The Gospel According to Matthew Shepard:

The Theme of Reconciliation in 'The Confession of 1967' from the Perspective of the Unreconciled

Paul E. Capetz
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

[2-18-02]

One of the addresses given at the conference on the Confession of 1967, with the theme, "The Hope of Reconciliation Today," provided the very special perspective of one who by virtue of his sexual orientation must count himself among the "unreconciled." While scholarly papers are not usually part of the treasures you find in Network News, we believe Paul Capetz offers both a personal testimony and a scholarly examination of the meaning of reconciliation today.

Part of this talk, along with selections from the other presentations at the conference, will be published in the May/June issue of Church & Society magazine.

Thanks to Dr. Capetz, and to Roberta Wells Hargleroad, the new editor of Church & Society, for permission to publish the full text of the talk here and in Network News.

All of Dr. Capetz' footnotes are included at the end of this paper.  Just click on any of the footnote numbers (in the light green color of all links on this site), and you'll jump to the note.  To return to the text, click the "Back" button on your browser.

In our own society, the attempt of gay people to liberate themselves from the chains of oppression by coming out of the closet and demanding equal treatment under the law has met with the resistance and the hatred of all those who believe that homosexuality is sinful, sick, and perverse. For this reason, the death of Matthew Shepard can serve as a poignant symbol of the challenge posed to the church by gay people today.

Calling to mind Matthew Shepard's death by the forces of homophobia enables me to engage the central theme of "The Confession of 1967," namely, the church as a community of reconciliation that is called to reflect in word and deed the gospel of God's reconciliation of humanity through Christ. Since homosexuality is the contemporary issue that threatens to tear apart the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as well as other mainline denominations, I am going to ask what "reconciliation" would mean for the church in this circumstance. After all, reconciliation is what this church most needs since talk of "schism" abounds on all sides. But I have to be completely candid at the outset of this discussion and admit that I am not particularly interested in reconciliation between the opposing camps within the denomination, namely, those who favor ordination of gay people and those who resist it. Attempts to find some sort of "middle ground," such as that recently proposed by George Hunsinger, are perhaps necessary in the short run to prevent the denomination from splitting, but in my view they miss the crucial issue that will eventually have to be faced in the long run. The church needs to come to terms with the fact that gay people are demanding full equality with straight persons and will not settle for a seat at the back of the bus (which is, more or less, the direction in which Hunsinger moves).4

My emphasis lies elsewhere, namely, on those gay persons like myself who are most immediately affected by this debate as well as by the historical effects of Christianity's traditional view of homosexuality. My question is thus twofold: first, "What would it mean for gay people to be reconciled to the church?," and second, "What would it mean for the church to be reconciled to gay people?" As I see it, the second question is really the one that needs to be answered first, since gay people will never be reconciled to the church until the church is reconciled to gay people.

Although I have never been the victim of a hate crime such as that perpetrated against Matthew Shepard, my life and my career have been adversely affected by homophobia, specifically of the ecclesial variety. Eleven years ago I was ordained as a minister in this church and was called to teach at one of our Presbyterian seminaries. Before I had even packed my bags to assume my new post, however, an anonymous accusation on account of my sexual orientation threatened to take this job away from me. I later discovered, to my great shock and dismay, that this accusation had come from one of my own professors in graduate school. Since the substance of the accusation could not be proven and the person making it denied any responsibility when directly confronted, I was allowed to join the faculty after all. But an ominous cloud hung over my head, for I knew that my job would always be vulnerable to such threats. After a year I took another position at a seminary affiliated with the United Church of Christ which has allowed me to pursue my vocation unhindered by homophobia. While I was glad to find refuge with the U.C.C., there was much sadness, nonetheless, since I had to leave colleagues with whom there was an unusual and rare "meeting of minds" of the sort for which one always yearns yet seldom ever finds in academic settings.

