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CHAPTER ONE

Claiming the Blessing

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

— Genesis 32:26

The Present Moment

While writing this book in the fall of 2008 I attended a wedding in California of two longtime friends, George Lynch and Louie Tamantini. Thirty years ago George was “outed” on his way to ordination after seminary, but has continued to serve the church as a volunteer in a lay capacity with a denominational peacemaking program. Louie was reared Roman Catholic. They have lived together for fifteen years. Both attend West Hollywood Presbyterian Church, where I once served on staff, and their pastor, the Rev. Dan Smith, officiated at the ceremony. Family and friends gathered on a glorious day at their home for a brief ceremony in which they exchanged vows and rings. There were few dry eyes in the house.

When my partner and I had made our plans to fly from our home in Atlanta to attend, I realized it would occur the week of our own anniversary, celebrating eight years together. I noted also that the wedding happened to coincide with National Coming Out Day (October 11) and would be the day following the tenth anniversary of Matthew Shepard's brutal murder in Wyoming. During the ceremony the pastor reminded us of this synchronicity, as well as the ongoing struggle in California to retain this right at the ballot box the following month. The blessing of same-gender marriage had not come at the hands of the church but as a ruling from a primarily Republican-appointed California State Supreme Court. Little did we know at the time that a few weeks later, a state that would overwhelmingly help elect the progressive Democrat Barack Obama as president would also approve a ban on same-gender marriages by a 52% majority.

The week prior to the wedding I attended a friend's trial in Pittsburgh Presbytery for officiating at the wedding of Nancy McConn and Brenda Cole. The Rev. Janet Edwards is the descendent of famed eighteenth-century American preacher Jonathan Edwards. Janet and I became friends when we lived in the same dormitory at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s. I knew what a deliberate person she was; she rarely took any action without thinking it through with great care, considering what it would mean to the church, the community, the people, and the vocation she felt called to serve. Now, as she faced accusers who did not have the decency or courage to show their faces, she chose to invite friends and supporters from around the country to attend the trial to be held in the Grand Hall of the Priory, a name I considered worthy of the ecclesiastical intrigue of The Da Vinci Code! After the presentation of the cases and witnesses of the prosecution and the defense, as we awaited the verdict of the next morning, she invited everyone— opponents and supporters—for dinner and worship in a banquet hall at the Soldiers and Sailors Museum. Our seminary classmate, the Rev. Gail Ransom, led a creative worship, using innovative and interactive principles developed by Creation Spirituality theologian Matthew Fox. And I was to preach—an honor of great significance to me and to many in the room who knew of my nearly forty-year struggle as an activist within the church.

But what a tough text Janet asked me to preach on! The marriage feast of the Lamb, described in Revelation 19:5–10. This is the beatific vision of the future wedding of Jesus (the Lamb) with the faithful “‘clothed with fine linen, bright and pure,’—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints” (Revelation 19:8). This is of course the only marriage truly “made in heaven.” In fact, Jesus had declared there was no such thing as marriage in heaven when asked about resurrection (Mark 12:25). Yet the metaphor of Christ the groom and his Church as the bride is the basis for the later sacramentalization of marriage itself.

In this moment of conflict, Janet wanted to give everyone—including those who opposed her—a taste of the marriage feast of the Lamb. The theme of the evening was “A Time to Embrace: Toward Love and Reconciliation.” In the sermon I described how many if not most of us knew what it meant to be prevented from embracing because of color, gender, disability, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Artificial barriers get in the way of what we really want. I explained,

And what we want can be simply put: we want to belong. We want to belong to each other in marriage. We want to belong to our congregations in ministry. We want to belong to our vocations in service. And we want everyone to belong, even those whose privilege grants them immediate access to blessings we can only pray for, work for, struggle for, and sometimes die for. We have something to teach about gratitude for blessings too many take for granted.¹

I also spoke of my recent experiences serving as interim pastor of several congregations and of my need to talk with those in conflict about diabolos, the New Testament word for devil, which literally means “divider” or “adversary.” The spirit of division or divisiveness is what we experience as demonic. And the word to challenge division is dialogue, which literally means “through the word” and suggests finding common ground through what interim ministry training terms “holy conversations.”²

As we engage in dialogue, we overcome the demonic within and among us, that adversarial spirit that would separate us from one another. I believe this may be applied not only to conflict within a particular congregation but disagreements within denominations and religious traditions. It is my hope that this book may further our holy conversations about marriage, and same-gender marriage in particular.

