Catholic Bible Thumping and Protestant Divine Order: The Men Who Rule Us, re: Gay Human Beings

I’ve been mulling over the address Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, gave on 30 July at the Lambeth Conference. To be specific, I’m intrigued by Kasper’s insistence that the Anglican communion toe the Roman line and condemn homosexuality.

Most of all, I’m intrigued by the theological basis of Kasper’s argument. Kasper told the Anglican audience, “This teaching [i.e., the catechetical teaching about homosexuality as intrinsically disordered] is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute."

I’m bowled over by Kasper’s assertion that the catechetical teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute. Kasper was once a highly regarded theologian—that is, he was so regarded prior to his ascendancy to power in Rome, after which his career as a theologian took a direction similar to that of his compatriot and colleague Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. After both men rose to high positions in the Vatican, their theology began to lose its critical (honest) edge and to become a tool serving the power and control interests of Rome.

As a theologian, Kasper knows better, I suspect. He knows full well that to claim that the Catholic teaching about homosexuality is founded in the scriptures and is absolute is absolute balderdash. The Catholic approach to the question of homosexuality has never stressed the scriptures.

It has avoided that stress for a number of reasons. In the first place, Catholic sexual ethics are founded in an Aristotelian philosophical presupposition that human sexuality is “ordered” to procreation, and that all human beings can determine this through natural law. Aristotelian philosophy, as received and reinterpreted by neo-Scholastic theology, is the basis of the Catholic teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered—not the scriptures.

Catholic theology (and the magisterium) have also historically shied away from a scripture-based approach to homosexuality because within the Catholic tradition, there is a strong recognition that the scriptures alone do not yield a clear, consistent sexual ethic. Catholic theology has always wedded scripture to tradition; it has always insisted that the scriptures must be read within the context of a tradition handed down within the community of faith, which shapes how we hear and interpret the Word of God.

And this insistence is sane, when the question is how the scriptures treat homosexuality. When Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) came out with his 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” a significant number of Catholic theologians criticized that pastoral letter’s attempt to base the teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered on scripture. It was this pastoral letter that first gave a high profile to the term “intrinsic disorder” in Catholic teaching about homosexuality.

Just as the term “intrinsic disorder” is an innovation on the tradition—the introduction of a new term to the traditional discussion of homosexuality, an innovation that has dangerous consequences, in that it suggests that the nature of gay human beings is disordered—the way Ratzinger used scripture in his 1986 letter is also innovative, theologians have maintained. Essentially, though Ratzinger’s letter seeks to argue that there is a strong and consistent scriptural basis for condemning homosexuality, the letter tacks scriptural quotations onto the traditional natural-law argument that sex is ordered to procreation. Ratzinger uses bible verses as proof texts for philosophical and theological positions that he has already arrived at without recourse to the scriptures.

Theologians analyzing Ratzinger’s 1986 letter noted that it did not attempt a careful exegesis of the biblical proof texts appended to the natural-law argument. Ratzinger did not try to understand the original meaning of the handful of proof texts that Christians cite to condemn homosexuality; he did not seek to place these texts in their historical context. In ripping them out of their original historical context and prescinding from careful exegetical analysis of the texts, he weakens his argument that scripture provides some kind of consistent and clear condemnation of homosexual persons and their behavior.

I assume that, as a theologian and a powerful Vatican figure, Cardinal Kasper knows these critiques of Ratzinger’s 1986 attempt to ground Catholic teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered in claims about scripture as the source of an absolute, consistent, and clear condemnation of homosexuality. If Cardinal Kasper is aware of this widely held critique of Ratzinger’s 1986 letter, then I wonder why he would think it feasible or wise even to weigh in on a highly controversial theological point that demands much more discussion, as he also weighed into the politics of another religious communion. I have some reflections on these points, which I’ll offer after I examine some of the reasons a large number of theologians today reject the attempt to ground an anti-homosexual ethic on scripture.

