abdication of this responsibility to do careful ethical analysis. It also makes relationships based on long-term commitment impossible, since at any moment it may seem more loving to ignore the commitment. Now I don't believe the committee actually intended to recommend such an empty ethics. In some areas they did manage to produce solid ethical analysis. The best example was their analysis of the sexual responsibility of pastors and other leaders, e.g. whether it is appropriate to have sexual relations with a member of the congregation. (Their answer was: only with the most careful safeguards, and they gave some examples of what this means.) The problem is that they did not apply such careful analysis to every area, and they were apparently not sufficiently self-critical to realize this. Thus the report has the effect of demolishing traditional restrictions and not doing the work necessary to put something in their place. It may of course be that the committee and I simply disagree about what an adequate replacement for traditional restrictions would be. But I am simply not convinced that there is no difference in sexual expression appropriate within and without marriage. This gets to my second basic problem with the report. The report is based on the concept that all people are sexual beings, and have a right to express themselves sexually. Those who are not engaging in intercourse are assumed to express themselves sexually by masturbation. This approach is portrayed as a corrective for the tendency of Christians to consider sex as "dirty". I agree that Christians need to consider the positive value of sex, and that the Reformed tradition is correct in not limiting its purpose to procreation. However the idea that everyone is sexually active seems to me an unnecessarily narrow view of what it means to be sexual beings. Using the kind of analysis that the committee uses elsewhere, I believe it can be shown that there is a great danger that sex outside committed relationships such as marriage will turn out to be exploitative. I'm willing to consider that a proper analysis might identify situations outside of marriage where sexual relations are appropriate. But they have not done such an analysis. The most serious problem I see with the report is that it didn't deal adequately with the problem of homosexuals within the church. After all, this is the primary actual issue that the GA needs to deal with. There is certainly a section on homosexuality in the report. Some of what is says is useful, although I agree with the minority report that the analysis of Rom 1 that they quote from Robin Scroggs has its problems. (The minority report, on the other hand, blows the analysis of Gen 19.) But the big problem with the report is that it doesn't make any attempt to look in detail at homosexual relationships. What bothers me about the majority report is that it shows no signs of having looked at what kinds of relationships gay and lesbian Christians actually engage in. I would have expected the committee to make an effort at presenting statistical evidence, case studies, or something like that. Are people thinking only of the homosexual equivalent of marriage? Are we being asked to endorse gay sex clubs? What? It seems to me unreasonable for the committee to ask us to endorse a lifestyle without giving us some idea of what it is like and what its consequences are. I think for example that it would be easier to get the PCUSA to accept homosexual relationships that seem analogous to marriage than to give a broad endorsement that would seem to include promiscuous behavior of all kinds. Would the homosexuals within the PCUSA consider that a good stand for us to take? The report gives us no idea. Frankly I find some of the comments in the minority report both more realistic and more helpful. It's interesting that press attention has focused mostly on the majority report. What I find *really* interesting is how far the conservative minority was willing to go. I found their analysis of whether homosexuality is innate, and their summary of attempts at "converting" very useful. (In summary, they concluded that changing orientation is a long, painful process with a fairly low success rate, and there are some reasons to doubt how successful the "successes" are.) I'll end with a summary of the issue from the minority report. "One thing that seems clear to us, is that there is something in the human spirit that seems to work best in monogamous, covenantal relationships. Many people whose sexual orientation is toward those of the same gender are not promiscuous and are living together responsibly and faithfully -- and at least as permanently -- as many people who are living in a heterosexual marriage. Even though a majority of people within our church, and most people in society at large, do not seem ready to affirm homosexual marriages, still it is our opinion that monogamous, conventional [I think they mean covenantal --clh] relationships are better than the pitfalls of promiscuity and ought to be affirmed in some way. ... The entire special committee unanimously agrees that hatred, exploitation, violence and scorn directed against gay and lesbian persons, ... is sin. There needs to be a continuation of work and prayer for more understanding on all sides of this issue. We are united in affirming that our churches should welcome gay and lesbian persons into the membership of the church, providing a safe haven against bigotry, and offering ministries of love and nurture which take them seriously as persons. Some of us believe that one day, after we have done this, and when more of us have come to know some gay and lesbians as real persons, then the question of ordination will finally be settled, one way or the other, from the grass roots up, rather than from the General Asssembly down."