Episcopal Press and News
Burning Issues Conference Brings Diverse Voices to Sexuality Debate
Episcopal News Service. January 15, 1998 [98-2069]
Sarah Bartenstein, Executive for Communications of the Diocese of Virginia
Is the church's continuing debate over sexuality a gospel opportunity or a gospel threat?
That was the question posed to four speakers who addressed a standing-room-only audience at the third Burning Issues Conference on December 8 and 9 at the Virginia Diocesan Center at Roslyn in Richmond, Virginia.
Members of the Diocese of Virginia were joined by Episcopalians from Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Kansas, to form an attentive and diverse group listening to some of the most articulate voices in the church today.
The Rev. Gray Temple of Atlanta, Dr. Louie Crew of Newark, Diane Knippers of Fairfax, and Bishop James Stanton of Dallas, agreed on at least one point: the sexuality debate can be a gospel opportunity for the Episcopal Church. Their reasons for reaching that conclusion, however, were different.
Temple, the rector of St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, Atlanta, characterizes himself as a liberal charismatic. He and Crew, the founder of Integrity, a ministry to gay and lesbian people in the Episcopal Church, favor the blessing of relationships between persons of the same sex, and believe such persons should be eligible for ordination. Knippers, president of the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy and a board member of the American Anglican Council (AAC), and Bishop Stanton, AAC's president, oppose such actions, saying that represents a departure from the clear teaching of the church.
The conference format was helpful, Bishop Stanton observed, noting that parliamentary or legislative arenas are not conducive to a clear and helpful exchange of views, because of the sometimes combative nature of those settings, and because each person is limited to a few minutes to express his or her views.
That had been the intent of Bishop Peter James Lee of Virginia and the planners when they designed the conference: to provide a forum which could promote real dialogue rather than posturing or debate.
The presence of persons in the audience who are on either side of the question, as well as those who confessed to continuing ambivalence, ensured that this was not a case of one side or the other "preaching to the choir."
During a 24-hour period marked by heartfelt exchanges, prayer, and as surprising amount of laughter, "people were in love and charity with each other," according to one participant, the Rev. April Trew Greenwood of Millers Tavern, Va.
Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews coming from participants, however, many said they wished there had been even more time for discussion and questions. Bishop Stanton and others said they would like to see a continuation of the process begun at the conference.
Temple spoke first, after the speakers' order was determined by lot. He set the tone for the event, first by asking each participant to look at the persons seated on either side of themselves. Then, he urged, "Pray for them. Congratulate God for them. Agree with God about them."
He then began his comments by insisting that argument has not helped the church as it has tried to deal with issues of sexuality, because "no conflict is resolvable at the level at which it is waged."
"For the most part," he acknowledged, "we have not found each other's arguments plausible." Rather than rehearse those arguments, he said he preferred to "talk about how we talk."
He asked that conservatives stop calling liberals "revisionists, heretics, or libertines," and that liberals stop referring to conservatives as "homophobic, reactionary or developmentally challenged."
A helpful model for the conversation about sexuality, Temple suggested, might be the various ecumenical dialogues in which the Episcopal Church has engaged. A major hurdle in those conversations, he said, has been the historic episcopate.
To move such dialogues forward, "We will have to be willing to say something like this: 'We who have received grace through the apostolic ministry are eager to share that grace with those who have received grace through other ministries and are eager to have you share the grace of your ministry with us.'"
It is that posture, Temple argued, that is required in conversations on sexuality. He asked those on the opposite side of the sexuality issue, "Will you expose me to the grace you enjoy in that belief? I'd love to share with you the grace Jesus has offered with me as he has turned me inside out on this matter."
"Like participants in ecumenical discussion, all of us here share most values in common," Temple said. "All of us are saved, all know Jesus personally. All of us treasure the enrichment of our marriages that sexual fidelity and decorum provide. And all of us have received grace through the positions we espouse. May we share that grace? May we request it of each other?"
Temple asked that Christians "allow the Holy Spirit to lift us off the plane of conflict."
To the question raised by the conference title, "Gospel Opportunity or Gospel Threat?" Temple said, "There is no doubt in my mind that this debate is a blessing to the church. It compels the Episcopal Church to pray together."
Knippers, a member of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, focused primarily on marriage and the family, and the ways that those institutions have been damaged by the culture.
Marriage "reflects the very image of the relationship between God and his people," she said. She called the current debate on sexuality "a great apologetic challenge."
"Human sexuality is rooted in our physical nature as created beings. We are two sexes, wonderfully made for each other," she said. Beyond the physical nature of human beings, "we are also created as social creatures. God's plan for humankind is that its primary and most basic organization is in families... .Families start with a marriage."
She said that marriage is not "a private contractual relationship," so that individuals are not free to change the rules about marriage or the limits that society places on it.
There are many purposes to marriage, she said, but two are particular to that relationship: The first is what Knippers called "the unitive function," in which two persons become one flesh. "But this unitive function doesn't simply unite two individuals," she said. "There is a great divide and difference in the human family and the two sexes. In marriage, we are united with the other." The second purpose to marriage is its procreative function: "be fruitful and multiply."