The Jewish and Christian scriptures are highly problematic documents for anyone seeking seriously to maintain that “the bible” condemns homosexuality. They are problematic for the following reasons:

▪ The issue of "homosexuality" is hardly ever mentioned in either the Jewish or Christian scriptures.* The texts to which those trying to ground condemnation of gay human beings in the bible point are a tiny handful of texts within a huge body of sacred literature that has much more central focal points.

Given the almost total lack of any interest in the question of homosexuality in either the Jewish or the Christian scriptures, one cannot but be amazed at the attempt of many Christians today to make this issue the issue on which the entire tradition stands or falls. Given the very strong, clear, consistent emphasis of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures on the theme of practical compassion as the very heart and center of authentic religion—do justice, love God, walk humbly with your God—one has to be even more amazed at the certainty of those Christians today for whom homosexuality is the issue that they are on the right track.

When one looks at this certainty in light of the central focus of Judaism and Christianity—practical compassion—one recognizes that something is seriously awry today, in Christian thinking and Christian practice. On the basis of a tiny handful of texts that do not reflect the central preoccupation of the scriptures stated in text after text, how can Christians be so certain that they have the right to propose what is not compassionate at all: the demonization and exclusion of gay human beings as the key task of the churches at this point in history?

▪ The tiny handful of texts on which some Christians today seek to ground the condemnation of gay human beings and their committed relationships is exegetically problematic in the extreme. Every text from both Jewish and Christian scriptures cited to “prove” that homosexuality is wrong is exegetically problematic. Not a single one is clear. The exegetical work done on these texts for some time now shows overwhelmingly that the texts do not provide a clear and consistent basis—a strong foundation—for what is now the central thrust of many Christians across the globe: demonizing and excluding their gay brothers and sisters.

▪ It is self-evident that this handful of exegetically problematic texts cannot be about what contemporary people know as homosexuality, because the psychological concept of innate same-sex attraction and the term used to identify it (that is, “homosexuality”) were not even possible within the historical contexts in which the Jewish and Christian scriptures were written. The recognition of psychologists that some people throughout history and in every culture find themselves predisposed from birth to a more or less consistent lifelong attraction to members of their own sex did not happen until the latter part of the 19th century. At that time, psychological researchers who began to document and study the transhistorical, crosscultural phenomenon of lifelong same-sex attraction coined a term, “homosexuality,” to describe the phenomenon they were studying.

The scriptures could not speak of a phenomenon of which the biblical writers had not even dreamed, when they wrote the canonical texts. The scriptures could not condemn homosexuality when not only the concept, but a term to describe it, was totally unknown to the biblical writers. Anyone who thinks that the bible is concerned with the phenomenon of homosexuality is retrojecting a late-19th century and 20th-century term and psychological insight into the scriptures.

▪ Jesus—whose life and teaching provide the definitive window through which Christians are to view everything—never once mentions homosexuality. Jesus is completely silent about the issue that, for many Christians today, is the defining issue for all Christians, the issue on which the churches will stand or fall.

Jesus is not silent, by contrast, about practical compassion, love, justice, concern for the least among us. Jesus is not silent about refraining from throwing the first stone, eating with outcasts, being judged by the measure we use to judge others. Jesus is not silent about the matters of practical compassion that form the very heart and center of Judaism and of Christianity.

▪ Throughout the history of the church, the scriptures have been read as if they absolutely, definitively, clearly, and consistently bless practices that Christians have, in time, recognized as immoral. Christians have been absolutely certain that the bible consistently and clearly speaks of the need for men to dominate women. The bible has been used to justify “holy” wars throughout history. For millennia, the scriptures were read as endorsing slavery. I grew up in a culture in which the bible’s defense of segregation, and of the right of white people to demean people of color, was taken for granted, and was preached about in churches. The ugly antisemitism that resulted in such atrocious events in the 20th century has biblical roots. It is grounded on the claim of many Christians throughout history that the Christian scriptures condemn the entire Jewish people as deicides.

