Via Negativa: Just Vote No!

June 12, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Every year or so the various mainline Christian denominations hold their national conventions, and homosexuality seems to be back on trial again. Conservatives blame it on us because we refuse to sit down and be quiet. We blame it on them for digging in their heels against us, other Christians, experts, society and the Holy Spirit. “And they’ll know we are Christians” to paraphrase an old folk song, “by what we say NO to.”

Next month, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. meets here in Southern California, and it is probably going to be contentious again. Since the last meeting, several Southern California Episcopal congregations have bolted from the national church body, been told they were forfeit their real estate to the Diocese, fought that in court and lost, etc.

Unlike the old Hollywood cowboy and Western movies, there never seems to be the final “showdown” which settles everything. One “showdown” leads to the next, which leads to the next.

Whether conservative or renegade, break-away Episcopalians like it or not, the Episcopal Church has found itself on the leading edge of acceptance of LGBTQ people. Early on it recognized the truth that “the body of Christ has AIDS” — to de-stigmatize the fact that Christians are living with HIV/AIDS. It recognized that many of its own clergy are in fact gay or lesbian. One local diocese, New Hampshire, elected the Rev. Gene Robinson as their bishop. And “all hell broke loose” in the Anglican worldwide communion when the Episcopal Church ratified his election as the right person for the job, but the ultra-conservative and reactionary bishops elsewhere in the world, refused to recognize the validity of his orders.

This painful drama continues to be played out in the Episcopal Church. I hear that the local diocese is so preoccupied with the coming convention that it decided to completely ignore and bypass the Christopher Street West Pride Parade this weekend in West Hollywood —which every prior year in recent memory has seen a huge marching unit representing the Diocese and its parish churches.

In the meantime, the larger but less well-known Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has played its own drama. It meets in a church-wide Assembly every two years, and that comes up this August 17–23 in Minneapolis.

Just like other denominations, our LGBTQ lives are being put up to a vote again. The Lutherans have gotten bogged down over and over in “studies” in which the only people who actually learn anything about human sexuality and homosexuality are the individuals who wrote the study. Even though the papers they produce are routinely made available to the larger church (well, at least the last several times they have been), the faithful who occupy our pews and elect delegates to conventions don’t necessarily learn anything from the careful work of study commissions.

The last Lutheran study of homosexuality didn’t produce any tangible benefits. Every proposal to open up ordination and ordained service to lesbian and gay clergy met with resistance. The ELCA continued to polarize. A handful of congregations have said they will bolt the denomination, and they have plans well underway to vote themselves onto their own little island.

If my memory of the history is right, one of the arguments against changing the ordination standards was that the ELCA had no standing social teaching about human sexuality to guide it, so it shouldn’t talk about ordaining practicing homosexuals until it had an overall theology of sex in place.

Four years ago, the national ELCA Assembly authorized the drafting of a social statement on sexuality. Two years ago in Chicago, additional instructions were given to the study group doing the work on the social teaching. Even though the working group did not want to deal with church policy about homosexuality it was finally ordered to come back with recommendations on ELCA policy at this year’s Assembly.

This latest study, Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, and its ministry recommendations voices the fact that we don’t all agree on matters of sexuality and homosexuality, and we need to commit to finding ways to live together without being in complete agreement.

Surprisingly, the ELCA may actually change its negative policies in August if it accepts the recommendations of the study group. Simply referred to as Ministry Policies (and downloadable here), the Assembly will have the chance to undo some of the damage done in 1990 when Vision and Expectations and Guidelines for Discipline were swiftly adopted and promulgated without review by the clergy of the church in an attempt to “preclude” lesbian and gay people in relationships from serving as clergy or lay professionals.

What we are doing here, in church body after church body, is trying to get rid of the Christian equivalent of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policies. The United Church of Christ did that more than 30 years ago.

More importantly, maybe Lutherans will join other Protestants in continuing to ditch the via negativa theology (and if you’re really interested, check this out) of sex that has captivated the majority of Christians for more than a thousand years. Maybe.

In the Lutheran system, the clergy and lay people elected to represent the congregations at the churchwide Assembly are not “delegates”–they are not required to vote on matters as their home synods or congregations instruct them, but are free to vote their own minds and hearts as the Holy Spirit guides them.

Which is why I say “maybe.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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