TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624610.000

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                                                                                RELIGION, Page 48

What Does God Really Think About Sex?


Christians of all sorts are battling over the issues of
homosexuality, infidelity and fornication

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by Barbara Dolan/Chicago,
Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta and Leslie Whitaker/New York


    "I am disgusted." "An abomination." "This report would
remove the Bible as the authoritative Word of God, making it
merely a guidebook." One after another, participants at the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) rose in the
Baltimore Convention Center to attack one of the most radical
series of proposals on sexual morality ever to come before a
major Christian denomination. In essence, the church report,
three years in preparation, shattered 19 centuries of tradition
and asked the church, for the first time, to bestow acceptance
upon sex outside of marriage -- for homosexuals, for adult
singles living together and, with less enthusiasm, for
teenagers. Adultery would be next, critics charged.

    No chance of that. By a 534-to-31 vote the Presbyterians
last week rejected the controversial report. They also issued
an outright disavowal of the practice of homosexuality and
affirmed "the sanctity of the marital covenant between one man
and one woman." But the raucous debate that led up to the vote,
and that will surely follow it, showed that three decades after
the sexual revolution started to percolate through American
society, the relationship between God and sex is again throwing
some of the country's most important religious denominations
into turmoil.

    Traditionalists are facing off against liberals, married
worshipers against singles, homosexuals against heterosexuals,
as the churches try to come to grips with the changing
life-styles of their adherents. Just as important, liberals in
various denominations are struggling to deal with the sexual
preference and morality of those who are no longer attending
services, convinced that the churches do not speak to their
private needs. Among the imminent sexual confrontations:

    -- United Church of Christ (1.6 million members). Next
week's national synod will discuss how to deal with clergy who
are involved in nonmarital relations.

    -- Episcopal Church (2.4 million members). In July a
national convention will decide between two conflicting
proposals on homosexuality. One would allow ordination of
actively gay and lesbian priests by local bishops, a practice
that is already occurring. The other would explicitly ban
nonmarital sex by all clergy.

    -- United Methodist Church (8.9 million members). A
special panel will issue a report in August on whether the
church should continue to declare that homosexual practice
violates Christian teaching. An April straw vote indicated that
most of the 24 panelists want a change.

    -- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (5.2 million
members). The first draft of a proposed new stand on sexual
issues like homosexuality and chastity is due next fall. There
are early rumblings that the draft might seek reinterpretation
of Bible passages dealing with sex.

    -- American Baptist Churches (1.5 million members). This
denomination will decide at next week's convention whether to
develop a policy statement on sexuality, with specific issues
to be defined later.

    -- Roman Catholic Church (58 million members). America's
biggest denomination is also caught in the debate because of
members' continuing resistance to Vatican stands on such matters
as homosexuality and premarital sex. Two special problems:
allegations that many priests break the celibacy rule, and a
recent outbreak of pederasty scandals.

    The tenet that sex should be confined to marriage is an
age-old one inherited from Judaism. It is under assault because
of the pressures of modern reality: the sexual precocity of
young Americans, the large number of divorced or unmarried
adults who have active sex lives, and the growing strength of
the gay-rights movement. The issues are hitting hardest at the
moderate and liberal "mainline" Protestant denominations that
stress toleration and follow social currents. These groups,
which have been steadily losing membership, could face further
attrition, even outright schism, over sex.

    The churches for years have also been under increasing
scholarly pressure to treat traditional understandings of
Scripture as cultural expressions, subject to change, rather
than as God's eternal strictures. Another important factor is
the intellectual influence of feminist groups that see
traditional Judeo-Christian morality as an expression of
patriarchy. In addition, a trend has been emerging in modern
moral theology to base judgments concerning sexuality not on
absolute rules but on the relative value of each relationship.
This approach was promoted as early as 1966 by Episcopal
theologian Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics: The New Morality.
Among the denominations where the pressures are highest:



    PRESBYTERIANS

    The 2.9 million-member denomination was the first to face
the full implications of the sexual revolution. As far back as
1970, a church panel, echoing Fletcher's approach, declared that
"sexual expression . . . cannot be confined to the married and
about-to-be-married." Irate traditionalists got that year's
assembly to reaffirm the sinfulness of adultery, fornication and
homosexual practice, but their motion passed by a paper-thin
margin.

