Healing Begins with Diagnosis

I wonder if Gagnon has understood this right.  Specifically, embedded in his response is a claim that I have not been able to confirm from its source:

the City Church letter appeals to Jesus’ mission to outcasts as a basis for jettisoning a male-female requirement for marriage

(source: Why San Francisco’s City Church is Wrong About Sex | Robert A. J. Gagnon | First Things)

I say this because I am aware that Gagnon is trying to defend something true, though I cannot always follow him at every stage of his reasoning and rhetoric:

As a church inspired by Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and founded in the Reformed tradition, City Church is supposed to give preeminence to Scripture. Instead, on the matter of homosexual practice, the Pastor and Elder Board gave preeminence to their judgment regarding what conduces more to human flourishing and, oddly, to a scripturally misguided book written by former Vineyard pastor Ken Wilson called A Letter to My Congregation. The letter recommends it to church members for showing, “great empathy and maturity to model unity and patience with those who are in different places on this conversation, all the while dealing honestly with Scripture.”

Wilson contends wrongly that the biblical indictment of homosexual practice is limited to exploitative relationships with adolescents, slaves, and temple prostitutes, as though these were the only forms of homosexual practice known to persons of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

(source: Why San Francisco’s City Church is Wrong About Sex | Robert A. J. Gagnon | First Things)

Again, if what these authors believe the letter advances is really what it’s getting at, then it is really understandable that they’re responding with such heavy rebuttals:

I don’t see this letter seeking a dialogue either. Human flourishing and personal suffering are not hermeneutical principles. Personal happiness is not a guide to biblical interpretation. The problem with trying to build a biblical, historical, and theological argument is how formidable a task it is. And it’s even more formidable with this issue because it won’t work. The error this letter advances is so profound and universal it amounts to a complete abandonment of all Scripture, 4,000 years of the Judeo-Christian heritage, and 2,000 years of church history – in which, and this is vital – there is not a single voice of dissent over this issue and practice. It is, quite literally, so completely outside the mind, worldview, and spirit of our history, creeds, and bible that it’s a bit astounding.

(source: A Response to the Statement from City Church San Francisco on Its Ministry to the LGBT People)

And I agree that what they take to be the question is not a subtle matter, certainly not an example of adiaphora, and not to be judged by radically individualist reductions of “human flourishing” or exegetical gymnastics whose foundations are obvious examples of special pleading and petitio principii.

But I am not certain that, based on the language in this confused product of a disordered thought process, what Gagnon and Robin think has happened has, in fact, happened.  Here is what seems to be the “bottom line” statement:

We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining. For all members, regardless of sexual orientation, we will continue to expect chastity in singleness until marriage.

(source: A letter from the Elder Board | City Church San Francisco)

Left hanging, of course, is what “marriage” means.  Of concern, also, is language like the following:

2. Our pastoral practice of demanding life-long “celibacy”, by which we meant that for the rest of your life you would not engage your sexual orientation in any way, was causing obvious harm and has not led to human flourishing.
(It’s unfortunate that we used the word “celibacy” to describe a demand placed on others, as in Scripture it is, according to both Jesus and Paul, a special gift or calling by God, not an option for everyone).

(source: A letter from the Elder Board | City Church San Francisco)

And, of course, this:

Some have been living celibate lives and want to know if we can talk out loud about this. Others report they have become Christians at City Church. Some report that while they were raised in the church, they left it, but have returned and experienced great renewal. And many hope for a life long partnership one day that will fulfill their basic human need of belonging, companionship, and intimacy. Others are already married or partnered and know this is a safe place for them to grow in their relationship.

(source: A letter from the Elder Board | City Church San Francisco)

But if City Church has decided to abandon marriage for a facsimile, it didn’t say so clearly in this letter.  In fact, I am more concerned by the confusion and the apparent desire to hide real intentions behind a smokescreen of false precision in language than what this already very confused group has decided to do.