The proximity of the sermon to Saint Francis's feast day prompted me to recount how, in Nikos Kazantzakiss novel Saint Francis, the saint tells the narrator, Brother Leo, that even the Tempter, the devil, will enter paradise and be transformed. “How do you know, Brother Francis?” asks Brother Leo. Saint Francis replies, “I know because of my heart, which opens and receives everything. Surely paradise must be the same.”³

Now that's a vision worthy of Jesus. If even the devil may be reconciled, how much easier will it be for the adversaries around any particular conflict in the church!

The next morning the verdict was reached in Pittsburgh Presbytery v. The Rev. Janet Edwards, Ph.D. Because the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) does not recognize same-gender marriage, the court decided, it was not possible for Rev. Edwards to have performed a same-gender wedding, thus she did nothing, right or wrong!

“Where there is no vision the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) declares. What Janet Edwards offered as a vision, the church declared an apparition.

Another of our friends who lived in Bushnell House, our dorm at Yale Divinity School, was Barbara Brown Taylor. In her book Leaving Church and recent interviews, she grieves how conflicts like the one over homosexuality have surfaced dogmatic litmus tests for Episcopalians. She observes that the Anglican Church she loved was not so much a church of common beliefs as it was a church of common prayer. Scholars such as Elaine Pagels in Beyond Belief have documented how diverse beliefs characterized the church from its onset. And during Janet's trial, one of her defense witnesses, Dr. Chris Elrod of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, had quoted John Calvin to the effect that no one person can discern the truth—that's why we need to keep speaking to one another.

The Social Context

“Marriage gives you more authenticity, more equality,” declared Cody Rogahn after marrying his partner, Jonathan Yarborough, in Provincetown, Massachusetts. “It gives you the same things heterosexuals have, and everybody should have, if they want to be in a committed relationship with another person.” The couple, already together eight years, were among the first to apply for a marriage license the day it became legal in the state, May 17, 2004—the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the concept of “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education. On the same day, then President George W. Bush called once again for a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and six states prepared to vote later that year on similar amendments to state constitutions: Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah.⁴

On that day, Massachusetts joined Belgium, the Netherlands, and three Canadian provinces in legally marrying gay couples. Canada since has recognized same-gender marriage nationwide, as have Norway, Spain, and Sweden. Connecticut's Supreme Court legalized same-gender marriage in November 2008. Vermont earlier had led the way in recognizing civil unions, and in April 2009 passed legislation allowing same gender marriage; the governor vetoed the legislation; and the legislature overrode the governor's veto on April 7, 2009. That same day, the Washington, DC, council voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, joining New York State. The Iowa Supreme Court declared that state's anti-same-gender marriage amendment unconstitutional on April 3, 2009. Maine's legislation passed and its governor signed a same-gender marriage bill on May 7, 2009.

Many municipalities have registries for domestic partners, and an increasing number of businesses provide domestic partner benefits—all of which cultural observer Jonathan Rauch refers to as “marriage lite.” He has noted that it is these less-than-equal unions that actually weaken the institution of marriage, not same-gender marriage, because many heterosexual couples have opted for these lesser alternatives rather than embrace marriage itself.⁵ He believes if marriage were valued as a universal good for gays and straights alike, the institution of marriage would benefit, much as extending the vote to blacks and women strengthened that franchise and American democracy.

Back in 2004, in other areas of the United States, such as San Francisco, upstate New York, and counties in Oregon and Colorado, marriage certificates were granted to same-gender couples until higher authorities intervened. The pleasant spectacle of gay and lesbian couples standing in line for hours and sometimes days to marry indicates, at least to some, that marriage is alive and well in the United States. Witnessing these news events on television stirred support from people previously indifferent to same-gender marriage, ranging from the late Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, who declared his country should have it, to a self-described “regular guy” who wrote of his changed mind in a letter to the editor in a Southern newspaper.

Of course, it also stirred negative reactions, especially from the religious right, led by the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, and others who viewed the advancement of gay people in society as a sign of cultural decadence and the nation's imminent moral downfall. Marriage and family are believed by some Americans to be under attack, and often their objections are based in religion. But there is no neat conservative–liberal political dichotomy on the issue: some conservative voices have also been raised in support of same-gender marriage, or at least equitable rights. Journalist Anna Quindlen observed the conservative and progressive nature of same-gender marriage: “Same-gender marriage is a radical notion for straight people and a conservative notion for gay ones.”⁶

What has fueled the furor over gay rights and marriage was the essential legalization of sex between consenting adults of the same gender in private by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down state sodomy laws in 2003, and the subsequent Massachusetts and California Supreme Courts rulings requiring those states to give marital rights to same-gender couples, finding no prevailing governmental or societal interest in excluding homosexual citizens from those rights. These rulings could both be interpreted as conservative decisions, saving citizens from undue governmental intrusion in private matters in the first case, and preventing legislative or popular vote trampling on individual rights in the second. But those who oppose both decisions think marriage must be saved from “activist” judges, though most federal judges presently on the bench have been appointed by Republican administrations, and the same U.S. Supreme Court that struck down antigay laws also found in favor of a Republican president in a disputed election.

