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1. Archbishop of Wales Gays and the Future of Anglicanism Responses to
the Windsor Report
2. Gay people and the bible - A major new source of christian homophobia
3. A Church at War - Anglicans and Homosexuality
Book Review by Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales
Gays and the Future of Anglicanism Responses to the Windsor Report
Ed. Andrew Linzey and Richard Kirker
There are three things which characterise this book. It is quite hostile to the
Windsor Report (I write as one of the people responsible for that report); it
argues cogently for gay people’s inclusion within the Anglican Communion and
its ministry; and the essays are by some of the finest theological minds in the
Communion. The Windsor Report, whatever its shortcomings – is at least
remarkable in that its seventeen members from across the whole Communion, and
from widely different backgrounds and theological viewpoints, did at least
manage to achieve unanimity. Its aim was to find a way of enabling different
theological perspectives within the Communion to co-exist with tolerance and
patience that is usually characteristic of Anglicanism whilst respecting the
autonomy of churches on the one hand with the need for mutual inter-dependence
and accountability on the other, but without the setting up of a central curia.
But perhaps I protest too much.
The arguments advanced for including gay people within the church and its
ministry deserve to be read and pondered by all who are involved in the debate
on human sexuality. They deal in depth with the issue from the perspective of
scripture, tradition and experience, by scholars who know what they are talking
about. The arguments advanced here show up the superficiality and even the
shallowness of the 1998 Lambeth plenary on the same topic and should also give
the Anglican Church in most places cause for penitence for the way it has
treated and thought about gay people. We desperately need a listening and study
process on this topic in the Communion as has long been recommended to no avail
and it is good that the ACC at its meeting this year has now agreed to gather
material from across the Communion on this topic. It might find, as the WCC
found when it gathered material from all its member churches on this topic and
as this book demonstrates that sexual sins are not the only sins and are not
even the main sins according to scripture; that theology has to be open to the
possibility of encountering God’s revelation of truth in new and novel ways –
that’s what the doctrine of the Spirit means and that what is often lost in the
so called debate about human sexuality is the fact that we are talking about
real persons with real feelings. This book throws down a formidable challenge
to the Anglican Communion. It cannot afford to ignore it.
Barry Morgan
Gays and the Future of Anglicanism
(Edited by Andrew Linzey & Richard Kirker, O Books, September 2005, 1
905047 38 X)
Price GBP £ 17.99 USD $ 29.95
Add 15% for post and packaging
Read the publishers press release
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GAY PEOPLE AND THE BIBLE - A MAJOR NEW SOURCE OF
CHRISTIAN HOMOPHOBIA
Robert Gagnon, an American Professor of theology, has published 'The Bible and
Homosexual Practice'(1). It is quoted extensively in the recent official report
on homosexuality by the House of Bishops of the Church of England (2).
Gagnon's book is used as a support for the House of Bishops'
criticism of homosexuality in their new report. The book is also being quoted
in the conservative religious press, including an article by Bishop Nazir-Ali,
the Bishop of Rochester, in the Church of England Newspaper of 11th September
2003. Bishop Nazir-Ali is a senior Diocesan Bishop in the Church of England,
which itself is part of the Anglican communion. The Bishop recommends 'a
thorough study of Robert Gagnon's recent book', and says 'Gagnon examines all
the evidence and concludes that St Paul was aware of different kinds of
homosexual practice, including those between consenting adults, but found them
unacceptable precisely because of the Bible's teaching on what is fitting in
sexual relationships'.
The scope of Gagnon's book is wide and he has an impressive
academic knowledge of the provenance, origins and circumstances of biblical
texts. But he makes no pretence that it is an impartial or open-minded book. He
starts by stating his antigay conviction. He then comments at length on
selected passages in the Bible, with hermeneutical analysis aimed at supporting
the antigay position. Gagnon attempts to forestall criticism by asking, 'Is the
criticism of gay and lesbian people intolerant, uncritical, primitive,
provoking violence?' No, he says, but he sees it as his duty to speak out
against homosexuality, and if this brings pain to homosexual people it's not
his intention. He says we must love God and love our neighbour (remembering
that this does not necessarily include tolerance or acceptance), - and 'act
quickly before the gay rights crusaders win the day'.
