By Michael Russell
Bishop Pierre Whalon has recently suggested that one of the ongoing issues in the current troubles is that TEC put the cart in from of the mule by acting with respect to the confirmation and consecration of +Gene Robinson before we had fully formed or voted for a theological rational for such actions. Sadly we cannot change the past, but we might at this time affirm that in the deliberations of GC and the church over the past thirty years we have done that work and then ratified on the floors of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies.
Since we cannot undo the past I have to wonder about the utility of generating such an “official” theological position now. If we were to spend time doing some “careful” theological study and then adopt it, for whom are we doing it? Not for ourselves because we’ve already committed to a path. Not for those who are clearly and I think permanently opposed to full inclusion, they will never be convinced. Perhaps it would be useful for people who can be swayed one way or the other, and for that reason it may be worth doing.
With the cat well out of the bag, however, I suggest we just distill all that has brought us to this moment into a series of affirmations or principles and enter any future conversations from there. Those might include:
1) Scripture has no definitive teaching on homosexuality as it is practiced by couples in the Christian family. Even Peter found parts of Paul’s letters hard to understand! The use of scripture to stir up hysteria, to create scapegoats or to justify violence against any group of people is anathema.
2) While there are commands in parts of scripture, the overall purpose of scripture is not to be a legal code or a guide to all things simply. Those who seek to make a new law from the Gospel have failed to understand it at all.
3) The traditional understanding of marriage was as a political, economic, or procreative union, sometimes unions, rarely consensually or freely entered into by women and often not by men either.
4) All people are children of God regardless of their genetic construction and the Church is free to place in leadership anyone who loves Jesus and has gifts for ministry.
5) Reason and Nature are sources of divine revelation (do read Hooker to understand this one) because God made it all and it all teaches us about God. While sin hampers, it does not destroy human capacity to learn new things that our ancestors could not have known. These things are as much a reflection of God’s will in the universe today as such things were for our ancestors.
6) Only one commandment survives with any authority, “Love one another as I have loved you.” The rest is hash.
There may be others we might say, or some group might want to flesh them out. But frankly I think GC has struggled hard over the decades to parse all this out. It has listened to all including strongly dissenting voices and then made decisions based on its considered judgment. That is doing theology too.
The Rev. Michael Russell is rector of All Souls’, Point Loma, in the Diocese of San Diego. He is the author of Hooker’s Blueprint: An Essence Outline of the Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity, and blogs at Anglican Minimalist.