A Comment on "Transforming Families"

Does the church need yet another report to help us understand the values and theology of "traditional" families? The reality is that our churches are confronted with a wide variety of family models and our challenge is to share effectively the gospel's grace and compassion with those families that do not fit the mold. Where we need help is developing a theology and ministry toward those new partnerships, configurations and understandings of family that we find within our own church "family." We need a report that addresses what is, rather than what we wish or remember. The original intent of the Task Force on Changing Families was directed at such a mandate. The much-revised document that will be sent to this year's General Assembly, seen in this light, is disheartening.


Let me mention three examples:

I had just arrived as the new interim pastor. A member of the church made an appointment to meet with me. Linda was a beautiful young woman who sang in the choir. She was from Cameroon by way of England, with a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. She had recently been married in a relationship that had been arranged by her family - and that was her concern. She had not yet been married a year, and her husband had already returned to his pre-marriage relationship. She turned to her uncle who lived in Chicago and asked his advice. He said, "It's too soon for him to go back to back to the mistress." Before too long, Linda left the area to go live with her uncle.

Dan was serving as pastor of a suburban congregation. He had been struggling with his sexuality for several years and with the active participation of his wife, he acknowledged his homosexuality. His wife shared their struggle with a friend, who shared it with a friend, who called the Presbytery. Soon, Dan was no longer serving as a pastor of a congregation. Hurt, it took him a few years to find a church that would simply let him be. One of the highlights of my service at that congregation was participating in the baptism of his son-in-law and two grandchildren who had also become part of that congregation's life.

John was a deacon who came by one afternoon to introduce himself to his new interim pastor. In the course of our conversation he began to tell me his story. His wife of 30 years had been in a vegetative comma for the past 10 years. She was still in her early 50s, and doctors felt she might continue to live for 20 to 30 years with no possibility of recovery. Over time, John had formed a new relationship that had been accepted by the children of both families. He continued his emotional, financial and legal support of his wife. The church, however, did not know of any of this and assumed that he and his common law partner were husband and wife. On the next Sunday after our conversation, his partner had a big smile on her face as she sat in church, knowing that the pastor now knew her situation and accepted her.


Three different churches, three different "family" situations, each one challenging my already broad notion of family. Every one of us could tell multiple versions of the story.

There is no question that the nature of family has changed dramatically in the last generation. Some have responded to these changes with alarm, feeling that the traditional nuclear family itself is at stake; others have responded with understanding and are seeking ways the church can be supportive of those in differing circumstances. In light of these changing needs, the 209th General Assembly in 1997 appointed a committee to look at the realities of changing families in America.

Changing Families Task Force

After several years' work, the committee was prepared to report at last year's Assembly. The process was sidetracked, however, when an alternative report surfaced within the Assembly committee. It was eventually revealed that it had been authored by Alan Wisdom, of Presbyterians in Faith and Action, an offshoot of the Institute for Religion and Democracy. This conservative critique of the report emphasized married heterosexual couples as the biblical norm for healthy families. The Assembly referred the majority and minority report back to the Changing Families Task Force to report again this year. After a year of review, editing and refinement, the report will come to this Assembly with an apparently moderate, "family-friendly" veneer. (The final draft of the report has not been released at the time of this article.)

Given the nature of our contemporary culture wars, the actions in the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the Ohio legislature, and recent statements by the President, we are hearing significant debate about the nature of the family, and loud defenses of "traditional" family structure. What we need is a theological and pastoral understanding of the variety of intimate relationships and commitments that don't fit the "traditional" model. That is what last year's report sought to provide. Simply restating a traditionally orthodox definition of the family ignores the challenge to face the social and cultural realities of our time. Biblical faith certainly does not require being blind to the world around us.

But at least, the new report does not suggest that traditional marriage exhausts what the church means by family. To that we can all say, "Thank God," because too many of us would have been excluded by such a simplistic response.

Changing the report to reflect traditional definitions, however, raises a different and a more troubling concern. Acknowledging the reality of the changing structures of family is not a threat to traditional families. On the other hand, closing our eyes and minds to what "family" means in contemporary American culture threatens the church's ability to respond to those who lives and families fall into different categories. While the report acknowledges that "God works through all kinds of families," it does make a value judgment that "married people, are on the whole, happier, healthier, and better off financially . . . than are single people." (Presbyterian Outlook: Jan. 12-19, 2004)

Semper Reformanda Pre-assembly Conversation: about families

Sensing that the topic of families in transitions is a fundamental issue to our theology and mission, the Witherspoon Society will be sponsoring its 10th Annual Semper Reformanda Pre-Assembly Conversation on the "changing families" paper. We will have several members of the Task Force as part of our panel.

Realistically, we don't need help understanding the theology of "traditional" families. Where we really do need help is developing a theology and ministry toward those new partnerships, configurations and understandings of family that we find within our own church "family." We need a report that addresses what is, rather than what we wish or remember.

There is one more family story to tell. It involves a man who had a wife who was without a child but who brought another woman to her husband so that he could have a son. Later, the husband, in order to gain some security in the eyes of a local king, lied about his relationship to his wife and offered her to the king. It was only later that the wife, indeed, had a son of her own.

We must be careful when talking about "family" when our own religious tradition offers such a variety of family patterns - patterns through which, in all their variety, God has been at work.