ATLANTA — The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) knows how to vote on gay ordination. It has lots of experience at that — so much so that General Assembly veterans joke they can guess the speeches that folks are lined up at the microphones prepared to deliver.
But William Stacy Johnson, a lawyer and professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, wants to shift the discussion, and wants the PC(USA) to find a way to talk about gays and lesbians–their lives and commitments and faith–in a way that’s theological, in the context of their relationship with God and with other Christians.
He’s proposing that the church consider gays and lesbians in the context of what he calls the “Trinitarian drama” — through the bold, amazing, ongoing story of creation, reconciliation and redemption.
At the most recent meeting of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA), Johnson presented a long draft of a paper on human sexuality that he’s written and which the task force, while not formally adopting it, intends to add to its list of resources for the church.
The paper — this draft is 140 pages — is an extension and revision of an earlier one Johnson presented to the task force in August 2004, in which he described six ways in which Christians have thought theologically about homosexuality — views ranging from affirmation to condemnation. In this new, expanded paper, Johnson describes seven views, encouraging people to think of them as sort of a “survey” of some of the literature and thinking that have informed the church’s debate on gay ordination.
Johnson writes that he has tried to treat each of the views fairly and isn’t expressing his own position, “although I intend to do so in a forthcoming book-length study.”
In discussing the paper Jan. 12, the task force members didn’t seem quite sure what to do with it — perhaps in part because it’s long, still somewhat a work-in-progress and more Johnson’s than theirs. Johnson described it as a “teaching paper” that has informed the task force’s work.
Task force member Mark Achtemeier said he wanted people to understand that Johnson is providing “a roadmap of current discussions” among Christians regarding homosexuality, but the paper doesn’t reflect “the task force coming down in one of these camps.”
Achtemeier, who teaches systematic theology at the University of Dubuque School of Theology, also asked for “a pastoral paragraph” to be added warning readers, “this is strange stuff,” because Johnson describes somewhat explicitly same-sex activity at points in Christian history.
John “Mike” Loudon, a pastor from Lakeland, Fla., said, “My biggest concern is that folks will say that the task force is recommending this. It’s part of what we studied” — an earlier draft was the basis for a three-hour oral presentation Johnson made to the task force — “and it was very helpful to us.” But the task force isn’t formally adopting Johnson’s paper, Loudon said.
In the paper, Johnson encourages the church to step away from its decades-long, yes-or-no debate over ordaining homosexuals to ask questions such as these:
§ Where do gays and lesbians fit in the story of creation? Christians believe that “God thought of us before we were and brought us into being,” Johnson writes. In light of that, are people who are attracted to those of the same sex a violation of creation or “a fairly consistent feature” of it?
§ What can be said about the character of sin — about people turning away from God’s purposes? What about the reconciliation that Christ brings? Some contend that gays and lesbians need “to repent of their lifestyle” and others that the church needs to repent of its sins of hatred and exclusion, Johnson writes. “Through it all, it needs to be remembered that reconciliation includes both a `vertical’ and a `horizontal’ dimension. We are to be reconciled both to God and to one another.”
§ And redemption is future-oriented — as “God enables us more and more to become what God would have us be,” Johnson writes. In speaking of redemption, “we are asking what sort of life we need to be living in order to anticipate and `live into’ the fullness that God desires for each one of us.”