The Author gives 'personal reasons' for his interest in the
subject which are revealing. He has previously been active as a 'Christian'
student in a Student Fellowship Group. He tells how he befriended a
guilt-ridden young homosexual man who believed that God may judge him severely.
Gagnon's attitude towards this student was of acceptance together with reproof
for his 'sin', - which he calls 'an example of the Church demonstrating
kindness without giving up its historic stance against same-sex intercourse'.
This strikes me as a rationalisation of a desire to dominate within a
dysfunctional relationship which is damaging to the victim. And it provides a
revealing answer to the question, what's it all about? Gagnon's first chapter
is on the Old Testament in which he repeats the well-known antigay verses. He
also refers to the creation stories in Genesis 1-2, which are his primary prop
for regarding marriage and procreation as the only good thing. But he ignores
the second creation story in Genesis that describes Eve's role as a companion
or partner for Adam. Gagnon does quote the text in the Book of Samuel about
David and Jonathan and their love 'more wonderful than the love of women'. But
this, he assures us, does not imply any sexual element in the relationship.
Omitting to tell us how he knows.
The next chapter is about Jesus. Although Jesus never said
anything recorded about sexuality, Gagnon somehow thinks it is implicit in a
great deal of what He did say. Again without any explanation as to how Gagnon
knows this. He points out how vengeful St Paul's God was, 'allowing the
unrepentant to heap up the measure of their sins until their total destruction
is warranted'. This is fine if you are referring to Hitler, but lesbian and gay
people ...? Well yes says Gagnon, quoting Paul's assumption that 'human anatomy
and procreative function comprise the most unambiguous indications of divine
intent'. This naive concept of the natural heterosexual is at the heart of the
matter for Gagnon. It is his idee fixe and a theme that he recalls time after
time in the book. He seems unaware that evolution has brought the concept of a
fixed nature into question, and that anatomical variability and adaptation is
the major principle in all living things. He says 'Paul has visceral feelings
about those sinners who go against his understanding of nature'. Too
true.
Gagnon does admit that same-sex relations may alter the
traditional domination of men over women, and that sex is now accepted as for
pleasure as well as for procreation. But he asserts that 'these ideas do not
undermine Paul's argument against same sex relations in any way'. In fact they
do, but the main reason why Paul is outdated is because he thought that a
same-sex relationship is just men behaving badly, and not an inherent and
morally neutral attribute of some people's inborn nature. Quoting Paul, Gagnon
links homosexuality with adultery, fornication, incest, bestiality and
pedophilia, all sins which he says are 'willful suppressions of the obvious
truth about God and God's design in the natural world'. Then, the big stick -
'Sin will pay the wages of death, and the "gift of eternal life" will not be
bestowed on them'. Paul does not refer to the possibility of permanent faithful
same sex relations as a separate category of good. However Gagnon states that
in Paul's time there was current and previous literature about accepted same
sex relations, and therefore that 'Paul could not have been unaware of the
existence of men whose sexual desire was oriented towards other males'. This is
an unwarranted assumption on Gagnon's part. 'Paul could not have been unaware'
seems like a fudge because Gagnon could not factually say 'Paul was aware'.
Gagnon excuses this by saying 'it simply does not matter how well homosexual
conduct is done; what matters is that it is done at all'. But whatever Paul did
or did not know, there is no reason why his opinion two millennia ago has to
dictate our behaviour today. Paul certainly did not know that determined
efforts to change a person's sexuality do not work, because this was discovered
less than 100 years ago.
Gagnon returns to his and Paul's leitmotif, reminding us again
that 'the fittedness of the penis and vagina provide clues as to how God
desires sexual pairing to be organised by gender'. He goes on, 'the
biblical
writers had in view gender differentiation viewed not as a tool for holding
women down but as a structural design divinely imbedded in creation for the
health and vitality of the human race'. Of course bisexual relationships which
can lead to procreation are good for the health and vitality of the race, but
this does not mean they should be compulsory for everyone. On Gagnon's
reasoning, single as well as gay and lesbian people are sinners, not to mention
celibate priests.
By this point you may have concluded that Gagnon is not capable
of connected thinking, and the next section confirms this. He declares that St
Paul regarded a head covering as appropriate for women because they are less
prone to go bald than men. This makes Alice in Wonderland look like a textbook
of logic, and forefeits Gagnon's claim to be taken seriously.
