Are There Homosexual Saints ?
By Joe Bob Briggs Reprinted From Issue #190, November/December 2003
By Joe Bob Briggs
Reprinted From Issue #190, November/December 2003
When I was eight years old, a 14-year-old boy came to live with us for the summer. He was the son of my dad's friend and the ultimate "big brother" type, able to teach me archery, boxing and all kinds of manly pursuits that my bothersome sisters could be left out of. I loved having him around, of course, and never thought to ask my parents just why a boy from another family would spend four months living with us.
His father, I would learn later, was a Baptist preacher who had been discovered in the church sanctuary in the arms of another man. His family had been dispersed while the defrocked preacher tried to find a job.
Although the Baptists, like all Christians, do preach forgiveness, this was beyond the pale. There was no question of what had to happen. He was henceforth unwelcome in all Southern Baptist churches. In this case there was no mechanism for mercy. In ancient Israel he would have gotten the death sentence, so the Baptist version of New Testament transformation of the law was to sentence him to mere psychological hell.
Harsh? I thought so. But I tell the story because of recent events in the Episcopal Church USA. That body is about to break apart, split off from the Church of England, and become one more piece of spiritual flotsam bobbing in the Sargasso Sea we call American religion. Most American Anglicans would apparently call this a good thing.
The issue, of course, is the always thorny one of homosexuality, in the form of a gay bishop recently ordained in New Hampshire. (How far we've come from my childhood.) It seems that gays are popping up regularly in the Anglican communion, but mostly in the three countries that tend to make up the rules as they go along – England, Canada and the United States. For the other 161 countries that report to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it seems the wealthy westerners have simply gone mad.
What's intriguing about this is that in countries like Brazil and parts of Africa, where homosexuality is in many ways more common and open than it is here, the church is able to say that, on the one hand, it should not be criminalized, but on the other hand the church should have no part in it. It's seen as sin and nothing more. It's not that big a deal – until somebody halfway around the world ordains a gay bishop.
In America, though, it's the word "sin" itself that drives many Anglicans up the wall. They would condemn the Southern Baptists for even calling it that. Like the Presbyterians, who long ago watered down their theology to accommodate all lifestyle choices short of satanism, the most liberal Anglicans believe that a man's bedroom is not the concern of the church at all. The first point that seems to be ignored by the press coverage – most recently in a front-page New York Times article by Laurie Goodstein – is that the ways of God are not the ways of the world. Although this idea is Theology 101 and would be accepted by any prelate, there's a tendency in press reports to assume that the church is an extension of the United Way or some other secular charity that would be subject to anti-discrimination laws.
Of course it's not. We have a Constitution that says it's not. And yet civil liberties advocates don't really jump on this issue when the church is brought up on the charge of excluding gays. A First Amendment spokesman is more likely to defend the rights of a convicted murderer than the church's right to its own membership and leadership rules.
The second point that never gets made is that the ways of the media, or the ways of democracy for that matter, are not the ways of the church. Majority votes don't matter. The politicking over doctrine, even at its most intense, is not about power or social justice. It's about Biblical authority or divine revelation. As far as I know, even The New York Times hasn't come out against divine revelation, but neither would I say that they've come out in favor of it. In this one area, at least, their silence is refreshing.
In other words, unless you're a confessed Anglican, you have no dog in this fight. The idea of gay rights organizations writing position papers about what the Anglican communion does is nonsense. They have no standing. An Anglican who calls himself gay has standing, but under current Anglican doctrine, he should probably consider either leaving the church or repenting. By saying, "I'm a practicing homosexual and also Anglican," he's essentially telling his church that he intends to follow his own conscience in spite of everything, that he doesn't regard it as sin, and so by definition he's out of fellowship. The church can deal with him mercifully – he's misguided and in need of prayer – or they can deal with him legalistically – excommunication – but they must deal with him.
And this, at root, is what I think bothers the press and public. "Don't ask, don't tell" may work for the military – although there's increasing evidence that it doesn't – but the church has no right to avert its eyes. Its job is to keep its eyes resolutely on every member of the flock, especially the ones who stray. And people don't like that. They think it's intrusive. They think it's somehow Big Brotherish.