Nine years later, in the spring of 2000, I asked the presbytery to release me from the exercise of the ordained ministry.5 This decision was made in response to the passage in 1997 of so-called "Amendment B" which implied commitment to a life of permanent celibacy for a gay person holding an ordained office. Up until that point, I had been able to live within the bounds of the constitution in good conscience. To be sure, the "Definitive Guidance" of 1978 had already put into effect what was essentially a policy of "Don't ask, don't tell!" Yet there was still some space for gay officers to serve the church within these ambiguous constraints. The change in the constitution itself forced my hand. For me, the crucial consideration in relinquishing my ordination was a matter of principle: enforced celibacy without the possibility of marriage violates a fundamental tenet of Reformed theology. Previously there had never been a situation in the history of the Protestant church when celibacy was required of an entire caste of persons as a condition of their fidelity to the gospel.6 Remaining silent was no longer an option. I could not continue to represent the church as one of its ministers when the theological principles of its own heritage were ignored for the purpose of excluding gay people. In the meantime, another Presbyterian seminary invited me to apply for a faculty position, but when I explained the reasons for deciding to set aside my ordination, I was informed that there was no point in submitting an application since it could not be taken seriously. I mention these experiences not to make myself the focus of attention here, but simply to illustrate that gay people are not the only victims of homophobia. The entire church suffers the consequences insofar as talent is drained from the ranks of its leaders for the sake of a policy that I have no hesitation in decrying as immoral.

Hence, I remain unreconciled to the church for two reasons. The first is moral: the church's current position precludes the possibility that gay people can live a moral life on the same terms as straight people. The second is theological: while the rhetoric of being a "confessional" church abounds, there is little self-critical reflection upon the actual content of the Book of Confessions. To be sure, opponents of gay people are more than willing to point to the "Heidelberg Catechism" which contains a reference to homosexuality, but only in its faulty English translation, not in the original text.7 We know that a few years ago the General Assembly refused the call for a new translation of the catechism. But I'm not talking primarily about what this or that passage of a given confessional document does or does not say about homosexuality. Even if we were to get a new translation of the "Heidelberg Catechism," this wouldn't solve the issue for today's church. So what do I mean by taking the Book of Confessions seriously?

I'm referring to the basic understanding of human existence in the world before God that is expressed in our Reformed confessions and asking what it would mean to apply this understanding to gay people and not merely to straight people. I'm talking about "theology," not proof-texting. I believe there is a definite link between the moral problem facing the church in the matter of homosexuality and the theological problem of failing to take our Reformed heritage seriously in the light of new challenges. This celebration of the thirty-fifth anniversary of "The Confession of 1967" provides us with an occasion for theological and moral reflection which is truly "confessional" in the most authentic sense, unlike that of the inflated rhetoric of the so-called "confessing church" movement in our denomination which wants to claim the confessional tradition on behalf of its fight against gay people.

In posing the question, "What would it mean for the church to be reconciled to gay people?," I readily recognize that, for many persons in the church today, there is no desire for such reconciliation. From their perspective, gay people are sinful or immoral in their lifestyles, perverse and unnatural in their sexual desires. "Reconciliation" can only occur when gay people repent of their sin, turn back to God, and either live in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage or abstain from sexual activity altogether. This, after all, is the biblical view, as we are told again and again. For Christians who are convinced of such a position in the matter of homosexuality, the overriding consideration is that of biblical authority.8

One major reason I am not optimistic about a reconciliation between the two opposing camps within the church is precisely this difference respecting the meaning of biblical authority. Surely, those of us who are on the other side of the controversy about homosexuality believe that we, too, acknowledge the authority of the Bible (not to mention the Reformed confessions!). But how we understand what fidelity to the Bible means is quite different. I would also add that this difference involves an entire constellation of theological beliefs and convictions that reflect contrasting construals of the meaning of the Reformation heritage. For our opponents, the fundamental issue at stake in the present debate is preserving the Reformers' doctrine of sola scriptura whereas for us it is not so much the Reformers' views about the Bible that bind us to them as it is their understanding of human existence in the world before God (sola fide). Scholars of the Reformation make a distinction between the Reformers' "formal principle" (the doctrine about biblical authority) and their "material principle" (the doctrine about salvation). For those of us whose interpretation of the Bible has been deeply affected by the results of the historical method, it is not possible simply to adopt the older views about the Bible as a supernaturally inspired oracle containing the words of God. The meaning of biblical authority has undergone a great shift during the modern era of Protestant theology (in which the historical-critical method came to fruition). It is the evaluation of this shift, whether it was a good or a bad thing, that divides us from our opponents in the matter under discussion today. That's why there are theological issues of a fundamental sort to be addressed, in addition to the ethical questions about the morality of homosexuality.

With respect to the nature of biblical authority, "the Confession of '67" took a decisive stand that aligned the church unambiguously with the new understanding of biblical authority of which I have been speaking. But it should be pointed out that in some ways this new understanding wasn't so new after all. There are significant precedents in some aspects of the writings of both Luther and Calvin for this view, and some scholars (myself included) would contend that the rise of the historical-critical method has been the occasion for the authentic contribution of the Reformers to the understanding of biblical authority to come into clear focus. But that argument has been made in other contexts and I cannot rehearse it again in this place.9

The confession makes a very important distinction between Jesus Christ as "the Word of God" (with a capital "W") and the Bible as "the word of God written" (with a small "w"). This distinction is intended to accomplish two things simultaneously: first, to retrieve an understanding of the Bible that was present in the thinking of the Protestant reformers but was obscured by the subsequent history of Protestant orthodoxy; second, to correlate this strand of Reformation thinking with the insights yielded by the historical-critical method regarding the Bible as being very much a product of the ancient world. Holding these two points together enables us to refrain from making claims regarding the supernatural origin of scripture and, instead, to view it as a witness (indeed, "the witness without parallel") to the reconciling work of God in Jesus Christ who is "the Word of God incarnate." The statement reads:

The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel....The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God's work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.10

Given this understanding of biblical authority, what prevents the church from reconsidering its position on homosexuality?

I believe that the answer to this question is "biblicism," i.e., a belief in the authority of scripture such that what it says about homosexuality overrides every other consideration that might be brought to bear on the issue. Biblicism, in my view, is the demon that needs to be purged from the theological thinking of the church. And yet, that is precisely what "The Confession of 1967" seemed to offer in its statement on the Bible. In the light of this confessional statement, it's difficult for me to understand how many persons in the church can take it for granted that what the Bible says about homosexuality is somehow beyond critical scrutiny on account of what they take to be the Reformed view of scripture's authority. Yet this is precisely what the "confessing church" group would have us believe! But who is really taking the confessional heritage seriously at this point?

From my theological perspective, biblicism is a form of idolatry because it treats as divine what is a human document. When one considers what Moses or Paul says about homosexuality, could this not be an example of what "The Confession of 1967" means when it speaks of "views of life…which were then current"? I am convinced that those who appeal to the Bible to rule out any serious ethical examination into the morality of homosexuality are repeating the error of those theologians who defended the practice of slavery by appealing to its biblical justification. This use of scripture, as though it contained an infallible, divinely revealed moral code, is idolatry! I want to quote a passage from James M. Gustafson who discusses the meaning of idolatry in this sense. Gustafson writes:

As theologians, and particularly Protestant theologians, have long noted, the absolutizing of objects of loyalty short of God -- including particular moral values and principles -- is the temptation of finite human beings. It is the traditional sin of idolatry, the error that makes the security of persons and communities rest upon their certitude that they are the sole custodians of what is true and right and good. The experiential awareness of finiteness requires that we recognize that what we know about moral values, and what we state as perduring moral principles, is relative to our created human experience… [Persons] cannot assume an attitude of dogmatism about their firmest moral convictions. Moral life is a finite human enterprise; the formulation of moral values and principles is not exempt from that condition… The temptation to fix historically relative perceptions and teachings into externally valid rules of conduct must be resisted. Willingness freely to admit moral mistakes is in order.11

I take it as self-evident that the finite character of morality of which Gustafson speaks is also applicable to the moral teachings found in the Bible and the confessions. This is the only conclusion compatible with a thoroughgoing historical interpretation. Hence, to absolutize either of these sources as being beyond criticism is to fall into idolatry!

