The Adventist Church and Homosexuality

The Adventist Church and Homosexuality

A proposal by John McLarty

(This is a revision of an early version of this piece.)

I have been quite outspoken in my criticism of common conservative approaches to applying their understanding of the Bible to issues of irregularities in sexuality. I have read nothing in articles by scholars at the Adventist seminary or respondents on Facebook or middle-aged “reformed” homosexuals that would persuade me the conservative position is true to Scripture or to human experience.

A few of my conservative friends have responded to my criticism with a very appropriate challenge: If you don't like current Church policy, what do you propose the Church do? If someone made you King of the Church for a day and charged you with writing formal policy that would be included in the Church Manual for the global, incorporated Adventist denomination, what would you write?

Below is my attempt at spelling out the policy I would write in that situation.

Let me be clear: I am not writing my personal convictions. My thinking is deeply rooted in and shaped by the Adventist theological heritage. However, I have taken elements of that heritage and pushed them so forcefully that conventional thinkers would see my conclusions as a contradiction of the heritage rather than as the natural development of that heritage. If a leader required the Church as a whole to embrace all the details of my own personal theology it would severely damage the living community that is the real church. While I dissent from some aspects of conventional Adventism, I am unwilling to destroy the Church in an effort to “improve” it.

Church policy is a political animal. It has to balance tradition, exegesis, regional variations, money, and temperamental differences. Effective policy change—change that brings people along instead of cutting them off—must be evolutionary. No wise policy will appear wise to an ideologue because wise policy is always a messy compromise among people and values. It is never pure. And it should be always open to change.

So with these qualifications in mind, I will propose the following as church policy to be voted by the church bureaucrats at the General Conference:

Preamble

God's ideal for humans as portrayed in the first two chapters of Genesis is that every man and every woman find a happy, life-long home in a monogamous, heterosexual marriage that produces good children who will in turn have grandchildren who continue to live out their lives in happy, life-long monogamous fruitful marriages. In its worship and teaching the Church honors this glorious ideal. The Church encourages all persons to live as close to this ideal as possible.

Not every person in the Church can live this ideal. Among our members, there are marriages that endure but are less than happy. There are childless couples and people who are single for decades. There are divorced people, homosexuals, and people who have been married several times. There are people of indeterminate gender. There are people with disabilities for whom marriage is impossible. All of these people are members of our churches. They respond to our evangelism. It is the duty of the Church to provide opportunities for worship, spiritual encouragement and pastoral care for all of these people.

How does the Church both honor the ideal portrayed in Eden before the fall and minister in Christ's stead in the real world we live in today.

First, we recognize that clergy are symbols of the ideals and commitments of the Church. The higher the ecclesiastical dignity of an office, the more closely must the office holder live to God's ideal. Therefore:

1. The Church will provide a distinct, separate ordination for clergy who serve as presidents of conferences, unions, divisions and the General Conference.
2. Clergy serving in leadership (i.e. presidencies) above the local congregation must be married and parents. If they are divorced or if the majority of their children have rejected the church, this should be seen as a major impediment to continued service in any position above that of a local congregation. Further, because of their role as symbols of the ideals and commitments of the church, no one who is obese may serve as a president.
3. Departmental directors would have the same spiritual rank and pay rate as pastors serving local congregations.
4. Single persons may serve as leaders—either clergy or lay—in local congregations where direct knowledge of their gifts, piety and integrity would counterbalance the deficiency in their symbolic function.
5. The church would not ordain homosexuals to the clergy.

In the Western Adventist Church there is significant conflict regarding God's will in regard to homosexuality. In light of this conflict, we decree:

1. Just as Adventist clergy have historically been forbidden to perform marriages in which only one of the persons is Adventist, Adventist clergy are prohibited from solemnizing homosexual marriages. [Personal note from McLarty: just as there are a few pastors who quietly disregard the rules regarding “mixed marriages” there would be pastors who would quietly disregard the rules regarding homosexual unions. At present, this disregard of rules is tolerated as long as it stays off the public radar screen.]
2. Adventist Churches may not allow their buildings to be used for performing forbidden marriages.

We, the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church gathered in council, refrain from promulgating rules for how congregations are to manage their response to homosexuals and to people who divorce and remarry. Congregations are charged to respond to these situations in light of God's ideals, Adventist tradition, and the well-being of the individuals and congregations in each case. [McLarty's note: Some congregations would be accepting. Most would maintain traditional norms.]

