More People Who Don’t Like the GAPJC Decisions

More Light Presbyterians, one of several pro-gay ordination caucuses in the PCUSA, has published a letter from a group of candidates and inquirers  for ordination who are perturbed about the recent General Assembly Permanent Judicial Council decisions:

We, your sisters and brothers in Christ, your colleagues in ministry, faithful members of Presbyterian churches are saddened by the recent ruling of the Permanent Judicial Commission (PJC) which singles out the requirement of fidelity in heterosexual marriage and chastity in singleness as an essential tenet of Reformed faith.  This ruling contradicts some of the most important work of the Peace Unity and Purity Task Force, which put forward a more gracious and open way for us to live together as the body of Christ in the midst of our differences.

Even though the PUP task force, as well as Louisville, claimed that “nothing changed.”

This PJC decision puts a wedge between theology and practice, belief and action, being and doing.  It demeans the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer persons by again reducing our lives to sexual acts. It fails to recognize God’s ability to choose whomever God wills to serve the Church. It perpetuates the mythology that sexual orientation is simply a matter of behavior. It says that we are not filled with God’s grace.

That’s five sentences, five pieces of nonsense:

1) Theology and practice are not identical, and neither are belief and action. Do we really have to re-visit meat sacrificed to idols?

2) It is the letter-writers who are reducing the lives of GLBTQ people to sexual acts, by claiming that they can’t live without them. No one in the PCUSA has suggested denying ordination to those who are of one of those orientations, but who also understand that the sexual acts that those orientations tend to must be avoided in order to be obedient to Scripture.

3) Since when is the Church obligated to assume that God is calling a person to ordained ministry just because that person says so? The Church has always exercised a discerning role in that process, and one way to discern that a person isn’t called by God is to look at whether they are willing to live up to the standards that the Church, on the basis of Scripture, has in place.

4) See number 2 above.

5) Who has said anything about the presence of God’s grace in these people’s lives? Unless they are interpreting the biblical and juridical standards on ordination as implying that they are unrepentant sinners. They would have to answer that.

Our Reformed understanding of Scripture teaches that the way in which we live our lives as responsible, faithful Christians is intimately connected to our faith. Our love, commitment, and indeed our manner of life is an inescapable expression of our faith as we seek to both know God’s will and to live into it. We are filled with the Spirit, a Spirit made manifest in our Christian discipleship and acts of Christian witness: by teaching Sunday School; giving our time, talent and treasure to our congregations; working in soup kitchens; financially supporting ourselves and paying tuition to Presbyterian seminaries; visiting  the sick and shut-ins; working for justice; being present with individuals in their last days of life on earth; singing in choirs; tutoring children; yearning to preach the Word and administer the Sacraments; proclaiming the liberating and good news of Jesus Christ, and welcoming and raising new disciples to serve Him.

I’m sure the people who signed this letter are all lovely individuals who do a variety of laudable good works. I’m also sure that they sincerely believe that Scripture is wrong, and their experience is right, in determining what constitutes godly sexual conduct. I’m further sure that they are incorrect in this belief, and that no amount of foot-stamping should bully the PCUSA into giving them what they want.

Many of us have found ourselves in holding patterns, serving in whatever capacities we can create while waiting for the church to open the door to the Holy Spirit and usher us into ordained ministry serving Jesus Christ. Many of us have been removed from the ordination process when we have been honest about the magnificent ways that the Holy Spirit has moved through our lives, calling us out into the world as whole people, burning with the desire to serve Christ. We have been removed because we cannot serve with our whole heart while hiding our sexuality and gender identities. A few of us have been ordained, some of us have been unable to utter the full truth of our lives, and others of us have been in spaces safe enough to disclose our full identities.

There’s no need for them to remain in “holding patterns.” The answer is for them to join a denomination such as the Episcopal Church or the United Church of Christ that believes, as they do, that the Holy Spirit has changed His mind about what He inspired the writers of Scripture to say about sexual conduct.