John Witte, Jr., director of the Law and Religion Program at Atlanta's Emory University, introduces his exhaustive academic tome on marriage in this way:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., once said that all the great questions of theology and philosophy must ultimately come to the law for their resolution. Holmes's claim, while overstated, has merit for this book. While theologians and philosophers have debated questions of the origin, nature, and purpose of marriage, jurists and judges have had to resolve them—in general statutes as well as in concrete cases. Such legal formulations have invariably reflected, and sometimes reified, prevailing theological ideas and ideals respecting marriage.⁷

The Religious Context

Forty years ago, religious bodies and the broader society began grappling with homosexuality and homosexual persons, whose emergence as a much more visible community in the United States began after World War II and as a political influence after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Roman Catholics began to question Vatican pronouncements on human sexuality, including what the Vatican called the “intrinsic disorder” of homosexuality. Protestants began wrestling with the issue of homosexuality by addressing the question of the ordination of self-acknowledged gays and lesbians who expressed their sexuality in responsible ways, including covenant relationships. Some Christians noted that the church needed first to address the issue of same-gender marriage if the church was to hold all of its leadership accountable to the same standards of fidelity and chastity. They felt we were putting the cart before the horse discussing ordination of gay and lesbian individuals prior to the ordering of gay and lesbian relationships. So, as precipitous as the same-gender marriage debate has been portrayed, our current dialogue on the subject is, in truth, long overdue.

In the public square, it may be that the wrangling on same-gender marriage has proven a blessing for the institution of marriage itself, just as the debate on homosexuality has served as a blessing for the understanding of human sexuality. In the religious sector, though we may not like conflict within our ranks and fear loss of members and even schism, it could be said—some would say too optimistically—that our wrestling with these issues has benefited religious bodies as well. For Christians, such wrestling serves as an occasion to discern and disclose not only our own views on marriage and human sexuality, but also our own ways of reading the Bible, encountering God, and following Jesus, guided by the Spirit, within the context of our faith and faith tradition. The dialogue isn't the problem—it's the contentious way we often do the dialogue or resist the dialogue that may diminish our spirits and reject the Holy Spirit.

“All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to God's purpose,” the apostle Paul affirmed.⁸ This doesn't mean those who love God and are called to serve don't suffer, experience discomfort, and endure conflict, as the apostle indicates earlier in Romans. Rather, it means that faithful people will find God and the good in every circumstance.

The Old Testament figure Jacob is said to have wrestled with God.⁹ It was a hands-on, intimate struggle in the night. And Jacob demanded a blessing. To our ears, grappling with God seems unthinkable. Placing our hand on the awesome Lord of the universe seems implausible. And demanding a blessing—from anyone, let alone the Creator of all that is—seems impertinent. Isn't the very nature of blessing God's grace—unmerited, unearned favor? Yet Jacob was given his blessing and renamed Israel, “one who strives with God.” Despite God's blessing, perhaps rather because of God's blessing, Jacob had yet to reconcile with his brother Esau, who perceived Jacob as stealing his birthright.

Throughout the scriptures, we see people of faith striving with God: bargaining, negotiating, pleading, seeking signs, asking forgiveness, claiming blessings—from the Garden of Eden to the garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord himself asked that God deliver him from the cup he was about to drink, the suffering he was to endure. In the midst of that suffering on the cross, he cried out to know why God abandoned him, yet he gave up his spirit to God's will and God's care. His trust in God led from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden of the empty tomb.

Though many of our theologies have since constructed a less pliable God, the truth is that we still contend with God. We still plead and bargain and claim blessings. I suspect its something about being human, an imprint of Eden when God wrestled clay into human form for companionship, and took walks with us in the cool of the day. For Christians, the communion of that innocent time is tasted again in the bread and wine we share with One who wrestled into human flesh out of love for us. Yet Communion is also a foretaste of the communion to come, the marriage feast of the Lamb, the kingdom or commonwealth of God that is in-breaking even now, transforming our old ways of understanding and living in the world.