First, of course, the confusion was already in play:  City Church manifestly has trouble figuring out what “celibacy” means.  To be celibate is to choose not to marry; one can be celibate and unchaste, as Giacomo Boncompagni could attest.  “Continence” is refraining from [behaviors that respond to appetites, such as] sexual gratification; “chastity” is finding exactly appropriate satisfaction for one’s total emotional, physiological, rational, and volitional being–neither more nor less, and certainly not completely other, than that which can truly satisfy.  “Celibacy” is an evangelical counsel because it refuses what is good–actual marriage–in order to have an unmixed availability for the enjoyment of what is best.  “Chastity” is practiced by all, celibate or single or married; “continence” in its most proper sense is necessary for the chastity of the unmarried, including the celibate.  Even married people must practice a degree of restraint similar to continence–call it “continence,” but not “perpetual continence,” perhaps–in order to treat each other with the respect and dignity which is their due.

Second, these appear to be questions of membership, not marriage.  Now, the meaning of “membership” in a Protestant congregation, especially one that obviously mixes a hipster-progressive ethos with evangelical roots and a roughly Presbyterian form of governance, is a vexed one.  Generally, “membership” in an elder-ruled evangelical congregation means getting to vote for leaders and is part of becoming eligible for leadership.  There are usually additional requirements for “leadership” and specific decisions made about other public acts of the congregation.

Third, because the Reformed tradition does not acknowledge all seven sacraments, and cannot coherently enunciate the relationship between divine institutions and secular government without unmaking its heritage, there is always profound ambiguity when evangelicals engage in efforts to discipline institutions that are properly the Church’s jurisdiction that also involve claims proper to the jurisdiction of secular regimes.  Thus, on the one hand, we have those who seem to think that whatever regimes call “marriage” is marriage, and on the other hand we have Radner-Seitz.

Fourth, there appears to be a very basic confusion, related to their ignorance of the meaning of “celibacy,” at play in the discussion of “evangelical counsels“–a concept being incoherently rehabilitated among the confessional heirs of the Lutheran and Reformed teachers who rejected the long tradition of recognizing some people’s special calling to heroic virtue:

To these evils was added an opinion concerning vows, which, it is well known, in former times displeased even those monks who were more thoughtful. They taught that vows were equal to Baptism! They taught that by this kind of life they merited forgiveness of sins and justification before God. They even added that monastic life not only merited righteousness before God, but even greater things, because it kept not only the precepts, but also the so-called “evangelical counsels.”

(source: The Augsburg Confession)

But this sort of confusion is problematic, especially for the American evangelical heirs of a very attenuated tradition, who are not able to recognize the way that “merited” and “Baptism” and “precepts” and “counsels” are used here–that is, how they were used by the Lutherans at Augsburg, let alone how they are intended by the Church herself!

As a result of all this muddle, I am uncertain which of two possibilities, or what scramble of elements of these, I am encountering in this letter:

1. “We have been causing confusion and distress by trying to mandate ‘celibate’ lives for people who experience certain feelings.  We want to correct that, because no matter what their present feelings, people may eventually find themselves in a variety of chaste, continent friendships or in actual marriages [i.e., a man and a woman permanently faithful and potentially fruitful].  Besides, we all work together to avoid sin and repent our lapses, so it seems more harmful than beneficial to single out one possible sin to be avoided by a pre-emptive lifelong vow–and who can promise beforehand, in good faith, to never fall into any particular sin?  But please note that we still expect people to live chastely before marriage [which we still understand in keeping with our confession, Scripture, and the universal teaching of the Church]”; or
2. “We have been causing confusion and distress by trying to mandate chaste lives for all, which we miscalled ‘celibate’ lives in the case of those whose feelings made [actual] marriage extremely unlikely.  We are going to change that because we now think that a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, could have something called a marriage or some equivalent partnership, and that such a relationship might be more likely to cause the Gospel to flourish in their lives than some other arrangement.  Besides, we all work together to avoid sin and repent our lapses, so it seems more beneficial than harmful to accept a wide variety of possibly lifelong vows–but not a vow to live chastely outside [actual] marriage, because who can promise beforehand, in good faith, to never fall into any particular sin?  But please note that we still expect people to live chastely before marriage [which we consider open to redefinition by means of internal dialogue, public advocacy, or fiat of the regime].”

