To
"B," or Not to "B"? That Is the Question
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron
E. Shafer
(Rutgers, June 24, 2001; 12th
Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C;
Gay Pride Sunday)
(Psalm 43, OT, p. 569);
(Galatians 3:23–29, NT, p. 200)
With
apologies to William Shakespeare and to his character Hamlet, the question
that’s now before our Presbyterian denomination is a form of “To be, or not
to be?” but a form that’s quite differently spelled.
And yes, your order of service does give it correctly.
You
see, I believe our question is not first and foremost Hamlet’s, that is,
whether or not to continue living—although that, too, may prove to be at stake
for us, derivatively.
Rather,
I think the first and foremost question before us Presbyterians is whether or
not to embrace Easter’s offer of new life in Christ, whether or not to embrace
Pentecost’s offer of freedom in the Holy Spirit, whether or not to embrace the
power God offers us through Easter and Pentecost, the power to re-shape our
Christian communities along the lines described by Paul in this morning’s
Second Lesson.
But
slow down, I hear you saying! So I
better back up a bit to provide you some background information both about our
Presbyterian denomination’s infamous Amendment B and about the apostle
Paul’s famous Galatians 3.
So,
journey with me now back to 1975. At
that time, I was a member of the committee of our presbytery, the committee of
our grouping of some 100 or more Presbyterian churches here in New York City,
that shepherds candidates for professional ministry.
In
1975, a man named Bill Silver was a candidate under our care.
He had completed his studies at Union Theological Seminary and had passed
all of his ordination exams. He had
also received a call to join the clergy staff of the Central Presbyterian
Church, on Park Avenue at 64th
Street, a call inviting him to develop there a ministry in the arts.
There was just one obstacle! Bill
was openly gay.
Because
Bill was both gay and out-of-the-closet—gay and proud—our committee was not
prepared to recommend his ordination.
But
because Bill was in every other way well-qualified for ministry, neither were we
prepared to recommend against his ordination.
So,
caught on the horns of what we perceived to be a dilemma, we took the fateful
step of asking our presbytery to petition the highest governing body of our
denomination, called the General Assembly, or GA, to offer the church guidance
in such a matter, “definitive guidance.”
The
1976 General Assembly did respond to our presbytery’s request.
It voted to establish a national task force to study the issue of
ordaining out-and-proud gays and lesbians—or, to use the language of the time,
“self-affirming, practicing homosexuals.”
So
the Moderator of that General Assembly—New York City’s own Dr. Thelma
Adair—appointed a 19-member national task force that included two persons from
this presbytery: Robert Davidson, who was pastor of our neighboring
congregation, the West-Park Church, at 86th
and Amsterdam; and yours truly, who was both a member of the candidates
committee that originated the issue and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, the Old
Testament.
Our
task force also included one openly gay man, Chris Glaser, a candidate for
ordination under care of a presbytery in California, and it also included, we
later found out, one closeted gay elder, who had been the Moderator of a
previous General Assembly. He came
out to the task force near the end of our work.
Our
task force studied the scriptures, the constitution of our church, and various
sociological and psychological and theological materials.
We also conducted open hearings in four locations throughout the country,
where we heard moving testimony by many gay and lesbian Presbyterians and
witnessed firsthand the gifts that the Holy Spirit had given them for ministry.
At
the end of our two-year process, the task force asked me to prepare a
book-length document that summarized the results of our study, a document
that’s still in print and available to you for reading.
Our
task force reached the unanimous conclusion that sexual orientation in and of
itself ought not to be a bar to ordination.
But we differed among ourselves as to whether persons of homosexual
orientation had to remain celibate in order to be qualified for ordination.
Five
members of the task force continued to believe that all forms of homosexual
behavior are sinful and wanted the General Assembly to advise presbyteries and
sessions that such behavior should automatically disqualify a person from
ordination as a minister, an elder, or a deacon.
