By Frank Dunn
Church and society seem to be stuck on issues of human sexuality. Washington, DC, now faces a controversy regarding whether to sanction marriages for partners of the same sex.
Accustomed as they are to being the gatekeepers of marriage, Christians are likely either to favor or to oppose such marriages as a matter of morality. It is a moral issue, but not necessarily for the reasons that proponents or opponents frequently state.
Our ideas of what is moral have roots in large frameworks that include what we think is true and what we believe to be the consequences of human action. These “frameworks” are structures of consciousness. While the debate rages between the notion of eternal rightness of marriage between one man and one woman and the belief in the justice of extending civil benefits of marriage to partners of the same sex, we perhaps miss what is happening all around the debate. For in the bigger picture, the “framework” itself is changing. A new consciousness is clearly emerging.
This new consciousness is far deeper than any one issue. In general, a shift is happening in the direction from competition towards cooperation, from nationalism to global connectedness, from “scientific” rationalism to a re-appropriation of myth and symbol, from insistence on cultural conformity towards honoring dissidents, from exclusivity to a greater toleration, indeed appreciation, of differences. At the center of the new consciousness is a reassessment of the place of the individual in community, including the worth that societies assign to individuals and communities.
Shifts like the present one can sometimes be dated, such as 476 CE when the Roman Empire collapsed. Another shift came in 1492, when Columbus discovered the New World. Still another came on November 24, 1859, when Darwin published The Origin of Species. We can point to a cluster of developments that have ushered it in the present shift. One was the summer of 1989 when thousands of East Germans went on vacation and refused en masse to return home but flooded into Hungary, Austria, and West Germany, thus effectively beginning the fall of European communist domination. Another was the appearance of the internet as a popular means of connection and communication, in or about 1995.
Human beings evince a tremendous reluctance to become a conscious species. Whether we are going to participate in the shift, or wait it out, or spend our energies joining the forces of reaction (always an integral part of a shift) is a live question for the Church. Religious communities are among the best—maybe among the only—places where people can gather to look intently at the implications of deep cultural changes affecting the entire planet.
Some of the dimensions involved in the emerging consciousness are
the transition from top-down leadership to dispersed leadership
profound exploration into the nature and location of authority
growing understanding of the interrelatedness of everything on the planet
communication enabling immediate interpersonal and political connection
limitations of free-market capitalism to solve world economic problems
re-emergence of the Feminine and its effect on the exercise of power
awareness that a finite supply of oil dictates re-thinking energy
boundaries of power and the failure of coercion.
None of these things taken singly is new, with the possible exception of the revolution in communication. But together they are forcing us to confront the fact that some of our cherished narratives, such as the notion of the exclusive appropriateness of heterosexual marriage, are inadequate to address the multiformity of human experience in the 21st century.
There is gospel in all of this. While many narratives, including those believed by some Christians (e. g., “marriage has always been between one man and one woman”), are headed for the dust bin, the core of our faith is that God can never be contained in any cultural or creedal formulation. And at the heart of our Story are the words to shepherds, to disciples, and to grieving women: “Fear not.” As a people, we keep celebrating Easter and Pentecost, affirming not only a Risen Lord who does not abandon us to muddle through on our own, but a Holy Spirit—God present among us here and now—guiding us into all Truth.
That message is one that might not only comfort us but inspire us to help shape the conversation around a rapidly changing earth, beginning in our own assemblies of faith.
The Rev. Frank Dunn is senior priest at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in Washington, D. C.