Over the last fifty years dramatic new insights have been achieved in the studies of both human behavior and the science of brain function and formation. These insights have forced the western world, led by medical and scientific people, to reject the wisdom of the past that viewed homosexuality as a choice rather than a given aspect of reality, as a mental illness rather than as part of the spectrum of human sexual activity, and as aberrant and evil behavior engaged in by morally depraved people rather than a natural, albeit a minority, part of humanity. As long ago as 1973 The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Today the debate centers on such things as the role of the hypothalamus, the level of the male hormone testosterone in the pregnant female, the work of the Y chromosome in sexual development, neuro-chemical realities and other newly discovered physiological facts in the studies of brain formation and function..
The constancy of the number of gay/lesbian people in the population of the world is also generally accepted. That evidence is disguised by the fact that homosexuality is violently suppressed in some social orders, making it appear to be minimal or non-existent. Studies reveal that suppressing homosexuality only cloaks reality; it does not decrease the incidence, and allowing homosexuality to be expressed openly only reveals reality; it does not increase the incidence. The fact is that the numbers of homosexual persons appears to remain constant in every generation and in every society. The conclusion to which these data point is obvious; namely, homosexuality is a part of the human and biological norm. It is not an aberration or a sickness that needs to be overcome. These new insights, overwhelmingly accepted by the medical and scientific community, continue to be rejected, however, by uninformed religious people who buttress their attitude with appeals to a literal understanding of the Bible. This same mentality has marked every debate about every new insight that has arisen in the western world over the last six hundred years. It is a tired, threadbare argument and has become one of embarrassment to the cause of Christ.
In the developing nations of the world these scientific insights are available to the gay/lesbian community and have provided many in that community with the impetus to come out of their closets of fear, and their ghettoized existences. They are now openly sharing their gifts and achievements in all walks of life, and our society is being forced to rethink its destructive stereotypes. The result is that the overwhelming hostility and prejudice that gay and lesbian people have had to bear in the past is rapidly diminishing.
The Christian ministry of reconciliation to and with the gay/lesbian population, particularly in the urban areas of the western world is today being significantly hurt by the continued expression of uninformed prejudices by some religious leaders among us who are perceived to speak for Christ. In recent years there has been a significant movement back to Christianity among gay and lesbian people.
The Christ embraced those whom the religious authorities of his day defined as outcasts and unclean, and we are called to do the same. The integrity of the Gospel is at risk unless we confront this killing prejudice in our midst and root it out from the body of Christ. For these reasons we want to make certain that you as the leaders of this communion know how strange, disheartening and discouraging it is to these victims of our prejudice when this Gospel is undercut by statements made by Christian leaders in which prejudice and ignorance are enshrined and where the suggestion is made that this rejection by these leaders is part of the Gospel itself. Let me illustrate what I mean.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has been widely quoted in the press as saying, "The discipline of the Church is that we recognize two life-styles. One is marriage and the other is celibacy, and there can't be anything in between, and we don't recognize same sex marriages." Yet in 1991 a booklet entitled "Issues in Human Sexuality," was published with a foreword by the same Archbishop of Canterbury and in 1997 the General Synod of the Church of England commended this book to the churches and people of England for study, noting that it was not the "final word" on this subject. In the text of this book the clergy and the Church were exhorted to support the faithful commitments of gay and lesbian lay couples. The discontinuity between this booklet and the Archbishop's later statement was explained by a spokesperson for Lambeth Palace who said that the Archbishop was only talking about the unions of gay clergy couples when he drew his harsh line. That is the weakest of all possible arguments. There is no moral tradition in Anglicanism that suggests that something might be morally acceptable for the laity and not for the clergy. It also relegates to a second class status the relationships that some gay and lesbian couples have forged under great hardships and which in fact have produced in their commitments to each other the marks of both love and holiness.
The Archbishop has further disappointed those who expect more of his leadership role in the English Church by his steadfast refusal to meet and to be in dialogue with the major church-related gay/lesbian organization in the United Kingdom, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. His role as the titular head of this communion has also been weakened by his refusal to meet with the founder of Integrity in the United States. He seems to believe that it is his prerogative to designate the proper leaders of the homosexual community with whom he is willing to negotiate, those who embody his "acceptable" understandings. We need to be reminded that the white, apartheid-supporting government of South Africa also sought to act this way. They wanted to speak only with those representatives of black Africa with whom they were comfortable. They dismissed the claims of other groups by accusing them of employing unacceptable tactics which included violence, without the slightest understanding of how unacceptable and violent apartheid itself was on all black people. Whenever the Church rejects a segment of God's people, the Church creates the very hostility and the precise reactions which the Church then condemns. That is an unacceptable procedure for Christians in general to follow and it is not a becoming stance for one who wears the mantle of Christ.
The credibility of such a stance on the part of the Archbishop is also compromised by the admission that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, has himself knowingly and willingly ordained non-celibate gay persons to the priesthood. The fact is so have countless other bishops throughout the Anglican Communion. The ethical basis for this behavior seems to be "so long as we are not open and honest about what we are doing, it is okay." I submit that this attitude has no moral credibility.
At the recent General Synod of the Church of England, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Rev. Richard Harries, was quoted as saying, "Marriage and gay unions are not on a par." These words have been heard so often that one suspects they have almost become the party line. The Archbishop of Canterbury used these same words in the press recently, even when being critical of Bishop Harries [for Harries' support of lowering the age of consent for males in the U.K. ]. These words imply that marriage is clearly superior to a gay union. Bishop Harries and the Archbishop are, of course, speaking out of their own heterosexual perspective. This argument has been used in the past by those in power to block and denigrate other rejected people who were seeking a place in the sun. White people defended slavery, segregation, apartheid, and anti-miscegenation laws with similar versions of that statement which maintained that black people were simply not on a par with white people. Males in previous generations have acted to keep females from voting, from achieving the ability to hold property in their own name, from getting adequate educations, from entering professions reserved for men only, from being ordained and even from getting divorces when they lived in abusive marriages. These conclusions were also justified by the claim that women were in fact not on a par with men.
Now the powerful majority of heterosexual church people want, in these words to claim that their majority status qualifies them to denigrate homosexual people and the sacred commitments of the gay/lesbian community by defining them as "not on a par" with the relationships of heterosexual people. This argument is totally without merit. Prejudice, however, has an interesting way of seeking to justify itself. This is the language of power; not the language of Christ.
The time has come for the leaders of our communion in every nation to be concerned less with institutional public relations and more with truth and justice. As a Church we sacrificed black people for centuries until their acceptance was politically and socially acceptable and then we tried to claim credit for defeating racism. The Church of England rejected the ordination of women until that idea had achieved more than an 80 percent approval rating in the population at large and until the damage done to the institution of the Church by not ordaining women had become greater than the damage that would be done by ordaining women. Only then did they act. Surely we must recognize that there is no integrity and no leadership in this kind of pattern.
The statement by the Archbishop of the Southern Cone [my link is to an ENS report of it--Louie/Lutibelle], the Most Rev. Maurice Sinclair, following the last meeting of the Anglican primates was an offensive burden that had to be borne by many parts of the body of Christ. The Bible is the book of life; it must not be used as a weapon of repression. This is not a new use of holy scripture, but it is galling to see that ancient distortion employed yet again and by one of our primates. The Bible was quoted in the 16th and 17th centuries to oppose Copernicus and Galileo. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was quoted to support the practice of slavery and to oppose both the use of vaccinations and the ideas of Charles Darwin. In the 20th century it has been quoted to undergird segregation, apartheid and the second class status of women. Now it is being quoted to condemn homosexual persons. The Bible must never be used to give moral justification to prejudice of any kind. Archbishop Sinclair needs to be confronted publicly.
The Kuala Lumpur statement of some bishops of Southern Asia employed the Bible in a similar fashion. Perhaps the overwhelming scientific data available today in the western world has simply not penetrated the minds of the signatories of this document. Perhaps they have never read those portions of scripture which validate polygamy and the treatment of women as property. Perhaps they want to go back to the time when homosexuals or suspected homosexuals were burned at the stake in conformity with the Levitical code that called for their execution (Lev. 20). Perhaps they have not read Romans 1 where Paul's argument is that those who do not worship God properly will have their sexual natures confused by God as punishment. Perhaps they have never seen monogamy lived out by loving, faithful gay or lesbian couples. I do not know what their reasoning was. I only know that their statement was an embarrassing misuse of the Bible and that it greatly confused moral categories.
Lest there be the slightest bit of misunderstanding, let me state specifically that no one I know of thinks promiscuity in any form can be tolerated or blessed by the Church. No Christian I know of wants any form of predatory sexual activity to be upheld anywhere. No leader of the Church that I am aware of favors sexual molesting in any form. It is scurrilous propaganda on the part of those who signed the Kuala Lumpur statement to suggest that these evils are to be equated with faithful, committed gay or lesbian relationships. Those are the only relationships that any of us have called on the Church to recognize as blessed by God and to add our blessing as a public sign of God's acceptance. The Kuala Lumpur signatories do not seem to recognize that the failure of both church and society to bless, recognize and undergird faithful, committed, monogamous relationships among our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters contributes mightily to those very sexual practices which all of us condemn.