He goes on to say there are 'extreme variations in cultural
manifestations of homosexuality', implying that sexual orientation is just a
matter of fashion and choice. But population surveys of sexual orientation are
recognised as being unreliable; the general view of the experts in this area,
the ethnologists, is that the true proportion of people who are homosexual
within different populations is fairly constant over places and times. But in
places where lesbian and gay people are accepted, they are known about and so
their numbers appear to be greater, and this explains the observed 'extreme
variations'.
I might have guessed that Satinover and Cameron would appear in
the references in Gagnon's book, and they do! Both are American psychologists
whose work is referred to time and again in the antigay literature. Satinover's
main work is his book 'Homosexuality and the politics of truth'. It is a large
book, full of religious mysticism together with allegedly scientific evidence,
all of it critical of homosexuality. One of Satinover's references is a report
of a study by Dr Paul Cameron which is based on deaths listed in obituaries in
gay newspapers. In this Cameron reports that gay people die thirty years
younger than heterosexual people on average. The source of his data is derisory
because casual obituary lists are highly selective, and so his findings are
meaningless in terms of relevance to the overall population.
Gagnon also reports some results from the National Association
for Research and Therapy. This Association has been connected with religious
organisations dedicated to 'converting' homosexuals, almost all of which are
now defunct because of lack of success in their conversions. Even more
deplorable is Gagnon's reference to a study by Freund and Watson, which also
appears very frequently in the antigay literature. This is a study of a group
of convicted pedophiles in America. It claims to find a higher proportion of
homosexuals in the pedophile group than expected on the population norms. This
type of retrospective study can tell nothing about the overall prevalence in a
total population, because of unknowable selection biases in the study group,
and should never be used for total population estimates, as everyone with the
slightest knowledge of epidemiology knows. The title of Freund and Watson's
paper describes it as an 'exploratory study', and the authors repeat three
times within the paper their caution about extrapolating the results. But these
cautions are ignored by Gagnon and others who quote the study and imply that it
is a meaningful population measure. It is deplorable, but significant, that the
antigay lobby is reduced to this crass misuse of the literature to support
their case. Apparently they can do no better. Gagnon ignores the views of the
great majority of the contemporary professionals in this area, who accept gay
and lesbian people. In my recent conversation with psychologists they say that
they do not contribute much to the current debate in the Church because they
regard it as settled, having been discussed and a consensus agreed in the 1960s
and 70s.
CONCLUSION
I appreciate that Bishops are busy people and cannot check every
reference in every document. Nevertheless I think the Bishops as a whole have a
responsibility to get this right, and they should either trust the experts,
that is principally the psychologists, or make some collective effort to sift
and weigh the evidence itself and not just the incomplete second or third hand
summary reports of it. It is deplorable, but instructive, that the Bishops
blindly accept such poor quality of 'evidence' for their anti-homosexual views,
while talking fatalistically about the 'different standpoints'. They are unable
to find any better anti-gay evidence simply because it does not exist. The size
and scholarly pretensions of Gagnon's book cannot disguise that.
1. Gagnon, Robert. 2001. The Bible and Homosexual Practice.
Abingdon Press
2. The House of Bishops Group. 2003. Some Issues in Human
Sexuality. Church House Publishing, London
Written by Dr Alan Sheard, Retired District Director of Public
Health, East Yorkshire UK, and Member of National LGCM
This document may be reproduced without permission but we would
appreciate a proper acknowledgement to Dr Alan Sheard and LGCM.
December 2003
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A Church at War
Anglicans and Homosexuality
Stephen Bates
ISBN 0340908556 (9780340908556)
Hodder & Stoughton, 2005 £8.99
Reviewed by Phil Groom
This book hurts. There's anger, pain and incomprehension between
the pages, even between the lines, and my fingers are burnt and blistered as I
reach the end of each chapter. What are we, the body of Christ, doing, tearing
our own body — our Lord's body — apart? Is it not enough that we re-enact the
crucifixion in each communion service? Must we also re-enact it in our
relationships with one another, offering vitriol in place of love, contempt in
place of grace?
Was anything accomplished
When Christ was crucified
Or was it our Creator
Committing suicide?
Christ could have saved himself a lot of future agony by staying
dead. But he didn't: he returned to life, bearing its scars. And so must we as
a church, and so there is hope.