We fear that the direct effect of this ruling will be to once again impose upon the ordination process a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. We are a gospel people, called to proclaim the good news of how God has loved and redeemed us and freed us for joyful service.  The good news of Jesus Christ is about witnessing to the fullness in which God has moved in our lives. It is tremendously painful and theologically suspect that our church should find it expedient that we must edit our lives, denying our full humanity which Jesus came to fully redeem, in order to be acceptable candidates for ordination.

I don’t believe there is any intention in the PJC’s decisions to impose a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy,” since that would amount in this instance to obtaining goods (ordination) under false pretenses. Candidates for ordination aren’t expected to hide anything–they are expected to be honest about themselves, and if that means that they are denied ordination, they will have to live with that until such time as they can persuade the denomination to change its standards. Why is this so hard for these folks to understand? Are they really so incapable of hearing someone tell them “no, you can’t have what you want, no matter how much you want it”?

We live in hope for the healing of the church. We live in hope that all policies which hinder our voices and witness will be removed. We know that only when this day comes will we experience full participation in the life of this denomination. We live in hope that our sisters and brothers in Christ will know us, in the fullness of how God creates us, and affirm our gifts and call.  We live in hope that policy decisions are not made on our backs but that we may be treated with equality and the respect we deserve. We live in hope that we will one day soon serve this church as Ministers of Word and Sacrament who happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.  We pray for that day with all of our strength.

Whatever. As I was looking at this paragraph, it suddenly occurred to me that right in the middle of GLBTQ is “bisexual.” As in a person who is attracted to people of both sexes. So given the mantra of “committed, monogamous, life-long” relationships that we’re told is the highest aspiration  of every non-heterosexual person, where does that leaves bisexuals? Isn’t it saying that they are going to have to repress a part of their natural inclinations, to refuse to express their full humanity, to be unable to affirm how God has made them by having sexual partners of both sexes? I don’t want to sound flippant (though I’m not sure how else to respond to people who call themselves “queer,” when there are schoolchildren who get suspended as menaces to civil order when they use language like that), but there’s a real question that has to be raised. If bisexuals are included in the general program for sexual affirmation and expression in the Brave New World of the GLBTQ-friendly church, what sexual practices can the church legitimately object to, if any?

No Singing/Praying Zone

The Alliance Defense Fund is suing an Ohio library board of trustees who don’t seem to understand that the First Amendment mentions freedom of religion:

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Citizens for Community Values Friday after an Ohio library denied the community organization use of a public meeting room. The Upper Arlington Public Library Board of Trustees said the proposed meetings violated library policy because they contained “inherent elements of a religious service.”

“Christian groups shouldn’t be discriminated against for their beliefs,” said ADF Legal Counsel Tim Chandler. “The government cannot treat people with non-religious viewpoints more favorably than people with religious viewpoints. Christians have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America.”

CCV requested permission to hold an event at a meeting room available to community groups at the Upper Arlington Public Library. The event is part of a series of presentations being held in Ohio called “Politics and the Pulpit.” The event provides information on the current status of the law with regard to Christian political involvement as well as teaching from the Bible about such involvement. The event also includes prayer and a time of singing and giving thanks to God for the freedom Americans have to participate in the political process.

The library denied the meeting room request, stating that some aspects of the meeting were permissible under the library’s policy; however, singing and prayer were not permissible. A library official wrote that the prohibited activities are “inherent elements of a religious service” and therefore conflict with the library’s policy.

“The government cannot discriminate against Christians or Christian groups simply because they are religious,” said ADF-allied attorney and co-counsel David Langdon of Cincinnati.

This breach of the First Amendment rights of both freedom of religion and freedom of speech are egregious enough so that the federal Justice Department has gotten involved on the side of ADF. You hear about stories like this and you’ve got to wonder what’s going through the minds of the people who make decisions like this. Did they really think they could prevent outside groups from using their facilities because of the content of their speech, or Who it would be directed to? Because they sing? Even the ACLU or Americans United for Separation of Church and States wouldn’t defend actions like this (would they?).
The ADF complaint is here.