As My Own Soul. Chris Glaser
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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