ADVENT 2003
From the editor…
The following is condensed from Dr. Harmon’s remarks
at the 2003 General Convention.
This isn't a debate about who is included; Christ invites and includes
all people. This isn't a debate about pastoral care — the church's
living out her theology in practices that vary depending on the circumstances.
There is a distinction between orientation and practice that has to be kept
in mind. People have urges, inclinations, and desires but we need to distinguish
between having them and acting on them. This is about the call of God
to his church and its leadership to be holy as God is holy.
Primarily this is a controversy about the Bible. 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.
Not only is the Bible 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). A same sex union cannot be unitive, the
bodies do not fit together in their design. It is unable to be procreative.
Whatever else is being called for by General Convention, it is not marriage.
This is seen in the rhetoric of the resolution. It is only clear what
these couplings are not — marriage — but what they are is not clearly defined.
As if 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 are the ones which must be settled before the
liturgies can be developed and therefore the relationships can be approved.
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 neither justice nor
integrity.
If this passes, it will shatter the Episcopal Church. A noted rector 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” in the American Episcopal Church. 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 General 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.
It is a caricature to say that to speak of the church shattering is to use
a threat. That is untrue. Think this through. A woman who
has been in a marriage for some time discovers her husband is having an emotional
affair. There are letters, emails, secret liaisons 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. The
husband can even say, “the relationship hasn't been severed during previous
difficulties, so it will not now,” and that, too, is false. If the
husband goes through with the affair it is the husband who is responsible
for the marriage break up — that is the reality. 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. No one is offended, the
arguments go away, the tension dissipates — all at the “minimal” cost of
forestalling the redemptive work of Christ.” Let us take the higher
road, the call of holy love, let us embrace the gospel of repentance and
transformation, the gospel which has at its center not human affirmation
but Christ's redeeming suffering on the Cross.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr Harmon by e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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