One More Time Around On Homosexuality

Recently, the United Methodist Church's General Conference reaffirmed the denomination's long-standing position that homosexual practice is "incompatible" with Christian teaching. In the minds of many, the harshness of this position can still be offset by holding to a distinction between personhood, orientation, and practice, and confining the condemnation (it amounts to just that, a condemnation) to the latter. But a conceptual distinction like this yields at best only a trembling foundation upon which to base the denomination's teaching on homosexuality.

The trembling must have been pretty evident throughout the most recent deliberations. What came to the Conference for action was the majority recommendation of a legislative committee to replace the traditional statement about incompatibility with a more irenic one acknowledging that faithful people disagree about homosexuality and that all together still seek a "faithful witness" on the matter. Eventually, roughly five delegates out of every nine agreed that there was no disagreement among the faithful on the matter, and then went on to reject the majority report of the committee and to vote to retain the current statement in The Book of Discipline. About four out of every nine agreed that there was in fact disagreement on the matter, and agreed to disagree with the majority who voted against the majority report, by voting for the majority report. (Are you getting all this? Not every delegate did.) So much for the search, together, for a faithful witness, until perhaps at yet the next General Conference, four years down the road.

Hopefully, whether "United" or not, Methodists will not wait this long. For there are a number of things to keep thinking about as a result of this recently concluded gathering. For one, I at least was pleasantly surprised at the extent of support for the recommendation to get rid of the incompatibility reference in the denomination's present statement on homosexuality. It suggests that a respectable majority of the next generation of General Conference delegates may be ready to acknowledge honestly the fact that there is disagreement, and a lot of it, among conscientious Christians everywhere on the issue of homosexuality. In light of this fact, any church's blanket declaration of its incompatibility with Christian teachings is premature, arrogant, and un-Christianly alienating.

Two other things happened in the midst of this latest debate that especially caught my eye. One was the very influential speech of Eddie Fox, the World Methodist Council's director of world evangelism and as fine a candidate for Protestant sainthood as I know. But even saints run amok theologically sometimes, just like the rest of us do even more often. On the issue of homosexuality, I have to part company with this much admired colleague in ministry. Eddie sees it as a violation of an "order of creation" which he believes Jesus enunciated at Matthew 19:4-6, going back to Genesis' account of God's creation of men and women and of the marriage relationship.

Dear friend in Christ, I know you take this whole passage as from the Master himself, but for the life of me I myself cannot reconcile it with Mark 10, according to which this same Jesus provided no escape clause from marriage of any sort, not even for adultery (contrast Matthew 19:9). I am not nit-picking here, my brother. These differences simply mean that we cannot settle big issues about human sexuality without a lot more work on understanding biblical passages, especially those in conflict with one another, contextually as well as normatively. And then, of course, there is the frequently overlooked fact that arguments from "the order of creation" can be and have been put to outrageous uses that include the justification of slavery, the oppression of women, and the prohibition of abortion, all the way to the refusal of blood transfusions for a severely injured child.

The second thing that caught my eye about the General Conference debate on homosexuality was its relatively tortured quality, compared to the ease with which another issue of human sexuality --- transgender identity --- slid by with almost no public attention at all. Remember reading about the United Methodist pastor who "transitioned" from female to male, and retained his pastoral appointment in the process? A lot of people were salivating over the prospect of the Conference's taking action that would have removed this (man) from the ordained ministry. I think the delegates are owed a round of applause for not doing so. The "order of nature" is obviously a lot more complicated than most people like to think it is, and it is especially complicated when the value judgments we make about sexual identity and sexual preference are at stake. One woman achieves the first by embracing her masculine side within herself. Another achieves it by embracing her feminine side within a same-sex relationship. To God, what's the difference?