Friday, August 21, 2009

When the dust settles, the matter does not go away

A post on More than a via media is a timely prompt to raise a question or two about same sex partnerships. One of the difficulties conservative Anglicans do not have is raising dust about resolutions such as General Convention D025 and B033. But when the dust settles, when we cheer the TEC train out of the Communion station on Track no. Two, we have an ongoing matter to attend to, namely, how we respond to the phenomenon which is fairly new to Western society, the presence of stable same sex partnerships which society makes both legal and respectable.

In one post I do not want to attempt to sort the matter out. It would be arrogant to think I could do so. In any case, even if I did have a 'solution' of the kind, say, which one day would be recognized universally, the matter of holding the church together would remain an urgent question. But here are some things I have been reflecting on:

- Is there not 'goodness' in a stable same sex partnership, notably the good of human companionship and friendship?

- Is it not a very good thing when society through law protects each and every member of society from prejudice and discrimination on an arbitrary basis? (I was reminded, reading something the other day, of a classic instance of non-arbitrary discrimination: a lingerie shop is allowed to specify female applicants only for vacancies!)

- Consequently, can the church find ways to affirm human companionship and friendship, and to celebrate good laws operating in society?

But all this is better expressed, and with a little more 'bite' by More than a via media - in full here, an excerpt towards the end of the post follows:

"Radner does not address to what extent the contemporary Christian tradition has actually reneged on the Scriptural and traditional prohibition of usury - rather than seeking to apply in a pastorally sensitive manner the Scriptural critique of usury.

What is intriguing about his suggestion, however, is that it does perhaps imply that the new pastoral reality of the emergence of permanent, faithful, stable same-sex relationships in late 20th/early 21st century Western society could be compared to the increasingly legal status of usury in 17th century Europe and the Church's response to this. As O'Donovan hints at the conclusion of his A Conversation Waiting to Begin, the debate could then "bulk less threateningly than it once did ... It is a problem reduced to its true shape and size".

In other words, same-sex relationships are not something which our public teaching can affirm or which the liturgy can bless - but a social reality in which the Church's pastoral ministry can seek to encourage the application and growth of a Christian understanding of the virtues."

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Peter asks:
"Is there not 'goodness' in a stable same sex partnership, notably the good of human companionship and friendship?"

Human companionship and friendship are normally 'good' - altho' there is also honor among thieves and there was hearty comradeship in the NSDAP and the CPSU. There is 'goodness' also in polygamous Mormon and Muslim households. So, as Aristotle reminds us, and the Angelic doctor develops his point, what is 'good' really means what subserves the summum bonum. To this we should add: 'good' is what God says is good. Friendship and companionship are not to be eroticized and sexualized.

"Is it not a very good thing when society through law protects each and every member of society from prejudice and discrimination on an arbitrary basis? (I was reminded, reading something the other day, of a classic instance of non-arbitrary discrimination: a lingerie shop is allowed to specify female applicants only for vacancies!)"

'Prejudice and discrimination' imply irrationality in one's actions. How do women feel about 'transgender' males using female toilets?

"Consequently, can the church find ways to affirm human companionship and friendship, and to celebrate good laws operating in society?"

This is what it has always tried to do, arguably from Romans 13. certainly since the time of Constantine. The Church witnesses to the Gospel. If the State repudiates its Christian foundation (and all the laws of the west, including the United States, were founded on the teachings of Christianity, despite what ardent 'separationists' say), what is the Church supposed to do and say?

A thought experiment (actually based on people I know): what do you say to/about a vicar who leaves his wife and teenage children to take up a homosexual relationship? Or a mother, active in children's work in an evangelical Anglican church, who leaves her husband (but not her sons) to begin a lesbian relationship with a lay reader in the church, who continues that ministry in the neighboring parish?

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Anonymous
Thanks for your answers - I wonder what others might say if this was a discussion engaged by a wider group of conservative Anglicans!

As for the cases you mention at the end: the obligation of people who make vows is to keep them!

Best wishes
Peter

Anonymous said...

"As for the cases you mention at the end: the obligation of people who make vows is to keep them!"

Generally I agree (Jephthah excluded)- though I have to note as well the prevalence of divorce and remarriage in evangelical churches. The cases I mentioned perplex me (and the parallel with Gene Robinson is clear as well). How can you maintain fellowship in such a situation? Is there such a thing as godly discipline? Should the lay reader continue in that ministry? She actually has a high profile job in a cathedral!

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Anonymous
Fellowship with sinners is always tricky, but some have been good enough to maintain it with me and other usurers ... as for godly discipline, speaking generally, the Bible does encourage repentance and one may therefore hope that in a lectionary adhering church, the message of repentance is heard.

Janice said...

Have a look at this 1999 research paper, titled The Church and Usury: Error, Change or Development?, by Father Gary L Coulter. On page 65, in his Epilogue, Fr Coulter writes,

Any change in the Church’s teaching has been a real and legitimate development, not a reversal, error or contradiction.

As I understand it, Fr Coulter argues that what has changed is the recognition that lending money to someone else can lead to a loss that, in justice, should be compensated. Further, with the emergence of capitalist market economies, money can no longer be seen as "barren".

For instance, if I buy an orchard then, at the harvest, I not only own the orchard but I also own its fruits. But if I lend you money to buy the orchard and you are required to pay me back only the amount I've lent you then you will profit from the fruits and I will, necessarily, suffer a loss. That, of course, would be unjust.

