The Prioritization of the homosexual issue

It is well known in conservative ECUSA circles that I have tried in the last month to make the homosexual issue surrounding Gene Robinson into a much larger issue of sexual ethics, and then to set this in the context of the major changes - of worship, doctrine, discipline & Order -- that have occurred in the ECUSA since the 1960s.

I have suggested that when the matter of gay sex is treated in and of itself then it runs the danger of being basically a cultural matter - whether in the USA or Africa.

Someone who has been reading my tracts and considerations wrote:

'The prioritization of the homosexual issue is not primarily doctrinal. The issue is most certainly very serious and must be addressed. Nevertheless, addressing homosexuality without first addressing the matters of authority and order is a waste of time, a mere Band-Aid on a system that will devour itself in the end. The real power driving the prioritization of dealing with the homosexualists is a middle-class sensibility, draped in religious trappings. The frequent surfacing of the terms "pervert" and "unnatural," while justified in some regards, still does not get to the heart of the matter--poor souls dying because of their disobedience to God's Word Written. But if the matter were put in these terms, then the liar, the thief, the multiply married, the ordainers and imposers of women ministers would have to look to their own souls, and being middle-class they do not wish to do so. The first and greatest middle-class doctrine is this: "We are, all in all, pretty good fellows".'

There is much worth taking to heart in this straight talk, which will be offensive, I know, to some.

Consider that in the USA -- where in living memory it once was embarrassing in public to be known as divorced - that being divorced and remarried once or twice is perfectly respectable in 90 per cent of the country and churches. Consider also that couples living together without being married is also respectable whereas 50 years ago it was deeply frowned upon and actively opposed. (Much the same of course in Great Britain and the western world.)

But there is a proportion especially of the middle classes that focuses upon homosexual practices as being special if not unique aberrations and offences against good taste. And they do so while regarding divorce and remarriage and co-habitation as normal.

Now in the Bible there is no doubt but that homosexual practice is a sin, but when it is stated as a sin, it does not appear as one sin set apart from other sins. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 6:9 (RSV):

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers, will inherit the kingdom of God."

How many candidates for bishop does this word from heaven exclude and ought to have excluded in the recent past? How many ordinands? How many S.S teachers? How many of us?

When we point at homosexual sin (ners) alone and do not see its presence (them) as part of a much larger and sinister reality of evil in practice then we are unlikely to be repentant and to look into our own souls in self-examination by the light of the Word of God. We are being religiously middle-class and self-sufficient.

I am NOT saying that the election of Canon Robinson was right or good. It was right to oppose it! What I am saying is that by the rule of the Word of God, read & understood in its common sense meaning all of us need to be careful in pointing the finger towards Gene R and the Lesbigay Lobby when the rest of the hand points back to ourselves and to our sins of equal seriousness to that of homosexual acts.

If the Primates on October 15-17 focus ONLY on this matter of homosexual sin and do not set it in a much larger context of severe failures by all of us in biblical family order/ethics and ecclesial order/ ethics then they willbe letting down the Anglican Communion in a disastrous way.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)