If the denomination splits, it will be due not only to differing views on the issue of sexuality, but also because of the chasm between us on what it means to take the Bible seriously in a contemporary Reformed theology and ethics. Needless to say, I don't believe that the Bible requires such defensive maneuvers to insure its continuing authority among Christians. The Bible's central message of reconciliation in Christ can stand on its own. When this message is faithfully proclaimed from our pulpits and received with faith by those who hear it, then we can say, in good Reformed fashion, that the Word of God has spoken among us.

Unfortunately, however, the Word of God in Christ cannot be heard equally by all people. When the church's proclamation is tied to what is purported to be a divinely sanctioned policy of homophobia, then gay people are going to identify the church with those who seek our harm, not our salvation. The noted gay writer Paul Monette had this to say about his relation to religious institutions: "I understand that I'll never get around my rage at the tyranny of religion to see if there's anything Higher out there."12 Until the church is willing to repent of its anti-gay tradition, there will be no reconciliation of gay people to the church. What is needed is for the church to come to terms with the realities of our lived experience as sexual beings much as it had begun to do with that of modern-day heterosexual persons in 1967.

In "The Confession of 1967" we find the following important statement about issues of gender and human sexuality:

The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic way God's ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created mankind. Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man's alienation from God, his neighbor, and himself. Man's perennial confusion about the meaning of sex has been aggravated in our day by the availability of new means for birth control and the treatment of infection, by the pressures of urbanization, by the exploitation of sexual symbols in mass communication, and by world overpopulation.

The church, as the household of God, is called to lead men out of this alienation into the responsible freedom of the new life in Christ. Reconciled to God, each person has joy in and respect for his own humanity and that of other persons; a man and woman are enabled to marry, to commit themselves to a mutually shared life, and to respond to each other in sensitive and lifelong concern; parents receive the grace to care for children in love and to nurture their individuality. The church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by man when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the moral confusion of our time.13

Although we now recognize that this statement is couched in a non-inclusive idiom, we can still appreciate that the confession represents an attempt to respond faithfully to many developments of modern society that posed a serious challenge to traditional sexual mores: the availability of new means of artificial contraception and better medical treatment of venereal diseases, the global population crisis, the demographic shift from a rural to an urban society, and the dissemination of ideas about and images of sexual expression through books, magazines, movies, and television. All of these technological, social, and cultural changes of the twentieth century gained momentum after World War II and came to the boiling point in the turbulent decade of the 1960's. The effort to address these issues within the framework of a confession of faith informed by a Christian, Protestant, and Reformed tradition is commendable and worthy of our attention. But in addition to the profound influences that the feminist movement would exert upon church and society in the following decades, the writers of "The Confession of 1967" could not have anticipated another significant social and political movement that would require the church's response.

In 1969, just two years after the writing of the confession, there was a riot in New York City when gay people unexpectedly stood up to and fought back against police harassment during what was supposed to be a routine raid on a gay bar called the "Stonewall." This event marks the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in American history. The commonly heard phrases "before Stonewall" and "after Stonewall" indicate that this uprising was a watershed in the new self-definition of a group of persons hitherto living "in the closet" but now determined to fight publicly for their own liberation from societal oppression and cultural prejudice.14 At the time, few church leaders gave more than a passing thought to the question of homosexuality, and certainly none imagined that just over 30 years later the mainline churches would be virtually split down the middle by the challenge to America that began in that riot of 1969. The completely heterosexual purview of "The Confession of 1967" is indicative of this fact. But when multitudes of otherwise respectable women and men from all walks of life suddenly started "coming out of the closet" through a public acknowledgment of their homosexual orientation, the churches were faced with a challenge for which they had not been prepared since the phenomenon of homosexuality had rarely been a focus of sustained pastoral and moral concern.