The scriptures have been cruelly misused time and again throughout history. I once asked a class of undergraduate theology students if they thought that it is possible to formulate a norm by which we can determine when the scriptures are being misused. A thoughtful student from a conservative Catholic family raised her hand and said, “The scriptures are being misused when they are being used to hurt anyone.”

I can think of few better answers to this question.

As I have said, I suspect that Cardinal Kasper knows all that I have just written. I am a mere layperson, and a failed theologian, at that. He’s a cleric, a cardinal, an accomplished theologian who walks the halls of power.

If the good cardinal does know how shaky the scriptures are as a foundation for a pan-Christian affirmation today that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, why did he trouble himself to pitch the biblical argument to his Anglican confreres as he sought to line them up behind the pope at Lambeth? In my view, the answer to that question is rather obvious—and it’s also rather ugly.

The men who rule us in the churches today are willing to grasp at straws—and even to distort and mute the primary emphasis of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, which is the call to practical compassion—to assure their continued dominance within the churches. The cross-communion alliance Kasper is promoting is not really about preserving the church from the heresy of welcoming gay persons and their committed relationships.

It’s about preserving the domination of males within the governing structures of the churches. The scriptures do consistently condemn homosexuality—that is, the scriptures that belong to the men who rule us, the scriptures they claim the unilateral right to interpret for us, to preach to us, to use against us (and to justify their own power). Their scriptures condemn gay people, because it is in the interests of those who wield power in the churches to maintain their dominance and control of women and men they regard as feminine. It is in their interest to select instrumentally useful issues to shore up the bogus “natural order” which they maintain is essential if the churches and civilization are to perdure—the order in which they will always find themselves on top.

Not only are Catholic leaders today willing to buy into theological stances alien to Catholic tradition—e.g., the claim that the scriptures provide an absolute foundation for condemning homosexuality as intrinsically disordered—in order to safeguard anti-gay teaching, but the men who rule in the Protestant churches also appear just as intent to adopt Catholic theological positions antithetical to the theological roots of their own traditions for the same reason. On both sides of the fence, the men who rule the churches seem intent to discover any ammunition they can find, at hand, no matter how outré or far-fetched, when questions about "traditional" anti-gay teaching threaten to call into question their right to rule.

Recently, the United Methodist bishop of Florida Timothy Whitaker published an essay about why one should be a Christian. The essay is to be found on the website of the Florida United Methodist Conference (www.flumc.info/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000049/004993.htm). The essay notes that central to the Christian worldview are presuppositions about the “ordering of sexuality.”

In a previous posting on this blog (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/churchs-one-foundation-homosexuality.html), I critiqued Bishop Whitaker’s statement about the case of Rev. Karen Dammann. Rev. Dammann is an openly lesbian United Methodist minister whose case caused controversy in the United Methodist Church in 2004. As my reflections on Bishop Whitaker’s statement about the Dammann case note, the bishop places great emphasis on what he sees as the “revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings.”**

As my posting about Bishop Whitaker’s Dammann statement suggests, this language about divine order is curious within an evangelical context. It imports into that context language and philosophical concepts central to the Catholic sexual ethic, but absent from Protestant thought about sexual morality until recently, when the Protestant tradition began to select some (but far from all) aspects of Catholic natural law theology it found useful to combat welcome and inclusion of gay members.

To what should we attribute the meeting of the minds of the men who rule us in the churches today—their willingness to cross traditional confessional boundaries and adopt theological ideas from each other’s traditions, in order to hold the line against their gay brothers and sisters? Growing ecumenism?

I don’t think so. Frankly, I think that, in the last analysis, this is all about power—stinky power, power over others, corrupt power that willingly distorts both scripture and tradition to assure the continued dominance of heterosexual males within the power structures of the church. It is, after all, their tradition and their scripture. It is they who talk to us about the meaning of the bible; when they have the power to do so (and they decidedly do), they will do all they can to shut down the conversation, to demonize and exclude those of us with critical perspectives.