We all struggle with God: people of all colors and abilities and ages and genders and sexualities. We also wrestle with “the powers that be” on this earth. We claim the blessings endowed every human being: equal opportunities, equal rights, equal privileges, equal responsibilities. Socially, marriage is a privilege. Legally, marriage is a right. Spiritually, marriage is a calling, a vocation. In all three categories, marriage is a responsibility. Recently, lesbians and gay men are claiming this blessing and its responsibilities for themselves, socially, legally, and spiritually. Yet there is resistance. Social resistance. Legal resistance. Religious resistance. Paradoxically, some who denied gay and lesbian people other blessings because they were believed incapable of forming long-term exclusive relationships now resist them claiming the blessing of marriage. And yet, in the United States, the majority of citizens, while not necessarily affirming homosexuality or same-gender marriage, believe lesbian and gay couples should be afforded some form of legal rights and protections.¹⁰

Lesbians and gay men of faith have struggled with God, grappled to understand their sexuality in the context of their faith, wrestled for God's blessings in their relationships. Despite God's blessing, perhaps rather because of God's blessing, gays and lesbians feel called to reconcile with heterosexual brothers and sisters, some of whom may perceive them as “stealing” their birthright of marriage.

Church and culture may come to realize that the struggle is about something deeper than homosexuality or homosexual persons. The travail is over something essentially human and holy, the imago dei within each one of us that calls us to coupling, communion, and community. That's the blessing of the same-gender marriage debate: it helps us look deeply within ourselves and within the institution of marriage and the mysteries of human sexuality, spirituality, and companionship.

Claiming the Blessing of Marriage

There is some difference of interpretation over whether Jacob contended with God or with an angel of the Lord. But such messengers of the Lord served as God's presence to those to whom they appeared. Today individual Christians wrestle with God's messenger the church; in other words, with one another. Rather than regret the struggle, as we often do, we do better to realize that this is a human condition as well as the Christian dynamic: to wrestle with our conscience and the consciences of our sister and brother Christians, respecting that “God alone is Lord of the conscience.”¹¹ Christian tradition—the Bible, creeds and confessions, literature and history—invites us to grapple too with our spiritual ancestors, guided by the Spirit. And we must also face the church of the future, being faithful in this time and place so that our posterity may be blessed by our legacy.

The peace which we seek in the church is not necessarily the absence of struggle. Though uncertain, it is believed the Greek word for peace, eirene, comes from the root eiro, “to fasten together.” As the writer of Ephesians described Gentile and Jewish Christians blended in the same church despite their cultural and philosophical differences, “Christ is our peace.” Jesus Christ is what binds us together as Christians.

Throughout this book, scripture will play a central role, and the texts that are the “usual suspects” will be discussed. If the issue were readily settled by the Bible, however, Christians would not hold such divergent opinions, as can be seen by the wide spectrum of Christian positions and scholarly interpretations on homosexuality and the Bible. Respected scholars such as Johanna Bos, Walter Brueggemann, Victor Paul Furnish, Peter Gomes, Carter Heyward, Robin Scroggs, Jeffrey Siker, Helmut Thielicke, Walter Wink, and others have concluded, in Siker's words, “the Bible has relatively little to say that directly informs us about how to address the issue of homosexual Christians today. The Bible certainly does not positively condone homosexuality as a legitimate expression of human sexuality, but neither does it expressly exclude loving monogamous homosexual adult Christian relationships from being within the realm of God's intentions for humanity.”¹²

The declaration that “the Bible says what it means and means what it says” gives short shrift to the multilayered intentions of its writers and the complexities of their cultures and eras and circumstances, as well as to the Holy Spirit, who, through the ages, has led succeeding generations of Christians into “further truth,” as Jesus promised. The “plain meaning” of scripture also fails to account for our own bias and possible ignorance in approaching the Bible. It could be said that such a method for reading the Bible does not take the authority of the Bible seriously enough. Reading the Bible requires first “reading” ourselves, both what we bring to the text and what we cannot bring to the text without scholarly help. It invites comparisons within the Bible itself. And, ultimately, reading the words of scripture must take us deeper—to God's ultimate revelation for Christians, the Word of God, Jesus Christ.

Other Times the Church Changed Its Mind

Same-gender marriage is the occasion to be faithful in our own time. While race and gender and abortion are still matters of conflict, they were even more so at various times in church history, and are still volatile in various venues of Christian faith (such as Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic attitudes toward women as priests and Southern Baptist rejection of women as lead pastors). Many Christians hold that the stakes are higher today because they believe that gay and lesbian acceptance challenges biblical authority, Christian sexual ethics, church boundaries, and the institution of marriage. Yet this was also the perception of past controversies. Slavery and segregation, as well as the subjugation of women, were justified with scripture. Women's suffrage, women's ordination, equality in marriage, and a woman's right to make decisions about her own body were viewed (and still are viewed in some circles) as a rejection of traditional sexual ethics and family values, as well as destructive of the institutions of church and marriage and family.

We may not remember (or even know) the anguish of past conflict, just as the mother whom Jesus describes “no longer remembers the anguish [of childbirth] because of the joy.” With this metaphor, Jesus comforted his disciples who were about to suffer his loss (John 16:20–21).

The New Testament devotes many pages to arguably the greatest and most controversial experience in church history, when the Gentiles were “grafted onto the root of Jesse” without first converting to Judaism. We are so focused on our present time that we cannot grasp the revulsion that Jews felt for immoral, illegal (because they did not follow the Law of Moses), and unclean Gentiles. The controversy of accepting them “as they are” is arguably the single greatest conflict of the early church, described and addressed in various ways throughout Christian scripture. And yet that's just what the church did, accept them as they were. Jewish Christians had to overcome their visceral reactions and religious scruples and Gentile Christians and their advocates had to be mindful of Christians of “weaker” consciences. So there is precedent, and the church was able to be evangelical, proclaiming the gospel to the ends of the earth as Jesus commanded, when it chose to be inclusive.

As a denomination in the mainstream, Presbyterians may serve as a case study of how the churches in America changed their minds on earlier controversial issues and help us see the parallel with the present conflict. I believe it only fair to consider the beam in the eye of my own denomination. The Rev. Jack Rogers, professor of theology emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has documented how Presbyterians changed their minds and thus became “more faithful to the intent of the biblical and confessional writers”¹³ in an insightful and practical book, Reading the Bible and the Confessions. Though specifically Presbyterian, the cases have parallels in other ecclesiastical settings. And though religious, these shifts in interpretation of the Bible and church tradition have parallels in the changing constitutional and legal interpretations of the civil sphere. Indeed, the changes often occurred in tandem. Rogers reminds us, “Cultures are relative and should never be treated as rigid and timeless expressions of God's will.”¹⁴

I have selected those changes having to do with race, women, and marriage. The parallels I draw with the present controversy of homosexuality and same-gender marriage are my own.

We Changed Our Minds on Race

In the early 1800s, Presbyterian theologians justified slavery because no particular text in the Bible directly opposed it.¹⁵ No particular text in the Bible directly affirms homosexuality and same-gender marriage. Yet just as broader biblical themes led people of faith to question and challenge slavery, so they may lead us to question and challenge as well as shape our positions on homosexuality and same-gender marriage.

Though an 1818 General Assembly spoke of the evils of slavery, it used “[the slaves’] ignorance, and their vicious habits generally” to refrain from endorsing abolition. In 1861, Presbyterians split north and south over the issue of slavery, and the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America justified slavery: “As long as that race, in its comparative degradation co-exists, side by side, with the white, bondage is its normal condition.”¹⁶ Thus slavery was justified by the lifestyles of African-Americans in captivity, with all its attendant social ills. Today there are references to “the homosexual lifestyle,” as if all gay men and lesbians adhered to a single lifestyle, rather than representing the same diversity of life patterns embraced by heterosexuals. The “lifestyle” may be associated with a particular segment of the gay community, as imprecise a judgment as associating the straight community with, to take an example, those who frequent singles bars rather than enter into marriage. In either case, that of African-Americans or gay and lesbian Americans, to make a case for enslavement or exclusion based on conditions created by enslavement or exclusion would seem unfair and prejudicial.

On behalf of the new Confederate denomination, a theologian declared, “Whatever is universal is natural. We are willing that slavery should be tried by this standard.”¹⁷ Because slavery was commonly practiced, historically and cross-culturally, it was considered “natural.” The common practice of heterosexual marriage historically and cross-culturally also argues for it being “natural” for all. We may concede it being the norm at the same time realizing it may not be natural for those with a homosexual orientation, no more than slavery would be considered “natural” by the slaves themselves. We may compare it to patriarchy, which has been nearly universally practiced, or to men having multiple wives, which was permitted in 980 of 1,154 past or present societies for which there is an anthropological record.¹⁸