As early as 1971, however, a new denomination, "The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches" (M.C.C.), was founded for the explicit purpose of providing an affirmative Christian community where gay people who had not been welcomed in other churches could find unconditional acceptance and nurture.15 And the very next year the United Church of Christ (U.C.C.) became the first mainline protestant body to ordain an openly gay man to the ministry. The Presbyterians first confronted the issue in 1975 when a qualified candidate for the ministry explained that his gay lifestyle was not sinful since it exemplified the same moral standards of responsible love that the church expects of heterosexual Christians. I need not rehearse the rest of the story since you know it all too well, but suffice it to say that the Presbyterians have yet to answer that man's challenge.

Matthew Shepard was born a year later in 1976. What would the church have to say to him as he grew into adulthood? What guidance would there be for how a gay man should express his sexuality in a morally responsible manner? What messages about homosexuality would his killers imbibe from Christian teaching about homosexuality? There are no innocent answers to questions such as these. The church cannot ignore the implications of its anti-gay stance upon the lives of human beings, whether gay or straight. In this connection, the most telling indictment of the church is found in "The Confession of 1967": "The church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by man when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together, or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the moral confusion of our time." What needs to be added here is that the church itself exemplifies "the moral confusion of our time" as far as gay people are concerned and, thus, does "invite rejection" because it "withholds the compassion of Christ" and "fails to lead (all persons) into the full meaning of life together." Again, with reference to confession, we may ask whether the church really does lead all persons out of "confusion about the meaning of sex" and from "alienation into the responsible freedom of the new life in Christ"? What form would "responsible freedom" take for a gay man such as Matthew Shepard?

The gay Catholic writer Andrew Sullivan has given a poignant description of the destructive impact of Christian homophobia upon gay people. He writes:

With regard to homosexuality, I inherited no moral and religious teaching that could guide me to success or failure. In my adolescence and young adulthood, the teaching of the Church was merely a silence, an increasingly hollow denial even of the existence of homosexuals, let alone a credible ethical guide to how they should lead their lives. It is still true that in over thirty years of weekly churchgoing, I have never heard a homily that attempted to explain how a gay man should live, or how his sexuality should be expressed. I have heard nothing but a vast and endless and embarrassed silence, an awkward, unexpressed desire for the simple nonexistence of such people, for their absence from the moral and physical universe, for a word or a phrase, like "objective disorder," that could simply abolish the problem they represented and the diverse humanity they symbolized. The teaching I inherited was a teaching that, in the best of all possible worlds, I simply would not exist.16

Sullivan goes on to talk about the church's expectation of gay people that they should embrace abstinence as a condition of their fidelity to Christ: "abstinence not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake; abstinence not just from sex, but from love and love's hope and the touch of a lover's embrace."17 Finally, he gives this verdict:

… a doctrine that seeks to extinguish love from the hearts of a whole segment of humanity, is so onerous and invidious and anomalous that silence is its own decent expression. But it is and was this silence that defined for me, and still defines for millions, the ethic of a homosexual life in America and around the world. Which is to say, it is an unethic, a statement that some people are effectively beneath even the project of an ethical teaching.18

"This is the necessary context in which any discussion of homosexual sex has to take place," he concludes.19 In the twenty years since AIDS first reared its ugly head, the churches have offered no ethical guidance as to how gay people should be sexually responsible. This is the true immorality, not the promiscuity in the urban gay sub-culture to which the church so often points in horror. To quote Sullivan once more:

What incentives were offered for you to choose one way of life over another, when all possible expressions of your identity, from love and fidelity to promiscuity and prostitution, were regarded as morally indistinguishable one from the other? How can a human being navigate an ethical life in the midst of such moral nihilism? The answer is an obvious one, made explicable only by the thought that, in the minds of such theologians, homosexuals aren't fully human beings at all.20

