Book Review: A Thorn in the Flesh

Episcopal priest the Rev. Caroline J. Addington Hall has written a book that should be of interest to United Methodists embroiled in debates over human sexuality and the church. In her book, A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality Is Changing the Episcopal Church, she tells the recent history of the Episcopal Church from the birth of the sexual liberation movement in the 1960s to the current situation of schism and division.

The story is told in detail and with a sensitivity to the nuance and complexity of the debates and politics that play out on a national and global scale. A married lesbian, Hall is an advocate in the battles and her framing of the debate, tone, and language do not hide this. What she describes in the book is a splintering of two churches that started coming apart at the beginning of the 19th century. In her words:

In this period of reformation, the interpretation/authority of scripture has been challenged many times: the abolition of slavery as an acceptable way of life, the acceptance of divorce, the ordination of women, and now full inclusion of gay and lesbian people. This latter is perhaps the bitterest fight because it incorporates the question of gender as well as the question of marriage, and it is also the most difficult to argue because the Bible says nothing positive about homosexuality. The battle for gay inclusion of exclusion seems to mark the development of two different religions, both called Christianity, but it may have served as the final point of bifurcation for two strands that began to unravel as early as the late nineteenth century.

The book is fascinating because of its depth as it traces the story of the Episcopal Church in recent decades. It is fascinating for this United Methodist as we appear to be walking over much of the same ground.

This brief review cannot do justice to the book, but reading it did raise two other thoughts that may or may not be worthy of further discussion.

First, Hall connects the ongoing battles over sexuality in the church to the Baby Boomer (my word, not hers) generation’s coming of age in the 1960s. The left-right divide of that decade set the terms for the debate and the issues going forward. I wonder, in part, if this is why the rising Millennial generation is so weary of this conversation. It is their parents’ fight, not their own. This is my question, not Hall’s, but her book stirred the thought.

Second, Hall connects the debate over sexuality to broader questions in the church. For instance, she offers this observation about the various responses within the Anglican Communion to Islam.

In the Anglican debate, the second question about coexisting religions becomes: Is Jesus Christ the only way to God, or is it limiting God to think that he cannot also work in other ways? Archbishop Akinola, who sees Jesus as the only way, aimed to grow the Church of Nigeria as big as possible in order to vanquish Islam nonviolently — though he has never ruled out the possibility of violent response. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori, on the other hand, sees the valuable contribution of Islam and has joined in faith conversations with Muslim leaders.

I find Hall’s engagement with the broader set of issues and the broader context of Anglican Christianity most helpful. It sees issues as inter-related rather than isolated, which strikes me as more reflective of real life.

Hall does not hide her bias in the book. Conservative motives are often cast in a negative light and liberals are the heroes. She ends the book with an appendix that argues that the Bible does not really teach what traditional Christians have said it does. But the book is fascinating reading and an in-depth look at the melange of issues that the United Methodist Church has been wrestling with for 45 years. As our church becomes more “global,” the fault lines Hall describes will only deepen.

Christ & Paddles sex club

What is the proper response of the United Methodist Church to the general situation described in this story from the New York Times?

At around 4 on a Saturday morning, a time when most of the gay bars in New York have closed and locked their doors, a steady stream of young and middle-aged men, almost all shirtless and some stripped down to their boxer briefs, have found their way down a dark stairwell and into a maze of basement rooms, where the décor can best be described as fallout-shelter chic.

They have come to Paddles, an after-hours sex club in Chelsea, not yet ready to end their evening. They prowl the long cinder-block hallway, exchanging knowing glances. A husky, bearded man in his 40s lounges on a corrugated black rubber bench, admiring a chorus line of smooth-chested 20-somethings, their flesh glowing under a pink neon sign and black lights. A man in a metal-studded black leather chest harness strides toward a back room, the hookup room, where a circle of men, skin glistening with sweat, hover around a swing, watching.