The crucifixion laid bare the heart of God, the frailty of love
and the bloodthirstiness of humanity. This book lays bare the prejudices of
humanity as Stephen Bates takes the lid off this Pandora's Box of the gay
debate within and around the Anglican Church.
As the Guardian's religious affairs correspondent Bates is well
informed, his writing clear and to the point: no stones are left unturned in
his research, no questions unasked. Yet many questions remain unanswered:
having read this book I find myself, for example, no closer to knowing whether
or not homosexuality can be successfully defended from a biblical point of
view. Chapter 3, "In the Beginning was the Word" (pp.45-73), looks briefly at a
number of relevant biblical passages, at issues of hermeneutics and the
different attitudes of Christians. There are lines drawn in the sand, but no
conclusions reached. It's rush hour in the big city, the traffic lights are
stuck on amber and every angry motorist thinks he or she has the right of way.
But I do know that lies and falsehood are not defensible — and
for too long the Church of England has colluded in a lie, turning a blind eye,
pretending that homosexuality within its ranks doesn't exist. As Bates
observes, "Hypocrisy, it appears, is preferable to honesty." (p.300). The only
thing necessary for lies to flourish is for those who know the truth to remain
silent, and this, it seems, is the path the Church has chosen.
There's a time for silence, of course: Christ himself remained
silent when asked, "What is truth?" (John 18:38). Perhaps he knew that the only
way through the web of lies and falsehood that entangled him was crucifixion.
Perhaps we need to learn from that: if the Anglican Church's unity is so
fragile that it can't face the truth — and more importantly, live with the
truth — then perhaps it has to die. And in dying, one hopes, rise to new life.
I also know that it is no business of mine to condemn: there are
more than enough grey areas in my own life, enough logs in my eye if you prefer
(read Matthew 7:1-5). "Let the one without sin cast the first stone," said
Jesus (John 8:7). What followed was a private conversation that found its way
into the public record (were the Gospel writers so different to today's
journalists?) and each of us must choose whether we align ourselves with the
forgiven sinner looking wonderingly into the eyes of her Saviour, or with the
would-be stone throwers wandering away chastened but scheming: more lines drawn
in the sand.
The book's subtitle, "Anglicans and Homosexuality", might equally
well have been "Evangelicals and Homosexuality" since it's the evangelical wing
of Anglicanism that has made most of the anti-gay noise, that has apparently
appointed itself the Communion's moral guardian and so made of itself a new
Pharisaism. Consequently it's this wing of Anglicanism that Bates takes
primarily to task. He is a careful writer, however, and makes it clear that
evangelicalism is not a single-stranded rope: differing views within
evangelicalism range from the narrow perspective of Oak Hill to the more open
attitude of Bishop Pete Broadbent, both referred to and quoted several times.
And the rope is long enough for the evangelicals to tie themselves up in knots
and end up hanging either themselves or their opponents or both. All in the
name of love, of course.
Christ welcomed those the Pharisees — the religious right-wing of
the day — had excluded and ostracised. That says to me very clearly that we as
his followers must welcome those whom today's self-appointed Pharisees are
seeking to exclude.
Many will be annoyed by this book, but Bates has done all of us a
valuable service by opening the debate to a wider audience. No one concerned
about the future of the Church of England — or the wider Anglican Communion —
should ignore it.
Endnotes, bibliography and index bring the book to a close, but
the issues raised remain open, the lights still stuck on amber. Pedestrians are
bemused: they just want to cross the road and continue their journey. The
entire city's grinding to a halt, but elsewhere — another City, another
timezone — the traffic's flowing freely in both directions. But it's this
traffic jam that's made the news.
Whether you're an angry motorist or a bemused pedestrian, you'll
need to read this book with your wits about you: to those caught up in this
jam, it's life and death; walking away isn't an option. If you're an
evangelical, an Anglican evangelical especially, read it and bow your head in
shame. If, like me, you're an ordinary Anglican, read it and be appalled at the
workings of your church. Finally, if you're a lesbian or gay Christian: can you
read it and still find room in your heart to forgive the rest of us for the
ways we've villified and abused you?
May God have mercy on us all.
Phil Groom is Reviews Editor & Webmaster,
UKCBD
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