And it behooves us those of us who are the merely preached to (and preached down to), rather than those doing the preaching (and defining and demonizing and excluding) to remember that.

*On my reasons for placing the word "homosexuality" in quotation marks here, see third point in my list of arguments re: scripture.

**On the leading role Bishop Whitaker played in the 2008 United Methodist General Assembly's decision to uphold its current teaching that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian discipleship, and on Bishop Whitaker as one of the leaders of the movement to resist more welcoming and inclusive stances towards gay people in the UMC, see my blog posting "We Are All Care of One Another" at http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/we-are-all-care-of-one-another.html.

The Men Who Rule Us: Assuring Clerical Dominance

This is not an easy time in which to write. We’re preparing for a funeral. Even so, I don’t want to let my train of thought stop short. I offer the following reflections with the proviso that they are sketchy, written as my mind and heart are occupied with other matters now.

I wrote last week about the shared interest of men—straight-identified men—in continuing their dominance in the leadership sectors of all mainstream churches. I wrote about how the system of clericalism—a system built on male domination of women, and on the domination of gay men by straight-presenting men—is a system deeply entrenched in all the mainstream churches. There is a shared interest among the leaders of the churches in seeing that the system of clerical control remains intact, an interest that transcends denominational boundary lines.

I’m aware that not all mainstream churches resist the ordination of women, as the Catholic and Orthodox churches do. Even so, I would argue that in those churches in which women are now able to be ordained (e.g., the United Methodist, Episcopal Church USA, Anglican, Presbyterian), men still strongly dominate. One would have to be blind not to see the manifold ways in which institutional power prefers men—straight-acting ones—over women in the structures of these churches.

No matter how brilliant a woman’s seminary career is, she is highly unlikely to step into a pastorate as plush as the one afforded to her straight-presenting male counterpart when seminary ends. And she is far less likely ever to capture the pulpit of the “first” churches of the denomination, the ones from whose pulpit “the” Methodist/Presbyterian, etc., voice is beamed out across a state each Sunday.

I long since gave up attending the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion because I was, frankly, tired of rubbing shoulders with bearded, tweed-jacketed straight-presenting married men who claim to have the final word on matters religious. After I finished graduate school, I no longer had to choose to affiliate with these men who rule us. When it became obvious to me that I wouldn’t be accorded a voice, anyway, I gladly stopped rubbing shoulders with those of privileged voice, since I have my own thoughts to think, and nothing is more distracting than listening to empty cant when it postures as the final word.

Given the common interests of the system of clericalism across denominational lines, it is not surprising to discover how ready the Vatican or Orthodox patriarchs are today to shore up the “traditional” males-only, no-gay-allowed clerical system of the Anglican communion—even when the Vatican has long since declared Anglican orders invalid! Under the guise of defending orthodoxy and tradition, the men who rule us in the churches are actually defending their own clerical power and privilege, their exclusive right to represent the unitary voice that speaks on behalf of their communion. The future of Christianity is, to a great extent, being staked today on the single doctrine of male domination—of women and of men construed as feminine, due to their gay sexual orientation.

This is the why of clericalism and of its tremendous push to preserve (and extend) itself at this point in Christian history, at all costs. The how of clericalism is perhaps less obvious, less simple to analyze. It is less simple to analyze because the clerical system manages to maintain its control throughout the Christian communions by manifold expressions of power and privilege whose mechanisms are usually hidden from public view.

My own entry point for obtaining a glimpse of the system of clerical dominance in ugly operation has been in academic life. Last week, my friend Colleen Baker reported on her Enlightened Catholicism blog that Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether had recently been named to the Msgr. John R. Portman Chair of the University of San Diego—only to find herself summarily disinvited from the Chair after her appointment was announced (see http://enlightenedcatholicism-colkoch.blogspot.com/2008/07/rosemary-radford-ruether-loses-to.html). The university provost tells Ruether that the anonymous donor who provided funding for this chair had a different vision for it than Ruether represents.