Before you jump on me, I am not saying this is 100% of the behavior for those with same-sex attraction. And I’d be happy to ask the same questions about heterosexual hook-up culture or the normalization of extreme pornography. Indeed, if you’d rather read those stories and post about them, please do. (I will warn you that the pornography story is graphic.)

What I’m trying to get my head around is how the church responds to what is considered normal sexual behavior in our culture. I’m trying to establish whether we have any common ground in our understanding of Christian sexual ethics by pointing to what looks like a clear-cut case and seeing if I am correct that it is clear-cut to United Methodists.

Do we agree that this kind of culture is not in keeping with God’s will for humanity? Do we want to encourage the men in the story I quoted above to change their hearts and lives?

The obvious answer is “yes,” right?

Our Social Principles would say that obvious answer is “yes.” Wouldn’t they?

Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience would, too, yes?

We all agree, don’t we?

If your congregation had its church building just up the block from Paddles sex club, what would you do?

We’ve been here before

From the first decades of the church, controversy over doctrine has troubled us. In the New Testament we have evidence of a deep and divisive debate over what followers of Christ should and should not do.

We find this in many places, but some of the evidence can be found in Acts 15 and 21, Galatians 2, and Romans 14. We see here the church and its leaders wrestling with and disagreeing over what food to eat, among other issues. And we see, especially in Romans 14, Paul’s pastoral wisdom in living within a church divided over doctrine.

Some people might think sex and food do not have a great deal in common, but they are both personal and bodily in ways that are quite intimate. (Maybe these are the words of a fat guy.) They also are both items on the list of particulars of the Acts 15 council.

I don’t know what we would learn from these biblical texts. Perhaps we would all be trapped by our original commitments. Peter and Paul had a tough time working through their differences. James and Paul appear never to have agreed.

Can we learn from the apostolic controversies or merely repeat them?

A priest on polyamory

Okay, so this Episcopal priest writes a blog about ethics and gets a question from someone who wants to know whether polyamorous relationships are acceptable.

The priest suggests that the proper framework for analyzing this question of sexual ethics is whether the behavior in question makes us “more fully alive.”

[D]oes the possibility which I am contemplating — this action which I may take, this idea to which I may assent, this vocation to which I may say “yes” — invite me to become more fully alive? Does it, in other words, invite me to become bigger? Or does it threaten to make me smaller — is it likely to diminish me and, in so doing, diminish the people and the world around me?

At the risk of sounding like Stanley Hauerwas, isn’t the problem with such statements that they assume that the phrase “more fully alive” has a meaning independent of our religious or ethical commitments? Isn’t part of life among other Christians being taught and learning what words like “alive” really mean. In the absence of any other definition, we are stuck taking the meaning of such words from the same people who produce beer commercials and super hero movies.

But the priest finds this line of questioning helpful because it explains changing sexual ethics in the church and society in recent decades. Then he comes to consider the question about being polyamorous. He insists on discussing polyamory in terms of marriage, although I am not aware that proponents of polyamory are discussing multiple marriage. He, however, seems to find that an apt comparison. And so, he ends up arguing against polyamory because, well, it would be tiring.

Is it possible that you are called to share in that mystery, Polly, except with two partners? I guess so. But, gosh, it sure sounds exhausting. If you talk to just about anyone north of, say, five years into a long-term relationship, he or she will tell you that it’s a huge undertaking to maintain the mutual respect, the careful yet truthful conversation, the empathy, and the love which allows two people to keep on seeing the spark of the divine in one another. In short, while marriage is a wondrous vocation, it is also a whole lot of work. I can’t even imagine how much harder that work would become if you tried to keep its delicate and awesome dance going with more than one other person.

Isn’t there a better answer to this question for a Christian pastor to offer?

Another UMC pastor scandal

In my Google news feed, I get stories directed to me that have the word “Methodist” in the headline. I was discouraged when I found another story about allegations of sexual abuse by a United Methodist pastor.