To take just one example of what Sullivan is talking about, I point you to the words of Karl Barth, considered to be the greatest Reformed theologian of the 20th century. Barth spoke of homosexuality as an expression of "inhumanity" and stated categorically: "homosexuality can have no place in [the Christian] life, whether in its more refined or cruder forms."21 In the wake of what we now know about the homosexual victims of the Holocaust, Barth's words, written just a few years after the war, have a terrifying parallel in Hitler's vision of a civilization purged of gay people. In this day when many in our denomination are styling themselves after the model of the "Confessing Church" in Nazi Germany, it is important to remind ourselves that with respect to gay people (not to mention the role of women in church and society), the "Confessing Church" shared some of the same values enthusiastically embraced by the National Socialists.22

To be a "gay Christian" is to find oneself caught between two worlds that are moving in opposing directions: on the one hand, there is the church with its condemnation of homosexuality as immoral and, on the other hand, there is the gay community that rejects the church's (as well as the larger society's) rejection of itself as immoral. According to many persons in both communities, the church and the gay community represent mutually exclusive options: either one affirms Christianity, in which case homosexuality is unacceptable, or one embraces a gay identity, in which case one's commitment to the church is morally questionable. For those of us who find ourselves with one foot in each world, the external pressures upon us coming from both directions are mirrored internally in the feeling that our souls are being torn apart. We seem forced into a dilemma not of our own making, for to disown our spiritual heritage is as much an act of self-betrayal as is the thought of disowning our sexuality.23 How does a person choose whether to amputate the right hand or the left?24 As this conflict between two communities has become more heated in the past thirty years, I have increasingly begun to wonder whether "gay Christian" isn't an oxymoron, after all! The question for today, I think, is this: how does the theme of reconciliation, understood as a comprehensive interpretation of the gospel's import for our time, bear upon the question of gay people and the church? Is genuine reconciliation possible here or does the gospel come up against the limits of its applicability when the issue of homosexuality is broached?

There is a different sense, I believe, in which we need to be a confessing church: through a confession of sin against gay people in the name of the gospel. This is the only way that gay people will ever be reconciled to the church. Gay people will never be reconciled to the church until the church is willing to examine its basic beliefs about homosexuality from the ground up. After Stonewall, gay people refuse to sit at the back of the bus, to be treated as second-class citizens of this society or as second-class members of the churches. There will be no reconciliation of gay people until the church develops a sexual ethic that can take account of our lives as we experience and understand them. Gay people will be reconciled to the church only when there is a statement in the Book of Confessions about the responsible stewardship of gay sexuality that reflects the same degree of sensitivity and sophistication as the statement about heterosexuality in "The Confession of 1967." There will be no reconciliation of gay people until that time when a homosexual orientation is seen as having about as much moral significance for human life as being left-handed or having red hair. On that day when the church is truly willing to welcome gay people, it will cease to use descriptive phrases such as "objectively disordered," "deficiently human," "tragic," "pathological," and "a sign of the fall" with respect to our sexuality. In other words, we won't be reconciled until the church repents of its history of homophobia and heterosexism.

According to "A Brief Statement of Faith" added to the Book of Confessions in 1991, we are called

to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.25

Gay people are among those whose voices have long been silenced and are now bearing witness against the idolatry of heterosexism in both the church and the wider culture of which it is a part. We are calling all persons to work with us for justice, freedom, and peace. We are engaged in the work of reconciliation, just as "The Confession of 1967" proposes as essential to the life of the church.

For the church to revise its inherited moral codes in the matter of homosexuality is not to betray its theological heritage. Indeed, to recognize the dangers of idolatry in our use of the Bible and the confessional tradition is to open ourselves to asking what an appropriate moral response to the current challenge might be. To return to Gustafson for a moment, the recognition of finitude leads not only to awareness of the danger of idolatry in the moral life but also to a willingness to risk new moral ventures. He writes:

