I recently spoke on a
panel event advertised as ‘Evangelicals Supporting Marriage Equality’. In the
weeks preceding the event, I had coffee with an Anglican minister to discuss my
involvement as a panellist, the use of the word Evangelical, and whether I
apply it to myself.
In this piece, I respond
to the letter written by the Sydney Anglican Archbishop, in which he defends
the million dollar donation made by the Sydney Anglican Diocese to the
Coalition for Marriage, urging Australians to ‘vote no’ in the postal survey on
same-sex marriage. But my response to that letter is connected to the fact that
I do, in certain key ways consider myself an Evangelical, so I will begin with
a consideration of that term. Then, in responding to the letter, I suggest that
as Evangelical Christians, we should consider
how the million-dollar donation, and the defence of this action by the Archbishop,
may actively work to detract from the evangelistic
work of sharing the gospel.
Labels and Tags: Evangelical
I'm not particularly fond of labels and tags,
but, as someone who spends a lot of time in feminist and queer theory, I understand
there is value in declaring one’s subject position. Let me do this without the
standard tags: I’ve dated a couple of men and – to borrow from Katy Perry
- I’ve kissed a girl, and I liked it.
I’m unmarried and childfree. I read feminist theory. I critique cultural
marriage narratives. I’m for feminist,
transformative politics and subversive story telling[i].
Two of my grandparents were German-speaking
Jews who came to Australia by boat, but I’m an inner-city white girl who grew
up in the Anglican church.
I will take the label ‘Evangelical’. I do so
because as a Christian there are certain key beliefs and values I align with
that fall under the 'Evangelical' tag. The great source of knowledge that is
Wikipedia defines Protestant Evangelicalism as a Christian movement which:
maintains the belief
that the essence of the gospel
consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus
Christ's atonement.
Evangelicals believe in the centrality of the conversion or the "born
again" experience in receiving salvation, in
the authority of the Bible as God's revelation to humanity, and in spreading the Christian
message.[ii]
Amy DeRogatis, writing in Church History, uses ‘Protestant Evangelical’ as an “umbrella
term”, for Protestant Christians who “who affirm the necessity of a spiritual rebirth”
and are “grouped together by their literal reading of the Bible, their emphasis
on inerrancy, the imminent return of Christ, mission-mindedness, and in many
cases—though certainly not all—their suspicion of "worldliness" and
the perils of secular culture”[iii]. While I do not insist on reading the bible
through a literal framework, I do believe in the authority of scripture (and I seek to do justice both to the
text and to the lived experience of people around me. I figure this is my duty
if I'm to adequately pastorally care for my friends and family). I
believe in salvation by grace. I do believe the
gospel is good news, and I think most people I know would know that I'm always
ready and willing to talk of my own faith, and of religion (and sex and
politics).
Spending and Defending One Million Dollars
So here I
am, a feminist who is critical of marriage narratives, but has voted yes, and a Sydney Anglican and
Evangelical, who is deeply concerned by the words that the (my) Archbishop has
used in his defence of the million-dollar donation made by the diocese. I find
his defence problematic for several reasons, but I want to focus on a particular
paragraph which stands in tension with the core Evangelical goal of evangelism. Let’s look at the words of
the archbishop, sent in a letter to churches, read at synod and available on
the Sydney Anglicans website:
This is not a debate of our choosing. I am sure that we would
prefer to spend our energies telling people about God’s loving message of
salvation through Jesus Christ, but in God’s providence, this is the point of
engagement with our culture at this time.[iv]
This statement
is a striking admission. Firstly, it privileges donating to an ad campaign over
and above the evangelical work of
sharing the gospel, that is, the good news of salvation by grace and making
disciples of every nation (Matthew 28:19-20). It removes our agency and
responsibility (We didn’t choose to debate same-sex marriage, it was thrown at
us, and though we would ‘prefer’ to do something else we are, apparently,
powerless to do so). An organisation that can find a spare one million dollars
to give to an ad campaign cannot, with integrity, claim to be without voice or
agency. But perhaps, most significantly, these words and the donation, actively
detract from evangelistic or missional work and activities that Christians are
currently engaged in as it deters people from seeing the beauty of the gospel.
A story of Evangelism
Let me tell you a story of
friendship, which is, in it’s a way, a story of evangelism. I first invited Lisa[v] to church over
five years ago. She was not my “project”, she is my friend, but I confess that
behind my first asking her there was a fair slice of evangelistic guilt; I was
aware that I was not doing my bit as an evangelical. I was not inviting people
to church. So, I asked Lisa.
She came with
me to my local inner-west Anglican church a couple of times. Later when we were
both living in London, she would occasionally join me at a small West London
church where we attended a traditional prayer book service. Lisa recently told
me it was in London that she “fell in love” with “the church service”. Then,
when we were both back living in Sydney, and I had found a new church, I again
asked her to come with me. We dropped into the afternoon contemporary service,
and after a few weeks settled at the early morning, Book of Common Prayer
service. For a few years, Lisa came to church steadily and, for a while, went
to small group run by a mutual friend. Moved by an announcement in which our
minister told the congregation we were at risk of not making our budget, she
began to financially give to the church, because she was beginning to consider
our church to be her community. During this time, Lisa also came out.
