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Renewed Appreciation for an Unchanging Story

My mind has not changed a great deal, because the biblical story has not changed. The account is still there, from countless witnesses, of God's thrusts into history. God created his world to be "very good," but we corrupted his creation by attempting to be our own gods and goddesses and by trying to shape our own futures apart from him. We thereby brought distortion and ruin into the world of nature, family, work and community, bringing upon ourselves God's absence and curse, and the sentence of eternal death.

But God would not give up on us. He called Abraham and Sarah out of Mesopotamia to be the forebears of a new community that would live under his guiding lordship in justice, righteousness and obedience. Then through all of the vicissitudes of actual life in the ancient Near East, God made himself a people from those forebears -- delivering them from slavery in Egypt, protecting them against their enemies, leading them through the terrors of the wilderness, entering into covenant with them, giving them his guiding presence in the covenant law, bringing them into a land flowing with milk and honey, giving them a Davidic king to be their protector of justice in peace and in war, and finally taking up his own dwelling in their temple on the Mount of Zion.

When that people nevertheless rebelled against God's rule, he constantly wept and worried over them, repeatedly forgiving their waywardness and sending them prophets to speak his words of judgment and mercy. Then to erase their sin he sent them into exile, but he nevertheless promised them "a future and a hope," forgiveness and blessing in a new land, with a new covenant written on their hearts, under a new Davidic king ruling over an obedient, faithful and righteous community of all peoples.

Finally, in the fullness of time, God kept his promise to Israel, sending his Son to be the cornerstone, covenant and Davidic leader of that new, forgiven, universal community. Through the death and resurrection of that Son, God wiped out our sinful past, joined us to himself in an everlasting and unbreakable covenant, gave us instructions about how to live until his Son comes again to set up his rule over all the earth, and promised, to all who trust his ways and work, eternal life and joy in his kingdom which will have no end.

That biblical story is the bedrock of my faith and the faith of my church, and always I, with my church, am called to hear that history and respond to it, pass it on and live by its promise. Yet, events in our changing and torturous times constantly illumine new portions of the story and call for new responses to it, just as they also call for new reflection and understanding. In the past 20 years, new emphases from the biblical history have impressed themselves upon me in response first of all to the fruits of the '60s.

In June of 1989 the Philadelphia Inquirer printed portions of an interview with Timothy Leary, "the world's most famous acid head." "It's true," Leary was quoted as saying, "that in the '60s we were young, romantic, naïve and sometimes obnoxious. But we were right. I regret nothing." The truth is, we have a lot to regret, and indeed, a lot of which to repent. In the '60s our society decided that drugs were acceptable, that sex was free and that authorities were useless. "The old taboos are dead or dying," exulted Newsweek in 1967. "The people are breaking the bonds of puritan society and helping America to grow up." We are now paying the price of that blind and irresponsible folly -- in a drug war that we are not winning, in burgeoning crime that has made city neighborhoods uninhabitable, in teenage pregnancies and "children having children," in rampant abortions, swelling welfare roles, sexually transmitted diseases, self-indulgent neglect of community good, and countless ruined lives. We chose our own way and as with the primal choice in the garden of Eden, we brought on ourselves the way of death.

In the light of that, I therefore have come to a new appreciation of the place of law and commandment in the gospel, in both Old and New Testaments. Obedience to the divine law does not form the basis of our relationship with God, but is rather the outcome of it. God redeems us by the cross and resurrection before we have done any deed and while we are yet sinners. But having made us his own, God does not abandon us to wander in the dark. Instead, he gives us commandments as guides in this new life he has given us. "This is the way," he says to us, "Walk in it."

God's guidance in the new life is pure grace, given out of his love for us. Heaven knows our society is unable to instruct us about how to live the Christian life; society is still lost in the willfulness of its own sinful ways and knows nothing of God's way. Apart from God's continuing guidance, we do not know how to live. But God, in his incredible mercy, wants it "to go well with us," as Deuteronomy puts it. God wants us to have abundant life. God wants us to have joy. And so in love he gives us directions to point the way to wholeness, life and joy.

Sometimes, of course, we do not like the directions. For example, God says, "You shall not commit adultery," while almost every program on TV assures us that it is the only way to go. But seeing the consequences in our society -- two out of every three marriages now end in divorce -- I am overwhelmed daily by the love of God manifested in his commandment. Truly he is a God who wants us to have the unsurpassed joy that comes from a lifelong, faithful marital commitment. Experiencing that joy and the blessing that results from obedience to other commandments as well, I have come to a new appreciation of the wisdom and mercy embodied in the divine instructions given us in the Scriptures.

Similarly, I think I have come to a new understanding of the place of sanctification in the Christian life, perhaps mainly because the doctrine of sanctification has fallen into disuse in so many churches in our culture. Who in our society want to be good anymore? Persons strive to be self-fulfilled, integrated, successful, even rich, beautiful and thin, but rarely does one find a person who wants to be good as the Bible defines it. Who speaks of "a man or woman of God," or of a Christlike person? Yet the New Testament tells us that that is God's goal for us, and that he is changing his faithful people into the image of Christ "from one degree of glory to another."

I have encountered persons undergoing that process of sanctification in my travels throughout the church, and they are in fact lights in the darkness of our world, savory salt and leaven in the loaf -- persons who have become so saturated with the will of God that one could entrust anything to them. I cannot but think that they are the forerunners of what the church as a whole is supposed to be -- a beachhead on the shores of this present wilderness, a little colony of heaven, set into the jungle that is our world to claim its territory for God's rule over it.

Such persons of God inspire me to follow after them, but they also impress upon me that the way of Christ is a discipline -- of prayer, of regular worship and study of the Scriptures, of constant willing after obedience to God. Self-fulfillment and individual freedom are claimed as inalienable rights in our society, but persons undergoing sanctification know that holiness comes from having a master. Israel lost her life when she refused to wear a yoke, Jeremiah says. Similarly, our Lord taught us that life comes from bearing a cross that does away with self, and the sanctified life results from accepting Christ's blessed yoke. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," is Christ's instruction, for that yoke is easy and that burden is light and that discipline leads to rest for our souls.

Indeed, I have come to understand more and more that it is only by wearing the yoke of Christ and following his guiding reins that we have that perfect freedom for which so many long in our society. Our difficulty in America these days is that we want freedom without discipline, rights without responsibilities, self-fulfillment without the necessity of committing ourselves. How often do we leave off the first phrase of Jesus' teaching: "If you are my disciples, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"? But freedom comes only with commitment, and commitment to Christ is the only truth.

We sometimes kid ourselves into thinking that we can be free just for and of ourselves. But the apostle Paul tells us that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ. There is no neutral ground between those two bonds. And it is in that bondage to Christ, as he is portrayed for us in the Scriptures, that I have been instructed more and more in his freedom. What liberty he gives us when we bind ourselves to the Word!

I think this has become ever clearer to me as I have observed the growth and course of church bureaucracies in the past three decades. For some reason -- and I do not posit a necessary correlation -- the more church membership declines, the larger become the ecclesiastical bureaucracies -- those bodies that the late Paul Ramsey aptly named "the church-and-society curia," those bodies that seem to have a disturbing way of following the latest media-generated fad and that are sure they know the course the church should follow better than do the people in the pews. Such curia seem to have no freedom from the society around them, even though they claim to be prophetic voices in the church. Rather, they have rather well-defined ideologies, of either the left or the right, and therefore rather predictable positions on public issues.

But rarely it is through being saturated by the word of God -- getting it into one's bones until one sees everything through its values, reason, language and worldview -- that we are given true freedom from the society around us and no longer need be "blown about by every wind of doctrine." That is the freedom one sees in the prophets -- the freedom of a Jeremiah to preach treason when the Babylonians are at the gate, or the freedom of an Elijah to topple a royal dynasty for the sake of one little vineyard next to the palace, or indeed the freedom of a Nathan to turn around and support an adulterous Bathsheba, his former enemy. The freedom of the prophets comes from the word of God burning in their bones, just as Paul says that when we are "in Christ," we no longer see anything from "a human point of view." That is true freedom, and more and more I have come to realize that it is the only rock in the midst of the turbulent waters of our rushing times.

Similarly, I have come ever more to realize that the only freedom from one's sinful self lies in that liberty given us by Christ. This has been impressed upon me by observing the women's movement in the church. Certainly, the women have a just cause, because they have been discriminated against as second class members in the church for centuries, despite the Lord's and the earliest New Testament churches' clear example to the contrary. Women graduates at Union Seminary in Virginia, most of whom are topnotch preachers and pastors, still have difficulty finding a call to a pulpit. If the church had lived up to its gospel, in which we are all one in Christ Jesus, we would not be in our feminist mess today.

But many contemporary feminists in the church have unfortunately concentrated everything around themselves. They have made their experience the ultimate authority, above the Scriptures. Their liberation has become their all-consuming occupation, coloring everything they write, say and do. The radicals among them have even begun to claim that they have a goddess in themselves, or that they are divine, because they have substituted for the biblical God a "Primal Matrix" or "Mother Goddess" or great world spirit flowing in and through all things and people. Mistaking Christ's "dying to self" as a ploy to keep them oppressed, they have elevated themselves to the place of the divine and thus denied themselves any knowledge of the glorious liberty of the children of God. That surely is captivity to sin and bondage to one's feeble, mortal person. And such captivity leads only to death, whereas God in Christ so much desires to give us only abundant life.

Many in the church curia have almost totally surrendered to such ways of death, perhaps from a sense of guilt over the past treatment of females or from a real sense of justice, but often without thought or theological understanding of the consequences. And so the rest of the church may find its liturgy changed by some worship committee into a celebration of a Canaanite, fertility birthing god, or it may discover that it is no longer allowed to sing a hymn based on Isaiah 63. At the same time, the church is told by feminists that its Scriptures, the only written guarantees of its freedom in Christ, are now suspect and to be judged as true only if they accord with modern feminist views. Alongside the body of Christ, some feminists are constructing a new church, called women-church, and celebrating a new religion, sometimes utilizing the symbol of a female "Christa" on a cross. It is difficult to imagine any more confining bondage to one's sinful self and society.

In the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., Israel in the Old Testament was tempted to construct a new culture and a new religion based on Canaanite models. The parallels with our society are many and ominous. And it was only the early, nonwriting prophets, such as Elijah, Elisha and Micaiah ben Imia, who preserved the nature of the Mosaic covenant faith before the threat of total corruption by pagan religion and culture. God grant us a new prophetic voice in our time, perhaps rising up in protest from the pews, or sounding forth, as did Karl Barth, from an obscure and seemingly unimportant pulpit, a prophetic voice that proclaims justice and equality for women, but on the sure basis of the authority of the Bible and the equalizing nature of the apostolic Christian faith.

This brings me to my last point. Through 30 years of teaching in seminaries I have become convinced that the church has largely failed in its mission of educating its people in the apostolic, biblical faith. Every preacher who enters a pulpit these days must assume that the congregation knows almost nothing about the content of the Scriptures. The language of faith, the meaning of the sacraments and the basic doctrines of the Christian church are almost totally devoid of meaning for the average churchgoer. Thus our congregations are often at the mercy of the latest kooky cult (witness Shirley MacLaine and New Age religion), and there is no common biblical story that binds them together in their faith. Individuals drift from one church to another, without roots, without religious history, without any Rock or Refuge or any sense that they belong to a communion of saints or participate in an ongoing history of salvation that God is working out in their lives and world.

One could blame such biblical and doctrinal illiteracy on several factors. Surely the fact that most children remain in the Sunday worship service only long enough for the children's sermon has deprived them of the opportunity of learning the language of liturgy and prayer and of absorbing the content of doctrine from hymn and from sermon. It is no wonder that the church is losing its young people; the formative years of their childhood were spent in another room. Surely too, despite our multimedia and high-gloss curricula with pictures, Christian training has been occupied more often with relevance, social issues and entertainment than it has with learning (and even memorizing) the content of the biblical message.

But in the last analysis, I cannot help thinking that our Christian illiteracy is due largely to a failure of the pulpit. The Christian faith was passed on for centuries, long before we had educational programs and Sunday schools, from one generation to another by its preachers from their pulpits. Yet far too many clergy today hand over educational matters to associates and religious educators, while they themselves dispense therapy, psychology and the latest religious or social opinions.

I gave a talk some years ago in which I mentioned that the Christian faith was a matter of life and death. Afterwards, I was approached by a publisher who found that statement so amazing that he asked me if I would care to write a book about it. Surely his amazement was symptomatic of our society's sickness: that it knows no divine commandment nor desires any sanctification; that it seeks life apart from God, who is the sole source of life; that it searches for freedom but is unwilling to bear a cross; that it wants a story to live by, but will not teach or learn the One Story. Those are, indeed, all matters of life and death, and the church must deal with them if it truly wants to be the Body of Christ, and a light to the world and salt and leaven.

Covenanting: New Directions for Ecumenism



The ecumenical movement is in a period of kairos. The remainder of this decade -- indeed, of this century -- represents a pivotal time for Christian reconciliation. The appearance of the Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry agreement of the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission, the theological consensus statement of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), and the proliferation of local ecumenical efforts in countless places offer new possibilities for effective unity.

Because the COCU churches did not accept a merger model in 1973, but requested a different plan for growing together into unity, COCU has been preparing a threefold approach to common life, mission and worship among its member churches. This approach, called covenanting, has liturgical, theological and juridical dimensions. It will be tested and amended at the next COCU plenary session, to be held in Baltimore, Maryland, in November.

Since its inception in 1962, COCU has taken seriously the biblical mandate for Christian unity. Covenanting is an attempt to envision and make possible the gradual achievement of an organic unity that would bring crucial parts of the churches together. Several elements will be proposed in Baltimore to constitute the skeleton of a united Christian body: mutual recognition of baptism among the denominations; recognition and reconciliation of their ministries; regular eucharistic sharing; joint mission and service projects; and the constituting of councils of oversight to supervise the covenanting process.

If these elements are accepted and enacted by the nine COCU denominations, their separate institutional existence will not thereby be ended, but the fashioning and functioning of the joints and ligaments of a united ecclesial body will begin. The New Testament koinonia will be enhanced, while the ethos of each communion will continue to enrich the others. Thus the 1984 plenary appears to portend a watershed in COCU’s life. Each of the three vital aspects of the Christian church’s life -- theological agreement, episkopé (oversight which holds together both catholicity and apostolicity) and the local congregation where it all comes together -- will be central at Baltimore.

Theological disagreement has been one of the ostensible reasons for division in the church in centuries past -- perhaps even a primary reason. When fellowship was broken, ways of living in separation developed; these became quite efficient at keeping Christians and churches apart. In the new openness of the era of the Second Vatican Council, however, church leaders began to appoint to official commissions theologians charged with finding new ways of agreeing, of getting beyond or behind the divisions of recent centuries. Perhaps to the surprise of some of these leaders, their theologians have succeeded in building verbal bridges across the traditional theological crevasses. COCU now has such an agreement, in evolution since the early ‘60s.

During the church’s second century, a ministry (and then minister) of oversight (episkopé) became a foundation of inter-congregational fellowship. Congregational ministry arose out of and focused on presidency at the Lord’s Supper. The ministry of episkopé continued this eucharistic focus, as bishops began to serve among the congregations, unifying the Eucharist of the local communities and that of the universal church.