Knippers charged that those who are "working very head to legitimize homosexual practice, within society and within the church" will intentionally or unintentionally change the institution of marriage from the model intended by God. Allowing anything less than what she called God's "gold standard" for marriage would lead to its disintegration as an institution. Some who would allow blessing of homosexual unions "consider the ideal of life-long fidelity, in either homosexual or heterosexual relationships, not only hopelessly outdated, but repressive. These persons want to use homosexual unions intentionally to break down and redefine marriage."
Bishop Stanton, who addressed the conference the following morning, said, "The great debate about sex is not about sex but about self and wherein lies its salvation."
He said that the argument, in its essence, has to do with our answer to these questions: What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of your life? Are human beings created to be loved by God, or are they created to love God?
There are two traditions regarding these questions, he said, and the debate boils down to whether we are going to "supplant one tradition with another."
One tradition says, "I am what I am. I have a right to be what I am. This is God's gift to me," said Stanton. The other tradition is the "Christian notion found in St. Paul: your life lies in God. You find yourself only as you give, only as you yield, and fall into obedience."
"When I confirm, I ask confirmands, 'Do you promise to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship?' What am I asking people to commit to, if there isn't any such identifiable thing?"
He challenged the audience to read Scripture not as fundamentalists or literalists, nor to pick apart passages such as the purity codes found in Leviticus, but to seek and discern the "essential patterns" found in the Bible.
"If there's a Gospel opportunity here, it's that we can rediscover the essential pattern of the Gospel story," Stanton concluded.
Crew began his presentation by reciting the Great Commission: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel, II and following up with a story about the late Mother Teresa: An American woman, a resident of New York City, wrote to the famous nun, volunteering to work with her order during the New Yorker's sabbatical. She also enclosed a check for the order's work in Calcutta. After waiting weeks for a reply, one day a tattered envelope arrived with the woman's original letter enclosed. On the letter, Mother Teresa had scribbled two words: "South Bronx."
Then Crew said to the conference participants, "I have two words for you." He paused. "Gay Virginia."
"How are you getting the word across that God loves your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as much as he loves you?" he gently admonished, asking how Episcopalians in Virginia are reaching out to homosexuals.
He told his own story of denying his homosexuality until well into adulthood. Then he "entered into sinful behavior with strangers because they were the only ones I dared risk it with."
"I thought I had left God, because I thought God had left me," he said.
Then he met the man who would become his life partner, and entered into a relationship that led to "a recovery not of my autonomous self," in a reference to Bishop Stanton's comments, "but of my Christian self."
"Sex is not our besetting sin," said Crew. "Our besetting sin is not temptation to unfaithfulness. Our besetting sins are pride, selfishness and unkindness."
"Sexuality is not a means of grace," he said, "but marriage is."
He told of visiting his father while the elder Crew was dying. "I know I'm not the son you wanted," he told his father, "but Dad, I love you very much."
"Louie, you're so wrong," his father responded. "You are the son I wanted."
Gay and lesbian persons likewise need to hear that they are loved and cherished for who they are. "I know that I am on this earth to tell people, 'God wants you.'" he said. "There are thousands of people who will never hear that unless I tell them.
"Do you know the whole world is waiting for us to get over this issue so that we can get on to the real issue, which is that God loves all of us?"
After the conference, several of the 110 participants said it was an important step in the right direction.
"I've been through a lot of these dialogue processes and this was the first were we got anywhere," said Roger Boltz of Dallas, director of the American Anglican Council.
"I was very encouraged by this conference," Boltz continued. "This was a gathering of four voices who represent the great spectrum of diversity. They engaged the issue at levels other than emotion."
Boltz said he was impressed not only with the speakers but with those who came to hear them. "The audience that was here was ready to engage the issue." He said he would "love to see" the process continue.
The Rev. Rosemari Sullivan, rector of the Church of St. Clement, Alexandria, was also "impressed with the diversity of the group" who attended the event. She called the conference a "step in the right direction."
The event did not, however, cover up the real differences that exist in the church. "The conference showed clearly that for some in our church, personal experience judges and interprets Scripture, while for others Scripture judges and interprets personal experience," said the Rev. John Guernsey, Rector of All Saints, Dale City, Virginia. "I think it's crucial that Scripture retain its rightful place as our primary authority in Anglican Christianity."
Bishop Lee called the event a "very searching, very intense conference. Without exception, the presenters were thoughtful and prayerful as were the attendees. It was an important gift to the church at large."
The Burning Issues Conference is a memorial to the late Robert F. Gibson Jr., the 10th Bishop of Virginia, who was a champion of racial justice in the 1960s and a prominent figure in the ecumenical movement. He died in 1990. The first Burning Issues Conference on racial justice was in 1992, and the second on the sanctity of life in 1994. This was the third conference in the series.