But here's what's always missed in the debate. The church is not a progressive organization that transforms itself for each new generation of social progress. On the contrary, it insists that its most sacred tenets are defined by one transforming supernatural event 2,000 years ago, and that everything since then must conform to that event. Even the Protestant denominations, in breaking away from the Catholics, did so in order to return to the principles of the first century. Certainly they were disgusted with the 16th.
The scripture most often cited to condemn homosexuality in the church is from Paul's letter to the Romans, which is frequently quoted out of context:
"Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."
There's more, but the essence of the passage is this: God did it. God created homosexuality. And God turned it loose on men so that they would receive the true desires of their own hearts – serving themselves more than they served God. As such, it's the ultimate self-love. Homosexuality, according to Paul, was a specific psychological torment invented by God to reveal "vain imaginations" and "foolish hearts," which led to death instead of life.
In the immediately preceding verses, Paul is speaking specifically about what their true error was – turning away from God's power. The sin isn't homosexuality. The sin is regarding God as nothing. Homosexuality is simply something God allows so that men who have already turned away from God can see the fruits of their "reprobate minds," to use his words again. He constantly says God did it, though. God "gave them over." God "gave them up." God used homosexuality – and not just homosexuality, but fornication, murder, pride and a whole cornucopia of other sins – to show men their true natures.
So this presents an interesting dilemma for the church. If you exclude gays, then you must also exclude all adulterers, murderers, proud people, gossipers, backbiters, and reprobates of every stripe. Obviously, these exist in abundance in any church congregation. But there's a difference. The gossiper can be forgiven – but not if he says "I've chosen a gossiping lifestyle." The murderer can be forgiven – but not if he says "I intend to go serial with this. I think I'll be a murderer my whole life."
So the key issue, for the church, is whether homosexuality is a man's defining nature or simply an act. Prior to the 20th century, homosexuality was regarded as simply an act – an error – a sin worse than adultery but not as bad as assault. No one distinguished between heterosexuals and homosexuals. "Homosexual" was an adjective, usually followed by "act." It's only in the last century that men and women have stepped forward to say, "Homosexuality is the essence of my being."
This may be a good or a bad thing as far as society is concerned, but the church is not society. The church has believed for 2,000 years, with Paul, that homosexuality is something invented by God to reveal man's selfishness. Ordaining a bishop who says, "I intend to practice it continually," becomes, for the faithful, a rejection of God and an elevation of a "me first" gospel.
Ninety-nine percent of the Anglican world has no trouble understanding this. Most of them take it so seriously that, if the gay bishop remains, they'll cut off fellowship with the American Episcopals. (What's more likely is that the "high church" Anglicans will remain in the Anglican communion, and the liberal churches will form a new denomination.) But the foreign churches don't hate the man because he's gay. They hate the fact that what he represents – the father who supervises the marriage between Christ and his "bride," the church – has instead become a symbol of two fathers, or two brides. Aside from what the church regards as a sin in itself, the whole typology of the office is perverted.
When something similar occurred in the Anglican church in England – a bishop was "outed" as once practicing a gay lifestyle – the bishop resigned in order to protect the communion. What was more interesting is what he said about it: he and his former lover, also an Anglican, had been celibate since 1991, in order to live their lives in accordance with church teaching. Only the faithful would recognize that as an act of liberation, not bondage. These two men saw beyond "don't ask, don't tell" and went to the spiritual hard stuff: don't do.
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Well written, I’d be curious to see what a“gay Christian“ would think of this article.
I just reread the article and agree with most it but while the Bible does say to forgive I think keeping sinners like boastful Lbgqta+!..............ect who just want flaunt their lifestyle and want to convert others to their perversions should be kept out of churches when discovered. Counselled if willing to listen but shown the door if unwilling. I have hear a local conservative talk show host claim to be a Gay man and Christian condemning abortion without realizing that his lifestyle is equal to aborting potential children. There is very much more to say but I'll wait to see if ther is any response to this.