For various historical and theological reasons, communions such as the Presbyterians, growing out of the Reformation, evolved corporate, rather than personal, episkopé’. Others, such as the Methodists, who continued a personalized oversight, removed most of the theological content from the office. But even if they have not called their minister of oversight a bishop, most denominations have consistently maintained some ministry of that sort.

The theological agreements being reached in COCU and the WCC envision reconciling the episkopé of the various churches. Aye, but there is a rub, pungently expressed by a simple quatrain:

When you say episkopé

I’ll never make a fuss.

It’s only when episkopé

Becomes episkopus!

 

How is the oversight, which we all need and already have in some fashion, to be personally embodied? COCU is committed to maintaining the bishop’s function in a uniting church. But it is also open to having this ministry be different from any now existing among its member denominations, and it welcomes the diverse experience of all its bodies. It must walk a fine line between the autocracy of some forms of episcopacy and the tyranny of committee rule which characterizes those Protestant churches where bishops can be “selfappointed.”

A renewed episcopacy could involve reconciling the overseers of the various communions into a common body, a council of oversight. Since the Council of Nicea, episcopal churches have usually maintained the principle of “one bishop for each piece of turf” (even if they have seldom lived by this theological ideal). A reconciled body of overseers would consist of a group of bishops who would provide corporate, collegial supervision over a single geographical entity, at least for a period of time. Such a body would probably take joint responsibility for ordaining new ministers, and it would certainly need to be involved in planning and implementing a common mission. (The idea of interim joint episcopal oversight is not particularly radical; the current secretary of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome, Pierre Duprey, made such a proposal in 1978.) There would certainly be anomalies in such episkopé. But the greatest anomaly is a divided church.

The first question to confront such a body of bishops would probably be this: Since laypersons and presbyters (priests) are also involved in oversight, should they also be reconciled and serve in such a body? And would the churches nominate women, members of ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities to this ministry? A second question might be the following: Will the new group of reconciled persons in each place be a kind of “skin graft” growing over old divisions, or will it be simply an interim, experimental organization for developing and enhancing new relationships among still separated bodies? The November plenary session will wrestle with these and similar questions.



Local congregations are ready and willing to invest themselves ecumenically; a great deal of common life is already evident among them. The goal of covenanting among the COCU denominations is especially intended to manifest and enable the oneness of the church at the congregational level.

Denominations were important in bringing the Christian faith to the variegated areas of American life, especially to the frontier. Their value now is by no means as clear. Because their structure is organized to secure the preservation and extension of the larger institution, congregations that take their primary identity from their denominations cannot relate to the total life of a community. Thus, denominational organization tends to make congregations a force of division rather than of reconciliation in their communities. The result of this fragmentation is that denominationally defined local churches do not feel ultimately responsible for representing God’s reign in or to their area. As William Cate reminds us,

The denomination’s organizational structure is arranged on an area basis that deals with churches in a vertical, special-interest fashion, not horizontally and in relation to the community in which it finds itself. . . . Denominational executives . . . assume that their primary responsibility is toward their individual churches I The Ecumenical Scandal on Main Street (Association, 1965), p. 63].

To serve communities effectively, congregations need to be oriented to the needs of an area, assuming holistic pastoral responsibility for their immediate environment. They must exercise a priesthood for their communities, being the church for a particular place. This can only happen if their primary associations are with other groups of Christians in their immediate neighborhood, not with a denominational officer, or with other congregations of the same denomination many miles away.

In recent years COCU conducted experiments in joint mission and worship among local congregations -- experiments which made clear the value and possibility of such a concept of congregational mission and identity. The consultation learned that a group of congregations, bound together by covenant and regular eucharistic worship, can more effectively address community problems than can those divided by their denominational identities. Britain’s “local ecumenical projects” are demonstrating the same truth. COCU also discovered the necessity and value of the presence of people of various heritages and abilities (including those whom we often label disabled) in every community for it to be an authentic “catholic” church.

Local churches need to represent Christ to and for their neighborhoods, living and acting together as one Christian people around the Lord’s Table and in mission. Celebration and service can be planned and structured as the needs of the community dictate, both in small congregational groupings and in larger, parishwide events. Lesslie Newbigin, long a missionary and bishop in the Church of South India, expresses eloquently the theological point at stake:

When we say the Church is for that place, the meaning of the preposition “for” is determined christologically -- by what Jesus Christ has done, is doing and will do with and for all humankind. . . . Just as Christ is not understood unless he is understood as the Word by whom all things came to be, for whom they are, and in whom they are to be consummated, so also the church in any place is not rightly understood unless it is understood as sign, first-fruit, and instrument of God’s purpose in Christ for that place [the Ecumencal Review (April 1977). p. 118].

If congregations are to be such a sign, firstfruit and instrument of God’s purpose of reconciliation in any place, it is vital that they have a sense of being one people in worship and service, in association with other Christian congregations in the area -- not in isolation from or in competition with them. What emerges is a new ecclesial identity as a “household” of local congregations, defined as Christians together meeting the needs of a particular place. Such a form better incorporates the findings of the past 30 years of ecumenical debate on “place,” community and eucharistic fellowship. Uniformity in such interrelatedness is not necessary: the activity of the Holy Spirit is seldom very orderly.

Since some kind of oversight for such congregating congregations will be necessary, it is precisely at this point that joint episkopé, as exercised by a group of bishops, might profitably enter in. Smaller groupings of congregations could be ministered to more effectively, and on a more personal basis. In such a situation local groups ready to move together quickly for the sake of mission could do so; already-developed structures and organs (such as the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Regional and Local Ecumenism) could be utilized and built upon; those no longer useful could be let go. In worship, regular eucharistic fellowship will characterize common life. Joint ordinations by the larger body of bishops will make possible the interchangeability of ordained persons.

William Cate has written that “Christian unity occurs at points of interchurch contact and relationship: it is not the creation of an ecumenical structure . . .” (“Ecumenism Surges in Local Churches,” The Christian Century [March 14, 1984], p. 268). But in 20 years of work and gleaning, COCU has learned that some institutional expression (even if temporary and modest) is vital precisely at these points of “interchurch contact. It is the middle judicatory officials (whether bishops or regional or conference ministers) who are crucial in enabling or in frustrating the long-term ecumenical possibilities. Since the second century, the bishops have best exercised this ministry of unity, for they focus in one ministry both Eucharist and mission.

At several crucial points in the New Testament, unusual things happened when an area’s Christians were “all together.” As it enters its third decade of life, COCU is working consciously to foster such togetherness, in theological agreement, in ministry and mission and in congregational life. Such an approach will require more time (most conversations of COCU’s scope require 40 years), and will be much less tidy than a traditional union would be. But it will bring the churches together in their ecclesial life -- in membership, mission and ministry -- and it takes seriously the valuable diversity possible within organic unity. Such an approach is also compatible with, and parallel to, the “conciliar fellowship” goal being worked out in the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission.

Establishing a covenanting relationship with other churches is not “cheap ecumenism.” A change in identity is required; intentionally becoming a sign to a broken human race demands communal strength. COCU denominations will accept these challenges only as they realize that being baptized into Christ and the cross really does signify an abandonment of self and the acceptance of a new identity.

One thing is certain: it is in the cross, and the weakness and defeat it represents. that the power of God was and will be made manifest. It is to that cross that Jesus wishes to draw all people. And it is at the foot of that cross that each of us will recognize and experience our oneness with him and with each other.

Male Clergy Adultery as Vocational Confusion

Open Marriage: Open adultery. The smart new term not only dispenses with the sinful connotations of the traditional one but puts monogamists on the defensive [Hugh Rawson, A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubtetalk (Crown, 1981)].

 



Although it has become fashionable in some quarters to suggest that open marriage is a legitimate form of self-expression for Christians, people are still shocked when the adulterous Christian is a minister. Clergy adultery, while rarely discussed in print, is no longer an unthinkable phenomenon. For cultural and historical reasons it seems likely that clergy adultery is related to vocational confusion more often for men than for women. Even though there is very little -- if any -- data available on the rate of incidence of marital infidelity on the part of clergy, this has become a troubling reality in the lives of many clergy and laity. Denominational executives and supervisors, ministerial relations committees, congregations and the families of clergy find themselves searching for an adequate response to an unfaithful pastor, clergy colleague or spouse.

Of the few writings available on the sexuality of clergy, most refer to divorce or homosexuality. The issue usually raised is whether, from a biblical perspective, divorce or homosexuality has “sinful connotations.” In a recent article about “Addictive Relationships and the Ministry” (William R. Lenters, Reformed Journal, November/December 1981), the writer avoided the question of “sinful connotations” in choosing to describe how, rather than why, “some pastors fall prey to . . intimate relationships outside of their own marriages.” The minister is rarely described as a person for whom the issues of marriage, vocation and personal identity are intimately linked to sexuality -- as for other people.

A notable exception to the general failure to connect ministry as a vocation to clergy sexuality is the portrait of Tom Marshfield drawn by novelist John Updike in A Month of Sundays (Knopf, 1975). The 41-year-old Marshfield, a minister suffering from middle-aged angst, slips into an affair with the church organist. He rapidly develops a reputation as a counselor of women with troubled marriages. “There was a smell about me now. Women sensed it. They flocked to be counseled.” Marshfield’s bishop sends him to a clergy retreat center in the desert to overcome the “distractions” to his ministry. As he reflects on what has happened to him, Marshfield is uncertain whether his condition is a sign of new life or continuing death.

Tom Marshfield is not sure that he is a success in his career. His wife and children treat him like a nonentity. He knows that opportunities to alter the career and marriage choices of young manhood are limited. When an adoring congregation of one tells him he is wonderful, it feels as though God has given him a new life and a new future. As has been observed in life-cycle literature, an affair is a common response to midlife crisis.

Although male clergy experience doubts about vocation and marriage similar to those of other men, the present situation of the church and ministry may intensify the midlife crisis for clergymen. For one thing, the manhood of male clergy has been insecure for generations, insofar as the church has been perceived as an institution better suited to the interests of women and children than to those of “real” men, men of the world (Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture [Knopf, 1978]). For another, declining church membership suggests that religious affiliation is no longer required for social status. Clergy, educated as professionals, find themselves the leaders of a marginal social institution. Unlike ether professionals -- educators, lawyers, doctors -- they do not have the society as a whole as their constituency. They lead a band of volunteers, offering “services” no longer seen as social or life necessities in North American culture.



Clergy adultery is a sign of confusion about the professional role and status of ministers. It is related to a history of sexually split metaphors for ministry. According to the Victorian view of the world, religion, love, friendship, aesthetic taste and intuitive knowledge were associated with the feminine dimensions of life. From this perspective, the church was viewed as the unworldly, private sphere of women and children. By virtue of their relationship to a “feminine” institution, male clergy found themselves likened to Victorian women, who were thought to be more moral than men because they were thought to experience less sexual desire. Like the woman in the home, the clergyman in the church was expected to inspire more worldly men of the public sphere to virtue. The role of a clergyman was like that of a mother. Like the home, the church was seen by many as a “haven in a heartless world.” Both were institutions of the private sphere.

Many Victorian men experienced a conflict between two prevailing models for manhood -- that of the “male achiever ethos” associated with the wealth of a captain of industry, and that of “the Christian gentleman,” associated with the less successful but moral achievement of a good family man and churchman. Although the Christian gentleman role had connotations of the self-sacrificing moral hero, the image also implied that such a man was less successful because he was less aggressive and virile in the work world of “real” men. While the captain of industry was suspected of being self-serving, egotistic, violent and immoral in his personal relationships, he was nevertheless idolized as embodying the masculine virtues of force, rationality and the business acumen needed to succeed in the world. For Victorian clergy, these contradictory values created the dilemma of trying to be both manly and moral in the eyes of a world that characterized the church as feminine and marginal (Janet Forsythe Fishburn, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family [Fortress, 1982]).

Given these persistent attitudes about the church and ministers, laypeople have not easily granted to white male clergy authority as men who possess good judgment in the worldly domain of business or polities. Because laity have implicitly believed in the moral superiority of clergy, they have tended to relate clergy status to moral authority in the world of church and family. Laity have also granted clergy a special power over God’s Word by virtue of either education or spiritual intuition. It is therefore not surprising that some male clergy, from the Victorian period to the present, have had a high need to display signs of masculine power, authority and success. And it is not surprising that some of them have chosen the symbols of the male achiever ethos: bureaucratic power, acquisition of property, accumulation of wealth and the company of attractive women.

The attitudes of the laity aside, clergy seem to identify their own authority with particular aspects of their education as professionals in ministry. Current clergy role orientation reveals a continuing sexual bifurcation. In a pastoral-care model, the minister is like an accepting parent authorized to keep peace in the congregation. The reward of a good pastor is a growing congregation of trusting and appreciative members. This relatively passive form of leadership, in which pastoral authority depends on good relationships and powers of persuasion, reduces the extent to which a pastor might engage in either the critical or the prophetic aspects of ministry.

On the other hand, the image of the pastor as “chief of staff” resists a passive view of clergy authority. This metaphor, popularized by the church-growth movement, promises the leader growing congregations in return for executive efficiency and business acumen applied to “church management.” A similar model for ministry is that of the minister as agent of change in society. In either case, power and authority are related to a command of the science and technology of the business world and at most automatically exclude the spiritual integrity and authenticity of the pastoral model.

While these traditionally sexually split models for ministry are, admittedly overdrawn, a history of culturally derived confusion about the source of clergy power and authority has been intensified in recent years by women’s entrance into ministry. Shifting sexual roles in contemporary culture further confuse the vocational identity of male clergy already uneasy about their place in the world of men. Given the vocational quagmire in which male clergy presently find themselves, the name of Updike’s confused protagonist -- Thomas Marshfield -- is apt.

Those who counsel male clergy report that many genuinely believe that the “other woman” is a gift of God. In a culture in which the success ethos has infected all vocational expectations, including those of clergy, the other woman may seem a consolation for vocational or marital disappointment, sent by an extremely gracious God. Tom Marshfield’s sense that his adultery freed him from his moralistic past was slowly transformed into the insight that adultery is the American plague, a dance of death. Observing that Americans have mistaken adultery for “the exterior sign of internal grace,” he concludes that he is “a poor WASP stung by the new work ethic of sufficient sex.”

Doubting Thomas sees that he began his time of self-examination in a desert preoccupation with his mediocre marriage. He leaves the retreat center ready to face an uncertain future, with a renewed commitment to a wife whose silence accuses him and to a congregation shocked by his infidelity. Taking responsibility for his “slip into adultery,” he returns to the world. Having wrestled with God in the wilderness, he confesses that “we have not accidentally fallen, we have been placed.”



The pastor as unfaithful shepherd is not a new concept, or unique to the Christian tradition. Jeremiah described the covenant people as “lost sheep” because “their shepherds have led them astray. . . . they have forgotten their fold” (Jer. 50:6). There is reason to believe that unbridled sensuality was a problem for early Christians as they tried to balance the influences of Greek culture with Jewish fidelity to law in defining faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The uneasy relationship of sexuality to ministry has not been settled since, either by Catholic vows of celibacy or the Protestant preference for married clergy. Both celibate and married clergy have been known to pursue the worldly enticements of wine, women and song.

