Gays and the Authority Question

The debate over homosexuality, which is tearing at the fabric of what was once mainline Protestantism and beyond, is rooted in questions of authority. Although I do believe that much of the debate is rooted deep down in questions of one's own sexuality, it also has major theological corollaries.

In reading Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence (Baker, 2008), I discovered this important statement, one that I do think gets at the heart of the debate.

To approach any of the arguments and questions surrounding homosexuality in the closing years of the twentieth century and the opening ones of the twenty-first is to approach a battle to the death. When it is all resolved -- and it most surely will be -- the Reformation's understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead. That is not to say that Scripture as the base of authority is dead. Rather it is to say that what the Protestant tradition has taught about the nature of that authority will be either dead or in mortal need of reconfiguration. And that kind of summation is agonizing for the surrounding culture in general. In particular, it is agonizing for the individual lives that have been built upon it. Such an ending is to be staved off with every means available and resisted with every bit of energy that can be mustered. Of all the fights, the gay one must be -- has to be -- the bitterest, because once it is lost, there are no more fights to be had. It is finished. Where now is the authority? (Tickle, The Great Emergence, 101).

I do think that Tickle has set up the issue well. This is a battle to the death, and the debate over homosexuality simply is the final bulwark of the Protestant Principle of sola scriptura. It will be a long and hard fought battle, with much collateral damage. Denominations will be decimated, institutions as well. But the force of history, as I understand it, will lead to the demise of this principle. For some of us the search for a new foundation has already begun.

My denomination, the Disciples, has always set itself up as a New Testament church, but in the past half century we have realized that this is insufficient. First we had to face the issue of the Old Testament and then our own history. In the course of that we discovered that reason was always part of the equation. Therefore, we have talked more recently about the value of Wesley's Quadrilateral -- a convergence of four authorities -- Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. In answer to Tickle's question, that is where I think the debate is heading. Both reason and experience are calling for a reconfiguration of our understandings of homosexuality.

My prayer is that the battle will be short and peace is close at hand!