Tom Wright does like his polemics, and nearly always has something worthwhile to say (even if it is not always as worthwhile as he thinks). He is quick off the mark with a pulpit piece in today’s Times about how he sees the fallout from The Episcopal Church’s decision (as it seems) to lift their moratorium on ordaining gay bishops. (For a very different internal take on how it might feel see these two posts on Entangled States.)
At one level I envy both Wright and those whom he is most opposed to for their clarity on this matter. I am simply confused. I find it easier to see what seems to me to be questionable in the arguments mounted by both sides than I do to be convinced by either.
Let me give an example from Durham’s op-ed. Wright says:
But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).
Firstly, let me admit my ignorance about a great deal of what Muslim and Jewish teachers have to say about marriage, but my instinct would be that those who allow four wives are unlikely to have exactly the same view as those who allow only one.
Secondly, let me note that what most worries me is the overpowering ease of this claim that we are implicitly talking about the same thing when we talk about marriage in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, marriage in the long Christian tradition, and marriage traditions shared by the Abrahamic faiths. Nor does it seem clear to me that the way in which we talk about sex and sexuality are conceptualised in ways that our ancestors in faith would have recognised. We will happily read the Song of Songs as a celebration of erotic love. The vast majority of the Christian tradition did not so read it, and would have been profoundly uncomfortable (to say the least) with such a reading. The rediscovery of sexual hedonism (confined of course to heterosexual monogamy) that is now an evangelical staple is largely a contemporary novelty.
I feel more like the Gamaliel of the Acts narrative, unwilling at this time to reach a definitive theological conclusion. I know some good priests (better priests than I am) who are partnered gay men. It seems to me that the love, comfort and mutual support they have found in their partnerships are an intrinsic part of what makes them good priests.
Not long ago I was talking to a senior priest in a diocese whose bishop has been outspoken on the conservative side of this debate. He told me that the said bishop had never gone after the gay priests in his diocese, nor enquired what they got up to (don’t ask, don’t tell), in part at least because he was aware that they were good and effective priests. I think that if priests living in stable and same-sex committed relationships are having their ministries seemingly blessed by God (a blessing tacitly acknowledged by a conservative bishop), that must at least raise a very serious question. Jesus, after all, said “by their fruits shall you know them.”
Society at large has not had this debate, but in what has been a swift cultural sea-change, a lot of prejudice and anger has been driven underground and allowed to fester. The only acknowledgement of this underground resentment is the passing of more laws to criminalise it. The church’s theological agonising may yet be a public ministry of servicing a conversation that needs to happen.
Questions like this are, it seems to me, meant to drive us back to Scripture first and ask the question whether our traditional way of reading it is in fact the only one, or even the right one. I find I have more questions than answers, and I so far have not heard answers I find fully or ultimately persuasive – neither from those who would uphold the traditional position, nor from those who would modify it. So excuse me if I keep asking questions, and picking holes in other people’s arguments.
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Questions like this are, it seems to me, meant to drive us back to Scripture first and ask the question whether our traditional way of reading it is in fact the only one, or even the right one… So excuse me if I keep asking questions, and picking holes in other people’s arguments.
Just brilliant! … Yes, you are excused.
Always love reading your reflections on these issues, Doug. Thanks for a thoughtful and helpful post.
Doug, from being a committed ‘conservative’ I now find I’m pretty well in the same place as you on this one.
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