The pursuit of spiritual union with God can be confused with the sexual union that gives rise to some of the most vivid metaphors for spiritual ecstasy. The fine line between spirituality and sexuality has been blurred whenever the special charisms of ministry are used in pursuit of private spirituality or pleasure instead of given in faithful devotion toward the upbuilding of the whole body of Christ. It is not difficult to see the connection between the sacramental leader who intones, “This is my body . . . for you” and the temptation to seek out or give private form and consummation to a public rite intended to give life and hope to the whole congregation. Instead of setting an example for the flock in seeking out the lost sheep, the minister in such cases leads the flock astray, one by one.

Clearly the clerical task is a difficult one. In its third or fourth generation, the early church began to set limits and muster resources that might make the task more manageable. One of the texts often used in ordination sermons admonishes clergy to train themselves to “godliness.” This does not mean merely the self-control achieved by rigorous training and self-restraint, like the discipline of an athlete. Rather, it means reliance on “the gifts you have given to you by prophetic utterance when the council of elders laid their hands upon you” (I Tim. 4:14). The writer counsels the young Timothy not to be intimidated by his youth or inexperience, but to preach and teach with the confidence that his authority and status as a leader in the church come from God. Since the assurance that ministers are validated by gifts of the Spirit follows a rejection of the false asceticisms of celibacy and food abstinence, it seems likely that the gifts bestowed grant power, love and self-control to married ministers (II Tim. 1:7).

On the basis of the charisms bestowed by the Spirit, Timothy is advised to “set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” as he leads them. As in discussions of the gospel of Jesus, it is assumed that spiritual integrity encompasses both the life and the word of the pastoral leader. The sheep recognize the voice of faithful shepherds because their lives bear witness to their words. “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (I Tim. 4:16).

The Protestant polemic against priestly celibacy was related to the recovery of a more biblical perspective on the role of clergy to equip the laity for ministry. At the time of the Reformation, the doctrine of vocation meant that all Christians were called to identify their charisms and to devote them in service to God through the church. The special gifts of clergy were given so that they could guide and lead the ministry of the laity.

In the transition from the celibate priesthood to the life of married clergy, the home and wife replaced the rectory or monastery in the life of Protestant clergy. Ever since Martin Luther acknowledged the difficulty of writing theology while surrounded by diapers and crying children, it should have been obvious that the wife of a clergyman stood in a different relationship to her husband than that of priests to one another. Priests living in a rectory have in common only their commitment to ministry and can expect to find in each other mutual support and understanding about fidelity to that Vocation. While they are not always supportive of each other, they do not experience the emotional complication that the clergy spouse does who is not ordained to the same vocation, yet who is called as a Christian to make it possible for her spouse to exercise his calling. In the Protestant parsonage, the tone and tempo of life and the practice of devotion to God have, of necessity, differed from the kind of spirituality that undergirds the priestly vocation.

The Victorian division of everything human into feminine and masculine spheres and characteristics distorted the doctrine of vocation in a way that had special ramifications for the clergy marriage. Wives of clergy gradually became unofficial associate pastors, expected by congregations to carry out the more “feminine” tasks of teaching, visiting and pastoral care while their husbands carried out the more “masculine” tasks of preaching and administration. So long as the cultural ethos supported women’s vocation to the private sphere, and men’s to the public sphere, this sense of complementarity may have blunted the conflict between fidelity to marriage and fidelity to ministry felt by clergy today.

Like the resentful, sighing wife of Tom Marshfield, many wives of clergy find themselves caught in unwanted role expectations imposed by laity, yet unable to validate their own need to be independent individuals. The presence of more women in ministry may gradually resolve the clergy wife dilemma. The ordination of both men and women challenges all sexually stereotyped metaphors for ministry and all attempts to define husbands and wives in relation to their clergy spouse’s calling.

All Christians are called to discern their vocations. There are no vocations that are primarily masculine or feminine in nature. Although two people called to ministry may marry, clergy wife or clergy husband is not a vocation in its own right. Unless one seeks ordination, one should not be expected to perform the tasks of ministry in a way that differs from the ministry of any layperson. There is no such thing as an associate vocation.

Christians who marry are expected to support spouses in their vocational commitments. But this duty to support does not mean that the spouse is or can be the sole source of emotional or vocational empathy. Those who marry clergy should be aware of the paradox of ministry as a vocation. While ministry requires the same arduous process of education and professional validation as other professions, ministers cannot expect to enjoy the same kinds of rewards, status or authority granted by the culture to other professionals. Financial problems are a major strain leading to divorce in clergy marriages (William B. Pressnell, “The Minister’s Own Marriage,” Pastoral Psychology [Summer 1977]). Insofar as standard of living is an index of success, inadequate salaries can also contribute to the nagging sense of inadequacy that sends clergy seeking solace into the arms of someone other than the marriage partner.

The graces of power, love and self-control promised to Timothy suggest that the minister can enjoy both ministry and marriage. The pleasure promised, however, is the satisfaction of guiding others in the life of faith. The combination of power, love and self-control -- the special gifts given to pastors to serve the well-being of the congregation -- includes both personal characteristics considered masculine and some considered feminine. If applied to men and women clergy without differentiation, the gifts for ministry represent a spiritual maturity capable of transcending the demands of the culture to prove successful manhood or womanhood. This is not to say that clergy should not be paid well. It is to say that clergy “success” is not measured by the same standards of achievement applied to other professionals.

The combination of power, love and self-control also transcends all sexually stereotyped metaphors for ministry. These characteristics incorporate the loving concern and acceptance of the pastor with the power, force and self-control necessary to the manager. Given the circumstances of the contemporary church, the characteristics of both are needed by those who would be “faithful shepherds” of the flock.

Clergy cannot be expected to maintain integrity as spiritual leaders in a vacuum. Their families should not be expected to provide their only structure of support and personal accountability. Their congregations cannot provide them with an objective perspective on themselves as spiritual leaders or a context in which they are led in worship. Clergy need the same spiritual nourishment through self-examination, confession and celebration that they give to others. Thus, they need someone to offer that kind of caring ministry to them. Those who ordain and supervise pastors should provide them ongoing opportunities for worship, a network of spiritual accountability and prayerful support -- a ministry to and for ministers.

In a time when all the norms have gone awry, denominational executives and supervisors will have to assume responsibility as those who minister to clergy. Far too often denominational representatives have demanded evidence of success and further exacerbated the pressures that lead to clergy adultery or clergy divorce. It is not enough to provide support groups for divorced clergy, or to plead for equal rights for clergy who divorce.

If the church is to be the body of Christ in servant ministry to the world, those who lead the church at every level will have to examine their metaphors for ministry. Vocational confusion is not limited only to clergy in the parish. The gifts of the Spirit always available to those called out to lead the flock will have to be claimed as the only legitimate source of power and authority for all clergy. If those who ordain and supervise pastors neglect a ministry to them, it will be at great cost to the unity and integrity of the church.

Reflections on Human Cloning

In the sixteenth century, the Reformed theologian John Calvin wrote this about childbirth:

Although it is by the operation of natural causes that infants come into the world ... yet therein the wonderful providence of God brightly shines forth. This miracle, it is true, because of its ordinary occurrence, is made less account of by us. But if ingratitude did not put upon our eyes the veil of stupidity, we would be ravished with admiration at every childbirth in the world.' (1)

Four centuries later, we find that infants do not always come into the world through "the operation of natural causes." The miracle of childbirth has already moved beyond "ordinary meaning" through such procedures as in vitro fertilization. Now that we face the possibility of human life springing not from a fertilized egg but from a clone, we are making great account (some would say too much account) of this possible new way for infants to come into the world. Many people wonder whether this is indeed a miracle for which we can thank God or an ominous new way to play God ourselves. At the very least, it represents the ongoing tension between faith and science.

On the one hand, the church has sometimes taken an overly antagonistic opposition to scientific advances, so that Galileo was charged with heresy for supporting the seemingly unbiblical Copernican notion that the earth revolves around the sun. Darwin's theory of evolution (which apparently even frightened him a bit) is still opposed by some Christians who want equal time given to "creationism." (2) Such examples remind us that the church must not assume that faith requires protection by being shrouded in ignorance. We should be able to celebrate human accomplishments, including accomplishments in genetic research, as the result of divinely bestowed gifts of knowledge and technical skill.

On the other hand, the church rightly understands that sin can lead us to use scientific advances for extremely evil purposes. We can never support the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake apart from asking serious moral questions about the implications of that which we seek to know. To date, we have not been able to keep up with the moral and legal implications of adoption, much less of the dilemmas presented by artificial means of reproduction.(3) We certainly are not yet morally, legally, or spiritually prepared to tend to the difficult issues that would arise if human cloning became a reality.(4)

My position, which I commend for your consideration, is as follows: While I do not rule out the morality of research into human cloning, I do support a moratorium on such research, which would be removed in light of strong evidence for the positive benefits of such research and after concrete proposals have been formulated for avoiding the potential risks. Whether such a moratorium is imposed or not, I think we should be morally, legally, and spiritually prepared for that time when human cloning (legal or illegal) may become a reality in this country or abroad.

I offer nine guidelines with supporting theological rationale for the Commission to consider regarding research into human cloning.

(a) We should proceed with research into human cloning only if compelling arguments can be made for its potential benefits. While I do not believe that Christian ethics can proceed on utilitarian grounds (seeking to do the greatest good for the greatest number and maintaining that the ends justifies the means), I do agree with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that Christians are called to find the "significant in the factual," which means that we can neither make moral judgments apart from knowing the scientific facts (including an assessment of the potential benefits and threats of human cloning) nor allow scientific facts to be the sole determination in making moral judgments.

While the medical benefits of animal cloning and other forms of genetic research on human beings are readily discussed in the material I have read, I have not yet found equally compelling accounts of the potential benefits of human cloning itself. (5) So far, the proposed benefits of human cloning are inadequate. For example:

An infertile couple's desire to have a child through cloning does not provide an adequate reason to do so. There are already existing means of artificial reproduction. Furthermore, we must guard against the notion that reproducing (or in this case replicating) children, no matter what the reason or cost, constitutes a civil right. We should be sympathetic with and even appreciative of the infertile couple's desire to have a biologically linked child, for, among other things, it demonstrates an appreciation for children not always evident in contemporary society. Nevertheless, we need to examine whether the biological and genetic link between parent and child is so important that addressing infertility should take priority over other pressing medical concerns. (Furthermore, our society and the international community as a whole need to make the obstacles to adoption less formidable.) (6)

A grieving parent's wish to replicate a dying child does not justify research into human cloning. In fact, it misunderstands the distinctiveness of each human being called into being by God. We need to question any motivation to replicate a human being in order to replace another. It has taken a long time for us to recognize the inappropriateness of suggesting to a couple who has lost a child through miscarriage or infant death that they "can always have another." Even though a cloned child would indeed be a distinctive individual, his or her physical resemblance to the previous child, now dead, could cause emotional confusion on the part of the parents and the child.

Of course, any suggestion that children should be cloned for directly instrumental purposes, such as organ harvesting or providing the military with more soldiers or a basketball team with more talented players, should be rejected out of hand. (7)

I do not dismiss the possibility that significant benefits from research into human cloning exist, but I have not yet heard what they are. If it could be shown that research into human cloning would contribute to the well-being of the children and adults who already (or may someday) suffer from tragic genetic disorders (such as Down's syndrome or Huntington's disease) and that human cloning itself would benefit the children who are brought into the world through cloning. I could more readily support research (and government funding for research) into human cloning. The genetic disorders addressed by this research, however, would have to represent graver conditions than infertility.

(2) Make a clear distinction between human cloning and genetic research in general. There is a legitimate fear among some scientists and ethicists that any ban or moratorium on research into human cloning would also prohibit other promising (and perhaps less morally complicated) forms of human genetic research.

Some people who oppose human cloning invoke the "slippery-slope" argument to oppose all genetic research that could lead us closer to making human cloning possible. I believe that this argument should be invoked to force us to look honestly and courageously at the possible negative consequences of our position or action, but that it does not necessarily dictate abandoning the original position or action. Employing it may simply instruct us on how to identify the moral boundary that we do not want to cross. I would, therefore, support morally responsible research that promises to advance our understanding of human biology and disease, even if such research made the path to human cloning easier. This is part of what is entailed in discerning "the significant in the factual."

(3) Guard against self-deception (and, of course, public deception) when presenting the pros and cons of human cloning. If we are genuinely searching to uncover the truth (Christians would say "to discern God's will") about a controversial issue, we must recognize that truth itself destroys avenues for self-deception ( 8) Debate over abortion provides an excellent and tragic example of our inability to avoid self-deception in search of the truth. The debate over abortion (most recently focused on what are called either "late-term" or "partial-birth"abortions, depending on your position) reveals a reluctance to look at the facts surrounding both sides of a serious issue out of fear that one might discover or publicize a fact that does not support one's stance. Representatives from pro-life and pro-choice groups are equally guilty in this regard, rarely able to state each other's positions fairly, and hiding facts (sometimes from themselves as well as others) that do not support their position, while exaggerating facts that do (9) We must avoid repeating this error in the debate over human cloning. The public needs to hear, in language that nonscientists can understand, the potential scientific, moral, legal, and social benefits, as well as the potential threats, posed by human cloning.

(4) Research all related topics. We need to continue to gather as much information as possible to anticipate policy decisions for that day when human cloning may occur whether banned or not. For instance, would the study of twins (the closest example to the genetic relationship between a subject and its clone) enable us to understand better the positive and negative emotional and social aspects of being a clone? (10) Similarly, we could study the impact of artificial insemination with an anonymous donor on the child conceived in this way. Does the child have a longing to know something about the anonymous sperm donor (as biological father?) that poses a serious threat to that child's well-being, or does the child adjust well to the social parent or parents apart from that knowledge? A child conceived from artificial insemination by donor does not face the same situation as would a child having no biological and genetic father at all, but perhaps there are important similarities that could be uncovered through research. Numerous questions and dilemmas raised by adoption, artificial insemination, and in vitro fertilization require more research that could potentially prevent even more serious dilemmas resulting from human cloning.

(5) We must consider the status of the human embryo in research. Given the divisiveness of this question in relation to the abortion debate, this is the hardest issue that must be considered, and one that cannot be fully resolved. Nevertheless, the doctrine of vocation claims that God calls each of us into the world for a purpose. Each life has divinely bestowed value and purpose, so like Mordecai addressing Esther, we can say to each other, "Who knows whether it was for such a time as this that you were brought into the kingdom?" (Esth. 4:14) Although we may never agree on the point at which a developing life becomes a human person, we are compelled to take nascent life seriously and to ask when it is no longer morally acceptable to experiment on or discard human embryos."(l 1)

(6) If we proceed with research into human cloning, we must be mindful of those who are most likely to be exploited, and we must ensure the civil rights of those people who come into the world through cloning. Given the history of medical experimentation and the lack of access to medical resources for certain groups of people, we must be especially concerned that women, racial and ethnic minorities, prisoners, and the poor are not exploited as a result of this research or of human cloning itself. Do we desire to clone human beings in order to enhance or eliminate certain racial features, or to replicate one sex in greater numbers than the other? Will one group, such as prisoners or the poor, be exploited in the process of experimentation?