Now, (1) is open to some objections and nit-picking, and leaves plenty of room for rhetorical criticism, but it would not amount to the wholesale defalcation of doctrine that Gagnon and Robin see; whereas (2) would pretty much be what they are attacking, and if so, rightly so.  Unfortunately, the smoke and confusion of myriad (mis)interpretations makes it hard to be sure whether this is an overly-clever retreat from one set of clumsy disciplines to a more coherent position “spun” as a progressive gesture–or exactly what is going on.

One hopes that the folks at City Church, and whoever is in charge at their denominational headquarters, will be having some very serious “dialogue” about how to speak clearly and helpfully, guiding their people to a life actually unfolding from the Gospel.

But there are reasons to be concerned that Gagnon and Robin are right, even to someone like me who is (blessedly) not all that up-to-date on the latest morphings of American evangelical rhetoric and discipline.  First is simply that this is coming out at this time, in this place, that is, San Francisco.  This is, after all, the city where Archbishop Cordileone is currently being viciously assaulted for his efforts to help Catholic schools be places where Catholic teaching guides the lives of students and teachers:

At the beginning of February it appeared that there would be an agreement between the archbishop and the teacher’s union on language that expressed the archbishop’s goals. On February 5 the Associated Press quoted a union statement saying: “We are pleased that the document acknowledges that the teachers in our high schools are not all the same, like many Catholics around the world who struggle with their adherence to some teachings of the Church.” The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board observed that, “No one can quarrel with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s determination to ensure that his rigid interpretation of church doctrine is taught at four Catholic high schools.”

(source: Who is Paying Sam Singer? | E. Michael Hamill | First Things)

Since which time, of course, a notoriously amoral hired gun has been paid–quite a lot, it would seem–to cause trouble where trouble was unnecessary.  In this environment, for any Christian group to issue such a slovenly and poorly-reasoned statement, which on its best interpretation is still obviously designed to be misread as a deconversion to progressive secularism, is to reaffirm its schismatic and self-willed bent over against the obvious direction in which Gospel unity and charity should call us together in, at a minimum, a Christian co-belligerency against hostile actions of the regime and a culture colonized by an inhuman ideology.

Beyond the defection inherent in even the charitable reading of this statement (reading 1), the statement’s reference to the Reformed Church in America, the denominational body responsible for City Church, gives reason for another level of concern.  This concern is trebled when the very tendentious nature of the book City Church recommends for discussion is taken into account, and again when we look at the immediate parallels in contemporary American evangelicalism.

First, the RCA statements.  The general tendency over the past few years indicates that the RCA is embattled on how to deal with homosexual feelings, homosexual sins, and the advocacy of “marriages” falsely so called (Robin may or may not be correct that “evangelicals” are not deadlocked on the matter, but the 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2013 statements certainly suggest that the RCA is nearly so).  I will point out that their “study guide” is, at a quick examination, not obviously wrongheaded.

But the logic of “same-sex marriage” is not proving difficult for many Christians to effectively resist because it is, considered alone or de novo, particularly compelling.  Rather, it is because so many Christian groups have severely undermined–and American law (and Western law generally) has so thoroughly debased–the understanding, practice, and civil effects of marriage per se that it becomes hard to offer good reasons why anyone or no one should not take or leave any part of marriage at will.  Specifically, it is the abandonment of the Christian and cultural understanding that marriage is an indissoluble union–that it ought to be so naturally; and that when the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, the authority of the Church, witnesses a marriage to be such, that it is indeed indissoluble.  Instead, Christians have begun to treat marriage as a subjective matter severally realized in the individuals who agree to it; when that subjective agreement becomes seriously damaged or is withdrawn (with greater or lesser degrees of “I can’t help it”), the marriage is often treated as “really” over, so that the Christian assembly and the regime are supposed to simply adjudicate the consequences of that fact.