There is a more active or positive aspect to the awareness of finitude as well. It establishes a readiness to explore freshly the possibilities that are present in new circumstances of life to avoid ancient and new evils, and to achieve new patterns of well-being. A willingness to learn, a readiness to resist premature foreclosure of reflection, is required. Without lusting for novelty for its own sake, persons and communities can entertain the possibilities of new or different moral requirements under new and changing conditions of relationships to society, to the natural world, and to other persons. In short, awareness of human limitation restrains the human tendency to impose uncritically upon tomorrow the moral certitudes that were sufficient for another time, another cultural place, another historical circumstance. At the same time it evokes a readiness to search out the moral requirements that are related to present and impending circumstances, that are required by current developments in society and culture, that light the way through the dark moral forest in which we live.26

Gustafson's admonition reminds us that the gospel grants us courage to risk doing a new thing in our efforts to discern the way forward today.

Apparently, even Karl Barth was at least willing to reconsider the question of homosexuality near the end of his life. In a letter written by Eberhard Busch at Barth's request, we find this explanation of Barth's comments in the Church Dogmatics (3/4) to which I earlier referred:

Today Professor Barth is no longer completely satisfied with the incidental remarks he made at that time and, in the light of the changes and the new insights that have occurred since his writing, he would most certainly formulate these remarks somewhat differently today. Therefore, one is permitted to think that, in conversation with doctors and psychologists, he could come to a new judgment and description of the phenomenon [of homosexuality] precisely against the background of the context [in which these remarks were made], namely, that fundamentally God's command is also to be understood and followed as "freedom" for community."27

While the passage is more suggestive than precise, it is to Barth's credit that in his last year of life he could give indication of his willingness in principle to reconsider the matter. Perhaps we might even hope that some Barthian theologian today will dare to revise this aspect of Barth's teachings in a spirit that is faithful to his method of thinking.

For gay people to be reconciled to the church, the church has to reconcile itself to us. It has to be willing to re-examine itself in the light of Matthew Shepard and what his death symbolizes for the plight of gay people. With his battered body in mind, the church should remind itself of what another Matthew once reported Christ as saying: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me… Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not me" (Mt 25:40, 45, RSV).

1 The Bible commands that men who have sexual intercourse with other men are to be put to death (Lev. 20:13).

2 In 533 the emperor Justinian made homosexuality a crime to be punished with death. See John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 171.

3 See the account of Heinz Heger, The Men with the Pink Triangle, trans. David Fernbach, 2nd revised edition (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1994) and Martin Sherman's powerful play Bent (New York: Avon Books, 1979).

4 George Hunsinger, "There is a Third Way: Theses for the Crisis in Our church," in The Presbyterian Outlook, vol. 183, no. 40 (November 26, 2001):1, 7-10. While Hunsinger allows for certain forms of homosexual relationships and is even willing to accept the ordination of gay people, he continues to speak of homosexuality as "unnatural" (Thesis #60) and insists that it has "an aspect of tragedy" about it which means that it "cannot be normalized" (Thesis #53). "No formalizing of gay partnerships through covenantal ceremonies in the church…may be permitted to suggest a simple equivalency between the propriety of such partnerships and marriage" (Thesis #66).

5    My letter of resignation to the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area has been printed in the More Light Update, vol. 21, no. 2 (November-December 2000): 17-18.  [It is also on this web site.]

6    For the argument in detail, see my essay "Binding and Unbinding the Conscience: Luther's Significance for the Plight of a Gay Protestant," in Theology and Sexuality (forthcoming).

7 "The Heidelberg Catechism," in Book of Confessions: Study Edition [Part I of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)] (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1999), 4.087. The original text may be found in Bekenntnisschriften und Kirchenordnungen der nach Gottes Wort reformierten Kirche, ed. Wilhelm Niesel, 3rd edition (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag A. G. Zollikon, 1938), p. 171. In the Westminster "Larger Catechism," there is condemnation of "sodomy" and "all unnatural lusts." In the very same paragraph, however, "entangling vows of single life" are also condemned. Book of Confessions, 7.249.

