04498
November 9, 2004

Covenant Network examines faithful sexuality

600 attend progressives’ annual gathering

by Leslie Scanlon
The Presbyterian Outlook
Reprinted with permission

CHICAGO — These progressive Presbyterians came to Chicago to talk about theology and sexuality — about what it means to be a Christian and to live responsibly and faithfully as a sexual being.

      And, like the wind whipping famously down Michigan Avenue, fueled by the torrents of the presidential election and the sting of John Kerry’s loss, the conversation at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians’ annual gathering quickly swirled into other territories too.

      How can the church talk convincingly to young people — many of them with their feet firmly planted in the secular world — if it rarely talks about sex at all?

      What should the church say about sex outside of marriage — is it always wrong? What about committed, long-term relationships among unmarried partners, including gays and lesbians, but also church-going senior citizens and huge numbers of heterosexuals who live together or certainly sleep together before they marry?

      How does a church negotiate differing approaches to interpreting the Bible? How can Christians who think of sexual ethics in terms of covenant relationships talk constructively with those who think in terms of moral rules?

      What to make of all the political talk about moral values? Have progressive Christians who believe in abortion rights and justice for all, who are seen by some as being out-of-step with the majority of Bible-believing Christians, simply, as preacher Amy Miracle put it, stopped mowing that part of the lawn?

      How can one make a simple, convincing, compelling argument about complicated things?

      And what about Christians in places such as Africa and Latin America, places where converts fill the churches, and some of whom say American Presbyterians are wrong to even discuss ordaining gays and lesbians, much less to actually consider doing such a thing?

      So start with that: Why talk about sex in church?

      Because, for one thing, it’s talked about everywhere else.

      “It’s in the headlines of the election, it’s in our church controversies and it’s just interesting,” said New Testament professor Luke Timothy Johnson. “Church and its holiness remain the most important disputed questions facing Christians today.”

       But this was at times a pained conversation — given the recognition, among these 600 folks gathered Nov. 4-6 at Fourth Presbyterian Church in downtown Chicago, that the theological vision they advance had to some extent been slapped down by the election of President George W. Bush to a second term. They understand that Bush won victory with the support of evangelical Christians who see the world in very different terms than they do and whose moral vision, in the recent elections, prevailed.

      “We’re clearly in a minority position,” John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth church and editor of Christian Century magazine, said in welcoming the gathering. “Never has it been more important to be absolutely clear about what we believe and why.”

      In this election, “there seemed to be an effort to promote one set of values” as defining Christian or moral values, Laird Stuart, a pastor from San Francisco and former Covenant Network co-moderator, said in an interview.  “So a group like Covenant Network is trying to expand the discussion of values,” with the conviction that “if we’re going to be faithful to Christ we can’t devolve into red churches and blue churches,” can’t just write off the millions who see the world differently, but also can’t accept one particular, narrow definition of what “moral values” really are.

      This also was a conversation in which people understood the proximity of the secular to the sacred, recognizing that this church (tall, gray, imposing) was just down the street from the colorful, sexy Victoria’s Secret store.

      Jack Stotts, the former president of both McCormick and Austin Theological Seminaries (himself tall, bald, a little too genial to be imposing) spoke of how different the world has become from the one in which he grew up — how some might even consider his perspective as “quaint.” This is a shift from “first comes love, then comes marriage,” then comes the couple with the baby carriage, to sustain-your-erection-with-Viagra ads on prime-time TV.

      Stotts recalled when condoms were kept under the counter, available only from a stern-faced pharmacist. Now folks can troll the “Lifestyles” aisle of the grocery store and take their pick.

      Sex-oriented magazines once kept hidden away are sold in airport bookstores. Homosexuality, once spoken of in “whispered sniggers,” Stotts said, has given way to  “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” A banner hanging from a college dormitory read: “All we want is love. All we get is sex.”

      Stotts recently read a New York Times article in which a 16-year-old named Brian spoke of the advantages of hooking up for sex rather than dating, of being “friends with benefits,” saying that “being in a real relationship just complicates everything.” And Brian’s friend Melissa said of hooking up, “Everybody is using each other. That’s fair.”

      Stotts described today’s attitudes towards sex as “confused and confusing,” lacking an integrated sense of what’s meant by love and sexuality, and uncertain about what it means to accept God’s gift of human sexuality and use it responsibly.

      And Stotts said he wonders if the emphasis in the Presbyterian Church (USA) on ordination standards – the 25-year-old fight over whether to ordain sexually-active gays and lesbians – comes in part of “the need to avoid sexual issues that are closer to home,” such as the common scenario of heterosexuals engaging in sex outside of marriage.

      Stotts, as did other speakers, talked of the need for Christians to lay a theological foundation for how they approach sexuality — to know not just what they think is right, but why, and to consider sex not as something separate, but as woven deeply into the eternal story of God’s creation of the world; of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus; and of God’s continuing covenant with the faithful.

      Susan Andrews, a former General Assembly moderator and pastor from Maryland, preached about the complexities posed by the apostle Paul.  “Paul plays the devil’s advocate,” saying that all things are lawful, that it’s Jesus Christ through the gospel, not following moral law, that sets people free. But then Paul lifts up the moral law that is the foundation of Christian freedom, Andrews said. “We are not free from God,” she said. “Although all things may be lawful, not all things are helpful” – not all are used to empower or honor others or build up community and soul.

      So the question for Paul becomes, as Andrews described it: “How can our sexual behavior glorify God and honor the other?”

       Sex and salvation

      OK, sure, there was a lot of talk about glorifying God and the sacredness of sexuality — but also, hallelujah, some jokes.

      What to call this conference?

      Sex and the Windy City?

      Is there Sex After Church? (“In my neck of the woods, there’s football after church,” said Deborah Block, a pastor from Milwaukee and former Covenant Network co-moderator.)

      “I’m a Midwesterner. I’m repressed and proud of it,” said Amy Miracle, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian in Des Moines, preaching at one of the worship services. “I had hoped to end my career in ministry without ever mentioning the word `sex’ in a sermon.”

      Another preacher, Rick Spalding, chaplain and coordinator of community service at Williams College in Massachusetts, told of how his parents didn’t talk about sex, just left him a book to read, describing “the deployment of equipment.” (Today, Stotts quipped, that book would have illustrations of the equipment being deployed.)

      But along with the light moments came also the argument that the church doesn’t know very well how to talk about sexuality — particularly in a country deeply divided over gay marriage and other moral issues. Miracle, for example, chose to preach about salvation, saying that to her sexuality seems less about who’s having sex and more about “who God loves, who God claims and who God saves.”

      Her discussion of salvation could be seen as a template for much of the “moral values” discussion on which the country is embarking.

      Miracle told a story of working as a maid one summer, cleaning toilets side-by-side with a new Christian who asked: “Have you been saved?” Uncomfortable with that language, Miracle said she took a deep breath and carefully explained her faith journey, talking from her heart about God’s love and her deepening relationship with God. “I spoke quite eloquently for several minutes.” And when she finished, there was complete silence until her co-worker again asked: “Have you been saved?”

      But using different language to talk about salvation doesn’t mean that one group automatically has it and the other doesn’t, Miracle said. She said she doesn’t understand how a concept so big – salvation – can be used in such confining ways.

      “Too many of us have been hit over the head and beaten up by salvation talk,” told they can’t be saved if they haven’t been baptized the right way or described it in the right words, Miracle said. “It makes me angry ... Salvation is God’s work, God’s initiative, God’s show,” a free but immensely valuable gift, a concept that’s hard enough to understand.

“I’m tired of that word only being used by people who abuse it,” Miracle said. “And I think it’s time we take it back. But it’s not all their fault. Some of it is our fault ... We’ve stopped using the language. We’re so afraid of being misunderstood that we have ceded huge parcels of the Christian tradition” — as one of her colleagues put it, progressive Christians have just stopped mowing that part of the lawn.

So Miracle asked the crowd repeatedly: “Are you saved?”  And the answer came back, a little hesistant at first (Presbyterians are not by instinct a shouting bunch) but then getting louder “Yes!”

“Are you saved? The answer is always yes,” Miracle said. “Not because you were baptized the right way or recited the right formula,” but because salvation is God’s creation, God’s gift, God’s lifeboat for all people.

       The holy body

      Conference speaker Stephanie Paulsell, associate dean for ministerial studies and senior lecturer on ministry at Harvard Divinity School, said the idea of the body as holy, created by God, isn’t in advertising or the movies, and “we don’t hear this message often enough in church, either.” But telling people that “every body, every single body is worthy of the tenderest of care,” and emphasizing the body in worship and church life, has implications for all kinds of things, Paulsell said, from welcoming homeless neighbors for a hot meal to volunteering to take the teenagers on a ski trip to extending one’s hand to offer Christ’s peace.

      But the church typically treats sexuality as something separate, set apart, “and we have paid a terrible price for that,” Paulsell said. “What we need more is a whole culture that so cherishes the body, that sees so clearly the presence of God in everybody.”

      Paulsell also encouraged the church to be a place where people tell their stories, including stories about sexuality, describing how people have come to view their bodies as a dimension of their faith. One person in the audience, for example, spoke of the idea of praying with her husband before sex.  Paulsell said Jewish couples are encouraged to have sex on the Sabbath.

      Some of the Scripture readings came from the Song of Songs ¾ in one case, read jointly by a husband and wife who’ve been married for more than 50 years, and who quietly but delightedly gave the words a real kick. (That book of the Bible, Paulsell said, contains “some of the sexiest lines” of any in literature.)

      In talking to young people about sex, “how quickly we move to the `Do’s and Don’ts,” she said. “How easily we move to fear. When it comes to sex, we’d rather legislate than tell stories.”

      Sharing stories takes time, “a lot of time, a lifetime,” Paulsell said. “It is worth the wait and the meandering.” It’s the difference, she said, between simply legislating about gay marriage and “two women emerging from a church with rice in their hair and joy on their faces.”

     Telling stories

      That’s another part of what happened at this conference. People did tell stories — stories to illustrate how the conversation about the church and sex is more complicated than black and white, or red and blue.

      Andrews, for example, visited Africa while she was moderator, and said some of the same Africans so outraged about American churches seeking to ordain gays and lesbians are dealing in their own communities with polygamous marriages. One recent convert to Christianity joyfully described his 12 wives and 100 children — an arrangement that “may seem strange to us, it’s very real to them,” Andrews said. So pastors there struggle to figure out, when the man is baptized, does he have to give up all but one of his wives to fit into the sexual ethics of the New Testament? What happens to the others?

      Andrews said people she knows back in Maryland raise questions of sexual ethics too. What about the unmarried elderly couple, both dying of cancer, who want to comfort each other “flesh to flesh, bone to bone?” What about the graduate students living hundreds of miles apart, wanting to finish their degrees before they marry, but not willing to wait for sexual intimacy?

      “I am not always sure what it is that God forbids,” Andrews said. “But I know in my body and my soul what God celebrates. Sacred sexuality is about glorifying and enjoying God with the full worship of our bodies,” and reflecting the image of God in us by desiring the joy of the one we desire.

      Andrews wasn’t the only one asking unflinching questions — they popped out, both in the big presentations and in small discussion groups.

      What should the church teach about masturbation — if one is single and has no partner and doesn’t want “recreational” sexual encounters, is masturbation acceptable?

      What does the church say to young people about the big world between abstinence and sexual intercourse? (Think Bill Clinton: “I never had sex with that woman.”) If someone has only had oral sex, is that person still a virgin?  Teens apparently know a lot about oral sex, and have plenty of questions about where the lines are drawn, but will the church ever discuss it?

      How can the church be pastoral to gays and lesbians and their families? One pastor from Wisconsin said that at a church he previously served in a small town, “I discovered how many families I had” — five of them, whose adult gay and lesbian children had all moved away and would never return, who all thought they were the only ones, who never, ever spoke of it at church. “I feel for these families who are sitting in silence,” the minister said. “They need us as pastors. They need each other.”

      And premarital sex?

      “People know this — they play games about it,” said a retired pastor. “The kids come cross-country on a three-day drive from college, and they get home and they have to have separate bedrooms. Parents know.”

      So how will the church speak to all those unmarried people in their 20s and 30s, young adults who are all grown up and ready for sex? For many, the interval between high school and marriage will stretch for five or 10 or 15 years (for some adults, it’s their whole lives). If they are not willing to remain celibate, what can the church say to them?

      “I can’t imagine marrying someone without having sex with him first,” a young, single Presbyterian said in an interview.  “What if we’re not compatible? And I don’t think it’s wrong.”

      Annika Lister Stroope, a young married pastor from Minneapolis, put it this way in one of the small groups. In her 20s, as a single student in graduate school, “I was supposed to be able to pay my bills, get an education, drive a car, own property,” but not have sex. “I was supposed to be a grown-up in every way except having sex.”

      In interviews, other young Presbyterians said the church has to be direct in talking about theology and sex — not using language that people outside the church will never understand. At the pub near campus where he hangs out, “they just don’t have the Christian story in the back of their heads,” said Scott Collins-Jones, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary.

      So he would say “here’s how Christians do sex. It’s not the way everyone does it, but we’d like to invite you into our story,” presenting ideas like covenant and fidelity in relationships by first telling the Christian story, by talking of God’s covenant with Israel, by talking about Jesus.

      Underlying the debates in the church over sex are differing views of how to interpret Scripture, Stotts said. Some Christians look for pervasive themes in the Bible; others fasten onto particular verses they see as providing moral rules. Some start by considering sex in terms of relationships, others with moral law.

      “If you begin with relationships, you’re open to change,” as the church has done with its views on divorce and contraception, Stotts said. “If you begin with moral law, there’s no way you can open yourself to change.”

      During a question-and-answer session, Cynthia Campbell, the president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, said the moral message stressed in the election was “about not doing certain things. That appears to be the moral resonance of the United States at the moment.” How can those who want to argue morality in a different way ‘engage that conversation helpfully?” Campbell asked. “I’m clueless.”

      Stotts answered that “there’s been a hunger for clarity, for certainty . . . We’ve got to give some clear signals,” but “how do you do that without being shot down for being oversimplistic?” Perhaps start with a simple statement – for example, what one student said to him regarding the war in Iraq: “Killing is wrong, period. Killing is wrong.”

      Start simple and clear. Keep talking. Then the nuances can follow.