On a festive Sunday morning, fifteen adults and lots of children gathered during worship crowded onto the chancel to be welcomed into the membership of Bayview Hills Presbyterian Church. A couple of middle-aged lesbians tried to corral their three elementary-aged children, a young gay male couple held their newly-adopted infant, and one man thanked the congregation for accepting him so warmly as a gay man. The congregation applauded loudly after the smiling female pastor welcomed them into the fellowship.
On another Sunday in First Presbyterian Church of Westfield, a few miles from Bayview Hills, another group joined that congregation. They included two, late middle-aged, heterosexual couples and a single, divorced mother of an active ten-year-old. The congregation warmly shook their hands in a receiving line after worship. In a new members’ class, earlier, one of the older men had asked the pastor what the church’s position was on abortion and homosexuality because he could not join a church that accepted those things. The female pastor told him they disapproved, explained briefly their positions, and the matter was not discussed further.
These two incidents with new members reveal a lot about the differences between these two congregations. Members of these two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations in the same presbytery experienced homosexuality in very different ways. In my yearlong study of these two groups, I found that their cultures were very different, and those differences affected their moral positions.
In Bayview Hills, gay and lesbian people were ordinary members of the congregation. They led worship, taught Sunday School, sat on the Session, served coffee hour, and were part of the day-to-day fabric of the life of the church. No one seemed really to notice them. Everyone in the congregation knew and had ordinary experiences with homosexual people, if not in their personal lives, certainly in the life of the congregation.
At First Church of Westfield, the atmosphere was very different. In my entire six months in the congregation, I heard the topic mentioned only twice, unless I brought it up. And in those two times, it was briefly discussed and disapproved of. Even though I discovered members with gay children and others struggling with the issue, the subject was never discussed. There almost seemed to be a tacit agreement to avoid the topic. Many members of Westfield Church had very little contact with homosexual people, and if they did, it was a rarified panel discussion, a counseling session, or some other formal setting, not ordinary, day-to-day interaction washing dishes at a potluck as in Bayview Hills.
This difference, I think, played a big role in their different moral stances on homosexuality. Bayview Hills was a “More Light Church” and First Church of Westfield was a “Confessing Church.” Ordinary experience with homosexual people had a profound effect on moral positions of these congregations, more so than biblical pronouncements on the topic.
Members of the two congregations, though, did share one common experience. Day-to-day, week after week, members of the two congregations experienced the strong leadership of women pastors. Every Sunday they heard well-written and powerfully-presented sermons from women. The Sessions of both congregations were organized and run by women. And these women pastors inspired and led the congregations quite well. All the members of both congregations had day-to-day, ordinary experiences with strong women in leadership positions, not to mention similar experiences in their weekday lives. In part, because of this ordinary experience, both congregations proudly affirmed the moral position that women and men are equal in leadership roles, despite what the Bible might say in places. We would do well to pay more attention to those shared human experiences.
Many Christian ethicists argue that moral decision-making for Christians must involve the use of several sources of moral authority including Scripture and experience. However, all decisions must be rooted in personal experience. Ethicist James Gustafson says that of all moral authority, human experience has “priority.” In our debates in the church over homosexuality and other controversial topics, we would do well to give more priority to our experiences, not always beginning with Scripture.
The perennial focus of the Presbyterian Church on Bible study and biblical authority as we debate controversial issues is not helpful. By focusing on Scripture as an almost exclusive source of ethical authority, we set up polarization. These discussions begin with Scripture, thus shifting personal experience into a secondary role where it is discounted in importance. Participants in the discussion do not feel free to question the biblical material with the authority of their own experiences. This prevents the kind of questioning, struggle, and contextual analysis that seems essential and natural for most people in biblical interpretation and ethical discernment. As a result, since they cannot use the authority of their experience, most discussion participants feel compelled to take dogmatic and normative positions based on biblical passages. This inevitably leads to polarization.
What would happen if the church gave experience the priority position in our discussions? Unlike using the Bible as a beginning point, sharing of experience does not seem to be as polarizing. Someone’s experience, although open to interpretation, cannot be questioned and debated in the same ways as biblical material. The very authenticity of one’s experience gives it an almost undeniable authority. Of course, we will still disagree. My experiences will be very different from yours. However, I cannot tell you that your experiences are wrong, that they are untrue, and if we listen to each other, we can understand the moral position of the other much better. A dogmatic biblical passage cannot be discussed or understood in that way.
Experience, though, is a difficult and imprecise moral guide. Conservative ethicist Richard Hays says that personal experience is a “notoriously tricky guide” to moral authority because people are so easily self-deceived. Clearly, there is no deep, underlying store of truthful moral norms in experience because everyone has different experiences. However, as a beginning point, this does give us commonality. We all share experiences. And if we gather in a faithful community to listen to a variety of human stories, we can find moral truth among them all. Hays agrees that the experiences of a Christian community can lead to the establishment of moral norms that sometimes even contradict Scripture, but only “after sustained and agonizing scrutiny by a consensus of the faithful.” As long as we don’t become “experiential fundamentalists” or “biblical fundamentalists,” then these two sources can both guide us in our moral-decision making.
In the coming months as we once again begin the painful process of debating homosexual ordination in the Presbyterian Church, I hope we can do things a little differently this time around. I hope the elder from Westfield who said he gets physically ill around gay people can share experiences with the older lesbian businesswoman from Bayview Hills. They both run their own small businesses and have a lot in common. I hope the angry, formerly ordained lesbian woman in Bayview Hills can sit down and share experiences with the associate pastor of Westfield Church, who insisted the Bible condemns homosexuals. They both grew up in conservative, Midwest denominations, and they both found a new home in the Presbyterian Church.
I hope we can begin with the experiences of our lives, not with the dogmatism of what Scripture says. More Light Bayview Hills Presbyterian Church and Confessing Church First Presbyterian Church of Westfield have more in common than they realize. They both share the Christian biblical experience, and they share the Presbyterian experience. And they can learn from each other’s divergent congregational experiences. But they have to talk. They have to talk giving priority to human experience.
Erwin C. Barron is an ordained Presbyterian minister teaching at City College of San Francisco and the University of San Francisco. He received his M.Div. at Princeton Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the Graduate Theological Union. This two-congregation study was done as a part of his work on his dissertation.
