A response to Professor Azumah
I confess that I have regarded many of my African brothers and sisters in Christ with condescension. I speak of those who resist the ordination of women and the welcoming of homosexual couples. They just haven’t caught up to the modern world. And I speak in repentance. Professor John A. Azumah, in his paper, Through African Eyes: Resisting America’s Cultural Imperialism. [First Things, October 2015, www.firstthings.com], has thoroughly and charitably skewered people like me.
I take his subtitle seriously. His description of the patronizing behavior of some of American Presbyterians makes me cringe in shame. I wish I could say that my fellow Episcopalians and I do not behave in such ways, but we do. I have been a cultural imperialist. I will try not to be anymore.
But having pled guilty to the charge of condescension I wish now to address another of his charges. It comes in two forms – grotesque and moderate. I begin with the grotesque “For mainstream Western society,” says Professor Azumah, “the Bible is an ancient text that might arouse intellectual curiosity or become the subject of historical analysis, but it is hardly a sacred book.” To this he adds, “The scientific, historical-critical method of biblical exegesis is a poisoned chalice.”
The moderate charge goes like this: American liberal Christians downplay the role of the bible in making decisions such as those about homosexuality and instead allow themselves to be driven by the secular forces of the Western world.
I take the moderate charge very seriously. It speaks to my heart. I feel its power. I know myself to be very subject to the forces of secular culture. And when I am in the mode of self-doubt I ask myself whether I am being true to the Gospel, or whether I am just providing an apologetic cover for Episcopalians (and others) to claim to be Christian while in fact being secular. My judgment says no to this charge, and I will try to show why.
The grotesque charge makes me think that Professor Azumah’s acquaintance with Western Christians has been highly selective. I call the charge “grotesque” because it is so much at odds with my experience of my fellow American Christians.
I plead not-guilty to the charge in both its forms. In evidence I offer a recent statement by the former president of the Irish Republic, and a sermon by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, to which I add that I myself take the bible seriously and over the years have found that most ordinary Christians do so as well.
Former Irish President Mary McAleese says this about her decision to defy church leaders and campaign in favor of same-sex marriage during the recent referendum –
My views are founded emphatically in the Gospel. That’s where they come from. They don’t come from some weird Godless secular world …
What infuses me, what is the essence of my being, is my faith in Christ. … And it is the love of Christ and his offer of mercy to the world, the sense that every single person is a child of God, it is that which infuses me, gives me the outlook I have on the world.
I take that to be conscientious biblical vision.
Now listen to Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church – http://day1.org/5236-bishop_michael_curry_crazy_christians
Bishop Curry is in love with the bible. It is his language. And he is a supporter of same-sex marriage.
I hope this goes a long way toward proving large numbers of American Christians not-guilty of the moderate charge. But perhaps we are self-deluded. Perhaps, as devout as we are, as sincere as we are, as reverent as we are, we do allow ourselves to be led by the world and our justifications fall short of true biblical vision. Perhaps, for example, President McAleese’s appeal to “the love of Christ,” to “his offer of mercy to the world,” and to “the sense that every single person is a child of God” fails as central to the Gospel when faced with Romans 1:22-27, where Paul says, “God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural … Men committed shameless acts with men.”
So I will seek to show that we American Christians who support same-sex marriage have more than good intentions, more than devotion, more than sincerity; we have venerable precedent and sound biblical vision to back up our conclusions.
I turn now to biblical interpretation in the early church in order to see the grounds they use.
The distinctive mark of the early Christian community is life in the Spirit. On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends upon believers and they speak in tongues. (Acts 2:5-11) Services of worship are Spirited: “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. … If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. … Let two or three prophets speak. … If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent.” (1 Corinthians 14:26-27, 29-30)
This Spirited behavior is dissonant with its Jewish world. But Peter finds warrant for it in the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17)
Peter’s citation of Scripture has two important aspects. First, it justifies the behavior: this new behavior is sound because the prophet Joel foretold it. But, second, this behavior fulfills the vision of the prophet Joel. These believers are fulfilling a Scriptural vision. By their Spirited behavior they are proclaiming the last days!
In general we can say that to cite a passage of Scripture in justification of behavior or belief is to choose the vision in which that passage is embedded. And to say that the passage is fulfilled is to say that the vision is now taking place.
The next change faced by the early church is the dissonance between Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations and the Judaic tradition of separation from Gentiles. Is there any way to obey the command and yet keep the tradition? Are Gentiles to be included in the new community not only by baptism, but by circumcision and the keeping of the Law of Moses? Or is the tradition of separation simply to be rejected?
The first step towards resolution occurs when persecution drives believers from Jerusalem to Samaria. There they encounter Samaritans interested in the movement. They take the risk of mingling with these non-Jews and telling them about Jesus. The Spirit ratifies their action by healings and miracles. The apostles in Jerusalem approve.
Here believers risk change in behavior and take account of its consequences. And since the consequences are good, they are encouraged to make further trials in search of a resolution.
Next we see Peter’s struggle with the dissonance. Israel is a holy people, set apart from Gentiles by God. How can he obey Jesus and yet be faithful to the holiness of Israel? These questions must surely have been troubling Peter for some time before the scene in Acts 10:10-16 –
Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
The voice from heaven directs Peter to reject the ban on unclean foods. Now he can eat with Gentiles and thus reach out to them.
This is a momentous step. It rejects one biblical vision and chooses another. It violates the holiness of Israel and replaces it with a vision of universality.
So far no authoritative decision has been made. Peter is taking a risk on his own. He now visits Gentiles, eats with them, and preaches the Gospel to them. The consequence is that the Spirit ratifies the change, making no distinction between Gentile and Jew, descending upon the one just as upon the other. (Acts 10:24-48)
Up to this point Acts says nothing about non-Jews and the Law of Moses. We are not told whether Samaritan believers are expected to keep the Law. And in Peter’s encounter with the Gentiles nothing is said about the Law. But once the story shifts to Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, the Law becomes a central theme. Paul fiercely contends against requiring it of Gentile converts. He develops a clear theology of salvation in which for both Jew and Gentile, faith is the one and only essential. The Law is a tutor unto Christ, but no longer necessary.
Finally, after a decade or more of this break with tradition, the first Council of Jerusalem meets to consider whether or not to ratify what has been going on. (Acts 15:6-21)
First in the Council comes “much debate,” followed by Peter’s testimony that Gentiles have received the Holy Spirit, that God has cleansed their hearts by faith, that Jews have been unable to bear the yoke of the Law, and that Christians believe instead in salvation through grace. Paul and Barnabas tell “all the signs and wonders God has done through them among the Gentiles.” And James renders his decision by saying that Peter’s actions fulfill Scripture. (Amos 9:11-12 [LXX])
The Council decides between two Scriptural visions – the holiness of Israel, preserved by separation, and the universality of life in Christ, established by not requiring the Law of Moses. Two Scriptural visions, each with its texts. The decision is rendered by pronouncing a text from one vision to be authoritative.
The determining factor is not Scriptural texts. The arguments advanced in support of change are not Scriptural texts, but the consequences observed by the apostles. This is a good change, argues Peter, because Gentiles have received the Holy Spirit, God has cleansed their hearts, etc. This is a good change, argue Paul and Barnabas, because we have been able to perform signs and wonders among the Gentiles. And then James says Peter is fulfilling the prophet Joel.
We will see this pattern in controversy after controversy. A dissonance occurs. Some believers risk new trials in an attempt to resolve the dissonance. Two visions from Scripture, each with its texts, face one another. A decision is rendered affirming the texts of one and rejecting the texts of the other. The determining factor is the consequences of the trials.
Professor Azumah says that “there is … no place for redefining the Word of God,” and he especially abhors changes driven by the world. In the next change of church teaching we will see precisely those – a redefinition of the word “usury” that is clearly driven by the world. In fact, we will see Christians choose to live in the secular world rather than the world of neighborly love.
Today we think of usury as the charging of excessive interest. But for the first centuries of the church’s life usury was simply the charging of interest, any interest at all. In those days the large majority of loans were for consumption. A poor man needed food for his family or clothing to put on his children. It was the duty of neighbors to loan him money and to charge no interest.
But as the world of commerce changed, the purposes of many loans changed. Many were now used for production, not consumption. Lending money was no longer an act of Christian love; it was an act of commerce. But how many people would lend money out of Christian love so that someone else could make money?
Various expedients were devised to provide an incentive for loans and yet keep the command against usury. There was damnum emergens (an unexpected loss) which taught that lenders may licitly demand compensation when an emergency has cost them money. There was lucrum cessans (the cessation of profit) when a loan causes you to lose a profit you might otherwise have made. And later there developed associations or partnerships in which one party did the work and another provided the seed money. The second partner should clearly be compensated.
As the world moved more and more towards what we now call capitalism these teachings became more and more awkward in application. Christians moved more and more simply to the charging of interest.
John Calvin clearly articulated the competing visions involved in this change. He looked at his world and saw that it was no longer the world of the Old Testament. “There is,” he said, “some difference in what pertains to the civil state … in which the Lord placed the Jews … that it might be easy for them to deal among themselves without usury, while our … situation today is a very different one in many respects.” (John Calvin, “Letter on Usury,” pp. 232-233, in Franklin Le Van Baumer, Main Currents in Western Thought: Readings in Western Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present [Yale University Press, 4th edition, 1978]) The world of his time was no longer a world of neighbors. He goes on to describe commercial loans and their needs, concluding that in such a world usury was allowable, provided it was kept within bounds. Usury was redefined as excessive interest.
The title of Benjamin Nelson’s study of usury neatly summarizes the change in worlds: The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood (University of Chicago Press, 1969).
The new teaching spread quickly, but debate continued for many years. Advocates of both sides were found among both Catholic and Protestant. Few official church decisions were made. What changed was commercial practice and common Christian attitude.
Here the world clearly drove the change. We Christians did not one day decide to adopt such a world. Instead the world in which we lived had become, little by little, whether we liked it or not, secular and competitive. And when we redefined usury, we were being realistic, we were recognizing and accepting the actual nature of the world we were living in. The neighborly world of Christian love in which one lent to one’s neighbor without expecting return had vanished.
I find this example very instructive. On the one hand, the world forced our change, we were driven to accept a secular competitive world, but, on the other hand, we redefined usury in order to moderate the effects with some degree of Christian love.
The pattern of change is familiar once again – a dissonance between world and traditional Christian behavior, beginnings of change to reconcile the new elements and Christian life, choice of a new vision, biblical re-interpretation.
To consider the recent changes in the Western world concerning homosexuality in isolation is to misunderstand their place in Western life. They are but the most recent in a long series of events in a movement for human fulfillment. For several centuries now we have been redefining human relations to this end. The first major event in the movement was the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. Then followed movements such as those for equal rights for women, remarriage after divorce, civil rights for minorities, the ordination of women, and same-sex marriage.
I am now going to talk about changes in which I have personally taken part. I’m going to talk about my experiences, my feelings, my struggles. I do so because changes seeking human fulfillment are highly personal, they affect the personal lives of millions. My personal experiences are examples of what these changes mean and of how we have been arriving at our decisions.
In 1953 as a brand new priest in the Diocese of Chicago I was plunged into the midst of the divorce and remarriage struggle when I became priest-in-charge of a small suburban parish. At that time the Episcopal Church had been fighting over divorce and remarriage for many years and had arrived at a very awkward compromise. I had to tell couples who had remarried after divorce without having their previous marriage annulled that they could not take communion, but if they attended church faithfully for a year I could petition the bishop to let them back in.
We were trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Marriages were indissoluble. So a civil divorce did not dissolve your marriage. If you married a second time, you were living in sin and could not take communion. But if you attended church faithfully, we would let you back in. Weird.
This process was not only weird, it was ungracious. We all felt the gross dissonance with Christian love – parish clergy, bishops, and, most of all, those in the pews. The result was that by 1973 we Episcopalians had had enough. Twenty-one memorials and petitions from dioceses from all over the church were presented to our governing body asking for change. We responded by recognizing divorce and permitting remarriage.
I have said I felt ungracious. I also found myself defending second marriages, trying to help them work. One case in particular was decisive for me. The husband in a second marriage came to me asking my approval for him to abandon his present wife and children and go off with another woman. I did not give him that approval. And thus I found myself defending what was by church rules not really a marriage. By all logic I should have been urging this husband and wife to return to previous marriages. That seemed to me impossible. It seemed right to me to try to make the best of the present circumstances.
I have had many reasons since to reaffirm my decision. Divorce affects many people I care about. If I were to take a hard stand against remarriage it would cause enormous pain among my friends, my neighbors, my fellow parishioners, and above all my family.
I believe with all my heart that permitting remarriage after divorce is an advance in humane life. I see many good second marriages and families, and rejoice in them. I believe they are blessed by God. To permit them is a genuine advance in human fulfillment.
What do we say biblically about this decision? Some in the ancient church said that Jesus’ teaching on this subject was not legislative. That’s one approach. You can support this view with the final sentence in Matthew 19:3-11 –
Some Pharisees cam to [Jesus], and to test him they asked, “Is to lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flash’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”
His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.”
When I preached on this text a few years ago I took a different approach. I said that we need to look at the context. Notice, first, that the question concerns how a man treats his wife; it is couched in terms of a patriarchal culture. Notice also that it is the man who acts. He does the divorcing. And in fact he could do so for trivial causes. A woman not only had no rights in the process, she could be thrust out into the world without resources. So Jesus was protecting women from abuse in this teaching, and he was doing so in the midst of a patriarchal culture. In our equal-rights culture women no longer need that particular defense. If a man can divorce and remarry; so can a woman.
Because here I use a well-established method of interpretation – context – I believe I am faithful to Scripture.
Next in my life came the Civil Rights Movement, in which I took an active part from 1962 until sometime in the 70s. I will not say more on this topic. I mention it here to make clear that my life (and the life of Americans in general) has been part of one human fulfillment movement after another, that I have had to make constant decisions for or against strong social movements in American life. And those decisions have powerfully affected my personal relationships. It is not possible to understand any of these decisions without seeing them in this context.
1962 also saw the sexual revolution break forth in full force. Suddenly movies contained explicit sexual scenes, women started going braless, the sexual privileges of men (“Boys will be boys”) now applied to women as well, cohabitation became common and accepted, the “pill” changed everything.
But the movement was not just about sexual behavior. It expanded the movement of equal rights for women. In 1974 three Episcopal Bishops ordained eleven women as priests. The ordinations were declared “irregular” and “invalid,” because the church had not authorized the ordination of women. But in 1976 our governing body did so. The Episcopal Church now has many women priests and more than a dozen women bishops, including its Presiding Bishop, 2006-2015. As a result we have had forty years of experience with ordained women and the consequences have been good. I believe the Holy Spirit is confirming our decision.
But Pauline texts say flat out that women are to be quiet in church. How can we claim to be biblically faithful?
We interpret contextually once again. The Pauline texts are addressing the world of their time, the patriarchal world of the first century. Our world is not patriarchal. Women are equals of men. So this text, which rests on inequality, does not bind us.
There is another way to make this point. Wearing a covering in church, or speaking or not speaking in church, or wearing long hair or short are matters of social custom, mores. They are not matters of universal right and wrong. We are not bound by the mores of the first century.
Personal relationships entered into the decisions we Episcopalians made about the ordination of women. We were not talking in the abstract but about women we knew – friends, fellow parishioners, women we met at diocesan meetings. As a consequence of our decision I have now known many women priests and since my retirement have even had several of them as my pastor. I am very glad we made this decision.
However, the decision has meant a rupture with African churches. Here the cultural difference has led to painful inter-church relations. Like the Presbyterians Professor Azumah describes, who tell him to “suck it up,” I have sometimes felt angry at these “backward” people; but I do earnestly repent, even as I fully support our decision.
I will not go into detail about our decision concerning homosexuality. It evolved in ways similar to those concerning divorce and the ordination of women. Once again it involved important personal relationships. As times changed, more gays and lesbians came out of the closet, and so our decisions had faces and friendships attached – and in my case, relationships within my extended family. Almost all of us saw the effects of our decisions on friends and relatives.
The best defense of the Christian decision to accept same-sex marriage that I have found comes from the late Walter Wink (http://www.christianadvice.net/homosexuality-and-the-bible-dr-walter-wink/). Professor Wink was a biblical scholar well equipped in “the scientific, historical-critical method of biblical exegesis” mentioned by Professor Azumah, who several decades ago attacked that method saying, “Historical biblical criticism is bankrupt.” (The opening sentence of his book, The Bible in Human Transformation [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973]).
Professor Wink examines every biblical reference to homosexuality and finds three which “unequivocally condemn homosexual behavior.” The first two are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, both of which “leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed.” Wink rejects these texts on the grounds that we – most of us, at least – are unwilling to execute people for committing homosexual acts.
That leaves us with just one unequivocal reference: Romans 1:26-27, which, Professor Wink says, contains “Paul’s unambiguous condemnation of homosexual behavior.”
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
The professor advances a contextual argument as follows: In this passage Paul is not speaking of persons who are by nature homosexual, but of heterosexuals who violate their nature by engaging in homosexual acts. Therefore, since this text is not about homosexuals, it does not condemn same-sex marriage.
However, as we have seen in earlier cases, Scriptural interpretations follow from decisions for or against a particular vision of life. When the first Christians were caught up in the Spirit, they chose the vision of the prophet Joel. When they had to decide whether to include Gentiles with or without the Law, they chose the universal vision of the prophet Isaiah and others to replace the holiness vision of Israel as the People of the Law. And when the needs of commerce became capitalist the Christians of that day chose the competitive impersonal world to replace the world of neighborly love.
So what vision does Professor Wink advance? – Love, the love ethic of Jesus. “We can challenge both gays and straights,” he says, “to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole. Christian morality, after all, is not an iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God.”
This is the same ground advanced by President McAleese, you will recall, who speaks of “the love of Christ,” of “his sense of mercy to the world,” and of “the sense that every single person is a child of God” in her justification for supporting same-sex marriage.
I view the entire human rights movement in this light, from the abolition of slavery, through equal rights for women, through civil rights, through the ordination of women, as well as through same-sex marriage. In each case we are regarding the persons affected as children of God, loved by Christ, subjects of his mercy.
I conclude that Professor Azumah is correct one on count and incorrect on the other. He is correct that our changes in service of human fulfillment have been driven by the world. He is incorrect that we have downplayed the role of Scripture in making our decisions. The pattern of dissonance, trial adaptations, examination of consequences, choice between visions of the world, and Scriptural interpretation to express the vision chosen is not just ours; it is the pattern of Christian change we can see used in the early days of the church and continuing throughout.
The apostles found gross dissonance between Jesus’ command to go out into all the world and the tradition of Jewish separation from the nations. They made trial adaptations. The consequences were good. They rejected the vision of a holy people separate from the world and chose the vision of a universal people in Christ. Then they affirmed one set of Scriptural texts in support and rejected the other.
As the world moved into the capitalist system of production dissonances were felt between the world and the tradition of not charging usury. When the needs of production required interest, Christians accepted this need and its world of competition, and rejected the vision of a Christian village in which one lent to one’s neighbors, expecting nothing in return. Usury was redefined to mean excessive interest rather than just any interest at all.
Over the past several centuries one worldly standard of human relations after another has been felt dissonant with a developing Western conscience. Gradually viewing all human beings as equal we have abolished slavery and sought equal-rights for women and minorities both racial and sexual. The pattern for slavery is somewhat different. It was an on or off situation. So no trial stages can be identified. But the other movements follow the familiar pattern.
I believe we Western Christians stand acquitted of downplaying Scripture. It has played exactly the same role in our decisions as in all the centuries that have gone before.
Instead of our taking Scripture lightly I believe that what has happened in the Western world is a gradual fulfilling of Jesus’ vision for his children. Paul proclaimed that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) We have been fulfilling that vision.
I believe that African cultures should in the long run follow the same path. I believe they are not fully appreciating the Gospel. However, these beliefs concerning Africa are tentative in comparison to my belief concerning the Western world. I think women are better off, and gays are better off, and racial minorities are better off in our culture, precisely because we have made the changes Professor Azumah questions. But I am also very uncomfortable with our acceptance of the impersonal competitive world of capitalism. It is possible that an African culture which has not accepted that vision of life is better on the whole than ours. But is there such an African culture? Are not African cultures already in the grips of capitalism?
If I were able to chart a course for both of our cultures I would seek to modify the world of capitalism. Exploitation of the poor by excessive interest must be morally condemned from all sides. We need to establish credit unions of the poor to provide low-interest loans. Micro-loans need to be expanded. Somehow the neighborly world of early Christianity must modify the capitalist world which grinds so many – not just the poor.
More change is needed.