The opposing sides lined up at microphones at the General Assembly meeting in California last June, to argue for and against ordination of homosexuals and gay marriage. Soon we’ll see ministers and elders lining up in presbytery meetings as they join the argument. We seem to go over this again and again and again, debating the ethics of sexuality in our denomination. Why does the debate drag on and so little resolution come about? The tension between opposing “sides” in the halls of General Assembly and throughout the church is palpable. But what is behind these divisions in the political arena of a national gathering?
Looking for answers, I spent more than a year living in this division studying two local congregations with opposing views on homosexuality.
Bayview Hills Church (the names of the churches have been changed) proudly proclaims itself as a “More Light” congregation and flies a rainbow flag in front the church building. First Church of Westfield joined the “Confessing Church” movement several years ago and has incorporated the confessing church credo into all of its promotional literature. These two PC(USA) congregations are located less than twenty miles from each other in the same presbytery. They are about the same size, have similar levels of activities, and both have women as senior pastors. And yet, the two congregations have made public stances on opposite poles of the debate over homosexuality.
I spent more than six months in each of these congregations, worshiping with them weekly, participating in Bible studies and potlucks, attending Sunday school, and interviewing members of the congregations. I explored how each congregation taught about ethical authority and how they actually authorized their public stance on homosexuality. I interviewed members about their understanding of the position taken by their congregation; I asked about their experiences with homosexual persons, and we talked about many other ethical issues. Though the churches seemed radically different on the surface, I was incredibly surprised by what I found when I scratched beneath the surface.
As a lifelong Presbyterian, I was very comfortable in both congregations. They had a lot more in common than they had differences. Both of these congregations could be considered typical Presbyterian congregations in many ways. They generally followed Presbyterian styles of worship, preaching, and sacraments. They definitely followed Presbyterian government and organization by committee. And both congregations generally had the kind of theological diversity one expects to find in a middle-class Presbyterian church. Spending time in these two communities, I could easily become involved in the life of the congregation and forget that they were involved in the huge ethical debates ravaging the national church. Growing up in the liberal tradition, I felt much more at home in the Bayview Hills congregation with their emphasis on justice and social causes. However, I was surprised by how much I found familiar and welcoming in Westfield. People in the “confessing church” were genuinely open and welcoming, rarely discussing divisive issues, so they could allow a wide range of quietly-held opinions. Despite their liberal rhetoric, Bayview Hills sometimes seemed more intolerant and exclusive than Westfield in its insistence on certain political positions. However, in both congregations, I found diverse, real human beings living real human lives, sharing the experiences of Christian community. And I found that those human experiences of their real lives were what were most important to these people, not abstract issues, even biblical ones.
Of course, the churches had differences. I set out to explore how these otherwise similar Presbyterian churches could come down on such opposite sides of the divisive debates in the denomination over homosexuality. I wanted to see how these folks arrived at their ethical positions. How did they come to the opposing conclusions that homosexuality was either a gift from God or a dreadful sin that must be lovingly corrected?
When Christians begin to make decisions about moral issues, modern ethical theory suggests that we use several sources of authority to derive our moral norms. For Protestants, the most important of these is Scripture. We Protestants always and importantly look to God’s word expressed in the Bible to guide us. But that is not our only source of moral authority. We also look to the continuing revelation of God in our experiences in history and tradition, in science, in reasoning, and in everyday events to guide us. Scripture and experience both must guide our moral decision-making. And reliance on one without the other can be dangerous and offensive.
Much of the debate in our churches today involves these sources of moral authority. More traditional churches such as Westfield begin the debate with Scripture and tend to discount the role of experience. They may say something like, “I know that it doesn’t feel right, but Scripture says this, so I know it’s true.” More progressive churches such as Bayview Hills focus first on experience and tend to ignore or trivialize the role of Scripture. One person in that church said to me, “I know what Scripture says, but my heart tells me it is wrong.”
In our debates in the Presbyterian Church, we most often focus long and hard on Scripture. Just look at all the books written on biblical sexuality and what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. What we have often failed to do, however, is to take seriously the role of human experience.
When one thinks through almost any issue, one cannot deny the important role of our experience. One of the most important modern Christian ethicists, James Gustavson, says that “experience has priority.” In other words, he says that we read everything, including Scripture, through our experience. We cannot avoid it. When we read about Jesus being the “good shepherd,” until we know something about shepherds or have some experience with sheep and shepherds, that biblical passage has little meaning. Our experience necessarily must have priority. In her analysis of Christian ethics, ethicist Margaret Farley says, “In the end, the interpretation [of Scripture] must ‘make sense’ to the interpreter; it must make sense of, but also to, the interpreter’s experience.” Farley argues that no moral standard will hold for long if one’s personal experience consistently and regularly suggests otherwise. If some authority insists that we should not breathe oxygen because it is morally wrong, our experience would very soon contradict that moral standard, and we would be gasping for breath. All moral standards, even biblical ones, must somehow fit in with and make sense to our ordinary experience
No one is suggesting that Scripture be ignored. In fact, many Christians ethicists insist also that moral standards derived from our experiences need to be confirmed by Scripture. However, in our debates, we have not focused enough on the role of experience.
In the next two issues of the Outlook I will explore how these two opposing churches used Scripture and experience to derive their moral standards. And I will suggest ways that we may use these two sources to further our discussions without the divisiveness we have so often experienced. We need to look to Scripture and also examine and share our human and Christian experiences to find what God is leading us to do on these difficult and controversial ethical issues.
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 Seminary. This two-congregation study was done as a part of his work on his dissertation.