Rosemary Ruether notes that the San Diego decision is troubling on several fronts—most of all, because it implicitly denies academic freedom to the faculty who chose her for the chair. It is important to me to note that 1) the donor’s name has not been made public; 2) the donor can exercise great influence over intra-collegial decisions while remaining hidden—an unenviable development, since this opens the door to allowing academic discourse to be “bought” by unnamed powerful interest groups; and 3) the secretiveness with which the matter is now being handled underscores Ruether’s point that academic freedom is being threatened.

Academic freedom by its very nature demands that controversial decisions such as this be brought into the light of day for open, free consideration within the collegial context. Whenever the leaders of an academic institution resort to the cover of darkness for their actions—when they refuse to allow the reasons for major decisions to be made public and discussed in the public forum—one can be assured that the reasons don’t bear scrutiny and won’t stand up under collegial investigation.

What happened to Rosemary Ruether at the University of San Diego is, unfortunately, becoming all too common in church-sponsored institutions of higher learning. Since theologians are the one “official” critical voice that, by its very calling, must continue to talk about issues even when church authorities have tabled them, and must pursue truth that the power centers of church and society wish to avoid facing, then for social and ecclesial power centers that wish to reduce the truth proclaimed by a religious community to a unitary voice, it is important to suppress the voices of theologians. As Ruether’s story illustrates, it is relatively easy—and becoming ever easier—for church leaders to accomplish this using sub rosa channels of economic power and influence within university structures in which the powerful behind-the-scenes players who assist church leaders in maintaining their dominance are never revealed.

We live at a moment in Christian history when we will be seeing more and more attempts to curb and norm the conversation within churches, and to place it under the direct control of church leaders intent on representing their voice as the voice of the communion. What happened to Rosemary Ruether brings to mind what happened to another Catholic theologian, Charles Curran, over a decade ago.

In 1990, after he was dumped by Catholic University of America when his teaching about homosexuality and birth control earned him Vatican censure, Curran was offered tenure at Auburn University in Alabama. After the appointment was made, however, the university president announced that he would not be giving tenure to Curran. No reason was provided for this decision. At the time, there was discussion of the possible influence of Mobile Catholic archbishop Oscar Lipscomb on the Auburn president’s decision. Curran reported that Lipscomb had admitted to him that he had discussed Curran’s case with a Catholic trustee at Auburn—though Lipscomb denied having sought to influence the Auburn decision.

Charles Curran filed suit against Catholic University for his termination, only to find that the court upheld the right of the university to fire faculty members—even tenured ones—on religious grounds. The Curran case has created an ugly precedent whereby church-affiliated schools can now freely violate the academic freedom of faculty members while citing religious privilege as they do so—though schools usually employ covert ways of curbing or dismissing faculty members rather than outright termination. They do so because, even with court-defended religious exemptions, academic accrediting societies still demand that schools pay lip service to academic freedom, if the schools expect to be accredited.

Stating that one is terminating a faculty member because his/her work violates the religious beliefs of the university places a school in the unenviable position of appearing not to respect academic freedom. It is simply easier to cook up some other spurious reason (e.g., “inability to cooperate with this administration,” “lack of collegiality”) for the termination, so as to avoid negative publicity and court battles.

What happened to Curran and to Rosemary Ruether illustrates how the power centers of churches control and disempower theologians today across denominational lines. They do so via hidden channels of influence that operate at the level of presidents and boards of trustees, channels never exposed to public scrutiny. When decisions such as the Ruether or Curran decision are made by presidents and boards of trustees, the true story of how the academic freedom of a theologian is violated is never told: the story of midnight calls to pressure a president, of threats to withhold funding, of moral emptiness on the part of university and church leaders, of manufactured reasons for dismissal or denial of tenure that have nothing to do with reality, of boards of trustees that will not hold presidents accountable even when the moral vacuity of a president is patent, and so on.

If there is any truth to Curran’s assertion that Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb played a role in Auburn’s decision to deny tenure to him (and I believe there is), then this story illustrates the collusion of power players beyond denominational lines, in the contemporary push to stop the voices of theologians. Auburn was Methodist-founded and is today a state university.