Lisa continued coming to church with
me. She didn’t, as far as I know, become a Christian. She dates women. She
still loves the Book of Common Prayer. She still thinks about Christianity.
However, heartbreakingly, as a result of the Anglican Church’s donation to the
Coalition for Marriage she has no intention of ever coming back to church.
There is no conversion story. No Evangelistic ‘happy ending’ (there’s a phrase
I never thought I would write). Some people might think I failed to pray hard
enough for Lisa’s conversion. But where I sit, I see many years of investment in a person, in a relationship. I see over five
years of actively inviting someone into my spiritual life, by inviting them to
church and always being willing to talk about questions of faith and of sexuality. And I also see that in
the days following the announcement
of the donation, that any sense Lisa had of belonging at church had been
eroded. She said to me, “I know it’s not personal, but it feels that way”.
One Story. One Person
So what. One story. One person.
That’s not evidence you say. Sure. It might not be conclusive. But it happened,
and it is the truth of our experience. In this week, all I have had time for is
to gather personal stories. Anecdotes. I had coffee with a friend on Wednesday.
She and her husband are appalled at the million-dollar donation. She sent me a
message on facebook a few days later to
say they had spoken with their church leadership and have left their Anglican
church. I spoke with a colleague yesterday. A gay man in his fifties, raised in
the Catholic church. He’s fully aware of the actions of the Anglican church,
and that it is a church I belong to. When people like him look to the church,
what do they see? Via messenger, he wrote to me:
it
does surprise me that there is enough money to put into some things, yet not
enough for others of more importance. I was quite shocked at how much they'd
allocated to domestic violence in comparison. I would have thought it was a
more urgent and important matter.
Indeed.
I’ve seen some clergy try to defend this. They say DFV is getting ongoing
funding (which it may well be, and I’m very glad that it is). I’ve seen them
suggest that the postal survey is a “once in a lifetime” event, requiring a
sudden injection of funds, to stop society irrevocably walking down a path to
destruction. The Archbishop’s letter, admittedly puts it more mildly, saying we
“should stand firmly for God’s good plan for marriage in a
world that has increasingly abandoned that plan.”
Can we pause and reflect on that for
a minute. Even if we work within the framework that views homosexual acts as
sinful[vi],
what we see in the rhetoric of church leaders, when they describe this money,
this campaign to vote no as necessary
to stop society abandoning God’s good plan for marriage and walking headfirst
into supposed moral decay, is that the prospect of a gay or lesbian couple
being married is considered more destructive
than domestic and family violence. That is not only deeply insulting to gay and
lesbian people, it glosses over the very real danger to those in unsafe
relationships. You might feel like these
are very different issues, but at their core, both DFV and same-sex
relationships ask us to think about marriage, sexuality and what it means to be
ethically responsible. Given that Christians, have traditionally opposed
same-sex relationships on the understanding they are immoral, there is also an
important question here about what constitutes immorality. Rather than
uncritically equate homosexuality with immorality (thereby making a ‘no’ vote
seem easy and obvious), it may be more ethically responsible of us to think
hard about what immorality is. Because there are many ‘immoral’ or unethical
sex acts, and if domestic violence and sexual assault does not evoke at least the same amount of moral
outrage and financial intervention as the thought of a committed, monogamous,
state sanctioned non-hetero marriage, we need to ask ourselves some tough
questions, and perhaps reflect on the bible verse about specks and planks of
wood[vii].
Again, I
know, the interaction with my colleague is ‘just’ an anecdote. I sometimes
wonder when the Archbishop last had to
discuss his actions with a gay colleague or a queer best friend. But even if I
am the only person in the diocese
with such stories, I believe that even one
such story matters. I believe that one person
who is no longer coming to church matters. I believe that one family leaving their church matters. I believe that one gay man, looking on at the church
while still remembering the hurt of being bullied in school as a 12 year old
matters.
We believe
in a God who would leave the ninety-nine to go searching for the one. And it
just might be that the one, like my friend Lisa, is a lesbian. This week, when
Lisa looked at the actions of the church, she learned that, perhaps, in the
eyes of the church, she did not matter.
How I long to tell her she is wrong.
But that doesn't feel genuine. Yes, she matters to me. And I believe she matters to my creator God.
But, I cannot, with any sense of honesty tell her she matters to my church. As
she walks away from my Anglican church, I want my Archbishop, and my diocese,
to know that I didn’t just wish I
could have spent my energy telling her about
God’s loving message of salvation through Jesus Christ, I did do that. And I
want the Archbishop to know that letting an ad campaign take precedence over
evangelistic work signals a major shift in Evangelical church priorities. While I try to find a way to tell myself it
was well-intentioned, I cannot help but think that collectively, the Anglican
church risks failing to go looking for the one, choosing instead to feed and
protect the ninety-nine.
[i] For ideas on subversive
story-telling, see Jack Zipes, (2016),
‘Once upon a
time: Changing the
World through Storytelling’, in Common Knowledge, 22 (2), 227-283. doi:
10.1215/0961754X-3464961.
[ii]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism
[iii] DeRogatis, A. (2005). What would
Jesus do? Sexuality and salvation in Protestant Evangelical sex manuals, 1950s to
the present. