Homosexuality and the Orthodox Church

Reflections on the Ancient Faith Today Progam: Christianity and Same-Sex Attraction

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This past Sunday (May 20, 2012), Ancient Faith Today interviewed Dr. Philip Mamalakis and Andrew Williams who specialize in counseling people with same-sex attraction. It was hands down one of the most illuminating and informed presentations I have heard on this complex and often contentious topic in quite a while.

Without going into particulars (you can listen to the interview below), their grounding in Orthodox anthropology enabled them to avoid the common misconception that the object of a person’s sexual desire forms what I call a “foundational characteristic of personhood.” In practical terms this means that we error when we see a person first and foremost as either “straight” or “gay” believing that “sexual orientation” sums up much of who and what he is.

This way of understanding the human person is taken at face value in the larger culture, but in Orthodox self-understanding it misses the mark completely. We are not to conform our understanding of the human person to whether he prefers men or women because we don’t define a person in terms of his sexual desire. Desires are malleable, they require self-discipline and self-mastery (this is what fasting is about for example). And the knowledge that directs this path of mastery can only be uncovered if there is a deeper understanding of the purpose, meaning, and destiny of the human person.

This deeper understanding has been lost in the larger culture — including in some quarters of the Church — although not by the two presenters in Sunday’s program. They framed same-sex desire in the larger context of the inherent value of the human person and his created destiny to become a son of God (male and female alike). As such we heard no condemnatory language that you might hear from moral rigorists who correctly see homosexual behavior as sin but lack the insight about how the struggle with same-sex desire might actually be a means of transformation, or the moral relativism of those who believe that if something feels good it must be right.

The idea that desire defines personhood also gives rise to the notion that ‘orientation’ is a fixed and objective category of human ontology. In English this means that the thinking — the orientation or outlook that results by acting on desire — is itself the source of the desire. The orientation is understood to be something fixed and unchangeable, similar to say, hair color or race.

Yet, all passions (desires) affect an orientation, especially the inordinate ones. A person addicted to food will have an inner orientation geared toward the acquisition and consumption of more food, the alcoholic to alcohol, a person motivated by anger to anger, and so forth. In sexual terms this is true of the heterosexual as well. A man who fails to master lust will have an inner orientation towards, say, fornication and so forth. His self-understanding is no different from the homosexual activist.

Sexual relationships are properly expressed only in the context of marriage between one man and one woman in order to create a family and continue the human race. The sexual revolution that began in the 1960s overthrew this common wisdom. It created the condom/contraception culture that divorced sexual activity from procreation. The idea that the two parent family was crucial for interpersonal and thus cultural stability was undermined, and sexual activity outside of marriage was seen as a natural and positive good.

Homosexual activism then is a predictable outcome of heterosexual irresponsibility. Anytime sexual activity is divorced from procreation, any notion that the family — the union of one male and one female — is the proper social context for sexual relations erodes along with it. And where sexual desire is elevated as a primary constituent of self-identity, then marriage becomes little more than a legal framework in which sexual desire is actualized. ‘Gay marriage’ seems like a reasonable arrangement under these conditions.

Further, it is not true that the heterosexual model is an ‘orientation’ even though heterosexual desire can be misused. Heterosexual relationships, when properly understood and expressed as one man and one woman joining to create a family, lie within the order of creation, within nature. Put another way, same-sex unions are naturally sterile (not the same thing as infertile). They are biologically closed to the creation of new life. Nature itself rejects the premise that same-sex unions correspond in any meaningful way to the heterosexual family.

These ideas are self-evidently true even though many people have an increasingly difficult time seeing it. The cultural shift in the West is anthropological first, and only political second. Unfortunately this is also true in the Church where some activists work to bring this impoverished view of the human person into Orthodox thinking and praxis. They are not enemies necessarily but they are deeply confused, and their confusion should not be allowed to stand under the rubric of fairness, compassion, or any other appeal calculated to create moral parity.

The person authentically struggling with same-sex desire will learn to bring that struggle to Christ in ways that allow for a deeper transformation into Christ. If the ideas about homosexual orientation prevalent in the larger culture are imported in the Church however, then that struggle will either be truncated or abandoned altogether because of the false anthropology that it posits.

We are more than our desires. The activist seeking to create a moral parity between homosexuality and heterosexuality seeks the dominance of homosexual behavior in the end, and either has a poor understanding of the human person or deliberately set out to change the core anthropological teachings of the Church. Aberration replaces truth when this occurs, and the image of Him into Whom we are to be transformed is distorted.

Listen to the interview on Ancient Faith Today here:

Albert Mohler: Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution

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R. Albert Mohler Jr.

In the essay below, Dr. Mohler is speaking to an Evangelical Christian readership but many of his observations apply to all Christians. The normalization of homosexual behavior is a moral revolution Mohler writes and not one that Christians can join and remain faithful to their Christian faith. He’s right about that.

There will be pressure to adopt to this new morality as well. We even see it on the edges of the Orthodox Church with the Facebook group Listening: Breaking the Silence on Sexuality within the Orthodox Church for example. Who ever thought that some Orthodox would drag this battle of the culture war into the Church?

Mohler takes the Evangelicals to task for their sloppy handing of the homosexual question. I’m not sure we Orthodox have been sloppy, but we have been complacent. The homosexual moral revolution is at bottom a question of anthropology, what it means to be a man or woman and thus a human being. We Orthodox know some things about human anthropology but we’ve been asleep at the switch.

