Sex, Moral Teaching, and the Unity of the Church. Timothy F. Sedgwick
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purposes of moral teaching, and the structuring of moral authority. This makes it possible to understand the narrowing of moral teaching to what is right and what are the consequences in ordering moral authority. Given unintended consequences, the guiding claim might be stated, corruptio optimi quae est pessima, the corruption of the best is the worst. There is no straight-line development of Christian faith and life. Hence, proposals for moral teaching are often idealistic, ideas without adequate connection to the realities of practices and unintended consequences.
In chapter 4, I turn to the question of church governance as a matter of authority for moral teaching. I tell the story of the ways of ordering the authority to teach. In light of this history, the challenges for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion come to the fore. Here again, the purpose is not an argument for a particular proposal for governance. Instead, the intent is to describe the development of the Anglican Communion as a communion of churches in a way that clarifies the nature and challenges in the structuring of teaching authority, in short, of governance.
Chapter 5 provides the opportunity to harvest the fruits of these investigations in terms of the nature of Christian ethics and the unity of the church. The claim is that Christian ethics is necessarily ecumenical, for only together in the midst of our differences are we drawn into Christian faith. Christian life and teaching in general, and Christian ethics in particular, are not about a project to be achieved but a life lived. Christian ethics is an ecclesial ethic of formation in faith and moral discernment.
In a final Anglican postscript, I draw some broader conclusions from these chapters about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a communion of self-governing churches. Differences in what is taught and how authority for teaching is structured pose the ecumenical challenge. The development of the Anglican Communion offers the occasion to understand the nature of the unity of the church given these differences. Differences are the occasion for division but are also the opportunity to enter into a fuller union where grace and reconciliation may be known.
Each of these chapters may be read independently of the others. They each may stand alone as an introduction to a particular aspect of Christian faith, the church, and moral teaching. Read together in order, they introduce basic terms, explore assumptions, and draw together conclusions. I have not used footnotes but have included references and bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter. Direct quotations are limited. All of this is my attempt to write this book as an introduction for a broad audience. The notes at the end of each chapter, though, should serve to introduce the range of works across disciplines upon which I draw, make evident my indebtedness, and may lead the reader to this broader literature. Finally, at the conclusion of each chapter are some discussion questions. These may be helpful for book discussions or for study groups focusing on specific chapters.
NOTES
The phrase “free and faithful in Christ” informs the questions of moral teaching. The phrase is the title of the three-volume moral theology by Bernard Häring, arguably the most significant Roman Catholic moral theologian in the twentieth century, given his writings and his teaching of teachers at the Accademia Alfonsiana in Rome from 1949 to 1987. See Häring, Free and Faithful in Christ, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), especially volume 1. As Häring’s title indicates, moral decisions must reflect a person’s understanding; otherwise a decision creates a false consciousness. At the same time, moral decisions are free only as they are informed. The task of the church is thus to inform conscience so that it is free and faithful in Christ.
On the “corruption of the best is the worst” (corruptio optimi quae est pessima), see Ivan Illich, The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005), xvii, 175–229.
Turbulent times over matters of morals divide Christian churches. The divisions are not narrowly between Protestants and Roman Catholics or between evangelicals and mainline Protestant denominations. The conflict is as much within individual churches—Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Evangelical churches, and the list goes on.
Following World War II, a convenient mid-twentieth-century marker, the conflict and divisions in Christian churches in the United States began over race, continued over human sexuality, focused on women and minis-try, and turned to same-sex relationships. The civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, feminism, and gay rights are tied together by the fact that they challenged a received social order and social roles, none more dear than those of the family. Divisions reflect all that goes into what is figuratively called social location, including social class, history, generational identity, education, and religious beliefs. The broader the church, the greater the breadth of divisions.
Teaching and Governance
The response to conflict in churches, and specifically over matters of human sexuality, has focused on the question of “who’s right?” Further discussion has focused on conflicting appeals to Scripture and to differences in personal experience combined with claims from “the sciences.” The Episcopal Church has been no exception. However, in matters of the church and morals, the wrong question has been asked. The question “who’s right?” avoids the more basic question, “How should we teach and why?”
As the assumed normative order was questioned in the 1960s and ’70s and gave way to a far more diverse social order segmenting society, the question in churches was raised, “Will our children have faith?” This was raised as a question of teaching. “How is Christian faith passed on?” “How is it taught?” In the Episcopal Church the response to “How should we teach?” was shaped by the liturgical renewal movement. Reflecting the early church with its emphasis on baptism as initiation, the primary concern was formation as participation in the Christian life. Teaching turned from didactic learning of “the faith of our fathers” to experiential learning, in which through participation individuals would claim the faith as their own. In the Episcopal Church this focus on initiation and formation was given in the adoption of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer ordered around the centrality of baptism and the baptismal covenant.
At the heart of liturgical renewal and a “baptismal ecclesiology” is the understanding that Christian faith is passed on only as it is received. The outstanding challenge for churches is given in the very nature of tradition: “How should the church teach and order its life that the faith received is passed on and received by a new generation?” Teachings are taught in various ways, through worship, preaching, programs for formation and initiation or reception into the church, Bible study, educational programs, and pastoral care. This teaching is done by the ordained leadership, authorized laity of the church, and all the people of God, which is to say all those who participate in the life of the church. What becomes the teaching of the church from one generation to the next is what has been received. This has been called in Latin the consensus fidelium. Such consensus of the faithful has at its heart broad consent of members of the church, ordained and lay.
It is a mistake to narrow teaching to what is right. To do so does not insure reception and narrows faith to right belief and practice. Instead, Christian faith is fundamentally given together as a community formed by the practice of faith. Initiated in baptism, celebrated in eucharist, this faith is given in the giving up of oneself in relationship to others—listening and receiving each other as faithful pilgrims, having one’s own perceptions challenged, and having a sense of grace and new life deepened and enlarged. Christian faith is not first of all about “What’s right?” tied to a universal moral law; it is about life together in Christ. This means that Christian faith and ethics are fundamentally ecclesial. They are given in the church and depend on the way the church teaches and governs.
The Gospel Mandate to Be One
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