In 1867, the most prominent southern Presbyterian theologian in the latter half of the nineteenth century, citing biblical texts describing but not condemning slavery, “argued against the ordination of African Americans … with these words: ‘Every hope of the existence of church and state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of Negro suffrage.’ And more than twenty years later, in 1888, he wrote that ‘the radical social theory’ that asserts ‘all men are born free and equal’ was an ‘attack upon God's Word.’”¹⁹ In retrospect, we can see how both of these statements overdramatize the effect of change. Indeed, we may even come to the conclusion that had change not been effected, these dire results—the decline of civilization, the attack on God's Word—would have been more nearly realized. Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher has offered a similarly hysterical analysis of same-gender marriage, “We are poised to lose the gay-marriage battle badly. It means losing the marriage debate. It means losing limited government. It means losing American civilization.”²⁰ Yet what would be lost if more people married rather than fewer? Would anyone's marriage end or be diminished by allowing same-gender marriage?

In 1954, southern Presbyterians adopted desegregation ten days after the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled the same in Brown v. Board of Education.²¹ Despite coming afterward, the southern denomination nonetheless acted prophetically because most of the South would resist the court's decision. What the court adjudicated on constitutional grounds, the church adjudicated on biblical and confessional standards. The church did not follow the culture, but found its own way to the same conclusion, even at risk of alienating its primary mission field. There is no ruling yet on same-gender marriage from the U.S. Supreme Court, though it did decline to hear an appeal of the Massachusetts’ Supreme Court decision, which had said, in part, “The marriage ban works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason… . We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others.” The states have regulated marriage with two notable exceptions, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down polygamy in Utah and later struck down laws against interracial marriage in seventeen states. Affecting fewer people, the court also found in favor of a prisoner marrying without a warden's consent. As with desegregation, if and when the church decides to bless same-gender marriages, it will do so independently and for its own reasons. Whether or not the church will prove prophetic in this area remains to be seen.

We Changed Our Minds on Women

Women's contributions to the church were considered initially “ornamental” rather than substantive.²² This is roughly the same as the welcome most denominations offer lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (often abbreviated LGBT people), while largely denying them opportunities for service, leadership, ministry, and marriage. Ministry may be offered to LGBT people and their families to varying extents if at all, and the church receives their money, talents, and time. Yet without access to positions of authority, openly LGBT people do not have as much opportunity to substantively affect or shape the nature, mission, and ministry of the church as a whole. Women got around their own church disenfranchisement in the past by sheer numbers and their wholehearted engagement with the church at various levels; LGBT members have, to some extent, been able to do the same—not by sheer numbers, but by their wholehearted engagement.

The primary northern Presbyterian theologian of the nineteenth century critically reviewed a book against slavery by using “the analogy of the necessary subordination of women. He wrote, ‘If women are to be emancipated from subjection to the law which God has imposed upon them, … [i]f in studied insult to the authority of God, we are to renounce, in the marriage contract, all claim to obedience, … there is no deformity of human character from which we turn with deeper loathing than from a woman forgetful of her nature and clamorous for the vocations and rights of men.’”²³ Readers will have heard phrases such as this applied to lesbian and gay couples claiming their blessings: “insult to the authority of God,” “deformity of human character,” “loathing [for one] forgetful of [her or his] nature,” “clamorous for the vocations and rights” of heterosexuals. And the ideal of marriage assumed in this statement includes “the necessary subordination [and obedience] of women.”

When the 1916 General Assembly of southern Presbyterians reaffirmed the denomination's ban on women preaching and being ordained, it nonetheless allowed women to speak at mixed gatherings (of women and men) such as congregational prayer meetings at the discretion of the session (church council) of the particular church. Sixty-one commissioners (delegates) protested this as a violation of biblical authority!²⁴ Presbyterians would subsequently endorse the ordination of women as elders and deacons, and twenty-five years after that support the ordination of women as ministers. By the time of a case that came before the highest church court in 1974, in which a candidate for ordination opposed the ordination of women, the jurists declared of women's equality in church service, “It is evident from our Church's confessional standards that the Church believes the Spirit of God has led us into new understandings of this equality before God.”²⁵ This shift from viewing the leadership of women as “a violation of Biblical authority” to “the Spirit of God” leading them “into new understandings of [their] equality” took generations and, in practice, is yet to be fully appreciated and manifest in the church. Though changes as great as this may be accelerated in our own era by means of expanded and more timely access to education, information, and experience, the history of women in the church attests both the need of endurance and openness to the Spirit in terms of the present issues. Will our posterity, the church of the future, be as surprised by our own attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and same-gender marriage as we are at those of our spiritual forebears in relation to women? Polls of young voters indicate they already are.