    Since then the Northern and Southern wings of the church
have merged, but liberal-conservative differences have
continued to simmer. This year's controversial 200-page morality
report, Keeping Body and Soul Together, emanated from an
official study committee under the Rev. John Carey, religion
chair at Agnes Scott College in Georgia. Two members quit early,
and one raised charges that the panel was stacked with liberals.

    When the document was released last February, it was read
avidly -- more than 42,000 copies have been sold -- and with
growing ire. Before the Baltimore assembly, more than half the
church's 171 administrative districts and 2,000 local
congregations had condemned it. The document helped cause
something akin to schism at the second largest congregation in
the country: Dallas' Highland Park Presbyterian Church. Already
alarmed at liberal trends among the national leadership,
Highland Park members voted 2,563 to 2,001 last month to quit
the denomination altogether. They fell short of a required
two-thirds majority, so the church and its $47 million property
remain within the official fold. But 1,000 or more dissenters
walked out to start a new congregation. Joining them is
physician Grady Crosland, who served on the Body and Soul panel
and opposed its work. "The denomination is rotten," he snaps.
"No use staying around to shoot a rabid dog."

    His reaction is typical of the strong feelings roused by
the sweeping revisionism of Body and Soul. Among other things,
it declares that "there is no single, consistent biblical ethic
of sexuality" and instructs the church to "repent" its
oppressive morality, which the document deems to be the work of
white patriarchal "heterosexists." Forget "rules about who
sleeps with whom," it urges, and do not "restrict sexual
activity to marriage alone," but celebrate all forms of sexual
intimacy, "marital, premarital or postmarital."

    Body and Soul is most unorthodox in condoning sex among
unmarried heterosexuals. It states that the church should no
longer insist on celibacy as "the only moral option for single
persons."

    On the delicate topic of teenage sex, the document advises
youngsters to make decisions on the basis of "mutuality,"
"consent" and "maturity." Marilyn Washburn, a
clergywoman-physician and dissenting member of the sex panel,
considers it "tragic" that the report never tells teens that
"there is no perfect means of birth control and that condoms do
not prevent sexually transmitted diseases."

    The document is ambiguous in its pronouncements on sex
within marriage. It redefines fidelity as a learning process in
which spouses renegotiate the relationship "as needs and desires
change." At the same time, the report omits any mention of the
Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." This
lapse caused conservatives to declare that the document opens
the door to extramarital sex, a charge that committee members
deny.

    In line with trends in other mainline denominations, the
Presbyterian report asked church members to repeal legislation
from the 1970s that bars sexually active gays and lesbians from
the clergy. That too was rejected. Nonetheless, the assembly may
have reflected the extent to which the sexual revolution has
infiltrated the ranks by refusing to include in its final
resolutions a clause that condemned all intercourse outside
marriage as "not in conformity with God's will."



    EPISCOPALIANS

    At next month's convention, an official commission,
chaired by Rhode Island's Bishop George Hunt, is proposing that
the church endorse the view that homosexuality is a "God-given"
state and that gay relationships are "holy, life-giving and
grace-filled." The panel wants the church to develop blessing
ceremonies for same-sex couples and allow local bishops to
ordain actively homosexual clergy.

    Some bishops are already doing so. Two weeks ago, Bishop
Ronald Haines of Washington ordained the Rev. Elizabeth Carl,
44, who is living openly with a lesbian partner. Haines acted
despite pressure from the denomination's Presiding Bishop,
Edmond Browning, who is sympathetic to the gay cause but wished
to avoid the controversy. The action drew a pained comment from
the capital's premier Episcopal churchgoer, President George
Bush: "Perhaps I'm a little old-fashioned, but I'm not quite
ready for that."

    Nor are many others. The Episcopal convention will debate
a conservative counterblast from 60 bishops, led by William
Frey, dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambler,
Pa. The proposal would amend canon law to place all clergy
"under the obligation to abstain from sexual relations outside
of Holy Matrimony." Observes Frey: "Many of us believe that the
sexual revolution has run its course, leaving in its wake
thousands of broken marriages, a sharp rise in teenage
pregnancies, millions of convenience-motivated abortions, a
multibillion-dollar pornography industry and a mushrooming AIDS
epidemic. What could be better news than the proclamation that
there is a better way?" Bishop Hunt predicts a close vote.