What interest could a Catholic bishop possibly have, or exert, in such an institution? And how could that interest be exerted? If answers to such questions were ever made public, we’d have a very clear picture, I believe, of how leaders of churches today (acting in collusion with each other and with powerful economic and political leaders) curb critical theological discourse in the academy in order to assure the continued dominance of the clerical system across denominational boundary lines, and the right of the men who rule the churches to speak unilaterally on behalf of “their” churches.

In such situations, one would expect accrediting bodies to play a significant role in assuring that academic freedom is respected. If a church-affiliated university freely violates the academic freedom of theologians, what is to prevent its doing something similar with professors of literature, sociology, biology, etc.? What university worth its name would willingly trample on the academic freedom of any of its faculty members?

Based on my own experiences within the academy, I am not sanguine about the role played by accrediting bodies in upholding academic freedom. As I have noted on this blog, I myself have had dismal experiences at two church-sponsored colleges/universities, both under the accreditation of the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities (SACS).

Both as an administrator in SACS-affiliated universities and as someone whose academic freedom was violated by universities accredited by SACS, I have observed that SACS bends over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to the institution in cases in which faculty members report violations of academic freedom. In my first experience of being given a spurious terminal contract without any stated reason for the termination, and of being denied a written evaluation of my previous semester’s work, I met a brick wall when I reported what had happened to SACS.

Though I had ironclad proof that the academic vice-president had interfered in the operation of the college’s grievance committee, and though the refusal to provide a reason for my termination violates SACS’ own academic freedom statement, when I turned to SACS for support, SACS informed me that since the school had a grievance committee, I had had protection for my academic freedom. Never mind that this committee was a puppet committee that could not and did not act independently of the church authorities controlling the school . . . .

Because of this experience, I did not even bother turning to SACS on my second go-round at a SACS-accredited church-sponsored university. It was at this university that I was terminated without having even been given any evaluation of my year’s work—though, as I have noted on this blog, a document later came into my hands in which my supervisor reported to the board that a consultant who had been brought in to talk to me about SACS-accreditation issues had actually “evaluated” me and had recommended my termination.

I was never given this consultant’s report. I was not even told that he had “evaluated” me. I never had any evaluation of my work prior to my termination—a clear violation of SACS academic freedom regulations. The consultant brought in to “evaluate” me has published articles about the social construction of African-American manhood that are overtly homophobic. He is a Baptist Sunday School teacher. He is not even in the area in which he purportedly “evaluated” me—academic affairs—and is not even at a SACS-affiliated college. His knowledge of SACS standards was abysmal, I discovered when he met with me. If he “evaluated” me, he did so without ever having met me, on the basis of a single interview of an hour or so. And, given his background, it is impossible to imagine that his “evaluation” of me would in any way be unbiased. He was clearly brought in to do a hatchet job on an openly gay university administrator whose “lifestyle” he held in contempt, and he did his job well.

All of which is to say, it is not hard at all to silence theologians nowadays, particularly in church-affiliated universities, and especially in areas (such as the American Southeast) in which the commitment of academic accrediting bodies to academic freedom is weak when religious commitments are involved. When one takes into consideration the fact that laws protecting the rights of workers from wrongful termination are also weak in precisely the same areas of the country in which the churches’ right to terminate faculty on religious grounds is uncontested, one begins to understand why accrediting bodies in these areas are historically weak on academic freedom issues. To defend academic freedom, they would have to stand against strong currents of their culture—and against the powerful influence of the economic and political figures who collude with church leaders to silence critical voices.

There is a game-playing dimension to the way in which accrediting bodies go about investigating institutions of higher learning. As an academic administrator, time and again, I have seen accrediting bodies send to a church-affiliated college a team of investigators heavily weighted with team members from the denomination that sponsors the school in question.