But
fourteen members of the task force—including both Bob Davidson and
myself—held the belief that homosexual acts in the context of faithful,
committed partnerships are every bit as moral as heterosexual acts in the same
kind of context, and we voted as the majority to advise presbyteries and
sessions that such acts should not in and of themselves disqualify a person from ordination.
The
majority and minority reports of our task force were presented to the 1978
General Assembly, which met in San Diego, California.
& among the commissioners—or, voting delegates—to that GA were
Laura Jervis, now one of Rutgers’ parish associates, and Cyril Jenkins, then
the pastor of Rutgers Church.
Unfortunately
the 1978 General Assembly did not heed Laura’s voice, which was one of those
lifted in support of the task force’s majority.
Instead it adopted the recommendation of the task force’s minority and
offered lower judicatories this “definitive guidance”: “self-affirming,
practicing homosexuals” should not be ordained.
This
guidance was printed and sent out to presbyteries and sessions, but at first it
did not tie the hands of those lower judicatories which out of conscience could
not agree with the GA's finding. But
that situation of tolerance would quite quickly change.
In
response to an inquiry, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly ruled
that because the General Assembly had quoted a section from the constitution
when rendering its guidance, it had, in fact, done more than offer simple
guidance. It had, in fact, rendered
a binding interpretation of the constitution that in effect would bar all lower
judicatories from ordaining “self-affirming, practicing homosexuals.”
Presbyteries
proceeded to dutifully obey this newly binding “guidance” of the GA, and
they did not ordain any out-and-proud gay or lesbian clergy.
Bill Silver was, for example, not ordained by this presbytery, nor was
Chris Glaser ordained by his.
But
in the 1980s, a few congregations started a movement in open defiance of the ban
on ordaining out-and-proud gay or lesbian elders and deacons.
This movement was called “More Light,” because its adherents
believed, in words reminiscent of today’s first hymn, that there is yet more
light to break forth from fresh, new interpretations of God’s Word.
As a matter of fact, it was Bob Davidson and Laura Jervis and some of you
who later became members of this church who began that movement at the West-Park
Church, the first More Light congregation in the country.
It was not until later, in 1991, that Rutgers Church became a More Light
congregation. So this year marks our Tenth Anniversary.
During
the ’80s and early ’90s, other Presbyterians were made nervous by the More
Light movement and by progressive Presbyterians’ annual calling for the
General Assembly of whatever year it was to reverse the constitutional
interpretation of the ’78 Assembly.
In
1996, these other Presbyterians constituted a majority in the General Assembly,
and they fashioned and passed along to the presbyteries for ratification an
amendment to the constitution of our denomination that would make explicit a ban
on the ordination of all persons not living either faithfully in heterosexual
marriage or chastely in singleness. The
obvious target of this proposed amendment was non-celibate gays and lesbians,
regardless of how faithful and committed their partnerships might be.
The
office of the Stated Clerk assigned to this proposed amendment to the
constitution the letter “B,” and from November, 1996, through April, 1997,
the 172 presbyteries throughout the country debated and voted upon whether to
ratify Amendment B. A majority did
vote to ratify this amendment. 97 presbyteries—56%—voted “to ‘B,’” rather than
“not to ‘B.’” As a result,
since 1997 there has been a whole series of judicial cases has been brought by
ultra-conservative Presbyterians for the purpose of disciplining congregations
that ordain gays and lesbians. In
spite of the threat of judicial action, Rutgers Church has resolutely reaffirmed
our More Light identity, risking ecclesiastical trial and punishment and
maintaining a posture very much like that of the psalmist in our First
Lesson—feeling weighed down, confined, and constricted by what we see as the
unjust actions of others, but placing our hope steadfastly in God.
“Why,”
you may ask. Why have we been so persistently disobedient to the will of
those who, thus far, represent a majority in our denomination?
Well, this is where our interpretation of biblical passages like
today’s Second Lesson comes prominently to the fore.
