wfn.org | Burning Issues Conference brings diverse voices to sexuality d

[ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)]

January 15, 1998
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

98-2068
Burning Issues Conference brings diverse voices to sexuality debate

by Sarah Bartenstein
     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.

Dialogue `in love and charity'
     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.

Four different perspectives
     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."

Focus on marriage, family
     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," 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?"

A step in the right direction
     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.

-- Sarah Bartenstein is executive for communications of the Diocese of
Virginia.