We Changed Our Minds about Marriage

Presbyterians inherited Puritan attitudes toward marriage, reflected in the earliest version of the Westminster Catechism, which declared adherents should “marry onely in the Lord” and not “marry with infidels, papists or other idolaters,” referring to the pope as the Anti-Christ! In reaction to Roman Catholic celibacy, marriage was essentially required, and “undue delay of marriage” was a sin. Marriages were arranged by parents, a practice affirmed by the Second Helvetic Confession. The primary purpose of marriage was children. But, in the 1930s, American Presbyterians resisted the ban on marriage with Catholics, conceding, rather patronizingly, “many Roman Catholics are sincere and intelligent believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Westminster Confession was amended to remove negative references to the pope and the prohibition of marriage with Roman Catholics.²⁶

When the Federal Council of Churches advised parents to consider birth control in 1931, the southern Presbyterians withdrew and the northern Presbyterians admonished that the ecumenical body “should hold its peace on questions of delicacy and morality.” By 1960, the two denominations issued a joint statement approving birth control, based on a shift in Presbyterian attitudes as to the purpose of marriage. Marriage was now believed to serve the personal fulfillment of the couple rather than the goal of propagation. In turn, this change of heart allowed a more thoughtful consideration of divorce.²⁷ Readers can see how it would also allow a more compassionate consideration of same-gender marriage.

Yet more parallel is the way slave marriages were viewed. The dominant white culture did not recognize slave marriages. Couples could be bought and sold separately. Nonetheless, slaves devised rituals to celebrate their commitments, rituals gradually recognized by the church, especially Presbyterians. Hanover Presbytery in 1791 determined that cohabitating slaves could be considered married “in the sight of God” and by the “mutual consent of the Parties.” Divorce and remarriage was possible for slaves sold separately from one another, because each partner of the separated couple could remarry as if “the other were dead” and still be church members. A similar “as if dead” notion came to be applied to adultery and abandonment in later Presbyterian considerations of divorce and remarriage. As a result, a 1930 northern Presbyterian study allowed remarriage for the partner abandoned through infidelity or desertion, concluding “Anything that kills love and deals death to the spirit of the union is infidelity,” citing 2 Corinthians 3:6, “The letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life” (KJV). A 1950 southern Presbyterian council, while not recommending changes to church policy on marriage and divorce, nonetheless decried the use of proof-texts in the matter, as such texts had more than one interpretation and failed to take into account Jesus’ full teachings. Both north and south agreed to change the Westminster Confession's teaching on divorce and remarriage in the 1950s, affirming the first duty of marriage was to the couple involved, not society. Rogers concludes,

Whereas it took over a century for the church to cope with entrenched injustices to African Americans and women, the church changed its stance on the matter of divorce and remar riage in thirty-three years, between 1926 and 1959. Might it be that one significant difference was that those present and voting in presbyteries and General Assembly were vulnerable to divorce and thus could feel the necessity for change? Regarding racial injustice or women's equality, however, because those voting in presbyteries were all white and all men, they were able to distance themselves from those affected by their decisions. They could treat the problems “objectively” and focus on the good of society in general. But when it touched them, as with all human beings, their concerns become much more personal and pastoral.²⁸

Clearly, the same dynamic is at work in denominations that do not permit openly LGBT people to participate in legislative counsels of the church. Proof-texting as an inadequate way of discerning God's will or Jesus’ full teaching is also applicable in the treatment of LGBT Christians who are all too familiar with the handful of so-called “clobber passages” employed by those who seem all too unfamiliar with the numerous passages about God's grace and freedom in Jesus Christ. The new understanding of the purpose of marriage as the personal fulfillment of the couple supports the consideration of same-gender marriage. And, just as Christians were among the first to grant some recognition to slave marriages when illegal, Christians have been among the first to recognize same-gender marriages even when not legally sanctioned.

In the changing attitudes toward race, women, and marriage, the Presbyterian Church serves as an example of shifts occurring in many Christian traditions in recent centuries. In liberation theology there is said to be among God's people a “memory of the future,” which means that God's liberating presence in the past reminds us of God's liberating presence in the future. Just as Christians of the past addressed other controversial issues in good faith, so we may believe that we will do the same as we consider same-gender marriage.

Banning the Inevitable

There has been a flurry of proposed and enacted state constitutional amendments or laws banning same-gender marriage, and presidents and members of Congress of both major parties have passed the Defense of Marriage Act or proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. When governing bodies resort to codifying an institution exclusively for one class, such as ordination in the church or marriage in civil society, a sea change has already happened that requires building a wall against the tide. No wall will withstand the sea indefinitely, and so, such activity may be viewed as a sign of hope rather than a cause for despair.