Furthermore, theological affirmations regarding the divinely appointed vocation of each individual coincide with concern for the civil and human rights of each person born into the world, no matter how conceived. Hence, no person could ever be cloned to serve a predetermined purpose in the world. We cannot, for instance, clone human beings to provide soldiers for the military or with the expectation that they will be great athletes or in an attempt to create a great musician or scientist. God alone calls a person into being, no matter how that person was conceived, reproduced, or replicated. No matter how well we learn to manipulate genetic matter or replicate human life, we do not create life the way God does. In the story of creation recorded in the Hebrew Bible, the word for "create" is used only with God as subject. The theological claim that only God can create human life is no less true if we learn to clone human beings than it is now. We do not create the human soul. We do not, as God does, call human beings into existence. Nor do we, as God does, call human beings into different identities and tasks.

Again, if we are someday able through human cloning to eliminate genetic disorders from future individuals, we must ensure that those who remain with disabilities will not be discriminated against. For instance, a woman carrying a fetus that will develop abnormalities should not be forced to abort that fetus directly or indirectly (e.g., by refusal to grant insurance coverage if the fetus is brought to term). While the ability to correct devastating disabilities and diseases is an admirable goal, we can never as a society find excuses for neglecting or otherwise discriminating against persons with disabilities.

(7) We can proceed with research into human cloning only after considering larger issues of allocation. From a Christian perspective, we are concerned about the welfare of the least of the brothers and sisters around us. "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, so you did it to me" (Matt. 25:40). While many of us can thank God that our children are not likely to die from flu, diphtheria, or polio, or even suffer the mumps, measles, or rubella because of advances in medicine, we must be mindful of the enormous number of children and adults in this country and abroad who are forced to live as if these advances were never made. Simple diarrhea kills thousands of children a year.

When considering research into human cloning, we must look to the responsible use of limited resources. Though I am not a utilitarian, I believe that it is mandatory to ask whether other projects would serve the well-being of a greater number of people than research into human cloning. Government spending should be targeted for research that will best further the common good by addressing the most serious questions of health and disability. If we are going to spend millions of dollars, let it be to promote the well-being of the least of the brothers and sisters among us (and, hence, the well-being of us all, for our destiny is tied to theirs).

(8) Consider first the best interest of children. Although this guideline comes eighth in my list, I give it top priority. From a Christian perspective, we can affirm that all children truly belong only to God. They are not ours to manipulate, control, or abuse. But even apart from religious convictions, there are good reasons (both compassionate and practical) for society to put the best interest of children first. Unfortunately, no matter how a child comes into the world, through the operation of natural causes, through in vitro fertilization, or eventually through cloning, we have not been and, no doubt, will not be "ravished with admiration at every childbirth in the world."

Recent court cases indicate that we are already confused about the best interest of children. We find it difficult to sever ties between abusive parents and their children in order to give custody to loving, nonabusive foster parents who want to adopt. We can undervalue the biological and genetic ties between a so-called surrogate mother and the child to whom she gives birth, while granting custody of a toddler to a biological father he never knew. We have often protected contractual agreements or the rights of biological parents with far more zeal than we have pursued the best interest of children. Here, we have yet another opportunity to put the best interest of children forward when considering allocation and research into human cloning. At the very least, we must ensure the civil rights of children who may someday come into the world through cloning, by insisting that no child can be owned, bought, sold, or manipulated, that no government agency or group can sponsor the cloning of a child over which it will have guardianship (i.e., children will be cloned only in circumstances where they will be reared by a family), and that no child can be cloned solely for the purpose of procuring organs or for monetary gain.

I do not agree with those theologians who fear that human cloning would diminish the value of intimate relationships between husbands and wives or add one more obstacle to the formation of "traditional" two-parent families. Sexual intercourse will always have both procreative and unitive value for most couples. It is not, however, unreasonable to place value in the unitive function alone when procreation is not possible or desirable. Furthermore, while an intact family composed of two parents of the opposite sex and their biological child or children may provide the best standard family unit in society (and should, therefore, be given support), we would be naive and cruel to dismiss the possibility that differently configured families (e.g., families with single parents or homosexual parents or adopted children) may produce family situations that are as good as, or, in some cases, better than, those of families that fit the standard. While we need to avoid the cruelty to children that arises when society assumes that their resilience allows them to flourish in any family unit however configured, we also need to avoid the cruelty of rejecting outright or devaluing all families that do not fit the norm. While there are serious reasons to have reservations about research into human cloning, the idea that it would undermine the relationship between men and women or the basic family unit is not morally or theologically convincing.

(9) Regulate the treatment of animals involved in cloning research. Since the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the primary focus on moral issues regarding cloning has been on research into human cloning. Although one can clearly mark the distinction between research into the cloning of animals and research into the cloning of human beings, there are inseparable ties between them. Research into animal cloning adds to our knowledge of human cloning. There is a continuum from one kind of research to the next (which is why people became even more nervous when they heard that monkeys had been cloned, since monkeys are presumably closer to humans than are sheep). Furthermore, the benefits of animal cloning are for the most part meant to serve human beings. The biblical understanding of having dominion over the earth is not rightly interpreted to mean that human beings are free to abuse animals. Rather, we are called into responsibility for them. If it is not the responsibility of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to look into the welfare of animals in cloning research, I urge you to direct that responsibility to the appropriate commission or committee.

These nine guidelines represent the reflections of one theological ethicist. Obviously, the panel presentations demonstrated that there are very able and thoughtful theological and philosophical ethicists who disagree with me. The Commission, of course, must make a recommendation to the President on behalf of a pluralistic society whose members do not always share common beliefs and values.

How would I wish for you to proceed in light of this diversity of opinion? I propose that a common denominator for making your recommendation center around the question of whether research into human cloning will serve the common good. This suggestion is 'complicated not only by the lack of agreement in this country and abroad on what the common good is but also by our lack of commitment to serving the common good (however it may be defined).

My theological convictions make me want to put the best interest of "the least of the brothers and sisters" at the center of our concern for the common good. We need to discern the indissoluble link that connects the most privileged with the most vulnerable persons and groups in our human community. In making a decision regarding research into human cloning, we must pay close attention to the benefits it would provide for those who suffer the worst genetic disorders; we must look closely at the possibility of some groups or individuals being exploited or neglected through human cloning; and we must keep before us the welfare of the children who would enter the world through cloning. To counter our tendency to put the autonomy of the individual in conflict with the well-being of the community, I affirm the claim that "in each is the good of all, and in all is the good of each." (12) We cannot serve the common good apart from looking after the welfare of the individual, and the individual's well-being is tied inseparably to that of the community.

There are good secular reasons for being guided by a concern for the common good and for those who have the most to lose if we make the wrong decision. On the more practical and self-serving side, we need to recognize that we will pay for our neglect of the those who are the most vulnerable. Our well-being is indeed tied to their wellbeing. But there are also altruistic reasons (which some people from differing theological and secular traditions share) for promoting concern for the common good and focusing on the welfare of the most vulnerable. If research into human cloning does move forward, we must ensure that it does not seek knowledge for its own sake, or only to promote monetary gain or individual fame, but to serve and protect the common good.

Footnotes

(1) Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 1:369 (on Ps. 22:9) (2)For theological essays critical of the creationist position, see Roland Mushat Frye, ed., Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case Against Creation-Science (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983) (3) For instance, the status of frozen embryos has led to controversy between divorcing couples. Should these disputes be considered custody battles or disputes over property or matters of contractual rights? Should one invoke the same arguments used in the debate over abortion, or is this a separate issue? For information regarding some of the legal battles and arguments, see "Case Studies," in The Ethics of Reproductive Technology. ed. Kenneth D. Alpern (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3 15-45.

(4) One panelist, otherwise in favor of research into human cloning, was nevertheless opposed to an individual's cloning himself or herself and then claiming to be the parent of the resulting child. Genetically, he pointed out, the child would not be the individual's son or daughter but his or her identical twin. This observation reveals just how complicated the social and legal issues of guardianship and familial relationships would become in the wake of human cloning.

(5) There is, of course, no consensus regarding the benefits of animal cloning. While some religious groups and some advocates for animal welfare oppose animal cloning, I believe that the potential benefit merits continued research. I do, however, believe that we must ensure responsible treatment of the animals involved in such research. (See guideline 9 below.)

(6) My husband and I were among those who initiated international adoption proceedings only to find that while we could afford to raise a third child, we could not afford to

Make our way through the adoption proceedings ($15,000 to $20,000). Since there are so many couples (infertile or not) who would like to adopt, and since there are so many thousands of children needing adoptive parents, surely it serves the better part of wisdom to give our attention to making adoption a more viable option. This issue must be taken into consideration when exploring any topic (such as human cloning)that touches on infertility and artificial means of reproduction.

(7)1 do, however, agree with the panelist who claimed that the couple who reversed a vasectomy in order to conceive a child potentially able to provide their other child with a bone marrow transplant acted responsibly and lovingly. Every indication was that they would be loving parents to this new child whether a compatible bone marrow was provided or not. We could not, however, sanction the cloning of children for organ harvesting who would be subsequently abandoned or destroyed.

(8)See Stanley Hauerwas, "Self-Deception and Autobiography:

Reflections on Speer's Inside the Third Reich," in Truthfulness and

Tragedy: Further Investigations in Christian Ethics, by Stanley Hauerwas with Richard Bondi and David B. Burrell (Notre Dame:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 82-100.

(9) 1 am interested in promoting the idea of common ground between pro-life and pro-choice groups. Before we reach irreconcilable differences regarding what should be legal, our energies would be more productively spent on the common goal of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies rather than fighting each other.

(10) Of course, if human cloning were used only to replicate embryos to assist existing means of artificial reproduction, the concern stated here would not necessarily apply.

(1 l)It took 277 attempts to produce Dolly, the first genetically cloned mammal. If this had been an attempt to clone a human being, would there have been 276 losses of cells and DNA material or 276 lost human lives? Although for some this may be too extreme a way a to pose the question, we cannot avoid honestly asking about the value or moral status of the human embryo.

(12) I heard this aphorism from Paul Lehmann. I do not know if he coined it or was quoting it.

The Power of God-with-Us

1980: The dawn of Nicaragua libre and the impending U.S. presidency of Reagan, its ardent foe. A time in which the pernicious AIDS virus was moving among us, and we were unaware. Three years before the invasion of Grenada and six before the falls of Marcos and Duvalier. Before the emergence of glasnost and of Gorbachev. Just before the beginning of death-dealing cutbacks in already-small measures of care for people of color, women, children, others marginalized and animals, plants and minerals of many sorts in the U.S. The outset of a high-tech boom that would threaten further to diminish our senses of ourselves as co-subjects in the sensual work and play of creation. In this context, I was studying black, feminist and Latin American liberation theologies and was becoming convinced that a justice-making church could make a difference in the world.

Winding up a dissertation on a "theology of mutual relation" would, ironically, provide my fare into the security of a profession not well known for the mutuality of its practices or its theories. But, at age 35, I would be officially out of school for the first time in 30 years, and I leaped into the decade with a blessing in my pocket worth more than the Ph.D. -- unbounded enthusiasm for the theological vocation. Amid ups and downs, delights and sufferings, deaths and births, burnout and rekindling, I have been carried by the past decade more fully into an appreciation of honest theological work. I have been learning to recognize it, at its root, as a spiritual passion that we need in the world and that the world needs in us.

Let me back up a little. Though I was a graduate student, full- or part-time, for over a decade, my studies had not done much to deliver me from life. Working at Union Seminary in New York and in the city itself, in parishes, hospitals and shelters, I was learning as much about human life as about its divine source and resource.

I remember sitting under a tree in the summer of 1980 with United Methodist minister Michael Collins (who later would die of AIDS) and several other members of the minuscule gay-lesbian caucus of the Theologies in the Americas "Detroit II" conference. We spoke of how grateful we were to be learning with our theological "elders" that the sacred spirit of life can be experienced as the power moving us in the making of justice with compassion and of peace with justice.

I was sure that, sooner or later, the church would get it. Surely the liberal christian communities would come to see the rightness of the theologies of liberation being generated globally by christians and others struggling for bread and dignity.( Using the lowercase "c" with reference to "christianity" is a spiritual discipline for me as a member of a religious tradition so arrogant and abusive in its exercise of power over women, lesbians and gays, indigenous people, Jews, Muslims and members of nonchristian religions and cultures.) The basis of my optimism was, I believe, no facile "liberalism." In the company of discerning teachers and learners, my education was being shaped out of certain assumptions that had as much to do with living life as with thinking about it: that we are "in relation" whatever we may think of that fact, that the most basic human unit is not therefore "the self but rather "the relation"; and that this intrinsic mutuality demands -- and should be the foundation of -- our ethics, politics, pastoral care and theologies.

Drawing on the existential theology and social philosophy of Martin Buber, I wrote in my thesis that God is our "power in relation" and that justice, the actualization of love among us, is the making of right, or mutual, relation. Without realizing it I was trying to articulate a relational ontology as a companion piece to the profoundly moral motives and commitments of liberation theology.

My graduate studies had sparked my interest in human life as a relational matrix in which God is born. (The coming decade would stretch my imagination toward an intense interest in the connectedness of all life.) I felt a certain euphoria upon graduation. Happily donning a yellow button on my academic gown that read, "Better Gay than Grumpy," I stepped into the '80s and the ranks of professional theology as an active, indignant and optimistic teacher and priest with a ragged-edged commitment to justice for all oppressed people.

The past ten years have brought me to some new places -- more exactly, I suppose, into new ways of standing in old commitments and values. It is not simply that "my mind" has changed. My mind -- how I think theologically -- would have to have been put on ice not to be changing in some degree of conformity with its relational matrix.

Maybe as it grays, every theological generation loses some of its youthful idealism. But if, in changing (as we must to stay well), we do not hold stubbornly to the roots of this idealism, we will be sucked into a funnel through which our theological vision will narrow and, in time, become rigid and false. I am disappointed in my generational peers who look back upon "the '60s" with patronizing scorn, as if we ought to be a little embarrassed for having dreamed those dreams. I am learning that I do not trust those whose dreams become less daring with time.

I am not as busy as I was ten or 20 years ago. There's still much to do and I may be better able to do some of it, but I am doing less. I am not as optimistic as I was that organized religion will make much headway in creating a more just and compassionate world. I now understand better the conservative character and structure of the church, having been working within it (or at its edges) as a priest for about 16 years. I am less idealistic. I do not expect that many who hold authority in the church or other dominant institutions of our lives will be converted, en masse or as individuals, to the serious work of justice-making with compassion and good humor as their top priority. But I'm not cynical. My faith in the power of God-with-us -- our creative, liberating power with one another -- is secure, and my hope for the world is being radicalized. My companions in living, working and visioning; the claims of justice; and the urgings of the spirit are pushing me closer to the roots of the idealism and enthusiasm I embraced ten years ago. I am beginning to imagine the implications of the connectedness of all life, my own and that of other humans and creatures. I see more completely the importance of living in such a way as to celebrate the struggle for mutuality (the actual dynamic of justice-making) not only as an ethical ideal but as the very essence of who we are in the world -- the basis of our survival. I am learning that, in this sense, our we-ness literally creates my I-ness and that this is a very great good. It is the foundation of what it means to be human, what it means to be "in the image of God."

