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Written by by Hal Porter
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Sunday, 15 June 2008 05:00 |
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This coming General Assembly can correct a false categorical declaration the Assembly made in 1978 — “that the practice of homosexuality is sin.”
Unfortunately this ex cathedra pronouncement, which is hardly infallible, continues to be interpreted as official doctrine of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). [Look up the term “homosexual” on PC(USA) Web page.] But such an absolute statement cannot be found in our Constitution or our Confessions. It remains a statement of the General Assembly. Further, such a statement has never been made an authoritative interpretation of our Constitution. The tragedy of this a priori theological assumption is that it precludes the worth of homosexual persons as equally made in the image of God.
Our denomination rightly decries homophobia. However, the best “good news” our church has to offer homosexual persons, in or out of the church, is that if they want to get right with God they must live either a life of celibacy or redirect their sexual desires towards a heterosexual married partner. Where is the good news in this? There are Biblical texts that denounce certain same gender behavior; but do any of us, in our understanding of homosexuality today, believe such persons are to be condemned to celibacy or to life with someone sexually incompatible with themselves? Is this what the gospel of Jesus Christ requires? Hardly! We must always be willing to move beyond the Bible to the good news that it points to, which is the good news Jesus brought to those who had previously had no good news for their future. And that good news is compassion and love. We need to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus’ life and not through the culture of this world so that the world will become as Jesus envisioned it under the reign of God.
This General Assembly should correct the false categorical statement (theology matters!) that all homosexual behavior is sinful. That the Assembly once thought it so ought to be seen for what it was, an error, an absolute judgment from a heterosexual bias. We should all be clear by now that the love between two persons of the same gender can be just, compassionate, wholesome, and Christ like — just as it may be between two heterosexual persons. Writing in regard to same gender behavior, I thoroughly agree with what Presbyterian William Stacy Johnson writes in his theologically sound book, A Time to Embrace, that “When two people give themselves to one another in a mutual act of loving and lifelong commitment, something transformative happens: they become family. Becoming a family is the kind of thing that religious communities should honor, nurture, and support” p. 109.
Doctrinally, the General Assembly does not speak for the whole church, definitively or authoritatively. It is time for the General Assembly to correct this false witness that all homosexual practice is sinful and move on to a more just judgment of our neighbor. To do so, what it should honestly declare is that “homosexual behavior, in and of itself, is not sinful.” That would free us to treat our gay brothers and sisters as persons who are indeed part of God’s good creation and equally made in the image of God. What greater agenda for our time does this General Assembly have on its docket than this?
Hal Porter is pastor emeritus of Mt. Auburn Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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