When one considers that almost all presidents of universities sponsored by a particular institution have strong institutional ties to the governing structures of the denomination controlling their university, one can understand how it is that most accrediting visits don’t probe critically into allegations that academic freedom of faculty has been violated on religious grounds. In order to move some academic accrediting bodies in the direction of a defense of academic freedom, one would have to transform the culture of the accrediting bodies themselves: to the extent that they continue to be old-boys’ networks dominated by those with ties to church-affiliated colleges and universities, they will continue not to have a strong interest in promoting academic freedom or investigating cases in which universities they accredit have violated academic freedom of faculty on religious grounds.

+ + + + +

And now for a change of subject: since this and previous postings focus on bishops and church governing bodies, I would like to take this opportunity to note the reappointment of a United Methodist bishop whose name has figured in previous postings on this blog. I’m referring to Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida United Methodist Conference.

Bishop Whitaker has just been re-appointed to another quadrennial term as UMC Bishop of Florida. Florida interests me for a number of reasons outlined in previous postings on this blog, including the growing number of cases of violent assault of LGBT citizens in that state. This is also a state in which an explicitly anti-gay initiative is on the ballot for the next election cycle.

It’s a state, in other words, in which the churches’ pastoral efforts can do either much harm or cause much woe. As Florida deals with its issues with gay citizens, it’s interesting to note that, pastorally speaking, the central part of the state is now solidly under the control of bishops representing different churches, all of whom have taken public stands that many gay citizens see as less than welcoming to the gay community.

As a posting on this blog notes, at the most recent United Methodist General Assembly, Bishop Whitaker chaired the discussion that resulted in a vote to continue the current language of the Book of Discipline which sees the practice of homosexuality as incompatible with Christian life (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/we-are-all-care-of-one-another.html). My posting noted that participants in the debate at General Assembly were concerned with how Bishop Whitaker used parliamentary procedure to offset debate and to pave the way for a final statement in favor of the current policy by Rev. Eddie Fox, Director of UMC World Evangelism.

In a previous posting on this blog, I have also noted that the Catholic bishop of Orlando, Bishop Thomas Wenski, published a resoundingly anti-gay editorial in a newspaper in June (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/07/and-speaking-of-discrimination.html). Bishop Wenski calls for a continuation of the culture wars that have had such dismal effects on gay persons.

I have not touched previously on the Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida, Bishop John W. Howe. I should note that Bishop Howe appears to hold positions similar to those of his colleagues Bishops Whitaker and Wenski on gay persons and their inclusion in the church. All three of these gentlemen appear resolved to hold the line on gay persons and gay rights.

It would be interesting to know if any church-affiliated colleges or universities in this region manage to safeguard the right of faculty members to discuss gay and lesbian persons in a way that is more inclusive of these persons in the body of Christ . . . .

Rev. Whitaker’s friend Rev. Fox has been in the news again recently, and once again, in a way that makes clear his intent to continue defending the Methodist hard line against gay persons. When the California-Pacific and the California-Nevada Annual UMC Conferences both recently approved gay marriage and expressed support for pastors marrying gay couples, Rev. Fox responded by stating, "We've made it clear we adhere to biblical teaching and Christian tradition. Ninety-eight percent of Christians around the world believe marriage is between one man and one woman, so we're not out of step in our ecumenical relationships with Christians around the world" (see http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/07/california-umc-legislative-bod.html).

It would be difficult to imagine a United Methodist university in which Rev. Fox has influence giving hospitality to a theologian who calls for open dialogue about the place of LGBT persons in the churches, or for critical discourse about the disparity between what the churches proclaim about being welcoming places for gay believers, and how they actually behave towards LGBT persons. Fox and those allied with him seem far more intent on shutting down this conversation, than they are on pursuing it.

Gay Sex as Sin: Dubious Polls as New Weapon of the Religious Right

Well, it turns out that I can’t be totally silent today. There’s one news item that, in my view, does demand some attention, because it’s already being latched onto by right-wing “Christian” websites.