My learning has been partially the result of a via negativa, recognizing not only the absence of mutuality and justice but an active opposition to it in the doctrines of selfishness and domination incarnate in Reagan-Bush. I am at least as indignant today as ever and no less hesitant to say so. I am angry that a culture of alienation and despair, of greed and violence, is being constructed for profit on the bodies of the poor, the elderly, the young, women, blacks, browns, gays, lesbians and other people in the U.S., and is being masked as "kindliness" and "gentleness" by those who have learned to believe their own lies. Beverly Wildung Harrison, my beloved friend and companion through the past decade, reminds me of "the power of anger in the work of love."

If good humor is, at heart, a sense of perspective, I think I am maintaining it by enjoying being alive in the world. I delight in my friends, my students, my niece and nephew, movies and music, my animal companions, and our little bit of land and home on the Maine coast. I love walking and dancing and singing and laughing.

Still, I suspect that those who do not care for pushy broads, feminist priests, happy dykes and faggots, and irreverent references to the god of heterosexist, racist patriarchy, are likely to find me every bit as ornery as before. Recent years have dipped me into the wisdom of sages like feminist theorist Judith McDaniel who warn that trying to be "nice" on terms set by those who hold the power in place is to "sell ourselves short."

Specifically, then, what am I learning? I am learning that, without some serenity, I could not continue in the struggle for justice. Like that of many U.S. citizens visiting in Nicaragua during the '80s, my time there, in 1983 and 1984, was an unexpected blessing. I did not go seeking a gift. I went to be educated and to show solidarity with those struggling against the contras. In fact, my traveling companions and I were given a glimpse into the life of a people fighting enormous odds for the chance to live together in a just and peaceful society. Scores of Nicaraguan christians and others met us with what seemed unflappable confidence in themselves and in their spiritual or moral vocation to struggle for justice.

Not until I had been back in the U.S. for several months did it dawn on me that I had experienced a profound sense of serenity in these people and, through them, had glimpsed my own confidence and inner strength, elusive through much of my life as a white christian in the U.S.

I have wondered why so many white people have learned in Nicaragua what we well might have learned here at home -- in active, ongoing solidarity with, for example, black sisters and brothers or Native Americans. Has it been easier to go to a faraway land to see what has been happening right before our eyes? Easier because it felt safer, less intimate, or because we did not know how significantly our lives would be touched until it was too late to stop the transformation?

Nicaragua shook my foundations. As the experience grew in me, I found my commitments stronger than ever and, at the same time, I knew that I could not, in the words of womanist ethicist Katie Cannon, "keep on keepin' on." I was outraged about U.S. imperialism; hurt and angry about how women and gay and lesbian people are treated everywhere, especially in the church; horrified by the blatantly racist practices of the Reagan administration; immensely saddened by the death of my father; frightened by a breast cancer scare; working too hard in a seminary that drains its feminist professors to meet the demands of increasing numbers of women students; and just plain tired.

It took me several years to see that, in the early '80s, my faith was in serious crisis. As I left for Nicaragua, I was burning out. Had I ever, really, believed in resurrection? Had it ever occurred to me, deep in my soul, that it is a relational movement, the revolutionary carrying-on of a spirit of love and justice that does not and will not die? Had I ever truly believed that the Spirit needs us to do her work in the world, to move as slowly as we must in order to build this world together as a common home? Had I seen fully that we are never called to come forth alone but always to answer the Spirit's call with one another, drawing for strength and wisdom from what womanist theologian Delores Williams calls our "lines of continuity"?

This trust in the foundations of one's life has roots in the experience of right, mutual relationship. Thus at the core of our faith we know that, in the beginning and in the end, we are not alone. In our living and in our dying, we are not separate from one another. Reminiscent of Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others who have seen this, Archbishop Oscar Romero prophetically voiced this confidence when he promised, "If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadorean people.... My hope is that my blood will be like a seed of liberty."

In the strength of such faith, an inner peace can begin to form. Perhaps this incipient confidence enabled me in 1985 to speak to a friend, a former student, about my "drinking problem" and to hear his response: "It troubles me that someone who teaches and writes so much about mutuality is so resistant to seeing that you need help with this. You can't stop drinking alone. Why don't you take your own theology seriously?" A theophany, this encounter.

The next morning, with another friend, I attended my first meeting with other alcoholics and began recovering, one day at a time. In the spirit of the Nicaragua pilgrimage, this process is opening me to the real presence of others and myself to them. It is opening us to the power released among us in a vulnerability that, because it is authentic, common and shared, is sacred.

I don't believe any more now than before that we must participate in organized religion to be involved in the work of justice. But I know today that all of us need a shared sense of a spiritual or moral basis upon which to build our lives and commitments.

I am learning the critical necessity of approaching our theological work the same way we do any authentic spirituality: through the particularities of our lives-in-relation. A hermeneutic of particularity involves studying ways in which our differences contribute to how we experience and think about human and divine life.

In a racist society, a black god/ess is not at all the same as a white god/ess. In a hetero/sexist situation, a goddess is different from a god. In a sex-negative culture, an erotically empowering spirit is utterly distinct from an asexual and erotophobic god who needs no friends.

Through the work primarily of feminist christians, I have been led to Sophia/Wisdom, to "Christa/community," to Hagar the slave woman, to Jephthah's daughter and those who fight back on her behalf: images that are redemptive because they are dark, images of black or marginalized women, vilified, trivialized, rejected, silenced -- and resisting their oppression and that of their sisters. As our historical imaginations unfold, we may begin to recognize in these images a call to struggle against injustice and to celebrate our woman-lives.

A goddess whose tender, outraged presence heals and strengthens abused women is entirely different from the God in whose name troubled fathers and priests sometimes rape girls and boys. I have been taught this less by my feminist professional colleagues than by the students who have attended my classes on passes from hospitals or after therapy sessions, in which they are being treated for wounds inflicted by men (and sometimes women) who abused them as children or as adults. Their stories often suggest the appalling extent to which the church tends not simply to ignore sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual violence against women and children as a major crisis, but actually to provide theological justification for this violence in its teachings about male headship, women's subordination, and the sinful character of sexuality. The sex-as-sin obsession which characterizes christianity has produced a repressive, guilt-inducing sexual ethic which, in turn, generates a pornographic culture of eruptive sexual violence.

I am learning that I cannot teach christian theology constructively unless I am aware that, historically, the church has done much to damage women, Jews, people of color and the whole inhabited earth; and unless, as a christian, I am learning how our doctrine, discipline and worship continue to reflect and contribute to this abuse of power.

I also have become clearer during this violent decade that it matters a great deal what god-images we use in our worship. I am becoming increasingly resistant to participating in, much less leading, liturgy from which dark, erotically empowering, woman-loving images of God are absent or concealed. The election and consecration of Barbara Harris as an Episcopal bishop signaled hope for many of us. This was not because either the Episcopal Church or one powerful, capable woman, black and beautiful and prophetic, will move mountains. It was rather because the choosing of such a bishop -- by the-Republican-Party-at-prayer-church of George Bush and Sandra Day O'Connor -- conveyed the kind of lovely, unexpected contradiction that christians love to call "paradox." Bishop Harris is a living, breathing reminder that just about anything can happen when two or three are gathered in the spirit of justice.

During these ten years, my understanding of God has been, to quote radical feminist Mary Daly, "gyn/ecologized." I believe that God is indeed our power in mutual relation. I see more vividly than before that our redemption requires that this power come to us, and through us, in healing and liberation, advocacy and friendship, love and sisterliness, in the most badly broken and frightening places of our life together and as individuals. In a racist, heterosexist, class-injured world, God is likely to meet us often in images associated with children, poor women, black, brown, yellow and red women, lesbian women, battered women, bleeding women and women learning to fight back. Dark images. Like Mary's poor little boy, God is seldom welcome in reputable places. The story is not a nice one. Good theology is not respectable.

I am learning that, as a process of liberation from either injustice or despair, healing is a process of finding -- if need be, creating -- redemption in suffering. The AIDS crisis has been teaching me this, as did my father's nine-year bout with cancer, which resulted in his death in 1984. More recently, the sickness and death of a young friend, and a devastating relational rupture that left me badly hurt and in need of healing, have required me to struggle with the meaning of suffering.

As we move into the '90s with an economic structure that is killing poor people, a "war against drugs" that is a racist war against the urban poor, an unapologetic "post-feminist" contempt for women and girls and a mounting ecological crisis, we will need as much as ever to be able to create liberation in the midst of suffering.

I have never believed in "redemptive suffering" as a means of justifying either pain or God. I still do not. There is no theological excuse for the pain inflicted upon human and other creatures by human beings. There is no justification, no spiritual reason, why forces of nature such as hurricanes and viruses hurt us or why some of us get hit by cars or lost when planes crash. The death of my life-loving father was not good, nor was death of my friend Dianna, nor the agony of her spouse and family. From a theological perspective, whether pastoral or ethical, suffering is not good for us.

Although the sacred Spirit in no way "wills" or sets us up for suffering, all living creatures do suffer. In these last years, scarred by AIDS, by the dominant culture of greed and violence, and by personal loss and pain, I have come to see more distinctly the vital link between the healing process (traditionally the prerogative of religious and medical traditions) and the work of liberation (assumed to be the business of revolutionary movements for justice).

The link is in the commitment of those who suffer and of those in solidarity with them to make no peace with whatever injustice or abuse is causing or contributing to their suffering, and in their commitment to celebrate the goodness and power in our relationships with one another -- especially, in these moments, with those who suffer. To struggle against the conditions that make for or exacerbate suffering, and to do so with compassion -- "suffering with" one another -- is how we find redemption in suffering. To realize the sacred power in our relationships with one another, and to contend against the forces that threaten to damage and destroy us, bears luminous witness to the goodness and power of God. In the midst of suffering, we weave our redemption out of solidarity and compassion, struggle and hope. In this way, we participate in the redemption of God.

 

 

Coming Out: Journey without Maps

In another article of mine that is being published this week, I speak of my resistance to all categorizing of human beings, including the use of sexual categories such as homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual. The reason I cite for resisting is that "being human -- being sexual -- is not a matter of 'qualitative analysis' in which relationships of highest value become genital equations: woman plus woman equals gay; woman plus man equals straight." In my view, the labels we use do not express, but rather distort, the most important things we can know and say about our own sexuality and human sexuality in general.

If I believe this -- and I do -- why then break through my own resistance and "come out"? The answer does not come easily. The difficulty here does not rise out of diffidence, for this article will not be primarily biographical but rather an analytic attempt to make sense out of biographical journeying. Quite apart from personal meanings, however, the subject being addressed does not yield readily to our efforts for comprehension. We live, all of us, in uncomfortable ambiguity. We live with contradictions and partial truths. In ambiguity we seek the meaning of ourselves and of the world, and the words to communicate the meanings we find. In its enormous vital complexity, sexuality may draw us as close as we will ever get to the heart of ambiguity. It is to escape from our anxiety-producing uncertainty, I think, that we so readily accept labels and resist our own questing and questioning.

People tend to think of sexual "identity" (or "preference," or "orientation") as something innate. I do not believe this is true. It seems to me that our sexual feelings and behavior are shaped by a variety of interweaving factors. Biology -- our bodily glands and their powerful secretions, along with anatomy itself -- is one, but only one, of these factors. We are shaped also by our ethnic, religious, and class heritages, by our schooling, by the events in our early experience, and certainly by our parents -- by the specifically sexual models they provide, by their values, and by the ways they relate not only to each other, but also to us, and to others.

We are born sexual; our sexuality is indeed a given. But it is from a myriad of sources, and by a process closer to osmosis than to either inheritance or deliberation, that we learn how to feel and act sexually. That is why, I believe, we ought not identify the categories of "sexual identity" with sexuality itself, as though the categories were fundamental and fixed; as though they too were gifts to be accepted and valued without question. To celebrate our sexuality is to make a theological and anthropological affirmation of the pulsating dynamic of created life, the force within us that moves us beyond ourselves toward others. But this powerful affirmation of both creation and Creator is diminished in its truth when sexuality is equated with such categories as "gay" and "straight." For these categories can be boxes; they can be imposed from without, not truly chosen, not reflective of who we are or might have been or might become.

A Dominant Worldview

Yet these categories -- boxes -- are real. We live in them. We are in some significant part creatures of the social structures in which we participate; the boxes we call our sexual identities can be not only influenced, but even determined, by them. These structures, then, demand recognition and responsible attention. With regard to sexuality, what must be realized is that historically the predominant effect of cultural conditioning has been to squeeze all humanity into a single large box labeled "heterosexual." This social structure, this box, is so huge and so all-pervasive that we cannot easily see it; because we are enveloped by it, we cannot often find the distance we need to see and examine it. We accept this boxing of our sexuality as natural, the way things are and therefore ought to be.

Thus the heterosexual box becomes god of our social structures (including the church), our relationships, and our self-images. Functionally the heterosexual box becomes critical to and definitive for patriarchy, nuclear family, private enterprise, male-headship, and derivative boxes such as "masculine" and "feminine."

The social order is constructed, thus, upon a box largely invisible to its inhabitants. The moment a boy child learns that little boys don't cry, the instant a girl child learns that little girls don't fight, the child takes a step further into the heterosexual box. If, for reasons that may have little if anything to do with sex or gender, the child is drawn to protest against boxes, specifically against the heterosexual box designed to transform vulnerable little boys into big strong men and feisty little girls into soft, sweet ladies, the very social effort to implant a heterosexual identity may begin a contrary process. The point is that the result in either case is that the sexuality within is confined, shaped, limited, perhaps diminished by the container built around it.

The reason this is important is that sexuality drives toward relationship. It is a movement shared by all creatures and the creator, an impulse that we are capable of celebrating in every aspect of our lives. A significant aspect of sexuality is that it brings us to physical and emotional ecstasy in partnership. The ecstatic power of the sex act can lead us to identify it wrongly with the whole of sexuality, when in truth sexuality is, I believe, the one most vital source of our other passions; of our capacities to love and to do what is just in the world. I would go so far as to suggest that the capacity to celebrate sexuality is linked inextricably with the capacity to court peace, instead of war; justice, instead of oppression; life, instead of hunger, torture, fear, crime, and death.

Sexuality, which finds its most intimate expression between lovers, moves us into an active realization, and great relief, that we are not alone; that we are, in fact, bound up in the lives of others; and that this is good. That is why, I think, many (but too few) Christians speak of love and justice together; justice is the moral act of love.

This has personal meaning for me. Recalling my past, I can see now that coming out has been a long and puzzling journey out of the heterosexual box, in which I was no more comfortable at age five than I am now at thirty-three. The experience is hardly rare, as we are coming to know from the testimonies of women and men who, when they were girls and boys, were continuously reminded that anatomy is destiny and that sex-role expectations are not to be evaded. My own parents made no conscious attempt to teach me rigid sex roles. Yet, both they and I lived in the heterosexual box that was far larger, and more deeply formative, than either they or their children could realize. Accordingly, I experienced the larger social order as squeezing something out of me, pressing something in on me and eventually depressing into me feelings of shame about wanting to do things and be things that "weren't for girls."

Why did I want to be Superman and not Lois Lane? Matt Dillon and not Miss Kitty? Because Superman and Matt Dillon were more interesting to me. They led exciting lives. They made things happen. They were confident, assertive, energetic. Somewhere inside I knew (and knew rightly) that unless I felt myself to be an interesting, confident, and assertive person, completely capable of exerting as much "will" and leadership as the next person, I could never really love, or allow myself to be loved, by anyone. Not mutually. Not really. I knew also that any effort I might make on behalf of justice would be triggered by my own lack of self-esteem and by the painful inclination to identify with the underdog, rather than by the human and sexual impulse to work for justice on the basis of a strong confidence in both myself and the power of God to love.

In our history, in our society, in our churches, the heterosexual box is that into which girls are pressed into ladies who should marry and who must be held within the social order as subordinate to husbands, fathers, or father-surrogates -- regardless of the unique and individual capacities, needs, and desires of either women or men. There is too little room in this enormous socially constructed box for real mutual love between the sexes and no allowance at all for mutual love between women or between men. There is too little room in the heterosexual box for either spouse in a marriage to develop fully her or his capacities for loving humanity and God out of a sense of self as both strong and gentle, confident and vulnerable, assertive and receptive, equally able to lead and to follow. As a social structure, the heterosexual box intends to permit no androgyny or gynandry; nor does it encourage us to cast off the burden of sex roles -- because the heterosexual box is built entirely out of sex roles. 

New Priorities

Feminism challenges the legitimacy of sex roles Along with other social movements, feminism is rooted in the critique that a society so constructed that certain people and groups profit from inequalities -- between men and women, rich and poor, black and white, etc. -- is a society in which money is more highly valued than love, justice, and human life itself. Feminism moves toward the reversal of these values: Human life must be first; all else, second. As sex roles fall, as more and more women and men refuse to play along for profit and social gain at the expense our true selves, the heterosexual box begins to weaken. This is exactly what is happening today in our society. The box is collapsing: Women and men are coming out.

For many women, and I am one, coming out means that we are beginning to value ourselves and our sisters as highly as we have been taught to value men. Coming out means loving women, not hating men. Coming out means beginning to feel the same attraction, warmth, tenderness, desire to touch and be touched by women as we have learned to feel in relation to men.

For about fifteen years I have been coming out sexually, experiencing my attraction to women as well as men to be a valuable dimension of myself -- as friend, lover, Christian. I have been aware that there is a box, another box, a less constrictive box, for people with this experience "bisexual." As boxes go, bisexuality isn't bad. It may be (if unknowable truths were known) the most nearly adequate box for all persons. The problem with bisexuality in my life (and I can speak only for myself) is that it has been grounded too much in my utopic fantasy of the way things "ought" to be and too little in the more modest recognition of myself as a participant in this society at this time in this world, in which I have both a concrete desire for personal intimacy with someone else and a responsibility to participate in, even witness to, the destruction of unjust social structures -- specifically, the heterosexual box.

If our world and civilization have a future, it may be that in some future decade or century sex roles will be transcended; persons will be defined as persons and modes of relationship will be chosen, not imposed. It has been my experience that to live now as bisexual is to live somewhat abstractly in anticipation of a future that has not arrived. That is why, for several years, I have been coming out of bisexuality, coming out of utopic vision in order to focus my sight on the urgency and immediacy of the concrete present.

At present, I am a student writing a doctoral thesis on a theology of mutual relation, believing as I do that the future of both humanity and God depends upon human beings' willingness to relate as equals. I am a teacher in a seminary in which both women and gay people have to struggle fiercely to keep themselves from being squeezed into the heterosexual box in which women must submit, and gay people must repent. I am a priest in a church which, like most churches, threatens to collapse under the weight of a perverse notion of a sexuality that is to be neither celebrated nor related to other issues of love and justice. I am a woman in a church and a society that patronize women with reminders of how far we have come and of how much we have been given. And I am a lesbian -- a woman who has come out of the heterosexual box and into another box, which, as boxes go, is far superior for my life as a responsible person, a Christian woman, in this world at this time.

Coming out, I come into the realization of myself as best able to relate most intimately -- to touch and be touched most deeply, to give and receive most naturally, to empower and be empowered most remarkably -- best able to express everything I most value -- God in human life, God in justice, God in passion, God as love -- in sexual relationship to a lover who is female.

It is with another woman in this world at this time that I am able to experience a radical mutuality between self and other, a mutuality that we have known since we were girl children, a mutuality that has shaped our consciousness of female-female relationships as the first and final place in which women can be most truly at home, in the most natural of social relations. It is, moreover, with other lesbian feminist Christians that we can witness to the power of God's presence in mutuality -- relationship in which there is no higher and no lower, no destructive insecurities fastened in the grip of sex-role expectations, but rather a dynamic relational dance in which each nurtures and is nurtured by the other in her time of need.

A romantic portrayal? No, it is not easy. There are tensions, fears, the possibility of cruelty and abuse -- just as in any relationship. It is not that lesbian relationships are always, or even most often, characterized by mutuality. It is just that, in the present social order, lesbian relationships offer an opportunity for a mutuality of remarkable depth. Lesbian relationships can make prophetic witness within and to society: a witness not on behalf of homosexuality per se, but rather on behalf of mutuality and friendship in all relations.

Gains and Losses

Coming out, there are things lost: the bearing of my own children and the learning how to live better with male lovers. But the gain outweighs the loss: Coming out, I begin to envision and embrace the children of the world as my own; and the men of the world as my brothers, whom I can better learn to know and love as friends. Coming out involves a recognition of the co-creative power I have always experienced in relation to women. Coming out is a confession that I need and want intimacy with someone whose values and ways of being in the world can support and be supported by my own. Coming out means realizing and cherishing my parents' way of loving and of being in the world; of valuing who they have been and who they are, and of knowing myself both as bound to them and as separate from them in my journeying. Coming out means remembering my other relatives and early friends, in the hope that they can trust, and celebrate, the parts we have played in the shaping of one another's values.

Coming out is a protest against social structures that are built on alienation between men and women, women and women, men and men. Coming out is the most radical, deeply personal, and consciously political affirmation I can make on behalf of the possibilities of love and justice in the social order. Coming out is moving into relation with peers. Not simply a way of being in bed, but rather a way of being in the world. To the extent that it invites "voyeurism," coming out is an invitation to look and see and consider the value of mutuality in human life. Coming out is simultaneously a political movement and the mighty rush of God's Spirit carrying us on.

Coming out, I stake my sexual identity on the claim which I hold to be the gospel at its heart: that we are here to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. Each of us must find her, or his, own way to the realization of this claim. I have given you a glimpse into my way. Where the journey began, where it will end, I don't know. I know only that I am glad to be coming out.

The Last Committee on Sexuality (Ever)

My tolerance for debating whether I am sinful or sick by virtue of being homosexual has, after sixteen years before the mast, reached nil. My intolerance is the result of an intentional, uphill journey toward, a purging of the internalized self-hate that all gay and lesbian people ingest at the hands of a hostile society.

It is rather like an allergy. A single sting of homophobia, and I see I hold the unrealistic belief that gay and lesbian d deserve to live in a wasp-free environment.

In any event, even though this last-in-an-unending series of sexuality committees (which inexorably become homosexuality committees) was clear that it was not to come up with a definitive statement did ask us to "respectfully hear one another." In addition, to encourage "open-minded dialogue" in the diocese, it asked any who wanted to speak with us to come and have their say.

More, the Bishop appointed to the committee someone who was help us maintain "balance."

I scanned several of his articles on sexuality. He was, among other things, an articulate and rigorous homophobe. While he did not make the first meeting of the committee, I could not imagine respectfully listening to him. Nor could I imagine listening "open-mindedly" to the couched or flagrant antigay sentiment that gallops through the diocese. The more I thought about these scenarios, the more I realized I did not want to do this to myself.

I have two objections to being asked to put myself in this position. The first is that no self-respecting gay man or lesbian should have to listen to his or her ontology debated ever again, and the church should be the last institution to sponsor such a forum.

 Imagine, if you will, asking black clergy to sit on a "Committee on Race" and listen open-mindedly to a discussion of whether or black people are by nature intellectually inferior to white people (discussions that have not been unknown in South Africa). No one with a conscience would ask a black person to sit through that, and no self-respecting black person would agree to do it. Or again, imagine asking Desmond Tutu to sit with Pieter Botha and engage in a "balanced" dialogue about the pros and cons of apartheid.

The appropriate response to injustice is outrage and protest -- not polite dialogue. But I am even past the point of protest, and that brings me to my second objection.

The Kingdom Coming

I simply cannot be bothered with these endeavors. If the church needs to continue its "tempest in a tabernacle" about sexuality for another 150 years, so be it. But I have no energy for it.

Curiously, at a time when people are becoming increasingly tolerant of varied expressions of sexuality, only the church still clings tenaciously to a sex-negative worldview stemming from its dogged commitment to Docetism. Let it live with its heresy -- and obsess over it if it must.

Myself, I take seriously my baptismal call to be faithful in kingdom making. Sadly, the church is one of the last places I can find companionship on this mission lately. It is too busy consuming its gifts and graces -- resources both human and financial -- feeding ego mills and dysfunctional parishes and agencies, fostering "edifice complexes" and learning to "hate all the people our relatives hate." I am bored with it. The kingdom is at hand.

So I shall continue to embroider at the institutional edges, ministering with dying crack babies and their ruined parents while rejoicing in my sexuality and the rest of God's phenomenal creation; suffering with my sisters and brothers as they die of AIDS and training others to minister to those who are ill; joining people who come to me for psychotherapy in the abysses of their souls as we try to heal unbearable brokenness.

And in the meantime, the church has my full permission to continue debating whether I am sinful or sick, worthy of being ordained or even to sit in the pew.

And when at some point the Frozen Few glance around and note that the pews are alarmingly empty, those deemed worthy to minister to them might convince them to break just one precious stained glass window and look out and see the kingdom coming. They may be surprised to recognize the ushers. They will be soup kitchen hands and street workers, nurses and housekeepers, therapists and social workers. With them will be many other good folks (both gay and straight who have mostly left the church and stopped judging people they are too busy being Christ for them.

The Church Moves Toward Film Discrimination

One of the more urgent tasks facing the church today is the clarification of its posture in relation to the entertainment industry. Traditional attitudes still widely assumed to be valid are, in fact, generally bankrupt, The attempt to force Hollywood to produce "good" films has fallen with the demise of the old Roman Catholic Legion of Decency. The Protestant-. effort to ingratiate the film-makers has also failed with the increasingly complex character of the film industry. In the former case, hints that the industry might strike back via restraint of trade suits hastened th4 collapse of the old paternalism. In the latter case, the church has simply'' refused to be "delivered" to the box office by the clerical bureaucrats am publicists who conceived of their task as a noble effort to sacralize the industry.

We are now painfully aware of the fact that students ,entering graduate schools today are children of the television age. Their world is mediated by moving pictures, not primarily by books. Their perceptions are symbolized in visual imagery. They probably are harbingers of the future. Knowledge will increasingly be mediated by visual—i.e., filmic--events. Therefore, the church has an extraordinary responsibility to its people to educate for cinematic experience. What is needed is not primarily some dogmatic apparatus that will reassure churchmen that such and such a film is "safe." The church of the future will simply refuse to believe such data. What is needed is a new sense of style and discrimination that will enable the church adequately to apprehend and criticize the film. Unless the church can educate its people to the issues of discrimination in film experience, it will have nothing to say to its people in regard to the dominant mode of communication of ideas and values. If the latter is the case, then an entire section of contemporary human social experience will be untouched by the reflection of the church. The important question, then, is not "shall the church involve itself in the film?´ but "how shall it involve itself in the film?

The work of the Film Awards' Nomination Panel of the Broadcasting and Film Commission (B.F.C.) of the National Council of Churches has been one attempt to address this problem. Since its organization in 1963, the panel has struggled with the issues of interpretation and sought to prepare a slate of "award" caliber films for the B.F.C.'s consideration. Each of the years has been stormy and, to put it mildly, the films selected have not always pleased the constituency. But the process has been useful in clarifying the church's self understanding and in challenging outmoded assumptions in the stance of the church over against the film industry.

The film awards process was first proposed by the West Coast Committee of the Broadcasting and Film Commission. The B.F.C. formerly had a staff member and an office in Los Angeles, and a continuing committee of clergy and interested laity in the industry comprised the so-called West -Coast Committee. George Heimrich, now retired, was the director of the office, and Bishop Gerald Kennedy of the Los Angeles Area of The United Methodist Church was the chairman, The committee met twice a year and usually engaged itself- in desultory discussion of procedural matters including how to get the power centers of the film industry to pay attention to the churches. The primary work of the office consisted in script advisement by the staff member. The elimination of "offensive" language and scenes .derogatory to the church was the basic goal of this service The awards plan was one of the concrete achievements of this group.

A high level of hostility normally ruled in the West Coast Committee because of misunderstandings between It and the New York office of the B.F.C. The basic economic fact was that the decision-making center the film industry was New York, although the West Coast people contended that Hollywood was the production center. To add frustration to the situation, fewer films were being made in Hollywood. A certain pietism dominated the West: Coast group so that its members tended to conceive of their role- as "ministering" to the people who worked in the industry. It was tragically naive to assume that pastoral care to a "grip" or even an actor would possibly seriously affect the direction of the industry, controlled as it is from the financial centers of the Fast.

The basic division in the film awards process through the subsequent years has been between the pietists, who generally have reflected the style of the old West Coast Committee, on the one hand, and the more avant-garde, who generally reflect the eastern style, on the other. A fundamental paternalism dominated the early discussions of the panel. The assumption that the church could influence Hollywood by rewarding "good" directors lay behind much of the process. The eastern wing felt as strongly that the panel had to approach its work with a certain disinterestedness and critical distance and that its primary task was the education of the church in film discrimination.

The draft proposal for the awards was framed by a committee of the West Coast group chaired by the Rev. Hubert Rasbach, pastor of Hope Lutheran Church in Los Angeles. Pastor Rashbach is the only surviving member of the first panel still active in the group, and was its first chairman. I have been chairman since 1965. The original proposal called for awards to be presented in "categories." The "categories" were useful in clarifying the panel's work, but they proved to be confusing to the industry. The categories for 1964 awards were announced in the trade press and in more than three hundred direct mail invitations to producers. They were prefaced by the statement that the awards

may be given to American films of outstanding artistic merit that:

  1. Portray American life and culture in - the light of Christian ideals.
  2. Present family life in keeping with Christian principles,
  3. Show the application of Christian ideals to the growth of personality in children.
  4. Treat religious subject matter, whether biblical, historical or contemporary,- with accuracy, pertinence and moral value.
  5. Reflect the predicament and hope of man.

