Canon Kendall Harmon at General Convention Speaking (against) Resolution C005 .

Virtuosity ^ | 1 August 2003 | Canon Kendall Harmon

[ahadams2]

Canon Kendall Harmon at General Convention Speaking to Resolution C005, August 1st, 2003

Mr. Chairman, sisters and brothers in Christ, good evening. Perhaps you know the story of the church bulletin which said, "This Easter at Saint Stephen's, Mrs. Johnson, in honor of her fifty years of Sunday school service, will come up and lay an egg on the altar." It is my hope, and that of Sam, that we will not lay an egg tonight.

But simply take into account the supercharged atmosphere in the room, and you can see what a daunting challenge this is. Why is this such a difficult debate? I think one of the main reasons is because it is about people, not things such as bread and wine. I remind everyone that when emotions are up, discernment is down and clear thinking is difficult. Davy Crockett, the frontier hero, once said to Daniel Webster, the US statesman: "I had heard that you were a very great man, but I don't think so. I heard your speech and understood every word you said."

I can relate to that quote and am very concerned that our categories are clear at the outset. This isn't a debate about who is included; Christ invites and includes all people. This isn't a debate about pastoral care, which is the church's living out her theology in practice that varies greatly depending on the circumstances. There is a distinction between orientation and practice that has to be kept in mind, people have urges and inclinations and desires but we need to distinguish between having them and acting on them. Finally, this is about the call of God to his church and its leadership to be holy as God is holy.

It is VITAL that the traditional position is correctly defined since it is so often mischaracterized and recently even caricatured in this discussion. Professor Gerard S. Sloyan puts it this way, "The physical attraction of adults of both sexes to..the opposite sex is natural and to those of the same sex is not necessarily perverse. Only when such attraction is acted upon is it ethically wrong: for Christian, Jew and Muslim it is sin." He also writes: "Marriage both is and is meant to be the normal outlet for sexual activity, while for unmarried Christians of whichever orientation no other is envisioned" (Theology Today, July 2003 edition, pp. 159-160; and 156).

Notice carefully what Professor Sloyan is saying: there are only two states of human existence, singleness, and marriage. Therefore there are NO relationships outside of marriage which the church can officially sanction as places where sexual activity may be celebrated, as this resolution tonight invites us to consider doing. Let me briefly give six reasons why.

Primarily this is a controversy about the Bible. During their once a decade meeting in 1998 at Lambeth, the vast majority of Anglican bishops worldwide rejected "homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture." At issue are not just a few individual passages, as is often alleged, but the broad structure of the biblical narrative which flows from the primordial couple in the Garden of Eden through the Song of Solomon to the celebration of an undefiled marriage bed in the New Testament. The Bible's positive teaching on marriage is that it is intended by God to be a "one flesh" union which embraces the complementarity of the two sexes.

Based on this positive teaching, the Scriptures are also very clear that homosexual behavior is a violation of God's purpose for sex. As Robert Gagnon explains: "Same-sex intercourse" represents "a structurally incongruous attempt at merging sexually with a sexual same, with someone who" is "not a gender complement, and therefore not a person that could bring completion in the sphere of sexual relations to the sexual self. " This is the teaching of the Old and New Testaments: there is no tension, no qualification, no development, and no equivocation. Even Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary, who favors altering the church's teaching in the area of sexual morality, admits this: "Efforts to twist the text to mean what it clearly does not say are deplorable. Simply put, the Bible is negative toward same-sex behavior, and there is no getting around it."

Not only the Bible is at stake, but the church's whole theology of marriage. Traditionally, marriage was understood to have four purposes, communion (joy shared is doubled, sorrow is halved), union (the two shall become one flesh), procreation (be fruitful and multiply), and prevention (marriage was actually understood to prevent sin-when was the last sermon you heard on THAT one?). A same sex union cannot be unitive, because physically the bodies do not fit together in their design, and it is unable to be procreative.

So whatever else is being called for by Resolution C-005, it is not marriage. You see this in the rhetoric of the resolution itself. It is only clear what these couplings are not-marriage-but what they are is never carefully defined.

Yet the church has always understood that the only proper context for the expression of sexual intimacy is between a man and a woman who are married to each other. So what, it must be asked, are those claiming the necessity for change asking for? Among themselves there are actually three positions. Some say marriage needs to be shifted, some say we need a new category which is like marriage in some ways but unlike it in others, and others say we need to encourage friendships which may develop a physical side and see what God's spirit will do.

I would note that not all advocates for change are in favor of exclusivity in these relationships. Andrew Sullivan, for example, in his book Virtually Normal says: "there is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman; and again, the lack of children gives gay couples greater freedom...marriage should be made available to everyone, but within this model, there is plenty of scope for cultural difference. There is something baleful about the attempt of some gay conservatives to educate homosexuals and lesbians into an uncritical acceptance of a stifling model of heterosexual normality.")

