As My Own Soul. Chris Glaser
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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