We Don't Live in the Nineties Anymore
Why we can't agree to disagree on LGBTQ issues or anything else.
Two years ago I wrote about the impact of listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 while growing up:
Peek into my bedroom on a Sunday evening sometime circa 1985, you would have seen me working on homework, probably geometry that was due the next day. But I wasn’t just doing homework; no I was also listening to the radio and I wasn’t just listening to the radio, I was listening to American Top 40 with Kasey Kasem. Teenagers of the 1970s and 80s found some time on the weekend to settle in and listen to the biggest songs in pop music. From its start in 1970 until he left the position in 1988, millions of teens and young adults did something that might seem old-fashioned today: sitting in front of a radio and listening to the top songs for 3–4 hours.
I didn’t know it back then, but I was part of something that we took for granted in the 70s and 80s and that almost doesn’t exist today and that is mass culture, the big tent.
In that essay, I talked about the death of mass culture in America and how that has impoverished us in many ways. I also talked briefly about Mainline Protestantism and how in its heyday it was designed to be a religion for mass culture.
That’s not the case anymore and it hasn’t been the case for maybe a decade or more. Most of the mainline denominations are becoming monocultures where there is really one way to look at things. I don’t want to believe it is intentional, but it is happening all the same. One alleged example might happen in the Presbyterian Church (USA) this summer.
Back in 2011, the PCUSA affirmed LGBTQ persons to fully serve in the life of the church. This was approved at their 2010 General Assembly in Minneapolis and then sent to the presbyteries to vote in approval. In the 2011, enough presbyteries voted in favor for the amendment to be approved. That Presbytery happened to be the Twin Cities Area Presbytery where I was working at the time. It was a joyous moment for many of my friends who were either gay and couldn’t serve as pastors or left the denomination because of the ban. I also was happy that others could finally serve in total honesty and no longer had to hide who they were.
Of course, this came at a cost. This caused a split in the church, with more conservative churches leaving for evangelical Presbyterian denominations or leaving to join a new denomination for conservatives, the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians.
However, some conservatives chose to stay with the PCUSA. The have their own affinity group, the Fellowship Community, but they are still part of the Presbyterian Church (USA). However, that could all change. An overture from the Olympia Presbytery will be up for discussion at the General Assembly in Salt Lake City this summer. The overture adds gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes against which people can’t discriminate.
On the surface this makes sense. Before I express my concerns, Olympia Presbytery states in its rationale that twice in 2022 they had candidates for ordination who had “opinions that did not fully embrace the equal and affirmed status of LGBTQIA+ persons in the church.” Since I don’t know the full background here, I can’t say what not fully embracing LGBTQIA+ persons means and the overture doesn’t explain this either. It is difficult to know the intent of the overture, but maybe what’s more important is how it could be interpreted.
One group that is concerned about how it could be applied is the Fellowship Community. In a joint letter, it expressed the following:
After all of the battles over scriptural interpretation in the past 50 years in the PCUSA, usually highlighted by questions of sexuality, after all the revisions to our Book of Order, and after so many traditional churches and leaders left the PCUSA in the last 10 years…we are the ones who stayed. To be clear, we continue to believe that scripture teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that celibacy in singleness is our calling outside of marriage. We still consider the difference between orientation and behavior to be essential. These have not been comfortable convictions to hold, in our culture or our denomination, but we’ve stayed. Presbyterians have acknowledged that people of deep faith come to differing conclusions. We have stayed, and there has been room to stay.
If GA disallows a traditional interpretation of sexual behavior, it would be devastating. Whether by the words of the overture, the application of it, or the stated rationale behind it, perhaps a thousand churches and thousands of PCUSA pastors and elders would be excluded—and if enforced, driven out of the denomination. Among our Fellowship Community are many of the largest, most vibrant, mission-focused, church-planting, solid churches remaining in our denomination. Is the big tent suddenly not big enough to include us? Some of us serve “purple” churches, working hard at holding diverse views on some matters, while being unified around Jesus Christ. This overture is a message to these churches that there is no room for working at this within the PCUSA. It subordinates one part of our constitution–the Book of Confessions–below another, the Book of Order. And it would mandate one view, one interpretation of scripture in matters of human sexuality. No room for others, no freedom of conscience.
I read both the overture and the statement and felt for both sides in this matter. I know that progressives who believe in full LGBTQ inclusion believe such an amendment is necessary in order to ensure that LGBTQ persons can be fully welcomed into the life of the church. Having worked with Presbyterians, I know the impact the 1996 overture that banned LGBTQ persons from ordination had on pastors and those who wanted to be pastors. And I know the impact such a ban had in my own denomination where I had to remain silent through my own ordination process. Conservatives who are upset now must and should know the hurt that many LGBTQ people who felt called by God to serve experienced when they were told by their churches that they could not fulfill that call to ministry.
That said, progressives shouldn’t repay kind for kind either because if this overture is approved, that is what could happen. Conservatives would either have to hide their true feelings or leave the denomination, which is pretty much what happened with LGBTQ people thirty years ago.
What I’ve learned over the years is that while there are some people who are truly bigoted towards sexual minorities, others truly believe in their interpretation of scripture. I think they are wrong in the matter, but I also think if they come to this decision believing it is where God leads them, I also have to give them some room to have those beliefs.
I’ve shared the story of an elderly man who voted against me serving on a church board because of being gay. But he shared privately after the vote his earnestness in seeking a resolution and couldn’t reconcile his understanding of Scripture with me. He said this with tears in his eyes because I think he wished he could. But his wanting to explain his vote to me was his attempt to trying to be in relationship with me. I really can’t believe that every traditional Presbyterian wants to be hurtful to LGBTQ Presbyterians.
I want to believe that those in favor of this proposed overture would want to either to find a way that both sides could live together and also not hinder LGBTQ persons from being affirmed in their calling to ministry.
Way back in the nineties, whenever a church had to take a difficult vote on this issue, there was always someone that would say something to the effect, “now we have some healing to do.” That small phrase said a lot. It believed that while the vote was important, it was not more important than the whole body which was now living in tension. Relationships had to be mended in order to move forward. This wasn’t a winner-take-all, zero-sum kind of win because this was the church and we were about more than just who won and who lost.
We don’t live in the ‘90s anymore. The world is less charitable on all sides. Conservatives and progressives are more about power and righteousness than they are about grace and mercy. The Trump years have only accelerated this trend.
So I think this overture will pass. It may not have the effect that conservative Presbyterians fear, but it wouldn’t be shocking if it did. Because we don’t give others the benefit of the doubt, we don’t give people- even our enemies, grace. I think this might lead to more conservatives leaving the denomination which will make it safer for LGBTQ Presbyterians.
But I’m not certain it will be good for the body of Christ as a whole.