As My Own Soul. Chris Glaser
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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
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.
CHAPTER TWO
Deeper Than Scripture
Taboo, Shame and Sex-Negativity
Biblical, Cultural, and
Visceral Responses
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
— Jesus in Matthew 10:34 (NRSV)
Why are the issues of homosexuality and same-gender marriage so extraordinarily divisive and volatile in churches today? Why is the negative gut response to homosexuality so strong in so many people, including people of faith? Why are people rushing to defend marriage between a man and a woman as if it were under attack? What is the source of the panic, as if there are not enough marriage licenses to go around?
Long before the present controversy, the Rev. Eileen Lindner, a Presbyterian minister, once asked me questions like these. She has more than a passing knowledge of the church, then serving the National Council of Churches and holding a Ph.D. in American church history. Having worked on matters of race, women, and abortion, she has observed that the issue of homosexuality ignites passions the like of which she has not seen in these other arenas. This chapter is an attempt, not to completely answer such questions, but to put forward possible explanations. In the present storm of controversy, many Christians are like the disciples hounding the sleeping Jesus during a Galilean storm at sea to do something (see Mark 4:35–41). Why are we so anxious? What makes this conflict different from other recent storms?
When it comes to marriage and family, it must be noted that homosexuality and same-gender marriage are the divisions du jour. In his conclusion to his remarkable From Sacrament to Marriage: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition, cited earlier, John Witte, Jr. notes that “family crises on a comparable scale to those we face today have been faced before. And bitter jeremiads about the end of civil society and the dissolution of all social order have