My conviction is that we may be in a period of social unrest similar to what the Early Church experienced that caused the the forging of the great dogmatic truths like Nicea and others (I touch on this in my essay: Orthodox Leadership in a Brave New World). Great unrest imposes suffering, but it also can unleash creativity.

There’s a lot to be done. We have to resist the attempts to homosexualize the Church from within; teach that the object of one’s sexual desire is not a primary constituent of self-identity; develop our anthropology to answer the homosexual questions with better insight and compassion; learn how to help men and woman properly deal with same-sex desires, and more.

Mohler reproves his Evangelical followers for failing to meet the challenge of homosexuality face to face, and by this I presume he means that some Evangelicals prefer not to have dealings with homosexuals at all. That’s not an Orthodox problem I think because we have an easier time drawing the distinction between people and their behaviors, including their sins. We have a better practical sense that not much more than God’s mercy separates us from the next guy.

Unfortunately, the neo-Episcopalian wing like those on the Facebook group exhibit a deep immaturity about the the human person and same-sex desire. Their immaturity probably derives from moral confusion, particularly defining such concepts as tolerance and compassion in terms of the dominant culture rather than the moral tradition. They craft an apologetic that uses the language of the moral tradition to endorse behaviors that contradict its teaching, yet they refuse to admit that the contradiction even exists.

That’s why when they collapse the distinction between person and behavior they think they fulfill the law of love, and why they believe that insisting on moral parity between opposite-sex and same-sex marriage is pleasing to God.

If their confusion is allowed to prevail, then the dominant culture will trump the moral tradition and the deep anthropological understanding that shaped the language and makes the distinction comprehensible will be lost. So will the important pastoral work that depends on it. The Orthodox will become like the liberal Episcopalians except for our Eastern flair and better looking vestments.

Source: Albert Mohler.com

The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it’s facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.

To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can’t Christians just join the revolution?

And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, “The Honor Code,” moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we’ve witnessed on the question of homosexuality.

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than “moral deficiency.”

The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals win and the conservatives lose. Next, the denomination ordains openly gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions.

This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we believe that the Bible is God’s revealed word, we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. We believe that God has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only points the way to holiness, but to true happiness.

Thus we cannot accept the seductive arguments that the liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means that we must further stipulate that we are bound by scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman—and nothing else.

We do so knowing that most Americans once shared the same moral assumptions, but that a new world is coming fast. We do not have to read the polls and surveys; all we need to do is to talk to our neighbors or listen to the cultural chatter.

In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins.

This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound bites. But it is what we truly believe.

It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.

We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia—not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face.

My hope is that evangelicals are ready now to take on this challenge in a new and more faithful way. We really have no choice, for we are talking about our own brothers and sisters, our own friends and neighbors, or maybe the young person in the next pew.

There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world around us that is being tested, so much as the believing church. We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach.

New and Controversial: “Homosexuality in the Orthodox Church” Just Published

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From the Press Release:

12/2/2011

Controversial Book ‘Homosexuality in the Orthodox Church’ Published; Editor Justin R. Cannon Says Constant Focus on ‘Sex’ and ‘Sin’ Misguided

Newly-published book “Homosexuality in the Orthodox Church” offers a brief overview of the experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans Christians in the life of the Orthodox Church, including personal testimony and a Bible study.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 12, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ — “Too often the discussion around homosexuality in the Church focuses on sin, when the real question before us should be: How can the Church faithfully minister to and love homosexual Orthodox Christians?” These words are found in the preface to the recently published book Homosexuality in the Orthodox Church (ISBN 978-1456416874), now available on Amazon.com. Editor Justin R. Cannon believes that most conversations about homosexuality are misguided because they reduce people, lives, stories, and struggles to two issues: sin and sex. “This is not just about sex–it’s about people, relationships, love, and that core human longing for companionship,” explains Cannon. “Often it is not until the ‘issue’ is given a face and someone’s close family member or dearest friend comes out that hearts and lives are changed. This is not about an act, but about people.”

Cannon points out that most mainstream Christian denominations–even Roman Catholics with their ministry Dignity USA–have at least one gay-affirming group. But such is not the case with Orthodox Christianity. “The conversation concerning the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Orthodox Church has not started in the same way it has in the Roman, Anglican, and Protestant churches. While many localized Orthodox jurisdictions teach that practicing homosexuality is a sin, this teaching has not been ecumenically affirmed within the Orthodox Church,” states Cannon.

According his website, this book offers “a glimpse into the life, witness, history, and struggle of Eastern Orthodox Christians who happen to be homosexual.” Cannon identifies three ways that priests handle their congregants who are gay and partnered: 1) they just don’t talk about it and maintain a ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy, 2) They kick them out of the Church, or 3) They are embraced and welcomed to be full members of the community. “The frequency of these different responses is probably in that exact order,” he comments.

This 116-page tome is one of a kind–purportedly the very first book about homosexuality in the Orthodox Church that challenges the status quo belief that same-sex relationships are sinful. The book includes four accounts by Orthodox Christians and family members, an essay by a Ukrainian bishop, a history of a group called Axios (which served gay Orthodox Christians), a brief Bible study, and a list of further resources. Copies of the book are available for $12 through Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1456416871.

In the book’s Preface, Cannon writes, “It is my prayer that this anthology will open up dialogue and discussion within the Orthodox Church about the struggles, stories, and witness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Orthodox Christians, and those who love them.”

Inclusive Orthodoxy is a Christian ministry which teaches that the Church must be inclusive of all faithful believers regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, while also holding firm to the authority of Scripture and Tradition. More information is available at www.inclusiveorthodoxy.org.

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