BCO Amendments 23 & 37 (3 of 3): Have You Ever Known A Dry Drunk?
In so far as these amendments about church officers address homosexuality (and they simultaneously address by name financial folly, relational abusiveness and racial wickedness), they simply parallel the common grace observation of AA. The absence of alcohol or of sex truly is significant, but it is not inherently decisive in the discernment for ordination. Gay and celibate isn’t enough. These amendments fix firmly the immutable obligation of PCA courts to recognize dry drunks and moist homosexuals as believers ineligible for ordination.
It is to be expected that the following opinion piece will be criticized as homophobic, fundamentally at odds with the gospel, grossly callous and hurtful. It will surely be faulted for issues it does not address, and for forbidden diction as well as insufficient empathy.
Criticism of that kind will simply prove the point. Some matters are indubitable, no matter how they provoke offense. Some matters are judgement calls, no matter how much a motion to call the question disappoints. You can’t have this discussion without a messy omelette. You can’t have this discussion without wails and consternation.
Such shadow & gesture & implication assessment of my assertions and conclusions is purposefully invoked by this italicized introduction as a convenient demonstration of the whole. Earnest engagement with homosexuality in the PCA will bring friction, flack and slow moralistic pressure. Our Constitution and our vows must be fit for both our convictions and our weakness. Pass 23 and 37.
Our Setting and Circumstance
In the summer of 2021, overtures 23 and 37 were passed by large majorities at the PCA General Assembly. During the subsequent year, 88 presbyteries will vote on the corresponding amendments to the Book of Church Order, defeating them if more than 29 presbyteries reject them. If at least 59 presbyteries uphold them, a final vote will be cast at the 2022 General assembly. Yes, that is 90 votes. That is what it takes for a positive result, but essentially only 31 votes for a negative conclusion. These are the numbers of the process.
The most sympathetic and poignant reasons to reject the overtures are the possible negative impact for some who aspire to office in the PCA. Purportedly the amendments would become discriminatory tools in the hands of teaching and ruling elders shepherding men through the process of ordination. They would cause collateral grief and provoke understandable sins. In sum, the argument arises from distrust in the competence of PCA officers to act with wisdom. (See Part One).
Distrust is a common thread in discussion of homosexual persons– not just in the church. Over the last decade the cultural significance of homosexuality has changed, and such distrust has become less defensive and rather preemptive. Homosexuality has been transformed– not into a matter of individuality and public indifference, but rather into a benchmark of recognizable authenticity and public liberty. (See Part Two)
Ensconced in the framework of sexual minority status, that distrust anticipates and squares off with any diminution of homosexuality as an honored value in the attempted social equilibrium. Similar though not identical preemptive distrust has been articulated in the PCA; however, at times similarity seems to bend from being identical only by the difference of being congruent. It can be difficult to detect the difference. A discriminating disposition to detect determinative differences is the desideratum in presbyterian process. In a wholesome sense– even if the lexicon expunges it– the business of church courts is discrimination.
PCA Policy and Procedure
The policy and procedures of the PCA regarding homosexuality must reckon with the de facto status imputed to homosexual men and women. Contemporary admiration and protection afforded to homosexual persons is grounded in the axiom that same sex attraction is fixed and immutable; moreover, that static foundation is all the more virtuously embraced when combined with the commitment to celibacy. The virtuous estimation of homosexuality combined with a traditional rejection of illicit sexual activity waxes more fully, even to both praise for and vigilance on behalf of homosexual persons in the PCA.
The offered amendments do not curtail either the praise or the vigilance; however they provide a stipulated requirement for courts to persist in distinguishing members from officers, a credible profession of faith with all its entitlements in the PCA from an exemplary piety with all its authority in the PCA. Preemptive distrust discolors discriminating examination and analysis as inherently discriminatory, so long as gay (fixed and immutable) is combined with celibate (persevering and reliable). Gay and celibate should be enough, or 95%, to end the consideration of a man’s fitness for office so far as the seventh commandment is concerned.
