Punch the words “religion” and “homosexual” into the 13-year-old computer archive here at the baiduhai, and the machine pulls up a total of 761 stories that cover both.
Make that 762.
The truth is there would be many more articles about homosexuality and religion in the newspaper, except that they are beginning to jostle with one another for space.
The most recent stories are datelined Kearney, Neb., where a tribunal of United Methodist ministers heard charges that one of their peers, Rev. Jimmy Creech, had disobeyed church discipline last year when he joined two lesbians in a “covenanting ceremony.”
I put “covenanting” in quotation marks not only because I do not believe it is a word, but because the nature of Creech’s ceremony–informal blessing? unsanctioned marriage rite? an intermediate form of union?–was very much at the heart of the dispute.
In the end, Creech was acquitted. But to give you an idea how far from settled this issue is in the United Methodist Church, it is worth noting that he was acquitted because only eight of the 13 jurors agreed that Creech violated the rules, one shy of the nine needed for conviction in such church trials.
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The Creech trial, because it was open to the public, took media precedence over last month’s closed-door church trial of Rev. Steve Sabin, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America accused of being a practicing homosexual.
Legalistically speaking, it was a little easier to guess the outcome of Sabin’s trial. Sabin freely admitted that he is gay and has had an active “marriage relationship” with a man since 1993. Church rules say that practicing homosexuals are precluded from ordained ministry.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church committee sitting in judgment ruled that Sabin be removed from the church roster April 15, meaning he can no longer be the pastor of his church in Ames, Iowa. But his ouster may be delayed while Sabin appeals the decision to a nationwide Committee on Appeals.
Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) might have made news last week with its latest decision on homosexuality, except that it is probably beginning to sound like deja vu to most editors.
In the summer of 1996, the church’s general assembly passed a measure known as the “fidelity and chastity amendment,” which clearly stated that elders, deacons and ministers must be either married or chaste. The amendment then went through a bruising, yearlong ratification process by regional presbyteries.
No sooner had those presbyteries made the amendment church law, however, than the 1997 general assembly passed a new amendment that would replace “chastity in singleness” with “integrity . . . in all relationships of life,” apparently removing the ban on sex outside marriage.
The ratification struggle began all over again, and last week, it became clear that the new amendment had failed, sending the church back to “fidelity and chastity”–except that opponents of that standard are vowing to fight when, inevitably, it leads to a church trial.
That so many mainline Protestant denominations are struggling with homosexuality at once (the list is longer than these three) is noteworthy. That they have been embroiled in such controversies for upward of 30 years now suggests history in the making.
The truisms no longer fully explain what is happening. Yes, sex draws attention. Yes, politics does get mixed up with religion. Yes, churches reflect the ambivalence of society at large.
But the battles over homosexuality also tap into deeper theological questions that are very much in play at the end of the second millennium, especially among mainline Protestants, especially in America.
The first question is about the proper approach to Scripture, which most Protestants agree is the source of religious authority on earth. Simply acknowledging that authority, however, does not explain how to approach the texts, how to reconcile them with conscience and modern culture, or how to understand their apparent contradictions.
The second is about the authority of the church–where it comes from, where it sits and how it stacks up against personal belief.
It seems at first glance that homosexuality, which directly involves a minority of congregants and only a smattering of words in the Bible, would be unlikely to break up churches and denominations on its own.
But if it is fueling those ancient and fundamental debates with an immediate source of passion, perhaps it could provoke denominational schisms, or an even wider realignment among Protestant churches that are increasingly detached from their cultural and ethnic roots.
And that means, like it or not, that 762 stories may only be the beginning of the story.
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