On September 14, 1997, the Rev. Jimmy Creech performed a "wedding" ceremony for two women he will only refer to as "Mary and Martha." Congregants guarded the door as they watched for news crews. A classical guitarist played and the two women exchanged rings and vows. Someone sang the Lord’s Prayer and Creech preached a homily and served Holy Communion.
"We didn’t want it to be different than any heterosexual marriage," Creech told the Los Angeles Times. "And except for sanctioning by the state, it wasn’t."
At his church trial, he claimed: "I do not understand what the phrase ‘homosexual union’ means. It has not been defined by General Conference as it has no meaning for me." He went on to admit that he "celebrated the union of their love and fidelity to one another" and called the event a "spiritual union that was confirmed and celebrated by the covenanting ceremony."
When asked why he called the service a covenanting service, Creech replied: "The name is important because covenant has biblical roots and relates to God and people. The partners pledged their faith and love. The service was a celebration of the love and fidelity of two people."
When he was asked by the prosecutor if he will continue doing covenanting services if he were returned to First Church, Creech said, "Yes I will."
Let us try to clarify the real issue by asking a simple question. Is there anything in Scripture, church history, or the Discipline which can be used as the basis for the church’s participation in a covenant service between homosexuals, thus approving of same-gender relationships and sanctifying same-sex intercourse, so that it can be considered the equivalent of a heterosexual, "one-flesh" holy union?
If such basis can be found then the ceremony should not be simply
a compassionate form of ministry limited to a few "reconciling congregations"
and "prophetic" pastors. It should be seen as morally right, be
included in our Book of Worship, and be understood by everyone as
a part of the disciplinary mandate for the church’s ministry to homosexuals
as "individuals of sacred worth." If such a basis cannot be
found then it must be considered a misguided attempt to bless the unblessable.
The Law of the Church
Until recently church law as stated in the Discipline was considered
to be quite clear. When the Dumbarton UM Church of Washington, D.C. announced
a "Holy Union" Covenant service between two lesbians in May 1990,
Bishop Joseph Yeakel wrote a carefully-worded, seven-page letter to the
UM Church, quoting at length from the Discipline and showing it forbade
such a ceremony. His document was so clear that it not only prevented that
particular service from being held but also forced the bishop and cabinet
of the Wisconsin Annual Conference to reverse their position.
After allowing University UM Church in Madison to conduct such ceremonies for three-and-one-half years they issued this statement: "We believe that offering the ‘Celebration of Holy Union’ for same-sex persons is incompatible with the Book of Discipline, The Social Principles, is outside the parameters of the original resolution of University Church, and thus must be discontinued."
There is really no ambiguity in the Discipline’s stance. Just as the Scriptures do, it makes a clear distinction between persons and behavior. All persons are affirmed but not all their practices are approved. Rather, in every relevant section—the Social Principles (65C and G), Qualifications for Ordained Ministry (304.3), and the use of church funds (806.12)—it takes a consistent position against homosexual practices. In the light of this unwavering stance, a covenant service between homosexuals that not only legitimizes but celebrates a union in which same gender sex will be practiced, is an attempt to bless what the Discipline clearly does "not condone" but considers "incompatible with Christian teaching."
The 1996 General Conference sought even more clarity when it added to the Social Principles of the church a statement saying, "Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches." (The placement of this sentence in the Social Principles portion of the Book of Discipline, however, has resulted in questions for some about the binding authority of the prohibitive statement.)
At the Creech trial, the Rev. Douglas J. Williams, Creech’s legal counsel, said that the Book of Discipline contains no definition of "order and discipline" of the United Methodist Church. "Never," he said, "have we looked at the Book of Discipline in such a way. It is not our tradition."
Anyone can claim that the Discipline is wrong, and refuse to abide
by its pronouncements. But we are not being true to the facts if we say
it is unclear and ambiguous regarding what can be included in the church’s
ministry to homosexuals.
Church History and Tradition
Once again, until recently, none questioned the almost two thousand year-old
negative attitude of the church toward the practice of homosexuality. It
was based positively on the Judeo-Christian tradition limiting sexual intercourse
to monogamous, heterosexual marriage, and negatively on the unwavering condemnation
of same-sex relations in the Scriptures that continued in the writings of
the Early Church fathers.
In 1980 the late gay-activist John Boswell, history professor at Yale University, wrote Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality and challenged the traditional understanding of both Scripture and history. His book has practically become the source book for the religious pro-gay movement and is quoted everywhere as conclusive. This, in spite of the fact that Richard Hayes, then fellow-Yale scholar, now at Duke Divinity School, in a widely acclaimed article brilliantly showed the fallacy of Boswell’s biblical arguments as a classic example of "eisegesis"—reading one’s own agenda into the text.1
Hayes also examined Boswell’s historical reconstruction of early Christian attitudes toward homosexuality. He agreed with Boswell that homosexual behavior was not a major issue for early Christian writers. Hayes disagreed, however, with Boswell’s fallacious inference that they were, therefore, tolerant of homosexual behavior. Rather, they regarded it as so self-evidently evil as hardly to require discussion. Hayes points out that every pertinent Christian text from the pre-Constantinian period, and all the major Christian writers of the fourth and fifth centuries were unremittingly negative in their judgment on homosexual practices. He points out from Boswell’s own discussion that he is unable to cite a single early Christian text approving homosexual activity. Even a secular scholar like David Greenberg, professor of sociology at New York University, in his remarkable book containing 113 pages of different references, characterizes Boswell’s biblical conclusions as "terribly misleading," "historically unsound," and "badly misleading."2
I have gone to some lengths to show the unreliability of Boswell’s scholarship because shortly before his death, Boswell wrote Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (Villard, 1994). Boswell’s publisher claimed that the author "irrefutably demonstrates that same-sex relationships have been sanctioned and even idealized in Western societies for over two thousand years."
Boswell made the audacious claim that the "brother/sister-making" rituals found in the Eastern Orthodox Church were indeed cryptic affirmations of homosexual or lesbian relationships.
"Even the most cursory examination of Boswell’s documentation exposes the way he struggled to force a group of documents to conform to his conclusions," wrote Robin Darling Young, an associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, in a devastating review of Boswell’s work in First Things.3 As an expert in early Christian history, she wrote: "Despite its facade of scholarship, the book is studded with unwarranted a priori assumptions, with arguments from silence, and with dubious, or in some cases outrageously false, translations of critical terms. And Boswell’s insouciance about historical accuracy would be unacceptable in an undergraduate paper."
"It is understandable that groups that see themselves as oppressed should want to recover their authentic history," Professor Young continues. "But to create a false history, as Boswell has done in this book (despite its elaborate scholarly apparatus), is to undermine the very cause the work hopes to advance."
Other promoters of same-sex covenant services appeal to the whole history of the conflict between church and state. There were times the church claimed its authority to perform marriages when there was no civil license, and to recognize them even though the civil law did not. This is a fact of church history. But note the amazing shift from this truth. We moved from the clergy and church claiming the right to perform and bless heterosexual marriages—something grounded in the Old Testament and early church history—to the false claim that therefore clergy and church now have the right to perform and bless same-sex marriages—something totally contradictory to the clear biblical and traditional condemnation of same-gender sexual relations.
All of this represents a careless use of sources and incredibly shoddy scholarship. I am reminded of an article which appeared in Harpers magazine back in the 1960s entitled, "Footnote and Mouth Disease." It traced various experts who quoted the footnotes of other experts, until after several such quotations the footnote material would then be placed in the main text of a book. It gave striking illustrations of statements that had begun as cautious and tentative opinions, but by this process had ended up being stated as absolute fact!
It appears that many of the present so-called proofs of a historical basis
for homosexual marriages are the result of this practice.
