This post and the next follows in the wake of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland's decision in May to continue on the trajectory of allowing at least some congregations - where the local leadership in the Kirk Session agrees to it—to induct practising gay and lesbian ministers as parish ministers. At the same time, the Kirk is maintaining as its "default position" the traditional Christian understanding that the covenant bond between a man and a woman in marriage is the only God-ordained sphere for sexual activity and that homosexual acts are contrary to God's will and therefore sinful, exactly in the same way as all heterosexual acts outside marriage are considered sinful.
Now, many evangelicals in the Church of Scotland are more than just saddened that the Church seems to be slowly but surely drifting from traditional Christian morality in this area. For them a line in the sand has been crossed here on this issue and it is time either to leave the Kirk now as a few others have done already or at least time to start concrete preparations for leaving in a year or two.
Now, supposing that the proposal does pass all remaining stages and becomes the Kirk's position. What then? What if the Kirk continues to adhere to the historic Christian position but allows individual congregations to depart from it if their conscience will permit it? Should that be an automatic trigger for everyone who disagrees with them to walk out of the Church of Scotland?
There are a couple of thoughts I would suggest we reflect on, in answer to this question, before we jump to any conclusions.
The first thing to point out, as I did in my letter to the Herald newspaper on 23 May, is that there is nothing fundamentally new revealed in this decision about the theological spectrum of views in the Kirk. It is misleading for people to talk about lines in the sand here. Evangelicals and liberals have co-existed in the Church of Scotland despite deep differences in their views on both doctrinal and ethical matters for a long, long time. There are liberal ministers and certainly members in the Kirk today (I think I am fairly safe in suggesting) who would deny such fundamental doctrines as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the deity of Christ, the Trinity as traditionally understood, the reality of sin, Satan or hell; there are those who teach salvation by good works and outright universalism (that all are saved), while others teach that all religions lead to God and many deny that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and so on and so on. In effect, there are people in the Church of Scotland right now, in membership, in leadership and in ministry who have views that evangelicals would spend our lives opposing with our very lifeblood.
Yet, evangelicals have never seen fit to walk away from the Kirk despite such views being tolerated within the Church of Scotland. We have separated ourselves and our congregations from such false teaching, while remaining within the organisation. Why then is the issue of homosexuality considered such a fundamental thing that it should be the line in the sand when outright heresies have been tolerated (and sometimes more than tolerated) within the Kirk for many years?
I have yet to see a satisfying answer to that most basic question. I have to say that if denominational separation from error or heresy is always right, then even if the traditional view of sexual sin had been upheld at the Assembly, no one who takes that line should have been able to remain, in good conscience, within the Kirk anyway. There are ministers who deny even the most basic tenets of the Christian faith according to Paul himself - that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. If anyone can remain in a denomination where people can deny that without facing church discipline and removal from office, why then would the fact someone is gay or lesbian in leadership tip the balance towards separation? Compared to denying the resurrection, homosexual acts are small matters in biblical terms. We need to keep things in proportion.
Or perhaps it is merely because this would be an instance of the Church officially taking a position we would disagree with, whereas much of the liberal teaching is "swept under the carpet" of the "liberty of opinion" clause in the ordination vows? Perhaps, but that argument does not really wash. The Kirk's official positions on a number of points are also biblically questionable, for example the Kirk's official position on the nature of the Bible is hardly a ringing endorsement of evangelical Protestant doctrine! The Church has officially adopted non-evangelical positions on a number of issues over the years.
So we are then left with the impression that it is people's gut reaction to this issue that leads them to see it as such a big deal. If we can tolerate resurrection deniers in leadership but not gays, that tells us something about us and it's not a pretty picture.
All that has really happened is that two groups who disagree over what the Bible is have now found that disagreement surfacing over the question of the morality of same-sex sexual activity. The bigger disagreement was already there and both sides have lived with it for a century or more. Evangelicals believe the Bible is the Word of God written. Liberals, to a greater or lesser extent, believe the Word of God is only somewhere "contained" within the Bible. These two positions on the Bible have now been applied to the morality of homosexual acts within committed homosexual relationships and come to different conclusions.
If we walk away over this, we must do so in repentance for our own sin and the sins of our fathers and grandfathers in the faith who stayed within the liberal Kirk all these years and fought their corner, for if it is right to go now, then it was never right to be there in the first place—at least not in the last 100 years or so.
We have to tread very carefully here or it will merely look as if our true motivations are homophobic rather than theological or biblical.
(To be continued)
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