Is celibacy the boundary of homosexual corruption? Such self-mastery, no– Spiritual fortitude, in a professing Christian calls for admiration and protection. Gay&Celibate can be mocked and discouraged by other homosexuals as obvious “wannabes and gonnabes”. Certainly that is the diction of the accuser of the brethren– declaring that Christ has not emancipated them from the flesh. Victory must be celebrated and faith vigilantly bolstered in the household of God. Such is true with all believers and all besetting sins. Still, the question stands: is unstinting celibacy the homosexual line between the general office of church member and the special offices of deacon and elder? Does gay celibacy only need to pass the requisite ordination exams?
The offered amendments address only the standards for discriminating which men are fit for special office. They assume that what falls short of ordination does not disqualify from membership. In regards to homosexuality, they do not rule out some notion of “fixed” (indwelling sin, anyone?); however, they are in no way controversial for compromising “immutable.” Gay&celibate has already championed a real index of change. The amendments go further in rejecting celibacy as the demarcation of exemplary piety requisite for office in the case of same sex attracted aspirants to office. The amendments do not establish a checklist, rather they call for examination of the man’s character and conduct in regards to his remaining sinfulness in the specific array and dynamic of homosexuality.
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University Professor’s Book Aims To Destigmatize Pedophilia Because There’s No ‘Immorality’ In Being Attracted To Children
“I want to be extremely clear that child sexual abuse is never ever okay,” Walker said. “But having an attraction to minors as long as it isn’t acted on, doesn’t mean that the person who has those attractions is doing something wrong.”
University professor Allyn Walker wrote a book about people who are attracted to minors, a group he believes is misunderstood and should be destigmatized.
Walker is an assistant professor at Old Dominion University and author of the book, “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.” Walker’s book challenges the “widespread assumptions that persons who are preferentially attracted to minors—often referred to as ‘pedophiles’” and looks at the “lives of non-offending minor-attracted persons (MAPs),” a term used to describe the group because it is less stigmatizing than a word like “pedophile,” according to Walker.
In the interview with the Prostasia Foundation, Walker made clear that abuse should not be tolerated and argued there is a distinction between a sexual attraction and acting on that sexual attraction.
“From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all,” Walker said in the interview. “In other words, it’s not who we’re attracted to that’s either okay or not okay. It’s our behaviors and responding to that attraction that are either okay or not okay.”
The Prostasia Foundation is a non-profit that focuses on child protection along with an “evidence-based approach to child sexual abuse prevention with its commitment to human rights and sex positivity,” according to its website.
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In Defense of The Therapeutic
Do we indwell a therapeutic culture? In one sense, unfortunately, yes: Rieff, Jones, and Trueman rightly lament the self-centered psychologizing of our society. In another sense, sadly, no: Nearly every aspect of our culture militates against true therapy. The pervasive noise of distractions hinders the gospel’s healing touch.
Talking about the gospel as therapeutic is dangerous. Not wrong, just dangerous. I used to think it was wrong, since Philip Rieff famously inveighed against the psychologizing of the self in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, his prophetic 1966 book. His critique fueled my suspicion of all things therapeutic.
Noted theologians have taken up Rieff’s mantle. Gregory Jones warns in Embodying Forgiveness (1995) that in our therapeutic culture, we are in danger of manipulating forgiveness by turning it into a self-help process: We are told to forgive others not for their sake but for ours, since it gives us psychological relief. The result, Jones rightly insists, is that we no longer “discern whether there are tragic misunderstandings or culpable wrongdoing and brokenness that need to be dealt with through practices of forgiveness and repentance.” Rather than work through the mess to make things right, we turn forgiveness into a tool for restoring our own inner peace.
More recently, Carl Trueman has turned to Rieff to trace the genealogy of contemporary culture. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020) follows Rieff’s claim that our therapeutic culture has two baleful effects. First, it treats the community as oppressive and therapy as a means to counter this. This leads to the second effect: It subverts the proper relationship between individual and society. Whereas the individual once learned to take his proper place within the broader community, the community now serves the psychological wellbeing of the individual.
Rieff, Jones, and Trueman all warn against a therapeutic culture’s dangers. In their august company, one might think twice before putting up a defense of a therapeutic culture.
Let me nonetheless give it a try. It’s not that I disagree with the famous troika. Their critique of contemporary culture is truthful, incisive, and indispensable. Still, a caveat is equally indispensable, for the gospel’s very aim is therapeutic.
The Greek verb therapeuein means “to heal” or “to cure.” The purpose of the gospel is arguably that we be healed. Metropolitan Hierotheos discusses theology as a therapeutic science and speaks in detail about how to heal the soul. His book Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science of the Fathers argues that priests are in the therapy business: They “not only celebrate the Sacraments but they cure people. They have a sound knowledge of the path of healing from passions and they make it known to their spiritual children.”
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Sharing Your Faith – Whose Model Should We Use?
There is more than one way to evangelise, and if you can develop good relationships with non-believers, that is great. But the point is, if Jesus, the disciples, and the church for so many centuries concentrated on actually proclaiming truth to anyone and everyone, then we should not be dismissive of it – even in a rather different culture today. Sure, use the internet or social media or all sorts of new technologies to share the gospel message. And engage in “friendship evangelism” and the like. But do not think that just being nice and “being there” will ultimately cut it. Please make sure that you eventually SAY something!
If you know your New Testament, you will know that Jesus and the disciples had particular ways in which they shared the gospel. These were not the only ways in which folks can share their faith, but if it was good enough for them, then presumably we can learn something from them – especially if many modern forms of evangelism seem to counter what they had done.
It is not just that much of what Christians do today in this regard seems to conflict with what Jesus said and did – along with the disciples – but often we are hearing from some folks that evangelism and proselytisation is wrong altogether.
I kid you not. Plenty of those claiming to be Christians have said that we should not proselytise others. Consider these words that I penned nearly a decade ago. They involve the then Australian head of the once strongly evangelical para-church group World Vision. He actually came out and said this back then:
“We don’t engage in proselytism, and we work cooperatively with people of all faiths and those without a faith. In fact World Vision has more Muslim employees than any other NGO in the world, including Muslim NGOs. We strive to serve people everywhere without regard to their race, religion or politics.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/03/28/clueless-christianity-fuzzy-thinking-and-some-spiritual-lessons/
Wow. The group’s founder Bob Pierce would be rolling in his grave at that. Then we had the case of Pope Francis saying in 2019, “You must not proselytise. It is not Christian to proselytise”. Yes, he then had to go on to explain and defend his remarks. Whether or not he was ‘taken out of context,’ there are many believers today who do seem to look down on evangelism.
Certainly, the idea of waltzing into a town and engaging in open air preaching seems to be a big no-no for many of these trendy and progressive Christians. Such actions are considered to be ‘intolerant’ and ‘unloving’ and we must just slowly build relationships with folks first. You know, let’s just go to lots of cafés over a long period of time and sip on our lattes, and maybe one year we might be in a place to share your faith.
Now, is the building of relationships with non-believers generally a good thing? Yes it is. If and when we have that luxury of doing this, then by all means go for it. But two responses come to mind. This does not always work as planned. I know of Christians who kept putting off sharing their faith in order to “build a relationship” – only to then be told the person had died, and they never did get to hear the gospel! This happens far too often.
Secondly, it implies that everything Jesus and the disciples did were wrong, or not at all paradigmatic for us to follow. Hate to say it, but as far as I know, Jesus and the disciples did NOT normally spend many weeks or months getting to know folks and trying to get onside with others. They quite often simply went up to complete strangers and told them the gospel!
That was their normal way of doing evangelism. Sure, as a fledgling and persecuted new community of believers, they may have been rather limited in this regard. As I say, today, if relationship building is possible, then go for it.
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