The RCA has already been, for a long time, a party to this late delusion about marriage.  From a 1962 statement that still governs their practice:

A pastor may with good conscience officiate in the remarriage of divorced persons if in his judgment, and the judgment of the congregation’s Board of Elders, the persons have met the following requirements: Recognition of personal responsibility for the failure of the former marriage, penitence and an effort to overcome limitations and failures, forgiveness of the former partner, fulfillment of obligations involved in the former marriage, and a willingness to make the new marriage a Christian one by dependence upon Christ and participation in His Church. (MGS 1962: 205-218)

(source: General Synod Statements: Divorce and Remarriage | Reformed Church in America)

From this position, it is difficult to see how one could resist insistent harangues about “equality” in what passes for “marriage” in this culture, under this regime.  (Especially in San Francisco!)  What remains of the character of marriage after one admits that new marriages can be contracted while existing marriages are set aside by divorce is hard to defend except on grounds that one sin is more opprobrious than another.  I do not say it is not hard:  without a robust sense of ecclesiastical jurisdiction that can adjudicate nullity, pastors are overwhelmed by those who “marry” without actually freely consenting to marriage, divorce without either finding nullity or intending fidelity in separation, and who then seek what they may or may not finally understand to be marriage again; and pastors by their nature always want to counsel and help toward truth, not turn away hard cases because they have no jurisdiction or competent authority for resolving them.  The solution all too often is to rationalize away clear Biblical and traditional teaching by making “hard cases” into limiting cases for exegesis.

(Just the same, we should be prepared to admit that there are degrees of sin, and degrees of damage done by sin, so that it is not impossible that some people hardened or jaded to some sins might be jolted into awareness when presented with others; our call to them must be to take this as a wake-up to consistency, and never to let this turn into a special animus; but we should not let past inconsistency in doing right prevent us from doing right when we see it.  And it also remains the case that even divorce/”remarriage” cases among [a] man and [a] woman are still essentially more similar to the normative case than “marriages” with no sexual difference or possibility of fecundity.  This does not make them good, but it does mean that we should recognize in which direction the rationale of becoming consistent in right teaching on marriage must necessarily lead us.)

I do not mean to suggest that there is a single axis of causation, here, but I do seriously intend to point out that there is a common factor in almost every major instance of capitulation on this issue–one so common that is shows up in non-polemical sources and progressive advocacy sources without irony or comment.  In this adulatory interview with Ken Wilson, the author of the book City Church’s remaining elders cited in their letter, the connection is obvious:

KEN: The first thing is to convince pastors that they should give themselves permission to start asking the questions. […]

DAVID: You found the courage. […] But we’re talking here about the very first, private steps—the first moral questioning. Give us a little sense of how that began for you.

KEN: Well, for me, I asked myself: Why am I willing to make so much space in the church for people who are remarried after divorce—despite the Bible’s very strict teaching against that—and I’m not willing to make space for gay and lesbian people? And I kept asking myself: Why does this particular moral stance of the church about LGBT people cause so much harm?

(source: Interview with Ken Wilson on ‘Letter to My Congregation’)

The logic does not really require further commentary, does it?

