Sex, Moral Teaching, and the Unity of the Church. Timothy F. Sedgwick
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universal church. In this sense, ordained ministry, along with baptism and eucharist, is a central mark of the church, integral to the identity of the church as church. Understood as a gift of the Holy Spirit, ordained ministry is understood as sacramental in the sense that the ordained represent and effect the community of faith as local and universal. Central to this ministry is teaching, presiding at the celebration of the eucharist, and pastoral oversight over the community. As a matter of teaching, this ministry is understood by the church as that of episcopus, the Greek New Testament word denoting one exercising authority for teaching and oversight. To be the church there must be means of teaching and oversight, what may be termed episcopé, by which the local church is joined in communion with the church universal.
The structure of episcopé in the churches—Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, those of the Protestant Reformation, Anabaptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and other free church traditions—is varied. The structure of episcopé may be identified as conciliar, synodical, and magisterial.
In order to pass on the faith received and shared together, local churches have met together in council to pray and worship together and to share and learn from each other. This includes individual congregations meeting together as a diocese or other judicatories such as a Methodist Conference or a Presbyterian presbytery. It also includes dioceses or judicatories meeting together as a national church or a church covering a specific physical region. Most broadly, it includes national churches or regional churches gathering together as a communion of churches. Examples of national or regional churches gathering together in council would include the Ecumenical Councils of the early church, the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Catholic Church, meetings of the Lutheran World Federation, meetings of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, the Lambeth Conference where the churches of the Anglican Communion gather together, and the international assemblies of the World Council of Churches.
Votes may be taken as churches gather in councils. As councils, votes express the consensus over particular matters about belief and practice. At the least, they express a majority judgment of members. Such resolutions provide counsel to churches; however, they aren’t legislation to be enforced as criteria for membership and participation unless independently adopted by a participating church and applied given the church’s own governance structure. Given a consensus among those gathered over some particular matter, some churches may absent themselves from future gatherings, but the purpose of councils is to gather to counsel one another and not to legislate.
Churches gathered as dioceses and judicatories, as regional and national churches, or as forming a larger, international church may also share in a common structure of authority for teaching and discipline. In that case, representatives exercise episcopé as legislative bodies. Who are representatives varies from church to church, from exclusively bishops to ordained clergy and lay members, to largely lay members. In making binding decisions for each particular church, the form of governance may be designated as synodical. The nature of the meeting is more than counsel. It is legislative. This requires enforcement through membership and participation in the life of the church. Central to insuring conformity is the selection, the appointment, and, when necessary, the removal and replacement of the ordained who exercise authority for teaching and discipline. Discipline also includes the possibility of the exclusion of regional and national churches or dioceses and judicatories from decision-making or participation in future synods.
Beyond synods, authority for teaching and oversight has in some churches been assumed by a particular office. Most notably, in the Roman Catholic Church this is the teaching magisterium centered in the College of Bishops over which the bishop of Rome, the pope, presides. Presiding over bishops who exercise specific authority in the church, the pope exercises an extraordinary magisterium over the whole church. As the word “magistrate” denotes, particular persons rule. They make judgments about teaching and enforce teaching through membership, appointments, and removal from office.
Whatever the form of episcopé—conciliar, synodical, or magisterial—all agree teaching requires reception and hence multiple ways in which teachings of Christian faith are passed on in order that they are received. Different forms of teaching and different ways of structuring teaching authority reflect differences in the history and context of churches. Churches may learn from one another why authority for teaching and oversight is structured differently. They may also come to agree that they share a common sense of ministry as episcopé. Given the gospel mandate for Christians to be one as a matter of life in God and as a matter of witness to the world, one question remains, “Can churches share a full and visible unity while ordering and exercising episcopé differently?” The answer to this question returns to the question of teaching and how teaching is understood.
Anglicanism as Case in Point
While matters of morals have divided Christians within churches and between churches, little work has addressed the church and moral teach ing. Until the 2014 agreed statement of the Anglican Roman Catholic Theological Consultation in the U.S.A. (ARC-USA), Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment, the only significant study was the 1993 agreed statement by the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) titled Life in Christ. As with most ecumenical dialogues, the intent of these agreed statements is to understand the faith that different churches share in common.
As a matter of Christian formation, there is broad agreement among Anglicans and Roman Catholics that morally the need is for the church to form conscience in truth and to respect the consciences of those it teaches. At the least, different churches see formation as happening through worship, preaching, programs for initiation or reception into the church, Bible study, educational programs, and pastoral care. At the same time, different churches draw different moral judgments from the sources that inform the processes of formation. The importance of moral norms and normative teaching is also understood differently. This is reflected in the way in which teaching authority is structured. Again, churches differ in matters of governance, what they authorize as normative, as binding on all, and what they accept and even support as differences of conscience. Ecclesially, the question this poses is, “Given differences in the teaching of moral judgments, are those differences church-dividing?”
The Episcopal Church and the other churches forming the Anglican Communion have differences in understanding moral teaching and differences in ordering authority for teaching. This makes the present “crisis in moral teaching and governance” in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion a case study for the larger ecumenical movement.
As one of the churches in the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church has ordered episcopé in matters of morals in ways that have allowed and at best respected and supported differences in specific moral judgments. This is certainly the case in addressing same-sex relations over the last fifty years. This has enabled broad engagement with the Christian tradition and with the changing experience of persons inside and outside the church. In this process moral teaching has happened, at least as persons have come to understand themselves as sexual in terms of what that means in living a holy life as a matter of life in Christ.
Other churches, including Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Protestant, Anabaptist, Evangelical, and Pentecostal churches, as well as some other churches in the Anglican Communion, have taught matters of morals in ways that differ from the Episcopal Church. This has included differences in who teaches and what is taught, and thus how differences in understanding and action are addressed. However teaching is done, this has led to divisions within churches and between churches. As one person whom I worked with said over a matter of institutional differences and conflict, “The question is, ‘Who decides?’ ” In the same sense, teaching and the ordering of moral authority are tied together and determine where conflict rests and divisions rise.
Different ways of moral teaching and the ordering of episcopé carry with them strengths and weaknesses. As matters of deepening Christian faith, they all seek to inform conscience in truth and so to deepen life in Christ as koinonia, as participating and sharing together in that life as given in Scripture, celebrated in worship, and lived in love of neighbor, friend, and stranger. Some or many may wish and propose for the Episcopal Church a different way of teaching and exercising authority over