The Kuala Lumpur signatories also hint that homosexuality is a manifestation of a "brokenness" that when admitted and faced, could be "part of a healing process." If one is going to prescribe for a segment of the human race, one has a responsibility to be informed. The possibility that homosexuals might be "cured" by conversion, forgiveness, prayer, psychotherapy or "spiritual counseling" is totally discredited in the scientific world today. A recent statement by the American Psychiatric Society referred to it as "pastoral violence." To quote from certain persons who claim to be "cured homosexuals," who are today enriching themselves and their organizations by playing on the homophobic pain and fear that infects our society when there is no scientific basis or support for their claims is without honor and without integrity.
The threat of these same signatories to "expel those provinces" of the Anglican Communion or to break off communion with those who might ordain non-celibate homosexual persons to the priesthood or bless same-sex unions, is so blatantly a political tactic that it is hardly worthy of comment. The fact that their statement was immediately endorsed by the four American bishops and several of their fellow travelers who still refuse to ordain women in violation of the canons of this province of this Communion, only demonstrates its political agenda. To be closed to new revelations and new truth, to assume that you speak with the voice of scripture and that anyone who disagrees with you is not worthy of being part of the body of Christ, is to come dangerously close to what the New Testament calls the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. The Kuala Lumpur signatories need to recall that the Fourth Gospel suggests that the Holy Spirit "will lead us into all truth." That is impossible when any person suggests that he or she already possesses this ultimate truth.
The Anglican Province in the United States has been debating the issues surrounding homosexuality publicly for more than twenty years. That debate has been open and vigorous. Minds have been changed by new data and new experience. In 1997 for the first time we achieved a statistical majority in our house of deputies (which included four lay persons and four priests elected by every diocese in our Church to represent them), in favor of blessing same sex unions. We did not achieve a canonical majority which takes a vote close to 66 2/3 percent, but the wave of the future seems clear. We have already achieved a legal ruling, through a strange judicial process forced upon us by our most conservative bishops, that this Church has no doctrine that will prohibit the ordination of homosexual persons living in monogamous, committed relationships. We also elected in 1997 a new primate, who was himself a signatory of the Koinonia Statement (copy enclosed) that calls for the recognition of our gay clergy and the blessing of their sacred commitments. We have no desire to force our solutions on anyone, but we do intend to witness to the truth to which we have been led. We have, on other issues, tried to listen to other parts of this Communion when they faced concerns unique to themselves like polygamy in Uganda and Kenya. We are troubled by the arrogance that the Kuala Lumpur statement expresses, and we reject that arrogance forthwith as unbecoming to our partners in this Communion.
Even those bishops in England, who know better on this issue of homosexuality, have, with a few rare exceptions, been muted by some strange commitment to institutional unity. That unity has come at the cost of sacrificing truth. If even a minority of bishops would speak out, it would allow gay and lesbian people to know that they are not alone and that someone, somewhere, in the body of Christ understands their plight. The leadership of this communion in every land must break ranks with that mentality which believes that the role of a bishop is to serve institutional maintenance first and truth second.
Those who share these commitments with me do not plan to come to Lambeth demanding that our agenda be affirmed. However, if the bishops of the Lambeth Conference follow the lead of those who want to continue in the hostile, prejudiced patterns of the past, we will not remain silent. If the Lambeth Conference is forced to vote negatively on this issue, we will take to the public media to assure the gay and lesbian population of the world and most especially those gay and lesbian Christians we are privileged to serve, that they have not been abandoned by the leadership of their Church.
If homosexuality is not discussed openly at the Lambeth Conference, it will be yet another sign of our irrelevance as a Church in shaping the affairs of our world. However, that discussion must be authentic. The persons chosen to present the case for full gay inclusion must be recognized as leaders by the gay population itself. The one figure of world stature who could chair this is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Two retired bishops, one of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, Bishop Derek Rawcliffe, and one from the United States, Bishop Otis Charles, both of whom have publically declared their homosexuality, might also be able to serve that purpose. Since retired bishops do not attend Lambeth, they would need a special invitation. There are many active bishops in Canada, England, Scotland and the U.S. who would be acceptable to the gay constituency to speak on their behalf if the gay leadership in the Anglican Communion were consulted. If they are not consulted the integrity of the process will be destroyed.
Those of us who support the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the life of the Church are also prepared to support the appointment of a special commission to work on this issue during the next ten years, provided that two things are present:
Clearly in the next decade a consensus will be formed if the present available data can be disseminated. In South Africa, Canada and the United States apologies have been offered by the Anglican Churches to gay and lesbian people based upon prior treatment that these people have received at the hands of the Christian Church. The bishops at Lambeth might do likewise. It is my best hope, however, that the Lambeth Conference will not add to the burden gay and lesbian people have had to bear in the past and that it will rise above and even call to an accounting the negative voices heard from high places in our Communion in recent days.
I, along with countless others, stand ready to assist that process.
John Shelby Spong
Bishop of Newark
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