Jonathan Rauch has expressed hope that a decision on same-gender marriage not come down from on high, either in the form of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. He prefers a Federalist approach, by which states such as Massachusetts or California or Vermont might try out same-gender marriage and demonstrate to other states its viability and value to society. A Supreme Court decision could foster a reactionary response that could be destructive to the country in general and to the LGBT community in particular. That could be said to be true of the Brown v. Board of Education case, after which, as example, some public school districts closed altogether rather than comply with desegregation, establishing private schools for white children.

A “local option” policy could work for the church as well, in which individual congregations by choice may bless same-gender marriages before a denominational policy is set in stone. This has earlier been suggested for the question of ordination. Eventually, however, at a time of greater consensus on the matter in either the church or the state, a uniform arrangement would best serve each. I would argue that Brown v. Board of Education did not happen prematurely, but at a time when it was both needed and yet was based on a growing consensus. To assist the building of consensus for same-gender marriage, it will help to consider sexuality taboos, the history of Western marriage, the association of marriage with the sacred, Jesus and sexuality, and the spirituality of marriage—especially as these concerns relate to same-gender marriage. These are the themes of the chapters that follow.

What we know already is that the culture and the church can each change its mind. The process may look like a “culture war,” a slogan used by Nazis facing off with Jews, dissidents, gay men, Romas, and other minorities in the 1930s. But for society, it may simply be a cultural evolution that seems to move forward in fits and starts, yet retrospectively, flows in a natural but slow-moving process of adaptation to newly discovered realities.

For the church, the Spirit may simply be leading us into “further truth” so that we may do “greater things” as Jesus promised. In Christianity, believers have been encouraged to live proleptically by the apostle Paul, to live “as if ” the kingdom or reign of God were already here. The reign of God is already among us, Jesus proclaimed, thus placing “the way things should be”—human custom—in a different light, an eternal perspective. The reign of God was understood as ushering in justice and peace. It could be said that many same-gender couples, along with several states and nations and many congregations, are following that spiritual counsel by establishing and recognizing same-gender marriages. We may trust that, as God has been there for us in the midst of change in the past, God continues to be with us, leading us by the open-heartedness of Christ.

Notes

¹ Chris Glaser, “A Marriage Made in Heaven,” a sermon on the occasion of the trial of The Rev. Dr. Janet McCune Edwards, October 1, 2008, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

² Gil Rendle and Alice Mann, Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations (Bethesda, MD: The Alban Institute, 2003).

³ Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis (Chicago: Loyola Classics, 2005), 288–289.

⁴ David Ho, “Couples Make History: Massachusetts is first state to permit same-sex weddings,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18, 2004, front page.

⁵ Jonathan Rauch, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America (New York: Times Books, 2004), 6.

⁶ Anna Quindlen, quoted by Christine Pierce, “Same-gender marriage,” in Same-Sex Marriage: The Moral and Legal Debate, ed. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997), 171. Also quoted by Marvin Ellison, Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2004), 119.

⁷ John Witte, Jr., From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 1.

⁸ Romans 8:28.

⁹ Genesis 32:22–32.

¹⁰ Newsweek poll, detailed in “A Gay Marriage Surge: Public support grows, according to the new Newsweek Poll” (www.newsweek.com, December, 2008).

¹¹ The Form of Government, The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Chapter I, Preliminary Principles, 3.The Historic Principles of Church Order, G-1.0301.

¹² Jeffrey S. Siker, “How to Decide? Homosexual Christians, the Bible, and Gentile Inclusion,” Theology Today, Vol. 52, No. 2 (July 1994), 226.

¹³ Jack Rogers, Reading the Bible and the Confessions: The Presbyterian Way (Louisville, KY: Geneva Press, 1999), 4.

¹⁴ Rogers, 47.

¹⁵ Rogers, 40.

¹⁶ Rogers, 42.

¹⁷ Rogers, 109.

¹⁸ Rauch, 16. Referencing Robin Wright in The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (New York: Pantheon, 1994).

¹⁹ Rogers, 49.

²⁰ Rauch, 5.

²¹ Rogers, 79.

²² Rogers, 3.

²³ Rogers, 102–103.

²⁴ Rogers, 37.

²⁵ Rogers, 104.

²⁶ Rogers, 82, 84.

²⁷ Rogers, 115.

²⁸ Rogers, 116–121. Quoted conclusion is on page 121.