Scripture
Let us clarify one very important matter. The central issue in the Bible
is objective behavior—sexual relations between persons of the
same sex. We do not know whether or not they had a subjective concept
of what we today term "orientation." But this does not mean, as
so many claim, that the biblical references to homosexual practices do not
apply to what we now mean by the terms.
Actually in New Testament times they were so widespread that to the writers, same-sex masturbation and oral and anal intercourse was common knowledge. And every passage that speaks of homosexual behaviors is clear, unambiguously negative and morally hostile towards them. No serious biblical scholar disagrees with this point. Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Romans 1:18-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:8-10 condemn them directly, while Genesis 19, Judges 19, 2 Peter 2:6-10, and Jude 7 do so indirectly.
Then how is it possible to get around this unwavering common thread of Scripture that opposes any form of sexual intercourse (heterosexual or homosexual) outside heterosexual marriage? The central argument today is to dismiss them and accuse the Bible of "heterosexism," saying such morality represents a "patriarchal system" which demanded that sex be heterosexual in order to reinforce male dominance and female subordination.
In The Christian Century, Gary L. Watts points out the falsity of this "implausible" reasoning. "There is no logical need for a patriarchal system to reject homosexuality in order to protect male heterosexual dominance...[it] might just as logically permit male homosexuality alongside heterosexuality, and even exalt it to a higher level," he writes. "In fact, history provides us with a very clear example of exactly this pattern in the cradle of Western patriarchy itself, ancient Greece."
Watts points out that in Plato’s time Athens was clearly patriarchal, yet homosexuality among men was quite accepted.4 While the abuses of the patriarchal system are well known, the basis for the scriptural rejection of homosexual practices is not found in it, but in the fact it violated the sacred order of creation and was therefore morally repugnant to God.
For our discussion, Romans 1:18-32 is the most important reference, since it places the issue in an explicitly theological context and is the only Scripture that discusses both male and female same-sex intercourse. While Paul does not say it is a greater sin than the others listed in vs. 29-32, he does use it as his major illustration of individuals and society in rebellion against God. It is not the cause of God’s wrath but the consequence of it.
Two very sobering phrases are repeated three times within the 15 verses: "God gave them up (or over) to," and "they exchanged." Thus homosexual practices represent idolatry (they worship the creature rather than the Creator), irrationality (their darkened minds become futile in their thinking), and immorality (their hearts become impure and their bodies degraded). But the worst consequence of all is found in the final statement (vs. 32), "…they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
Back in 1990, in the height of the Dumbarton affair, Open Hands magazine stated the real issue at hand when they plainly declared, "When churches publicly support and celebrate committed gay and lesbian relationships through a service of union, they are blessing sexual expression within those relationships."5
In the light of what we have seen in Scripture, Church tradition, and the Discipline, it would seem obvious that covenant services of holy union between gays and lesbians are an attempt to bless the unblessable.
David Seamands is a former professor of pastoral ministries and dean of the chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He has served as a UM missionary, and pastor. He is a contributing editor to Good News and the author of numerous books, most notably Healing for Damaged Emotions.
Notes
1. See Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1986, pp. 184-215. For a detailed analysis of this issue, please see Chapter 16 of The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins 1996) by Richard B. Hays. See also J. Robert Wright, "Boswell on Homosexuality: A Case Undemonstrated," in The Anglican Theological Review, Vol. 66: 1, pp. 79-84. Geoffrey Wainwright, professor of theology at Duke, in the Spring 1992 issue of Challenge, p. 5, terms Boswell’s biblical work "amateurish and pleading."
2. The Construction of Homosexuality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988, pp. 195, 196, 225.
3. Robin Darling Young, "Gay Marriage: Re-Imagining Church History," First Things 47 (November 1994): pp. 43-48; www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9411/darling.html).
4. Gary L. Watts, "An Empty Sexual Ethic," The Christian Century (May 8, 1992): p. 521.
5. Open Hands, Vol. 6., No. 2, Fall 1990 p. 4.
This article in the May/June 1998 issue of Good News was updated from the original article
printed in Good News (November/December 1992).