Confused, conflicted and Christian
Questions and conflict about sexuality and sexual behaviour are threatening the peace (or complacency) in a wide variety of church-based groups and congregations. Co-habitation and common law marriage, same-sex committed relationships, extra-marital sex and pornography are among the concerns that are raising a host of pastoral issues. Relationships and realities are forcing us to delve deeper into the Scriptures as we grapple in good faith with the “facts on the ground" in our worship settings.
These difficulties are not particularly new, but they're always fresh for somebody and they seem to be bubbling with uncommon vigour this summer. Issues that riled mainline Protestant denominations decades ago are still on the boil in many places. But these days, evangelical groups are also increasingly unsettled on matters we used to think were crystal clear and settled irrevocably.
Item: When delegates from across Canada met for Lutheran Church�""Canada's convention in early June, they didn't debate same-sex marriage or other hot button issues. “Those are settled," they said. “The church body, whose roots go back to 1517, believes marriage is the life long union of one man and one woman."
Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada convention in July, on the other hand, considered a “Social Statement on Sexuality" that acknowledges much more ambiguity and highlights the integrity of loving relationships.
Item: Mennonite Church Canada has embarked on long-term discernment process regarding “faithfulness on matters of sexuality." This summer they also received a motion from an advocacy group asking delegates to acknowledge that “non-heterosexuals are struggling within congregations, whether or not they have publicly acknowledged their orientation and whether or not they are in a relationship with another person; and [that] all Christians have a legitimate place in God's kingdom and in the church."
Item: In June, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto began allowing the blessing of same-sex unions according to pastoral guidelines authorized by the archbishop. He recognized that the development would not be universally welcomed - some would say it goes too far; others not far enough. Meanwhile, a group of “Gracious Restraint" bishops see this as a violation of a global Anglican “moratoria" on “the authorization of public rites of blessing for same gender unions."
Item: New Direction Ministries of Canada previously operated as “a ministry offering Christian support to men and women choosing to leave homosexuality and equipping the church to minister compassionately and effectively to them." It now exists “to nurture safe and spacious places for those outside the heterosexual mainstream to explore and grow in faith in Jesus Christ." This shift involved significant organizational turmoil.
Confused culture
“Our culture is deeply confused about sex and its proper expression," observes Stephen Andrews, the Anglican Bishop of Algoma and chair of Langham Partnership Canada (the ministry John Stott launched to elevate the level of biblical preaching and seminary teaching worldwide).
Andrews rather doubts that “evangelicals will maintain an intolerance of homosexual behaviour in the next generation," and believes we need “a proper theology of sexuality" that “preserves faithfulness to the tradition while being, perhaps, less moralistic." He allows that “evangelical hermeneutics are shifting," and that “the convictions evangelicals once shared about the role of women and the permanence of marriage, which we used to think were clearly based on Scripture, are changing."
ChristianWeek continues to stand with the long consensus of biblical understanding that reserves sexual intimacy for a man and woman within a covenanted relationship. We are well aware that other Christians read the Scriptures and tradition differently, and we are at this point less interested in hosting debates about theological niceties than in grappling graciously with the pastoral issues now confronting countless congregations.
To our prayers of “thank you" for God's ever-present grace in our lives and “help" in our weaknesses, we need to add “bless this mess" in order to navigate the complexities and ambiguities of faithful living in confusing times. The good news is that God lives with us amidst the tensions, and neither this issue nor any other will ever destroy the Church.
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