Controversy, Christian-style

1.Introduction

“But what about scripture?” my fellow clergyman asked. We were talking about the blessing of same-sex unions. Some of our colleagues were doing it. Others were distressed. “If we do this, if the church approves it, what do we do about scripture?” To which I replied — the thought occurring to me as I spoke — “I suppose we would do what we did when we started blessing remarriages after divorce.”

That was a provocative conversation for me. What did we do about scripture and divorce? For that matter, what did we do about scripture and slavery? Scripture and oaths? Scripture and interest on loans? There are a lot of things we do or approve of that at least seem to be contrary to scripture. How have we handled that?

I have lived through a change of mind — both my own and that of my church (the Episcopal Church) — on remarriage after divorce. I know how I changed my mind and I have some sense of what happened during that period to lead to a change of position by the Episcopal Church. But I don’t know of any commonly adopted way of interpreting scripture so as to be faithful to scripture and yet support our new stance.

When I was first ordained (1953) the Episcopal Church held a confused hard line on remarriage after divorce. On the one hand, we said you can’t remarry in the Episcopal Church after divorce and if you do it elsewhere, you have to stop coming to communion. On the other hand, we said (at least in the Diocese of Chicago) if you want to get back in good status after such a remarriage you have to attend church faithfully for a year and then, if your new marriage is in good shape, we’ll let you start receiving communion again. We were saying contradictory things — remarriage after divorce is wrong, but if you do it faithfully, we’ll let you back in.

I believed in the indissolubility of marriage, so I set out to “uphold the church’s teaching.” But life is messy and I soon found myself behaving inconsistently. An early case — one I have never forgotten and that started me on the road to a changed mind — concerned a young family composed of a previously married and divorced husband, his second wife and small child. The husband came to see me. He had a girl friend, and, as near as I could make out, wanted me to tell him it was all right to leave his wife and child and go off with the girl friend. I had been trained in non-judgmental listening and I tried to listen with an open mind to his story, but I was horrified. How could he abandon his wife and child!

But, of course, by the church’s teaching she wasn’t his wife, they were living in adultery. To be consistent I should have been urging him to leave his present wife and child and return to his first wife. I didn’t do that. I didn’t even consider doing that. I took the present status as a given and tried to make the best of it.

Later I had many such inconsistent, messy cases. I saw members of my parishes and of my family struggling in unhappy marriages. I wanted them to be happy. I wanted them to have possibilities of growth that didn’t seem to be open to them under their present circumstances. I found myself more and more becoming pragmatic, just trying to find something that would work, and more and more becoming impatient with the clumsy, inconsistent, and unintentionally hurtful system of rules they and I were caught in.

Was this what Jesus wanted? Was this what he meant us to be doing?

And so I — and thousands of other Episcopalians — became not only impatient with our system, but changed our minds about divorce and remarriage. And in 1973 we changed our rules. Now we have a different set of dissatisfactions. What do you do with multiple divorces and multiple attempts at marriage? Are we really just sanctioning polygamy in the form of serial monogamy?

Remarriage after divorce is just one of many changes the church has had to face. Every newspaper tells of another challenge to inherited belief and practice. There is an ever-increasing multitude of new questions — euthanasia, abortion, prayer in the schools, same-sex unions, ordination of homosexuals in same-sex unions, Christian mission in relation to other religions, new liturgies, the role of women, the use of contemporary or inclusive language in worship, etc. And questions about how we interpret scripture are just one of many questions involved in facing change.

I have a friend and colleague who is very concerned about bishops and priests who make changes — such as blessing same sex unions or ordaining persons in a life-long commitment to someone of the same sex — before the church has made an official decision.

My mind can simply not comprehend how people with senior leadership-stewardship responsibilities … can “do their own thing,” follow their own vision, when the community they lead/serve has (thus far) refused to endorse that view.ⁱ

I hear others ask about the process of decision-making. Are we really supposed to settle — or seek to influence — such matters as the death penalty or abortion or euthanasia by resolutions and majority vote in our synods or conventions or classes?

I hear others who are so distressed by our controversies that they speak of leaving the church if such-and-such a change takes place. And sometimes I hear still others say they will leave if the particular change does not take place.

Some ask, “How can we change what the church has always taught? Aren’t we bound by tradition?” But others find “what the church has always taught” a source of oppression. One woman says,

I see how Scripture and theology have been used to bury any sexuality that has to do with partnership, not ownership or control. Experience, conversations with other women, my own sexuality and study have brought me to a belief that sexuality is partnership. ⁱⁱ

This woman is not alone, also, in finding experience a reliable source of authority, in contrast to scripture and tradition—

Many women [speak] of the centrality of sexuality and of their concrete experiences as roots of their emerging understanding of theology and ministry. … [A woman pastor is convinced] that the most trustworthy knowledge comes from personal experience rather than from the pronouncements of authorities.ⁱⁱⁱ

But, of course, there are many who long for scriptural and traditional roots.

And who is supposed to make these decisions? Should it be the Pope, or bishops, or conventions of both clergy and laity, or the “whole” church, or our denomination? Some, for example, object that ordaining women is not a decision to be taken by just one church (e.g., the Methodist Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church or the Episcopal Church) but by consensus of all or most of the churches (or the major churches, or the ones recognized as authoritative by the speaker).

One especially poignant cry is that the church is surrendering to the world.

Thanks to attempts … to be timely, our church has come so close to replicating the culture it is called (lest one forget) to save, that its identity has been largely engulfed by that very culture instead.^iv

The questions are manifold. The distress is widespread.This book is a study of how we Christians argue with each other, how we handle controversy. It is directed to clergy and laity who feel the tensions of controversy and ask the kinds of questions mentioned above. It is especially directed to those who are faced in conventions and synods and other authoritative bodies with the duty of voting on controversial issues.

I do not believe we can get rid of distress, confusion, and inconsistency in controversy. They are necessary components of deciding whether or not to make important change. But I do believe we can relieve some of the distress. And I especially want to point us toward ways in which we can preserve unity in the Body of Christ. The book is not addressed to one side or the other in our controversies, but to all. I wish to speak to liberal and conservative, radical and traditionalist alike. I wish to help each position advance its cause as constructively as possible. My hope is for us to be in this together, to pursue our controversies in ways that build up the Body and discern the leading of the Holy Spirit.

There have been many controversies in the history of the church. I propose to learn from them. How did our ancestors handle them? What can we learn from them? Are there any recognizable patterns in the way we Christians have settled our controversies?

I shall examine seven controversies:

Circumcision, the first major controversy of the church, in which she had to decide whether circumcision and the Mosaic law should be required of Gentiles;

Arianism, the great theological struggle of the 4–6^th centuries concerning the relation of the Father and the Son;

Iconoclasm, the 8^th century conflict in the Byzantine church concerning the “worship” of icons and the 16–17^th century re-ignition of that conflict by the Reformation;

Albigensianism (also known as Catharism), the dualistic heresy of the 12–13^th centuries which rejected the flesh as evil;

Usury, the controversy beginning in the 16^th century in which the church sought to adapt her prohibition of interest on loans to the realities of a rapidly developing capitalism;

Slavery, the process by which the centuries-long acceptance of slavery by the church changed to abhorrence; and

Divorce, the on-going controversy concerning divorce and remarriage.

We shall study two principal aspects of these controversies — the process and the rationale used in the decision-making.

I do not bring to this study any special expertise in biblical studies, theology, or history beyond that of the ordinary seminary-educated member of the clergy. I do, however, bring decades of training and practice in group process. I have focussed for many years on discernment of spirits in church life and especially in conflict. One of the methods I propose, therefore, to use in this study is to apply my experience to the seven controversies just as I apply it to contemporary controversies. What can we learn about the process used in the controversies of our forbears by looking at them through the eyes of contemporary group and spiritual dynamics?

Today, because of our controversies, there is much discussion about the reasons and grounds — the rationale — of Christian decision-making. Richard Hooker’s  “three-legged stool” of Scripture, tradition, and reason, is often advanced — and just as often criticized — as a model. Many have suggested adding a fourth leg to the stool — experience; for example, the women quoted above. In this study we shall pay particular attention to these four categories in an attempt to further the discussion, but we shall not feel bound to them. We shall simply seek to look at what is actually used and how it is used in the rationales of the controversies. If the various grounds and reasons advanced fit into these categories, well and good; if not, we shall seek to understand the differences.

I propose also to develop a practical spirituality of Christian decision-making, a model for dealing with our controversies so as to preserve unity. As sources for this model I shall use not only our learnings from the seven controversies, but also the models of communal decision-making developed by the Quakers and the Jesuits.