But it is quite easy to not just multiply examples, but to notice that almost all the parallel examples–that is, the examples of high-profile American evangelical congregations being, er, “guided” (or manipulated, or propelled unwillingly) into approval or near-approval of “marriages” that are no such thing–have the same character.  In some cases, one could not possibly write satire of the unrestricted use of subjective private judgment to trump all commitments to revealed teaching that would keep up with the uncannily predictable truth.  Consider this write-up of the experience of Stan Mitchell, who ruptured his congregation and betrayed his most loyal supporters in order to force the issue (emphasis added):

Mitchell took to the pulpit at age 16, gaining ordination through the United Pentecostal Church. He began to question his tradition’s exclusivist ideas about salvation and voraciously read the work of modern theologians, working his way from Max Lucado to Paul Tillich to C.S. Lewis. Mitchell became an associate pastor at Christ Church Nashville, a megachurch with Pentecostal roots, and quickly gained popularity among members of the congregation.

“We were at Christ Church when Stan preached his first sermon,” said David Schwab. “I felt he had been our pastor ever since then.”

Schwab and his wife, Becky, joined six other couples in reaching out to Mitchell in 2002 when he took a break from the pulpit. The couples promised to support him in a new church, which was born in Mitchell’s living room. Soon, they grew to 40 people meeting in rented space at a school. In May 2009, they moved into their new 12,000-square-foot church in the tony suburb of Franklin.

Mitchell, a twice-married father of two, said he’d been struggling with his stance on homosexuality since meeting several gay Christians at Christ Church Nashville. By 2012, he said, it was clear that GracePointe had to take the issue head-on.

The congregation is split on how that process went. Some members say they were aware of ongoing conversations in small groups and Bible studies and messages from the pulpit. Others, including Schwab, say they thought the stance was clear: LGBT people were welcome to worship, but they couldn’t hold leadership positions.

Both sides agree the issue came to a head when Mitchell performed a same-sex wedding without telling the board. After a two-day retreat with some board members and elders, Mitchell emerged with a decision. He’d announce from the pulpit on Jan. 11 that GracePointe would be fully affirming. When he did, he fought back tears as he described being knocked to the floor by the realization of what he had to do.

Schwab hasn’t been back since. “Those of us who sat through the tough times, he just kicked us out the door. It’s hard to fathom. Why would somebody do this?”

But even if there’d been ample warning, Schwab said, he and his wife would have left over the issue.

“I love my gay brothers and sisters. I really do,” he said. “But I think the Bible is pretty specific.”

[…]

After Mitchell’s announcement, his former Nashville church posted an online statement: “We must neither rewrite scripture to excuse our sins nor demonize ourselves if we fall into them.”

And that’s why GracePointe should be proactive in helping members explain the stance to evangelical friends and relatives, said the Rev. Cynthia Andrews-Looper, a lesbian who started attending GracePointe the day Mitchell made his big announcement.

(source: As one evangelical church ‘comes out’ for LGBT rights, others cast a wary eye – Religion News Service)

As with so many things, it is the choices before, during, and after the signature moment of wickedness that determine one’s character in that moment.

And this, dear friends, is why the claims of some people manifestly incapable of marriage to be “married” must be met with clarity, not animus; with increasingly consistent teaching, not shrill protest or false humility; and with firm resolve to reform what has already been degraded, to restore what has been perverted, to heal those who are wounded, rather than to pervert, degrade, and wound another generation with lies about marriage, divorce, “remarriage,” and pale imitations of marriage.

I am not certain, from this letter, whether the leadership of City Church has taken the turn Gagnon and Robin think–and I hope that it turns out that they are overreacting, that they are becoming hair-trigger polemicists and need to cool down.  That is an easy line to take.  But whatever the exact decision has been, and whatever the exact repercussions may be, City Church elders have not provided their people with clarity, consistency, reformation, restoration, or healing–not yet.

But they really must; the alternative is to become Balaam’s spiritual heirs, only speaking truth as a last resort when even an ass can see it’s too dangerous to keep pursuing short-term “results”:

Woe to them! For they walk in the way of Cain, and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error, and perish in Korah’s rebellion.

(source: Jude 8-13 RSVCE – Yet in like manner these men in their – Bible Gateway)