We have been disobedient because we believe in this
text and because we affirm the Spirit’s gifts for ministry given to the gays
and lesbians who are part of this community.
In
Galatians 3, Paul teaches, as clearly as one could possibly ask for, that the
sole basis for belonging to the community of the church is the grace that comes
to us through trust in Christ Jesus—not through any merit that might accrue to
us from conformity to law codes. In
the aftermath of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, the reign of Christ
brings with it freedom from any slavish adherence to the laws found in the
biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the freedom to belong utterly to
Christ irrespective of law codes, even those found in the Bible.
And, in the aftermath of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit blows freely,
wherever it wills, filling whomever it wills. The Spirit is no more confined by
the law than Christ is. There is no
limit to whom the Spirit may fill.
This
side of Easter and Pentecost, the reign of Christ and of Christ’s Spirit in
the community of the church establishes a new order of existence in which are
abolished all of the barriers to a full equality among persons that we humans
erect. Overthrown are Overthrown
are the barriers we erect between persons of differing ethnicity, between
persons of differing economic class, between persons of differing gender—and
now to Paul’s list we need to add one more: overthrown are the barriers we
erect between persons of differing sexual orientations.
“Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, [through Christ and
the Spirit] we’re free at last.” Free
from all the human barriers that oppress. Free
from all that tempts us to govern our communities of faith by rigid rules rather
than by the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Paul
understood the church of Christ to be an alternative community, one that
prefigures God’s new creation in the midst of a world where resistance to
God’s justice continues to predominate. But
through Christ and the Spirit, God acts to create, here and now,in the midst of
such a world, a new community, one in which those who are baptized already share
equality. Through baptism we enter into union with Christ in such a way
that all the usual markers of worldly status and identity fall away into
insignificance. Christ’s victory
over sin and death breaks down all the old barriers to equality that confine and
oppress us. In the church, the
community of the new creation, our oneness in Christ delegitimates and overcomes
all the old distinctions of race, of social class, of gender, and of sexual
orientation that have divided us. In
the church, the community of the new creation, even biblical law, old and
venerable though it be, even biblical law is no longer to be used as a wedge for
dividing us.
And
so, emboldened by scriptural texts like the one this morning and also by the
manifest presence of the gifts and fruit of the Spirit in countless gay and
lesbian Presbyterians, this year the Presbytery of New York City, with the
support of 29 other presbyteries throughout the country, addressed a different
kind of petition to the General Assembly. This
year we asked the 2001 GA to vote to annul the law, to delete Amendment B from
the constitution of our church and to overrule the authoritative interpretation
of the law made by the 1978 General Assembly.
And we did this precisely so that presbyteries may be given the chance to
ratify deleting B from our Book of Order and to affirm the freedom of God’s
Spirit to move as it wills.
And
what do you know! The fresh breeze
of God’s Spirit did indeed blow on this year’s General Assembly.
And just nine days ago, in Louisville, Kentucky, the General Assembly
voted to send down to our 173 presbyteries for ratification deleting Amendment B
from our Book of Order, and the GA also voted, if presbyteries do approve the
deletion, to then overturn the ’78 Assembly’s authoritative interpretation.
So
the question that will now come before the 173 presbyteries of our denomination
is indeed this question: “To ‘B,’ or not to ‘B’?”
If at least 87 presbyteries vote “not to ‘B,’” vote to delete
Amendment B, then our congregation and presbytery will at last be free to
exercise our conscience in this matter without fear of ecclesiastical trial and
punishment, and, most importantly, if that should happen all the congregations
of our denomination will at last be free to become places where the Spirit may
blow where it wills, places where yet one more barrier to equal personhood in
Christ may be overcome.
Needless
to say, much of our congregation’s energy over the next ten months will be
invested in gaining at least 87 votes “not to ‘B,’” in gaining an
openness in at least 87 presbyteries to experiencing new life in Christ and
freedom in the Holy Spirit unfettered by Amendment B.
Let
us pray:
Return to Sermon Archive