Incredibly, which of these three positions is actually being argued for, and what exactly we are doing, has not yet been spelled out. These are relationships in search of a theology.

So far I have said these relationships are against the Bible, that they contradict the church's doctrine of marriage, and that we cannot even be clear as to the definition of what is being asked for.

As if all this isn't enough, there are three more matters which make this resolution so crucial. Everyone here knows that the questions raised by THIS resolution are inextricably intertwined with the vote on the New Hampshire election. But the questions raised here tonight are the ones which must be settled BEFORE, as the resolution itself recognizes, the liturgies can be developed and therefore the relationships can be approved. We are in the midst of a debate and we need to decide the debate as a debate to respect the dignity of the people and the process involved.

Let us be quite clear. If Gene Robinson is confirmed by General Convention, it would bring through the back door a practice that the Episcopal Church has never agreed to approve through the front door. If we do that, it will be an end run around the debate before the debate itself has been settled. It will be a process in the name of justice and integrity which has no justice or integrity. (And please just so there is no confusion: this is not a comment on the New Hampshire process, but on the national process. If we are going to change church teaching, then let us be forthright and honest and open and change church teaching and THEN vote on an election in accordance with the change in church teaching).

In addition, if this passes, it will shatter the Episcopal Church. Sam Lloyd, rector of Trinity Church in Boston, said it would cause "significant splitting." A group of clergy in the diocese of Connecticut said it will "increase the descent 'deeper and deeper into chaos' (Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's words) in the American Episcopal Church.It will hasten the exodus of theologically serious Episcopalians to other denominations [or] increase the tendency [of such people] to distance themselves (emotionally, personally, and financially) from the diocesan structures."

The consequences in the Anglican Communion will be similarly disastrous. Already a significant number of Primates, representing the population of more than half of the Anglican Communion, have made clear that this step is utterly unacceptable in their eyes. To lose our communion with them, in the words of Rowan Williams, "would impoverish us as a Church in every way."

It is time to break through the veneer of what may be an air of unreality at this Convention, and tell ourselves the truth. I applaud the Presiding Bishop for saying "unawareness is a form of bondage" and I am concerned about precisely that unawareness now. It is a caricature to say that to speak of the church shattering is to use a threat. That is totally untrue.

Think this through with me. A woman who has been in a marriage for quite some time discovers that her husband is having an emotional affair. There are letters, emails, secret liasions and the like and she stumbles onto them. Then in a moment of great courage she summons her strength and confronts her husband. She gets him to admit the truth. Then she looks him squarely in the eye and says: "if you consummate that relationship our love will be shattered."

Now the husband can think to himself "she is trying to control me by threat," but we all know it is nothing of the kind-- it is instead a loving warning. And please note carefully the husband can also say, "if you choose to go that is your choice, you will be the one responsible," but that is untrue. And the husband also can say "look dear as long as we keep going to the dinner table together and loving each other we can work this out"-- and that is untrue. Please, please let us tell ourselves the truth.

Finally, I believe the gospel itself is at stake in this debate. Robert Gagnon puts it forcefully:

"Ultimately it is the individual homosexual who suffers in his or her relationship to God when the church shirks its duty to call a sin a sin. Far from being an unloving act, a sensitive refusal to condone homosexual conduct is the responsible and loving thing to do. The church deceives the homosexual by affirming a lifestyle that God deems to be sin. It is a nice, easy way out. Noone is offended, the arguments go away, the tension dissipates-all at the "minimal" cost of forestalling the redemptive work of Christ. God did not offer up Jesus Christ for the purpose of rubber stamping and affirming all human desires. Christ died in order that human beings might be reconciled to God and begin the process of sanctification that will ultimately lead to glorification. To simply assert that God loves us and forgives us as we are, without holding out the necessity and hope of a life conformed to the will of God, is to deny God's power to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. . . . To fly in the face of scripture in a pale call for acceptance and inclusion is a failure to do the costly work of reconciliation that liberates us from the bondage of our sinful selves... Acceptance is not forgiveness. Affirmation is not transformation. And inclusion is not reconciliation."

I end by offering a picture for everyone to have etched in their minds. Are we willing on the great and terrible day of judgment to see Jesus Christ look us in the eyes and hear the question: my servant, what did you do at the General Convention in 2003 in Minneapolis? And are we willing to look Christ back in his eyes and say: I voted to reject your clearly revealed will in Scripture, to shatter your church, and to pull people away from the love of Christ? I pray not.

[ahadams2]

Rite C005 is the 'blessing of relationships other than marriage' (i.e. homosexual marriage rites).

[LiteKeeper]

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