| Friday 8th August, 2008 You are here: Home - 8th August 2008 Index Page - 8th August Letters |
Homosexuality and the Church
The issue of homosexuality and the Church has again been a major issue in your pages with GAFCON, the Lambeth Conference and members of our Church..
However, in much that has been written, I would suggest that there is a confusion, whether deliberate or not, between the issue of ordination of a person of homosexual orientation and the behaviour and living of a homosexual person, who is ordained.
Leviticus (Chs. 18 and 20) is the usual source used in the argument against homosexuality, whereas the passages are actually arguments against physical homosexual behaviour, within a long list of other forbidden behaviours, as part of the Holiness Code.
I would not wish to draw a direct straight line from Leviticus to today, but there are no comments regarding orientation and, in the New Testament, for St Paul, (Romans 1) it is an issue of behaviour, again within a list of unacceptable relationships. There is no condemnation of a person’s orientation. As homosexuality is now generally regarded as of nature rather than nurture, though not necessarily exclusively, it is no longer classified as a disease. In this context, therefore, there does not seem to be an argument against the ordination of a person of homosexual orientation and, over the years, there have been many who have served God and their flocks faithfully.
The real argument seems to be over behaviour. The simple question raised by recent events is how would our parishes react to the behaviour of their incumbent, if single and if living with a partner. Should there be a different expectation related to sexual orientation, whether heterosexual or homosexual? In general, the members of our Church have a deep expectation that the clergy will be sexually abstinent, whatever their orientation, unless they are married.
Let us keep these two issues, of orientation and behaviour, separate so that reasoned arguments and discussions can take place. Let us remember why we are here, for, at the end-time, we will not be asked who or what we were, but how we lived and used the gifts given to us (Matthew 25: 34-46).
Rory Corbett (The Revd)
23 Magherabeg Road
Dromore
I read with interest what appears to be a somewhat simplistic approach in Kevin Docherty’s letter (Gazette, 25th July). The fact that we are having such an intense debate in the Church regarding homosexuality is showing a degree of maturity and that is positive. Indeed, Archbishop Harper is right to say we should consider more than Scripture in this issue. Since the writing of Scripture, it is fair to say that our understanding of homosexuality has changed. Most medical experts would not accept that it is a chosen inclination, but rather genetic. Clearly a new understanding of the matter is needed. Maybe Mr Docherty would prefer to take the logic of his argument to putting all the Levitical laws into practice, stoning to death adulterers, for example (Leviticus 20: 10). I would ask him to read the whole book of Leviticus before considering his response.
Ronald Brown
75 Pembridge Court
Belfast
BT4 2RW
Irish bishops and the Lambeth Conference
In light of comments made recently by the Archbishop of Armagh (Gazette, 11th July), surely there is a need for a fresh biblical integrity within the Irish House of Bishops. Was it correct for Irish bishops, individually or en bloc, to attend Lambeth? Other global bishops (i.e. Gafcon ) - after soul-searching and personal cost on grounds of conscience and Scripture - stepped aside from Lambeth ’08 - but what of Ireland?
It seems evident that the Irish bishops are being gradually directed into a future stance of liberal compromise, encouraged by our present archbishop’s comments. When will our biblical Irish bishops unite and declare in favour of Scripture and of truth?
I know, from wider sources, that this is a burden and grief to many. Faithful Anglicans wonder what at all is left of dignity in the Church of Ireland!
At this critical time, it was inappropriate for the Irish House of Bishops to have done the ‘Lambeth Walk’. Their attendance seemed to many (myself included) to be utterly unwarranted. Did attending not place themselves, and the Church they represent, in a place of challenge and compromise?
Through non-attendance, our House of Bishops would have sounded a clarion voice for truth to the whole Anglican world.
Some viewed the first 1990s Drumcree stand-off as having gifted republicans a platform from which to mock. Lambeth 2008 has gifted the ECUSA gay activists a platform from which to advance their hostility and to cause chaos to the wider Church.
Donard Collins (The Revd)
Killowen Rectory
Coleraine