But I was even more concerned when after a little searching I found this 1992 story about the same United Methodist pastor, a former district superintendent, a repeated candidate for bishop, and a frequent delegate to General Conference, who had lived as a bisexual, died of an AIDS-related illness, infected his wife with HIV that led to her death, and tried to seduce several young males over the years of his ministry. None of this came out during his life or, apparently, caused him to question his own fitness to be a minister of Christ. I pray that he has peace with God.

A complex and nuanced post on sex

William Birch is a Calvinist turned Arminian, a strong believer in biblical inerrancy, and man who, in his own words, struggles with same-sex attraction.

He has written a post on the last issue, but reflecting all three. I will return to it and read it again many times, I predict. Since I do not at the moment have a well-formed reaction to it, I simply link here for your reading.

Disobedience, disunion, and difficult choices

A while back the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church passed a “Statement of Gospel Disobedience” calling on members of the UMC in the Western United States to act as if our denominational statement on Human Sexuality did not exist.

Recently, a few new reactions to that development have occurred.

My bishop, Mike Coyner, published his personal reactions to the statement. Here are his final paragraphs:

I believe that our United Methodist Church one day may modify its various statements on human sexuality. The Social Principles in our Book of Discipline are the result of many General Conferences, which means its various statements and paragraphs were written by committees – and they read like they were written by committees. There is little sense of consistency and theological structure. I believe that a future General Conference may indeed take action, first to affirm that Christians of good will are in disagreement on these issues, and second to adopt a more moderate and holistic approach to these issues in our Social Principles.

Changing our Social Principles or other parts of our Discipline is not the whole answer. As one of my colleagues has expressed it to me, “The question is not if our church will modify its stance; the question is when and howthat stance will be modified.” The how is the most important part of his statement. For the church to move forward, any modification should come in an atmosphere of prayer, theological reflection, humility, listening to God and listening to one another. The actions of the Western Jurisdiction, while understandable, do not provide a helpful way forward. Bringing together the best of our church to address these issues outside of the legislative processes of a General Conference could be the how that is needed. Even if such a process takes time, it would worth that time to come together as a church and to find a way forward together.

Bishop Mike’s posting generated a news story in the United Methodist News Service.

Jack Jackson, a faculty member a Claremont School of Theology, wrote a piece arguing that “civil disobedience” in the Western Jurisdiction would not solve our problems and urging a division of the denomination as the best way forward.

Nevertheless, out of missional necessity, and in the light of the denomination’s continued decline, it is time for a conversation to begin on an equitable split of the UMC.

Beginning the conversation acknowledges the true endgame of our current direction: division. Progressive and traditionalist visions of human sexuality are simply incompatible. Most of Protestantism recognizes this. We can argue all we want, but there is no solution to our theological quandary that offers unity, common visions of Christian mission and an ability to focus on the deep systemic issues which plague the UMC.

Methodist blogger Matt Horan disagrees with Jackson in a post on his own blog.

If we divide ourselves over this issue, we will have failed to remember the things we have in common, which are far more important than where we stand on the issue of homosexuality.  It is clearly time for us to think of a way ahead that is different than lobbying for votes every four years and producing a large collection of embittered losers every time.  Perhaps the United Methodist Church might explore becoming a confederation of churches that leave space for practices of ministry to emerge locally, while remaining committed together to share resources and continue our global Kingdom-building mission.

Some days breaking up looks a lot easier than staying together.  Even so, I still keep advising married couples in my congregation: “I know it’s hard work to stick together, but keep at it.  In the end you’ll see it was all worth it.”

Voices from across the divide

Two posts this week again illustrate how divided or how diverse (depending on if you are a pessimist or an optimist) the United Methodist Church is when it comes to sexual ethics.

Roger Wolsey cheers on the growing assertiveness of progressive pastors who openly defy church rules.

Talbot Davis laments that exegeting the Bible can get you called names.