Yesterday, the Times (London) reported the results of a recent survey by the British polling agency ComRes which found that 81% of British Protestants believe gay sex is a sin (see www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4412975.ece). ComRes says that the poll is based on a sample of 517 British Protestants—I’ve seen no breakdown of the kind of Protestants polled, if, indeed, the poll did employ such fine-tuned analysis.

I have to say that I’m rather suspicious about this poll. Its release is clearly timed to coincide with the Lambeth Conference now underway in England. Indeed, the date of release seems timed to overlap with recent announcements at this worldwide Anglican conference of a report of senior bishops discouraging the ordination of gay bishops.

To see if I could get more specific data about the poll, I went to the ComRes website at www.comres.co.uk. Interestingly enough, I can’t locate a single reference to this poll on the ComRes website.

Why, I wonder? There are more recent announcements of other polling results. Why would this particular poll be either well-nigh impossible to find on the website, or totally overlooked by the polling company that undertook the survey?

What I do find on the website is interesting, however. ComRes regularly conducts polls for an organization calling itself the Christian Institute. This organization’s “Who We Are” statement by Director Colin Hart notes,

The Christian Institute exists for "the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom" and "the advancement of education".

The Christian Institute is a nondenominational Christian charity committed to upholding the truths of the Bible. We are supported by individuals and churches throughout the UK.

We believe that the Bible is the supreme authority for all of life and we hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. We are committed to upholding the sanctity of life from conception (www.christian.org.uk/news).

The Christian Institute is, in other words, a right-wing Christian political activist group akin to American groups such as Focus on the Family. Much of its energy in recent days has been spent in fostering discontent with court decisions in England that permit gay unions or adoption of children by gays. This is a group seeking to foster anti-gay sentiment for political ends.

The website avows the overt political intent of the organization. An FAQ section of the website notes that the organization pursues its ends through strategic briefings; conferences, recordings and books; media releases; influence of public policy; and assistance provided to individuals facing discrimination because of their faith. Among the latter is Lillian Ladele, a registrar in Islington who has refused to perform same-sex union ceremonies on religious grounds, though performing these ceremonies is part of her job description.

I’m apparently not the only person raising critical questions about the methodology of recent ComRes polls conducted on behalf of the Christian Institute. On 21 May, a blogger with the username Manic posted at Bloggerheads.com, noting that a recent Christian Institute-ComRes poll on abortion needed to be examined from the standpoint of the size of the sample polled (in this case, 1014 people), (b) the wording of questions asked, and the interpretation and presentation of data www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2008/05/nadine_dorries_5.asp). Manic subjects the Christian Institute’s presentation of the poll results re: this particular issue to a scathing analysis.

Another blogger, Susan Russell at Walking with Integrity, notes today that her group had conducted its own informal survey in Canterbury after the ComRes results were released, and had found that of 21 random folks wandering the streets, three out of four did not believe being gay should be a bar to ordination, and a significant percentage believed the church would benefit from being more inclusive (http://walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com/2008/07/family-feud-lambeth-version.html).

Russell also subjects to critical analysis the notion that polls representing majority viewpoints necessarily lead to sound moral conclusions. As she notes, if a survey about the justifiability of segregation had been done in Topeka, Kansas, in the 1950s, it’s highly unlikely that a majority of Topeka residents would have found segregation anything other than morally justifiable. Russell concludes, “I do not remember ‘Blessed are you who have complied with the will of the majority to exclude the minority’ in any of the Beatitudes.”

Indeed. Now that the results of this poll have hit the mainstream media, I have no doubt that it will accomplish its purpose, which is to suggest that a majority of Christians, even in nations that now afford extensive rights to gay citizens, condemn homosexuality.

I also doubt that, as the poll results are used, they will be subjected to careful critical analysis.

More’s the pity. I’d surely like to know more about this particular poll and why a report of it seems impossible to find today on the ComRes website. I'd also be very interested to know more about any financial connections the Christian Institute might have to similar right-wing "Christian" political activist groups in the U.S.