My Commentary on the Above Proposed Polices

Even-handed church law

If we are going to bar practicing homosexuals from our congregations we ought to bar divorced and remarried people from our congregations. Then we ought to bar from being elders and pastors all who come short of Paul's requirement: “He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him.” And as a church which officially embraces healthy living as part of our mission and doctrine it is simply inconceivable that we would allow obese men to serve as presidents within the church. [Commentary on the commentary: I think what I've written in the first part of this paragraph is logical. It also highlights the sickness of focusing on standards. While holding “elders” responsible for the behavior of their children is biblical, it is socially sick. But if we are going to hold homosexuals to “biblical” standards, then it follows we ought to hold the “elders” to biblical standards as well.]

There is already precedent for allowing exceptions to full agreement with the doctrines of the church.

There is a loud clamor in official church circles these days declaring that belief in 6 days/6000 years is an absolute requirement for being Adventist. Ted Wilson declaims, “If you don't believe in a short chronology you are not Adventist.” But I have personally heard Fernando Canale (a conservative theologian at the Andrews University Seminary) say that if a scientist believes all the rest of our doctrines and keeps Sabbath and pays tithe but does not believe in a short chronology, he would baptize such a person into the Adventist Church. Michael Hasel was present and did not demur.

If the recent creation doctrine can be set aside in exceptional cases, why can we not, in exceptional cases, set aside our doctrine about the absolute necessity of heterosexual marriage?

This approach requires from homosexuals an acknowledgment of the church's ideal of marriage—which is heterosexual, life-long marriage. Homosexual unions are other than this ideal. This approach requires from traditional members a recognition of the fact that the ideal is not possible for all people and that non-traditional relationships are righteous even if not ideal. (Of course, the actual ideal—life-long, heterosexual, monogamous, HAPPY marriage, is absent in many church homes.)

The inhumanity of enforced celibacy

We rightly lament the damage to persons that flows from the Catholic requirement of celibacy for participation in the ordained ministry. Yet we require life-long celibacy by homosexuals as a requirement for participation in church life. This is inhumane. The inhumanity of this requirement is highlighted by the fact that church officials who vote on the doctrines and policies intended to impose this obedience on homosexuals have themselves typically been active sexually for at least twenty years. Even the homosexuals we promote as advocates of celibacy have had decades of sexual engagement.

But something further needs to be said. The requirement of celibacy is not merely a restriction on genital activity. It requires sexual beings to carefully avoid deep friendships and real intimacy because of the “threat” and appearance these kinds of close relationships create. The Bible declares it is not good for man to be alone. Yet we say to a whole class of men: you must remain alone for your entire life. Who are we to contradict this declaration in our zeal to support other declarations in the Bible?

If God calls an individual to such a solitary life, let's us support them in that strenuous calling. But it is evil for us to impose this when we know that we ourselves could never bear it.

Jesus said something to the Pharisees about laying burdens on others. It was not a compliment. It is the height of spiritual arrogance to teach others there is an onerous requirement for salvation that they must meet—a requirement which we ourselves have never even contemplated attempting.

For Now

This is not my imagination of the best the church can be. I do not propose these polices as a picture of an ideal church life. I have written this to attempt to provoke a response, to challenge conservatives who selectively apply which “biblical rules” to enforce in the church. Especially, I would emphasize that this is not my idea of some final destination for the corporate church. It is a description of a place where we might be able to live together for awhile. I expect that over time the church will follow society in learning to place homosexual relationships within a moral framework analogous to the moral framework for heterosexual relationships. Attentiveness and loyalty will be affirmed. Promiscuity and unfaithfulness will be condemned.

We will come to see the picture in Genesis—a man and woman together in a life-long, happy monogamous marriage that produces children—as an ideal, not a standard. We will acknowledge that no one—let be more emphatic, NO ONE—lives the ideal. In our world no marriage is untouched by sin and pain and every marriage eventually is broken, either by death or divorce. The ideal is not available to us as a lived reality.

My sermon on Matthew 19 can be found here: http://greenlakesda.org/2014/10/legally-dumb/

An article I wrote for my church newsletter that explains the foundation for my theology can be found here: http://greenlakesda.org/2014/10/foundation-of-my-religion/