8 When I asked Hunsinger why he insisted on describing homosexuality as "tragic" and "disordered," he replied that Presbyterians are constitutionally committed to a high view of Scripture. But the problem, as I see it, is that the Bible sometimes teaches a position which the church in a later era no longer endorses. For example, the full equality of women with men, as taught in "A Brief Statement of Faith," 10.3, stands in contradiction to Paul's teaching in 1 Cor. 11:3, 7 where it is stated that "The head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband" and man "is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man." In the light of this precedent, is it self-evident that the church must continue to accept a biblical view of homosexuality? Surely Hunsinger does not see the modern view of the full equality of women with men as a violation of the Presbyterian commitment to biblical authority!

9 I have gone into greater depth on this matter in my essay, "Defending the Reformed Tradition? Problematic Aspects of the Appeal to Biblical and Confessional Authority in the Present Theological Crisis Confronting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)," in The Journal of Presbyterian History, vol. 79, 1 (Spring 2001): 23-29.

10   Book of Confessions, 9.27, 9.29.

11 James M. Gustafson, Can Ethics Be Christian? (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 98.

12 Paul Monette, Becoming a man: Half a Life Story (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 34.

13 Book of Confessions, 9.47.

14 See the account in Martin Duberman, Stonewall (New York: Dutton, 1993).

15 Troy D. Perry, the founder of this denomination, has recounted his autobiography in The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay, 25th anniversary edition (Los Angeles: Universal Fellowship Press, 1997).

16 Andrew Sullivan, Love Undetectable: Notes on Friend-ship, Sex and Survival (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp. 42-43.

17 Sullivan, p. 43.

18 Sullivan, p. 45.

19 Sullivan, p. 45.

20 Sullivan, p. 46

21 Church Dogmatics, 3/4 , ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), p. 166.

22 Twenty years ago when I was a student in Germany, I met a gay man, Werner Koch, who had been a pastor in the Confessing Church and a student of Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Finkewalde. He was sent to a concentration camp for his activities on behalf of the Confessing Church. See Eberhard Bethge's biography, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologe, Christ, Zeitgenosse (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1967),p. 613. Koch also explained to me that he had confided his sexual orientation to Karl Barth who, in agreement with Freud, did not believe it would be possible to alter his sexual orientation through psychoanalysis. On the subordinate role of women in the Confessing Church as well as in Nazi society, see the dissertation by Heike Kohler, Deutsch-Evangelisch-Frau: Konzeptionen und Handlungsraume innerhalb der evangelischen Frauenbewegung zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus and in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit am Beispiel der hannoverschen Theologin Meta Eyl (Kassel, 2001), pp. 217-221. I am indebted to Professor Luise Schottroff, formerly at the University of Kassel and now at Pacific School of Religion, for drawing my attention to this historical source.

23 A brief account of this dilemma in my own life can be found in the editorial "Face to Face" entitled "Homosexual Conversion? Finding Freedom as a Gay Man," in Word and World, vol. 21, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 302, 304. A completely different response is given by Bob Ragan in the same issue of Word and World, 303, 305: "Homosexual Conversion? Finding Freedom from Homosexuality."

24 Some Christians, of course, would say that cutting off one's hand is exactly what is required of gay people as a condition of their fidelity to the church: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire" (Mk 9:43).

25    "A Brief Statement of Faith," in Book of Confessions, 10.4.

26 Gustafson, Can Ethics Be Christian?, pp. 98-99.

27 Letter to Rolf Italiaander (June 21, 1968), in Karl Barth, Offene Briefe 1945-1968, ed. Diether Koch (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1984), p 543. I am indebted to Hunsinger for drawing my attention to this letter.

A major
Ghost Ranch event this summer!

July 28 - August 3, 2008

Paths toward Peace and Justice:
Spirituality, Earth-Care, and the Prophetic Word in a time of Violence

If you like what you find here,
we hope you'll help us keep this website going ... and growing!

Please consider making a special contribution -- large or small -- to help us continue and improve this service.

Click here to send a gift online, using your credit card, through PayPal.

Or send your check, made out to "Witherspoon Society" and marked "web site," to our Witherspoon  Bookkeeper: