The Episcopal Church‘s House of Bishops has responded anew yesterday to the crisis in its worldwide communion. Here’s the sum and substance:

It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children,
including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

I’m impressed with their faithfulness and their stand on this matter.

Amazon brought me some goodies today, including Rob Bell‘s newest book, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality. Since starting this blog almost a year ago, nothing has generated more links traffic here (besides my participation on the PCUSA Blog and BlogRing) than my posts on Bell’s Nooma series. I’m excited to read Sex God, having just finished Bell’s very good Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith.

Also part of this Amazon shipment: Mark Labberton’s The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (IVP), Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives (ed. Robert Webber, with contributions by Karen Ward, Doug Pagitt, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and Mark Driscoll) (Zondervan), Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (Harper), Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (IVP) and another Sacra Pagina commentary, this one Frank Matera’s Galatians.

Lots of good stuff to read soon…

I’m glad to read about this today:

The National Association of Evangelicals has endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

Human rights violations committed in the name of preventing terrorist attacks have made the country look hypocritical to the Muslim world, the document states. Christians have an obligation rooted in Scripture to help Americans “regain our moral clarity.”

“Our military and intelligence forces have worked diligently to prevent further attacks. But such efforts must not include measures that violate our own core values,” the document says. “The United States historically has been a leader in supporting international human rights efforts, but our moral vision has blurred since 9-11.”

The statement, “An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror,” was drafted by 17 evangelical scholars, writers and activists who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights. The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group, announced late Sunday that it had endorsed the document.

…

“There is a perception out there in the Middle East that we’re willing to accept any action in order to fight this war against terrorism,” Cizik said. “We are the conservatives — let there be no mistake on that –who wholeheartedly support the war against terror, but that does not mean by any means necessary.”

…

The document says government and outside researchers have documented “acts of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” against U.S. detainees, “especially in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, in CIA black sites and at the hands of other nations.”

The authors praise the U.S. Army for last year releasing a revised field manual that bans beating, sexually humiliating and threatening prisoners, among other interrogation procedures.

But the evangelical writers criticize the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a Defense Department system for prosecuting terror suspects. The evangelicals condemned provisions of that act that allow indefinite detention for some suspects and does not always hold intelligence officials to the same standards as the military.

Quoting a wide range of sources including the Bible, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the authors say the federal government has a moral obligation to follow international human rights treaties that the U.S. has endorsed.

“As American Christians, we are above all motivated by a desire that our nation’s actions would be consistent with foundational Christian moral norms,” the document says. “We believe that a scrupulous commitment to human rights, among which is the right not to be tortured, is one of
these Christian moral convictions.”

The NAE says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches. However, it does not include some of the best-known conservative Christian bodies, including the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family.

Go hug an NAE member today! While you’re at it, check out the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Much to my dismay, my reservoir of blog posts-to-read has overflowed. To be honest, I have a pile in my office of really good posts-to-read from before the turning of the new year. I’m not sure I’ll get to them; they may be either pitched or filed away. We’ll see.

But today I read a very good entry I wanted to commend and pass along: this truly wonderful exposition by Kim Frabricius entitled Twelve Propositions on Same-Sex Relationships and the Church from back in January. Here are her first three propositions:

1. Let it be said at once that the question of same-sex relationships and the church is a question of truth before it is a question of morality or discipline. Is the church’s interpretation of scripture true? Is the church’s traditional teaching true? If they are not, then they have to go, otherwise the faith of the church becomes bad faith. As Milton said, “Custom without truth is but agedness of error.” One other thing in anticipation: Jesus said that the truth will make us free (John 8:32); Flannery O’Connor added that “the truth will make you odd.” But before we say anything more, we must know what we are saying it about. In most discussions on the issue of human sexuality we talk at each rather than with each other; in fact, we talk past each other.

2. I take it that homosexuality – and certainly the homosexuality I am talking about – is a given, not a chosen (a “life-style choice”); a disposition recognised, not adopted; a condition as “normal” as left-handedness – or heterosexuality (whether by nature or nurture is a moot but morally irrelevant point). I also assume an understanding of human sexuality that is not over-genitalised, where friendship, intimacy, and joy are as important as libido, and where sexual acts themselves are symbolic as well as somatic. Needless to say, the “Yuk” factor deployed in some polemics has no place in rational discussion, while the language of “disease” and “cure” is ignorant and repugnant. Fundamentally, homosexuality is about who you are, not what you do, let alone what you get up to in bed. This is a descriptive point. There is also a normative point: I am talking about relationships that are responsible, loving, and faithful, not promiscuous, exploitative, or episodic.

3. What about the Bible? This is the Protestant question. “The Bible says,” however, is a hopelessly inadequate and irresponsible answer. Nevertheless, we must certainly examine specific texts – and then (I submit) accept that they are universally condemnatory of homosexual practice. Arguments from silence – “Look at the relationship between David and Jonathan,” or, “Observe that Jesus did not condemn the centurion’s relationship with his servant” – are a sign of exegetical desperation. No, the Bible’s blanket Nein must simply be acknowledged. But Nein to what? For here is a fundamental hermeneutical axiom: “If Biblical texts on any social or moral topic are to be understood as God’s word for us today, two conditions at least must be satisfied. There must be a resemblance between the ancient and modern social situation or institution or practice or attitude sufficient for us to be able to say
that in some sense the text is talking about the same thing that we recognise today. And we must be able to demonstrate an underlying principle at work in the text which is consonant with biblical faith taken as a whole, and not contradicted by any subsequent experience or understanding” (Walter Houston).

I’d demur a bit about this last point, because the next several go on to show how, for most of the scant references cited, the Biblical material isn’t in fact saying a Nein to “homosexual practice” for various reasons. Kim’s point is that there are Neins being said, but to different things, really.

Nevertheless, this is a great read. Check it out. [...Ed Note: If you've got time, check out the comments too...]

Also, tangentially, I just worked through the Strategy Report adopted by the New Wineskins Association of Churches. I’ve got some comments that I might put into an upcoming post. I am trying to distance myself from the initial reaction to having my position repeatedly called unfaithful to the bible and then reading the authors of the report decry the arrogance of their interlocutors.  How does one react to that? How does one attempt to maintain a charitable and grace-offering relationship with fellow clergy and elders who willingly distort the theological convictions and views of others? Anyway, I’d encourage everyone to read that strategy report, remembering that it is also a rhetorical document.

I have a place in my heart for pastors and churches who are torn by their conscience to remain in our connectional body. There is likely a way to process their schism as faithfully as possible on both sides. (And yes, it is a schism). My greatest concern is with pastoral pensions and medical care…

On the other hand, I’m deeply wounded and ashamed by the tact many of them are taking in their argumentation; they ought be more honest with the true differences on both sides and what that means for the church. And I think that the language used here is simply inaccurate:

• such as with the case of the word ‘coersion’ that comes up with regard to our property trust clause in our Consitution which both defines our connectional system (we’re not congregationalist, nor truly hierarchical) and which defies the history of churches that voluntarily assented to the current constitution and its trust clause when we merged as a denomination in 1983;
• so too the purported arguments about the PUP as “changing” what is in fact a reaffirmation of historical Presbyterian practice (local examination with higher-governing oversight, acknowledging that the scruple issue muddies the waters);
• so too the language that the Trinity Report is “unscriptural” when it is in fact rooted in biblical hermeneutics and full of biblical citation, an exercise (not universally successful) of lifting up the biblical resources for thinking about the trinity while upholding the classical trinitarian formula “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

And there are others; those are just the ones heavy on my mind.

Why mention all this here? Well, this group, among others, argues that there is “clear teaching of scripture” on the homosexuality issue, among other things. This has been the recent trope, since most of them adopt Robert Gagnon‘s argument that this is in fact clear cut. But Fabricus is more on point.

That’s enough for the day. May all who read this have a grace-filled Lenten season…

Via Andrew Sullivan, who links to a New Zealand paper:

The Conservative Jewish movement, the faith’s American-based middle ground between liberalism and orthodoxy, is nearing a leadership decision that seems likely to permit openly gay rabbis and same-sex unions.

The Rabbinical Assembly Committee on Jewish Law and Standards which last tackled the issue in 1992 meets in New York next week, its 25 members reviewing an issue that has already rent many Christian churches and simmers across Judaism.

“The way it looks, it will be decided on a more liberal understanding of the law,” Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Centre for Learning and Leadership, told Reuters. “It would be a very big, big surprise if that’s not the case.”
…
A gay pride rally in Jerusalem this month met with stormy protests and finally unfolded in a small stadium under heavy security. But Israel’s highest court also has ruled that homosexuals who marry abroad may be registered as married in the country.

There are perhaps 6 million Jews in the United States, only about a third of them affiliated with a congregation. Of those who do attend synagogue 38 per cent are Reform, 33 per cent Conservative and 22 per cent Orthodox, according to one survey.

Rabbi Kula, author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, said the move toward liberalisation among Conservatives “is not something that came down from the top. It came from Jews in the pews … Jews who had homosexual children and wanted them to be rabbis.”

Rabbi Gerald Zelizer of Neve Shalom, a Conservative congregation in Metuchen, New Jersey, a former president of the Rabbinical Assembly who is a contributing columnist for USA Today, said in an essay in that newspaper this year that he backed the 1992 position but now had a different view.

“Conservative Judaism has always taught that we must upgrade our biblical understanding with new scientific knowledge. Contrary to the biblical assumption that gayness is a sinful choice, our best knowledge today indicates that it is as determined and irrevocable as blue or brown eyes …” he wrote.

Hermeneutics in action. I, for one, am glad to see this move. I’m looking forward to my PC(USA) getting it, someday, when we realize that, yes, God creates you with a sexual orientation (yes, sometimes on a sliding scale), and that God creates most of us to live out the fullness of our life in intimate relationship with another (though some of us, regardless of orientation, have no such desire and live celibate lives). When we as a church come to see that, then this matter about ordination will be simple. Then we can see how blessing same-sex couples to lasting, intimate, reciprocal relationships can be important, a responsibility, and a gift for the couple, for the culture, for the church. And how realizing this will not decimate our view of either God or the bible, any more than our rejection of slavery or the full inclusion of women in all teaching ministries of Christ’s church did. And how these, in fact, led to fruitful reappraisal and renewed appreciation for scripture, not less. So much so that almost all Presbyterians (of the PCUSA variety) now read the bible with new eyes and reject readings that support slavery or subjection of women. I’m still waiting on those PCA folk, but I’m not holding my breath…

While this move was prompted by “Jews in the Pews,” we too have our voices from the pews. Some people in the our pews object to this (see the comments, for instance, to the this comment in this thread over at the Classical Presbyterian‘s Blog):

I’ll speak bluntly. I am a person in the pew. I do not want to be affiliated with a denomination that ordains practicing gays. I do not want my children being taught that two men or two women living together in a “marital” relationship is not only o.k. but blessed. I don’t want to support church leaders who want to “re-imagine” God or spend their time thinking up new names for the Trinity. I don’t want to go to a women’s bible study on the book of Genesis and find out that it is about “voices that have been muted, if not outright silenced” (from the PCUSA website).

But this isn’t a universal, or even a majority view. (Not addressing either the reaction to the “re-imagining” conference, or this reader’s rejection of the denomination’s theological reflection on the full biblical revelation of the nature of the one triune God, or the rest) I think progressives are way out ahead on the issue of sexual orientation and the church, and the PCUSA moderates, like the Conservative Jews in this piece, realize that we’re talking about their children, their nieces and nephews, their brothers and sisters, and they don’t want them excluded from the fullness of life that God intends for them, nor from the fullness of service that God might be calling them toward in the Church.

And my prayer is that, three generations or so from now, most of my conservative brothers and sisters in the PCUSA (those who haven’t already gotten this) will see this like they now see women leadership. I think that will happen, and, frankly, I think that’s what they think will happen too, and it scares the crap out of them.

Our church is more Christlike because we’ve moved past abolition and women’s ordination, and we’ll be more Christlike when we achieve this one too. My two cents.

William Stacy Johnson, in his October 9th commentary “Our Tortured, War-Torn Conscience” in the Presbyterian Outlook, writes:

Let me put it plainly. There is something wrong with a church that can whip itself up into a frenzy arguing about gays but then shrug its shoulders over war and torture. In 1933 Karl Barth said that if one is not preaching against the concentration camps, one is not preaching the gospel. Likewise, a church that is ambivalent or undecided about torture and unjust war is something less than a church of Jesus Christ.

The commentary has good food for thought (whatever your view about gays, frankly). I’d commend it.

Granted, I’ve been banging this torture drum a bit hard these past two weeks. For those that are getting tired, wait me out. I’m sure our government will act (by passing or not passing some legislation) on the matter soon, and we’ll get onto other matters in time.

My colleague here handed me the most recent issue of Theology Today, which is dedicated to the subject of Torture. The links lead to abstracts, which in this issue include:

An Augustinian Look at Empire
CHARLES T. MATHEWES

Making Enemies: The Imagination of Torture in Chile and the United States
WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH

Developing a Jewish Theology Regarding Torture
EDWARD FELD

What Can Christian Teaching Add to the Debate about Torture?
JEREMY WALDRON

Theology, International Law, and Torture: A Survivor’s View
DIANNA ORTIZ, OSU

Against Torture: An Evangelical Perspective
DAVID P. GUSHEE

I’ve not read through these yet, but I wanted to commend them to anyone interested…

…Craig also has written against torture on Broken Bonds Loosed Chains.

On the heels of my last post, I see that Neil has found out that there is a liberty Bible (CEV), complete with a bold American flag and the Statue of Liberty on its cover. Its ghastly.