Most of the bias of the first committee is reflected in the statement of the categories. Note that only "American" films were to be considered. It was assumed that the "target" of the committee was the domestic film industry. Not only did the complexities of internationalization of the industry make this an untenable limitation; automatically excluded from the purview of the committee was an extraordinary group of films. It is also instructive to note that no awards were given in the first three categories because of the specific requirement that the films be "Christian" in orientation. Such films were simply not being made. The most fruitful debates in the panel had to do with its own methodology, not primarily with the merit, artistic or otherwise, of a particular film. A vast amount of energy was spent on the process of clarifying the critical goals of the panel. The temptation of the panel was always to substitute institutional questions --"What will our constituency think?"— for critical questions — "What is a film of outstanding artistic merit?" Attacks on the, panel have usually charged that the panel is nonrepresentative. This assumes that its task is sensing the majority views of churchmen and becoming a popularity poll. The panel's makeup was wisely designed to include theologians, pastors, critics, and denominational officers. Its work was to be prophetic, critical, and educative.

In an attempt to be more sophisticated in the awards process, the panel refined the categories in 1965. Eliminating the adjectival use of "Christian," it turned to the more situational- phrase, "within the perspective of the Christian faith."

The Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches may make awards annually to American-produced films of outstanding artistic merit that, within the perspective of the Christian faith and within one or more of the following categories :

  1. Portray with honesty and compassion the human situation in which man is caught in tension between his attempt to realize his full potential of his humanity and his tendency to destroy that humanity.

  2. Portray human society and its cultural environment in such a way as to enhance understanding of the family of man in its richness and variety.

  3. Treat religious subject matter, whether biblical, historical, or contemporary, with perceptiveness, accuracy, and pertinence.
  4. Bring qualities of imagination, beauty, and honesty to subject matter appropriate for children.
  5. Provide exceptional entertainment value appropriate for family viewing.

This statement was a considerable refinement over the original categories, but the industry was still mystified. This confusion clearly reflected the growing awareness on the part of the panel that it was inappropriate to think that the categories had any influence on film-making at all. Further, the careful theological refinement may have satisfied some theologically sophisticated critics, but failed to convince the church filmgoer. Most fatally, however, the categories tended to distract the committee from its proper work, which was identifying meritorious films. With some modest editorial changes, these categories were used in the awards of 1967. The most significant shift was the decision by the B.F.C. to include foreign films in the regular process for the first time.

Continued discussion in the B.F.C. and panel has let to the current mandate on selection which was used in the 1968 award deliberations :

The Broadcasting and Film Commission of the N.C.C. may make awards annually to films of outstanding merit that, within the perspective of the Christian faith, also (1) portray with honesty and compassion the human condition—including human society in its cultural environment -- depicting man in the tension between his attempt to realize the full potential of his of. his humanity and his tendency to distort that humanity, and (2) and portray the vitality, tragedy, humor, and variety of life in such as to provide entertainment value appropriate for family viewing and audience appeal; and (3) present subject matter which, in terms content, will fire the mental, moral and existential development youth."

The panel further proposes to use this statement. as its mandate but to submit films to the Board of Managers with appropriate, citations under the general categories of (1) for mature audiences, (2) for youth, and (3) for family viewing.

The trend toward simplifying the statement of fps reflects the growing cooperation between the B.F.C. and the National Catholic Office on the Motion Picture (N.C.O.M.P.). Members of each agency have been auditing the other's committee work and, in 1967. gave the first joint award. Each agency now looks forward to a completely ecumenical film award process. If this can be achieved, the church's posture in regard to the entertainment. media may have some of the force formerly attributed to it.

II

A survey of the award-winning films is instructive in understanding the panel's development. In the first award year, 1964, three films were cited—Fail Safe, Fate Is the Hunter, and Becket. Cinematically, Fail Safe has been forgotten, whereas Dr. Strangelave, rejected by the panel that year and also dealing with atomic annihilation, has survived as a classic. Fate Is the Hunter, a modest story of mirage in airline pilots, has long since been forgotten. Becket, an artistically superior film, was as close as the committee could come to "religious subject matter," although it begged a great number of historical questions.

In short, the first awards were not particularly distinguished. The "process" really said nothing at all to the industry.. The industry still hoped for a docile church agency that could "deliver" bodies to the box office. Henry Youngstein, producer of Fate Is the Hunter, at the awards luncheon said: "This is a tremendous step that the NCC would do this, and 'now the other half is helping us to make the pictures you like and that you think have something to say by giving us a hand in getting the word out to the local local churches throughout the country."

Edward Anhalt, the distinguished screen, writer, who accepted: the award for Becket at that luncheon, commented that he was then working on the script for BoeingBoeing, a sex farce considerably less "religious" than Becket, a fact that created minor uneasiness among the pious present. It was instructive for the churchmen to see how much the industry was dominated by purely business standards.

The 1965 awards year saw the most far-reaching decisions yet made by the panel. Film historians who worry about such things single out this event as a "turning point". in the church's relationship to the mass media industries. (Cf. G. William Jones, Sunday Night at the Movies (Richmond: John Knox Press. 1967), p. !6. 'See the New York Times, Feb. 4, 1966.) This was the year of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Some prominent members of the B.F.C. had been variously involved with director-producer George Stevens from the inception of the film. An extraordinary amount of energy was expended upon church officers and communications people by Stevens' organization. Trips to the Utah filming site were arranged. Extraordinary publicity releases, purporting to illustrate the pious environment of the production and the religious nature of the entire enterprise, flooded the church press. Not only was Stevens a good friend of high-placed churchmen in Southern California, but his staff cultivated these relationships during the production. One member of the panel itself, who fought tenaciously for the film, was subsequently revealed to have been retained professionally by the Stevens organization. Bishop Kennedy, George Heimrich, and others were outspoken in their support of the film and vigorously advocated nomination. After two days' debate and a subsequent telephone conference call, a majority of the panel voted not to nominate the film, and the silence was like a rifle report across the industry.

The secular critics panned the film without mercy. Time called it "three hours and 41 minutes' worth of impeccable boredom" (Feb. 26, 1965). Shana Alexander, writing in Life (Feb. 26, 1965), noted that "Christ never tried to please everybody"

Stevens has said that he believes his picture will have great ecumenical value because it does not offend any religion : Catholic, Protestant or Jew. But by not offending anybody, he first bores and finally outrages all but the most pious of movie fans. The main trouble with trying to blanket the screen with wall-to-wall good taste, I think, is that you wind up with nothing to show for it but a pile of beautiful pictures. Good taste, relentlessly applied, comes to seem like lack of discrimination, lack of risk, lack of daring, lack of invention, even lack of inspiration. But what the picture seems to lack most is courage. Given his title, his subject matter, his great cinematic talent and infinite resources, I wish Stevens had found boldness to match.

Playboy (May, 1965) commented, "It takes a lot of planning and thought to make the birth, life, work and sacrifice of Jesus Christ into a big windy bore, but The Greatest Story Ever Told succeeds almost perfectly."

The panel's position was a desperate one. A significant section of the church had indeed already tacitly promised to "deliver" its public to the theaters. Not to offend the industry and run the risk of the industry turning its back on "religious films" was implied in most of the argument for the film. These critics argued that it was not necessarily a successful film, but that to snub it would "make us look funny." (See Christianity Today, Feb. 18, 1966, p. 49.) The position of the majority was that a film could not receive the award simply because it was a good try. If it failed to meet the collective judgment of the panel's view of artistic merit, theological pertinence, and accuracy, then it simply failed. The extraordinary mishmash of traditions and legends, including having Jesus recite the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, presented a peculiar problem to a National Council group, in view of the fact that the National Council held the copyright on the RSV "in order to preserve the purity of the text."

The panel decided not to nominate the film to the Board of Managers. A brief, desultory debate followed the report at the Board of Managers' meeting, but it was apparent that few of the film's friends had any real enthusiasm for the film, and its critics prevailed. (*For a detailed criticism from the point of view of a biblical scholar, see James M. Robinson, "Neither History nor Kerygma," Christian Advocate, Mar. 23, 1965. A general critical statement is to be found in my article "The Greatest Story; Can It Ever Be Told on Film?" Together, May, 1965. For additional statements see Malcolm Boyd, "The Church's Word to the Film Industry," Christian Century, Mar. 9, 1966, and Arthur Knight, "Who's to Classify?" Saturday Review, Feb. 26, 1966.)

To further exacerbate the situation, the films that did receive the panel's nod in 1965 created additional furor. The Pawnbroker and Nothing But a Man, widely hailed in the general press, attracted heavy criticism from the church public. There was a brief, contextual glimpse of nudity in The Pawnbroker, but the film nevertheless had received the seal of the Code office. Nothing But a Man, which may survive as the only real classic in the panel's list, was objectionable to some because of the slty language of some characters. In interpreting the awards to the presentation luncheon in Los Angeles, panel member Dean Leonidas Contos, now president of Hellenic University in Brookline, Massachusetts, said:

Pawnbroker is cited in the first category, and perhaps we need to isolate in that category what are the operative words, the P>operative ideas. It speaks of the "human situation," and man's attempt "to realize the full potential of his humanity and his tendency to distort that humanity." In short, the tension that began in Eden. Set in that awful tension, played against the shattering flashbacks to the dehumanizing animal behavior of the Nazi camp guards, the camera has here been made to strip nudity itself to that inner nakedness where God's grace seeks to find us and clothe us. It recalled to my thoughts, not then but later, a news photo I once saw as a young boy (and obviously never forgot) of a Spanish woman lying naked on a pocked street, ravaged to the point of death by beastlike soldiers in that terrible civil war.

How is it possible to force such a scene into the same precise rule that is aimed at suggestive voluptuousness, the too familiar boudoir and bathtub scene? I think the point can scarcely be made more cogently than a member of this panel, the Rev. James Wall, has done in a recent editorial in the journal he edits: "As for nudity, anyone obtaining salacious pleasure from those terrifying moments is already dead to the rest of life, and hardly a subject for further stimulation."

But to address a word to those in the industry who may have confused this artistic judgment for a moral one condoning nudity for its own sake, let us be altogether clear what has been said here. Pawnbroker was cited, after genuine travail, in spite of what would have been, not long ago, a violation of the Code. To thrust aside a work of such sensitivity, honesty, perception, to have canceled out its conspicuous merits by invoking a rigid canon which is itself susceptible to much interpretation, would have been to judge ourselves wilfully blind to the contrasts of beauty and ugliness that underlie human life.

The B.F.C. received a number of letters attacking the awards because of their apparent condoning of "blasphemy, obscenity, and nudity." What really underlay the attack was a massive rage that such modest artistic statements were made in the year of the bypassing of the most expensive ($20,000,000) attempt yet made in a genre of film that had outlived the sophistication of our culture and the churches. If honesty is important, then to speak with clarity and force is more important than to speak with halfhearted enthusiasm for theologically and artistically empty productions of an obsolete genre.

Among other films receiving awards in 1965 was A Patch of Blue, which includes the first kiss of a white girl by a black man in modern film and a brutal rape scene. The irony of this is the fact that the panel members most strongly opposed to Pawnbroker were most vigorously in favor of Patch. It is now rather humorous to note that the girl was blind, so the embrace scene was relatively "safe." What the Patch of Blue award illustrated was the inevitable fact of compromise in the committee, and the committee's tendency to trust certain producers, especially those who publicly supported the old Code. (Whereas The Pawnbroker received the Code seal, it forced the Code office to stretch its interpretation. Patch of Blue, on the other hand, revealed the inherent ambiguity of the Code by being formally "clean" but also an extra-ordinarily violent film.) The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, a sensitive and profoundly moving film biography, and The Sound of Music, a surefire family category film, rounded out the list for 1965. It was an eventful, problematic year.

 

The N.C.O.M.P. awards for 1965 were equally startling to the press and the industry. Darling and Juliet of the Spirits, originally rated A- "morally unobjectionable for adults, with reservations," by the old Legion of Decency, were cited by the National Catholic Office on the Motion Picture for their "artistic vision" and "expression of authentic human values." The absence of any reference to The Greatest Story Ever Told by the Catholics and the fact that all but one of the films cited were foreign made, added to the furor of the National Council awards, created a shock wave in the industry still reverberating.

 

III.

The 1966 awards debate revolved around Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which the panel nominated in category 1. The citation to the Board of Managers read: "[Woolf] presents with compassion and honesty the human predicament in which we are caught in the dilemmas of life. This film, recommended only for mature audiences by the panel, reveals the struggle for integrity and wholeness that resists the temptation to live within fantasy and deceit, and to turn instead to courageous acceptance of the responsibilities of maturity." Critical weight of church leadership supported the panel. But shouts of outrage were quick to be heard. A few congregations withheld support for the National Council because of the citation. Outrage was typified by the Rev. Charles P. Smith, in Worship and Arts (April-May, 1967), under the headline "Filthy Movie Wins Award from National Council of Churches" :

Some will say I haven't any right to an opinion at all since I haven't seen the movie and don't intend to do so. .. . But I did read the play, and I thought it neither honest nor compassionate, though others of Miller's (sic!) works appear to have both qualities. It seemed to me to be a work in which the author became fascinated with his ability to twist and contort a situation for the sake of displaying his own virtuosity and inventiveness. Nothing I have heard about the movie leads me to think that this has been altered. And besides, I can't imagine any people less likely to be able to portray "with compassion and honesty" any situation at all save perhaps one of self-indulgence, than Miss Taylor and Mr. Burton. There is a moral stench which surrounds this whole work, and its promotion, which should have ruled it out for the reviewers of the Council.

Woolf was seen by the majority of the panel as a deeply moral film because of its complete honesty in depicting life apart from God. It is God's absence that is the motif of the film, and the possibility of grace that is Nichols' peculiar touch to Albee's frightening story.

The rest of the 1966 list was more or less undistinguished. Sand Pebbles, And Now Miguel, and Born Free, have dropped from sight. The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming was cited as a family film with "uncommon and humorous treatment of the international situation." And a special award was given to The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Pier Paola Pasolini. The Board of Managers added an additional special award to William Jersey for his thoughtful cinema verite statement A Time for Burning.

A Man for All Seasons was cited in category 3 and became the first joint award with the N.C.O.M.P. As in Becket, the Roman Catholic saint emerged as a problematic hero, but the panel decided that it was a statement "about a man who cared more for honesty and integrity than for his life . . . and is therefore a profound statement of the possibilities of human existence under the pressure of faith to oneself and to God."

1967 produced what is admittedly the most undistinguished list of citations. It may have been, as some members of the panel assert, that exhaustion following the intense debates of the previous two years left the panel in no mood for harsh debate. This was the year of Bonnie and Clyde (cited by N.C.O.M.P.) and Blow Up (hotly debated and narrowly voted down in the panel). The citations went to In the Heat of the Night, The Battle of Algiers, Up the Down Staircase, and The War Game. It should be noted that these films deal with racial intolerance, violence in the cities, crises in public schools, and atomic annihilation. A fifth film, In Cold Blood, was cited by the panel but rejected by the Board. This was the first time that this had happened. It was rejected after a heated attack upon it by Robert E. Lee, prominent playwright and member of the Board of Managers.