    METHODISTS

    The church's panel on homosexuality is stirring a ruckus
even before its report is written. James Holsinger, medical
director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, quit the
study committee last February because he felt certain its
conclusions would follow liberal lines. But "nothing is fixed,"
says the Rev. Nancy Yamasaki of Spokane, the committee chair,
who is publicly noncommittal. The panel's recommendations will
undergo administrative review before reaching next year's
nationwide General Conference.

    Any revolutionary Methodist proposal is likely to rely on
the thinking of Victor Paul Furnish of Southern Methodist
University and other liberal Bible scholars. According to their
various reinterpretations, the Old Testament forbids homosexual
behavior as part of a code, including laws and rituals, that
Christians no longer observe. As for New Testament abjurations
against the practice, particularly St. Paul's strong
injunctions, revisionist scholars claim that the prohibitions
were aimed only against pederasty and homosexual acts by persons
who were naturally heterosexual. In any event, the argument
runs, the apostle would have been more understanding if he knew
as much about human sexual variance as moderns do.

    Holsinger thinks Methodism could lose millions of members
if an upheaval in church policy is ever approved. But Julian
Rush of Denver, a pioneer gay Methodist minister, says, "I
don't expect any change in my lifetime. The church won't lead
the way on gays. It has to come from society into the church."

    The debate over sexual morality is least strident in the
nation's growing Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches, in
which literalist interpretations of the Bible are embraced and
heterosexual marriage is the only state in which sex is without
sin. Nonetheless, these groups are taking part in the debate
from the sidelines. Two weeks ago, the 15 million-member
Southern Baptist Convention pleaded for "all Christians to
uphold the biblical standard of human sexuality against all
onslaughts."

    No institution has backed traditional morals more ardently
than the Roman Catholic Church, particularly under Pope John
Paul II. But within the U.S. branch of the church, there are
stirrings nonetheless. The most unorthodox to date was a 1977
study commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of
America. Like this year's Presbyterian panel, the Catholic
thinkers who took part declared there could be instances in
which homosexual, premarital and unwed sex were moral. The group
was even unwilling to outlaw adultery flatly, though it urged
"extreme caution" for priests who face the issue. The views flew
in the face of Vatican pronouncements made a year earlier, and
the doctrine committee of the U.S. bishops later issued an
unusual attack on the study. But since the mid-1970s, National
Opinion Research Center polls have shown that rank-and-file U.S.
Catholics are consistently more liberal than Protestants on the
issue of premarital sex. The latest finding: 84% of Catholics
do not always find it wrong, vs. 69% of Protestants.

    Catholicism, of course, has a unique sex policy for its
priests and nuns: celibacy. The debate over that tradition has
heated up of late, through the exposure of a variety of sex
scandals and admissions that the stricture is widely ignored.
A Star Tribune newspaper poll last April, for example, revealed
that one-fifth of Minnesota priests admit to violating their
vows. But Cincinnati's Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, president
of the U.S. hierarchy, still contends, "At a time when the whole
of our culture is saying you've got to have sexual fulfillment
and sexual activity, I think it's important for the church to
give witness that that is not necessary for a productive and
full human life."

    The notion of the church as a bulwark against America's
voracious sexual culture is also taken up by Bishop Frey, leader
of the Episcopal traditionalists. In a letter to fellow prelates
he argues that "one of the most attractive features of the
early Christian communities . . . was their radical sexual ethic
and their deep commitment to family values. These things . . .
drew many people to them who were disillusioned by the
promiscuous excesses of what proved to be a declining culture.
Wouldn't it be wonderful for our Church to find such
countercultural courage today?"

    But as the pressures and practices of modern society
continue to evolve, issues of right and wrong in sex, that most
intricate aspect of human existence, are likely to become even
more perplexing to most Americans. And now churches that once
served as sources of clear moral guidance are likewise grappling
uncertainly with these issues as they try to decide whether
their sexual standards will derive from biblical tradition or
the fluid folkways of modernity.