Coulter says that 'interest' comes from the Latin intereo and means “to be lost”. So interest payments are to cover the losses associated with lending money and are not 'usury', which is about making a profit. So it wasn't that 'usury' became "increasingly legal" but that 'interest' payments were recognised as just.

Therefore the analogy with the "increasingly legal" status of homosexuality fails. Same sex genital activity is still same sex genital activity no matter under what circumstances it's practised.

Peter Carrell said...

Thanks Janice
That is a very helpful insight into 'interest/loans'!

Anonymous said...

If I understand correctly,
1. 'usury' does mean loaning with interest.
2. The Bible does not ban usury outright, only within the covenant people. Loaning to Gentiles was OK (remember Shylock?).
So usury does not seem to be universally wrong or wrong per se, but situationally. Why this was so (in agricultural, tribal, kinship-based ancient Israel with its strict laws about land alienation and inheritance) is a tricky matter, but I suspect it had something to do with maintaining social solidarity within the covenant people and preventing the eventual pauperization of peasant farmers in years of bad harvest.
Jesus also refers rather neutrally - or even positively (ISTM) to interest in Matt 25.27.

Anonymous said...

In your unhelpful gleeful anticipation of cheering the TEC train out of the Communion station on Track no. Two – you continue your trend of pointing the finger elsewhere to distract from reflecting on your own context and province. Please remind your readers that your province’s official formal response to the proposed covenant is far more negative than TEC’s and so your province is more likely, once again, to be ahead of the TEC train on that track – not behind it.

As for your “the obligation of people who make vows is to keep them!” How about a post about that applied to your own context – not TEC’s for a change. YOUR province’s indiscriminate “remarrying” of divorcees (up to seven times in at least one case). Isn’t it time you critiqued your province’s practice of baptising children of the unmarried when your province is the only one that makes no declarations “on behalf of” the child – but solely having the parents renounce evil for themselves? You have already declared publicly here you and your ilk are unprepared to take on your provinces major scandal hidden in plain sight. Would it be any different if it were a homosexual one?

“Fellowship with sinners is always tricky” – your Donatist and other tendencies in one brief sentence.

Why are you so quick to accept Janice’s extremely weak examination of the biblical understanding of the place of money and of lending with a “That is a very helpful insight”? At a time of financial turmoil would not a robust biblical critique be extremely apposite? If Janice would have a lender share in the profit, why not in any loss? Do you in this brushing off not reinforce the perception that you approach the biblical texts with certain prejudices and only listen to those interpretations that support them?

Christianity has been wrong about the world being flat, about it being the centre of the universe, about usury, about slavery, about the place of women, about contraception, about evolution, about divorce, about relations with Islam (Crusades), and with Judaism (Holocaust), about Latin as the sole language for worship, about celibacy, about the age of the universe, and about homosexuality. Your blog is a last desperate gasp of your personal obsession with one of the last pawns (possibly the last?) standing on your board.

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Anonymous (i.e. the one who reads all I say as a castigation of TEC)!

I need do nothing with your post because you lay it all out for the world to see, especially the highly objectionable things in the life of ACANZP, some of which you know better than I know myself while (in previous comments) declaring you are not a member of this church ... intriguing claim!

But I do object to one thing: when I said in reply to (another) Anonymous comment, "A thought experiment (actually based on people I know): what do you say to/about a vicar who leaves his wife and teenage children to take up a homosexual relationship? Or a mother, active in children's work in an evangelical Anglican church, who leaves her husband (but not her sons) to begin a lesbian relationship with a lay reader in the church, who continues that ministry in the neighboring parish?" that people were under an obligation to keep their vows, I thought I was replying to someone writing from the C of E. So, for the record, no, I was not, as you imply, once again critiquing TEC!

But if you think that I think that married men on any continent or island who have committed themselves to a woman for life as their wife decide they wish to self-identify as 'gay', and vice versa, they have no reason to thereby leave the marriage ... you would be correct.

Oh, and one other thing, I am not gleeful at all about TEC being on no Two Track. Are you doing anything to help them to find the way to no One Track?

Anonymous said...

I have no doubt that the NZ church is compromised in many ways, pehaps because kind-hearted pragmatism rather than well-thought out historical and theological principle has guided decisions. The absence of solid theological heft (outside of a few parishes in Christchurch and Nelson) has yielded the floor to liberalism, which is largely culture-following. So WO, remarriage of divorcees, liturgical change (often replacing the misunderstood historical liturgy of Cranmer with bad poetry) and historical revisonism presented as multiculturalism were accepted without much opposition. When the wider culture was kindly toward Christianity (as in the 1950s), conservative assumptions about family life and sex prevailed, even when this wasn't reflected in churchgoing (though a lot more children were in Sunday school then). Things turned in the 1960s - not that we should blame everything on the Pill, but the sexual revolution broke down the nexus between sex and marriage which reinforced conservative morals, and an era of mass entertainment and unashamed hedonism swept across the western world. And do not doubt that Tec - or Pecusa/Ecusa as it was then - was pretty affirming of this. Even wehen it dabbled with the Charismatic movement, Ecusa ws really following Carl Jung. (Remember Morton Kelsey?)
Whereas across the water Moore College has made no bones about its commitment to the Bible and the principles of the English Reformation (an attitude you will also find in Nigeria and Uganda).
Agree with him or not, the typical Sydney clergyman is better educated than his NZ counterpart - or his North American.
Anon1

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Anon1

Moore College clergy are well educated.

There is a bit of theological 'heft' in Dioceses other than Christchurch and Nelson!