IV

When the West Coast Committee made its original proposal to the Board of Managers of the B.F.C. to establish an awards process, a committee of the Board was established to evaluate the suggestion and prepare a proposal for final consideration. Philip Johnson, then an executive with the Lutheran Church in America, served as chairman of this drafting group. The Johnson report revealed that members did not begin their work unanimously convinced of the value or importance of such a pro-gram. But the group asserted in its final report that

the program would afford an unparalleled opportunity to dramatize the interest of the Christian Church in the creative process in the arts, would encourage the production of films and programs of the highest standards, would give public support to those individuals in the film and broadcast industries who are striving to lift the general level of production, would present the Church in a positive rather than a negative stance in relation to these media, and would provide the opportunity for the Church in general and the B.F.C. and its members in particular to enter into significant conversations with the entertainment industry on standards, values, and goals.

On balance, one would suggest that the work of the Film Awards Nominating Panel and the decisions of the Board of Managers of the B.F.C. have moved the church in the direction of the purposes outlined by the Johnson committee in 1963. Interpretation by the panel has visibly demonstrated the church's interest in the creative arts by encouraging discussion of films and by drawing attention to films that might not otherwise have been noted. The process has also had modest success in giving public support to film-makers who were bucking the conservative business reflexes of the film industry and were trying to make extraordinary films. I once asked a producer if the award made any difference at all, and he replied that sometimes the difference of a thousand admissions makes or breaks a film and therefore the award has measurable economic value to the industry. There is some evidence that The Pawnbroker was actually nudged out of box-office doldrums by the announcement of the B.F.C. award. The desperation over The Greatest Story is further evidence of the direct economic value of the awards.

The awards have changed the industry's stance with regard to the church. When the old Legion of Decency held a boycott-type club over the film-maker, and the Protestants through more subtle but no less paternalistic devices promised a docile and bland audience, the industry knew what to expect. The formulas were all available. The long succession of "bathrobe operas"—biblical epics—and incredibly dull films such as A Man Called Peter were cranked out for the church folk. A new generation of churchmen, excited by a new generation of film-makers, was a great deal more sophisticated and expected the church to do better in its conversations with the industry.

Sentimental suggestions about industry-clergy conferences were doomed to failure. The economics of film-making are such that not even an artistic giant like George Stevens can risk experimentation in a biblical film. In the last analysis, the development of taste and discrimination was the only way open to the church. The film awards process has hastened the growth of discrimination by creating a growing community of churchmen involved in critical appraisal and discussion of the role of religion in the arts.

It is in the final suggestion of the Johnson committee that the process has had extraordinary influence. Throughout the period of the awards, members of the staff and panel itself have been intimately involved in discussions with Geoffrey Shurlock of the Motion Picture Association of America Code Office. When Jack Valenti became president of the M.P.A.A., relations between his office and the Broadcasting and Film Commission staff increased, and genuine dialogue has resulted.

It is no secret that the Rev. William Fore of the B.F.C., Dr. James Wall of the panel, and Fr. Patrick Sullivan and Mr. Henry Herx of N.C.O.M.P. were consultants with Valenti during the development of the new motion picture code and the new voluntary rating system. In fact, the idea of film classification was first proposed to Jack Valenti by Mr. Fore two years before the film-makers accepted the idea as an alternative to censorship. At first the term "classification" was a dirty word around the industry. A great number of factors go into decisions leading to the establishment of the rating system. It is also true that the code has served in the past to restrain exhibition of films from producers not in the association. But the vast majority of entertainment films are subject to the good faith implied in the new rating system, and the fact that church officials were invited to participate in the establishment is remarkable only in the sense that, for once, it was for the right reasons.

What is the future of the awards process? Some feel that the time has come to consider a more educative device, such as a critical journal in which more extended statements might be made. The cryptic statements in the citations to the film-makers and the press in the awards process are too brief. The B.F.C. does in fact now have a committee working on a proposal for just such a journal.

Given the high level of anxiety in the industry, it may be that the awards process will continue to be useful both to the film-maker and to the church. It is an ambiguous business at best, and the work of the panel during the first four years has left much to be desired. But the National Council of Churches has wisely kept the panel independent of outside pressures and, to a surprising degree, opened a new era of responsible, ecumenical, and theologically informed film criticism.

What is Religious Art?

What do we mean when we speak of religious art? Do we mean that religious themes are depicted in the art? Do we mean that religious persons were the artists? Do we mean that some special religious group or church has decided that the art is orthodox and therefore official?

All of these definitions have been used at one time or another to define religious art. The most common definition is that religious art is that which depicts biblical themes. Such art abounds, particularly that done in earlier centuries; but it is still prominent today. The next suggestion—that art is what religious artists do—saw its highest expression in the Renaissance when the church employed great artists who experimented with themes not only from biblical settings but from classical mythology as well. Often in history, "religious art" was what the church officially declared to be religious art. The most extreme example of this style is to be recalled in the Inquisition of the sixteenth century and in iconoclastic excesses right up to the present time.

Now the fact is that the very expression religious art is problematic. Biblical themes may be used in a painting but for irreligious purposes. The religion of the artist is ultimately irrelevant to the quality of his work, so that "faithful" painters may not be any more successful in doing "religious" art than nonbelievers. Some of the most powerful "religious art" of recent times has been done by artists professedly skeptical of the values of religious traditions.

It may well be that the interest that church folk show in defining religious art is but an example of the bad religious habit of the church to divide the religious from the secular, the O.K. and the not O.K., the clean and the impure. Such an attitude is contrary to the highest sense of the Christian view of the world and history and the intention of the gospel. God speaks to the world through its fullness and its roughness as well as from its particularity and its religious traditions.

What do we mean by the word religion? It comes from an ancient Latin word that means simply "to tie things together." Religion is the human quest for coherence and meaning in the understanding of the world. When the most primitive cultures first sought to see some connection between birth and death and the seasons of the year, they were constructing a religious view. When various forms of idolatry became part of their effort to influence the world, they were merely trying to tie all things together, to make sense out of a world that often proved hostile to human feelings. Religion is the generic word for Christianity. It is not synonymous with Christianity. Christianity is a form of religion, although to many of us it is the highest form. Religion is whatever posture is taken toward the world and its events and power that seeks to tie all things together into a coherent and experiential whole.

Now it is easy to see where all the trouble in the definition of the term religious art arises. According to the above argument, art does not have to have biblical subject matter to be "religious." Any felt passion or insight about the world, expressed with power, ought to be considered religious art. In fact, we know that in earlier cultures, religion and art were almost the same thing. The religious buildings, icons, and music of a culture are art; and its art is its religion.

"Art" is the process of expressing in concrete form or event human emotions and aspirations, ranging from the simple joys of being to complex philosophical expression. A work of art is a concrete thing, an event that helps the participant to bridge his experience with that of the artist or the group or the religious values expressed therein. If one accepts this definition, there is no such thing as "art"; there are only the things we make to tell our stories as human beings with religious purposes. Sister Corita Kent, the famous pop artist, once said in a poster, "We have no art here. We only do the best we can."

Somewhere we received the idea that art must be pretty or polished or symmetrical or restful. It may express those possibilities. But, if our definition is correct, it must also at times be ugly, rough, asymmetrical, and jarring. Why? Because men and women sense their world that way some of the time—maybe most of the time.

How then are we to judge whether a work of art is a good piece of art or whether it is religious art? The answer is that this is probably an irrelevant question. The most important question is this: Is the work of art expressive of a powerful view of life and, regardless of subject matter, does it stir some religious sensitivity in the viewer?

The late Paul Tillich, a great Christian theologian, suggested that a work of art could have religious subject matter and still be an irreligious statement. On the other hand, a work of art on a non-biblical subject could be expressed with such power that it would be a profoundly religious painting. These statements may seem contradictory to you. But let us look at them carefully.

Tillich believed that just stating a religious theme was not adequate. A religious painting of this type would seem to carry the entire religious message. The experience of the viewer would be limited to his knowledge of the particular religious scene. On the other hand, a treatment of a common event in human life and experience, so touched by human sense that its power still grips the viewer, is unmistakably a "religious" event. It ties things together.

Look at the painting of Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World." It is pretty. It expresses a fine personal sentiment. It is full of rich symbols. It contains religious subject matter. But it falls short of being a powerful statement of human emotion or aspiration. Now look at the painting of Georges Rouault's "Old King." It shows a powerful monarch who sits with a frail flower in his hand, his jaw tight, as he contemplates the finality of life and the emptiness of temporal power. Which painting is more religious? They are both "religious," but only Rouault's is also great art.

Let us now check our theory by looking at two artistic statements about Jesus. Look at the widely loved "Head of Christ" by Warner Sallman; and then consider the head of Christ by Matthias Grunewald from the Isenheim altarpiece in Germany. Sallman's Christ is theatrical, handsome, European, blond. The full emotional weight of the painting is carried in the flaccid expression and the uplifted eyes. The face is that of a slightly effeminate and untroubled person. In short, it is our culture's expression of confidence in a less than powerful, prophetic, and effective Lord. Grunewald, on the other hand, depicts Christ in suffering on the cross. A frightful expression of shock and pain is the dominant theme. The skin of our Lord is bleeding, and the crown of thorns is pressed down to draw blood. By superficial standards this is an "ugly" Christ.

The question we must now ask is this: Which of these depictions of our Lord speaks more nearly to our sense of the power and mystery of God's mighty act of Incarnation? Is it the calm, cool, and effeminate Lord, or is it the victim—the one who took into himself the suffering of the world to reveal God's love? Modern people may want to like Sallman's Christ, but the tragic events of our time make the sixteenth-century Christ of Grunewald more powerful. We can identify with this Christ.

This insight brings us to the final problem in our discussion of religious art. Art is so important in the life of man and society that from the beginning of civilization tyrants have tried to control it. Keep the horizons of art no wider than the expectations of the rulers and you have kept a people under control. That is why the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in Russia have caused artists much trouble. That is why any attack on the artist in our culture is ultimately an attack on our own freedom to know and believe.

Even Plato suggested that in his perfect Republic the artists ought to be rigorously controlled. We live in a free society; and if artists are free, they can be prophets in that society. They tell us what we may not have the imagination to see and think. They tell us secrets of our own hearts which religious traditions may not permit us to confess. In short they perform a kind of religious task for us all. They keep us open to the spirit of newness and innovation in the quest for meaning in human history and life. Without them, life would be merely the dull routine of what is apparent and not real, what is accustomed and not novel, what is required and not daring.

If you have not been to the local gallery in your museum or at the college or university near you, why not go soon and ask yourself some of the questions posed in this essay? Get acquainted with an artist and find out what makes him or her think and speak. Then, in your own reflection on the meaning of life, ask yourself this question: How do I tie it all together?

Religion is life, and the life that is lived without questions and spiritual wrestling is really a dull life indeed. When our minds and religious senses become dull and corrupt, then the glory of God and the blazing intentions of our Lord for our lives are unable to register in our daily existence. That is why religion and art are part of the wider quest for meaning. That is why we need them both.

A Theology of Church Music

It is commonly assumed that music in the church is embellishment of worship, somewhat in the same category as architecture or stained glass windows. Church musicians, while deploring this lower estate, do not often make the case for the theological function of their vocation. Reflection upon the nature of religious experience and the art of music reveals the possibility that music is, in fact, the complete mode of bearing the structure of worship.

How to say the unsayable? That is the dilemma of religion. The ways of speaking about unspeakable events intrude upon the appreciation of those events. So religion is always thrust into two modes: creating symbols and studiously avoiding any expression. The former takes the forms as diverse as literal representations (idols) and scientific "explanation" (systematic theology). The latter takes forms such as iconoclasm (smashing idols) and quietism (inner experience).

The history of the Christian movement can be described as the alternation between these various modes. The early church centered its life around the memory of great events and the reenactment of those events in living expression. This was followed by the rationalizing of the events into dogma which became "science" or systematized knowledge. As such, it almost always took discursive shapes. Thus idolized, dogma was broken by iconoclastic movements that returned to expressive modes in the periods of reformation. One may suggest that the power of events always dominates and cracks the theological frameworks that seek to "explain" or to "capture" events. Marianne Moore once suggested that "expanded explanation tends to spoil the lion_s leap." And in periods of despair about "explanation" of the events of God, anxious spirits yearn for new language. "God is the no longer sayable," said the German poet Rilke, "and his attributes fly back into creation."

Music alone survives this dilemma. Of all the ways of speaking in religion, music exists in time and not space. It exists at the intersections of profoundly empirical, physical, and intellectual ways of dealing with events. Its forms are expressive and not didactic. Its capacity for the creative occasion of celebration is modulated by the entire range of human emotion. Its most contemporary forms are coherent with its entire history. It is amenable to the private as well as the public expression of response to events. In its choral forms, it is capable of the disciplined authority of a community speaking together. In short, music is the context of the widest possible theological expression.

Neo-Platonic philosophy (vastly influential in early Christian thought) often resorted to the metaphors of music to describe the world itself. The phrase "the music of the spheres" in the popular hymn by Babcock is a vestigial expression of the early belief that the world itself "made music" as it moved in its ordained rounds. Mimesis is possible in music. The power of natural events is recreated in the expressions of music. So the great supernatural events of religious faith are best "described" by music whereas they may appear problematic in discursive speech. Note that the mighty events recorded in the New Testament are often given musical settings, as in the Christmas stories and in the apocalyptic visions of the Revelation of John.

Music, existing in time, is the art most congenial to the imagination. It participates in the "environment" of a person_s space without taking up space. As such, it does not "crowd" belief by the risks of location or space or thing-ness. Therefore, it is most congenial to the Judeo-Christian sense for the non-spatial character of God. But because it is formed by natural organs, such as voices, brass, wood, and animal skins, it also participates in the natural, spatial world as well.

This coincidence of time and space, nature and supernature, makes possible the metaphor of the creative event itself. Since religion assumes the meeting of the transcendent and the immanent, the event of music permits the ever new event, powerful in its newness yet linked in time and memory with faith. That is why Alex Robertson could say, "To sing the chorales of Bach is for the disbeliever to experience the suspension of disbelief."

Church musicians are engaged in serious theological work. This may not seriously be admitted by the clergy but it is true. In its lower forms of misunderstanding, church music may be seen as mere embellishment of an event that is more adequately carried by discursive speech. The sermon is a kind of theology and in its more powerful shapes it does have the same authority as music. But that authority probably will be due to the rhythmic and tonal structure of the sermon as much as anything else. In black preaching, we come close to preaching as solo and choral music. But preaching cannot command the full range of possibilities inherent in music as expressive form. Thus it is that the theology of a period strangely survives in its religious music and not in its discursive speech. We still sing hymns from the third century, but who but scholars read the sermons of that period? Plainchant survives but the medieval homilies have not. The Reformation lives in its hymns as does the evangelical revival of the 18th century in Wesley and Watts. The irony is that the medium most dependent upon time is in fact the most timeless medium.

These observations are not intended to radicalize church musicians in their continuing struggle with clerical Philistines. But they are intended to give a preliminary suggestion of the profoundly theological structure of church music and to encourage understanding and even appropriation of the role of "theologian" as proper for the church musician.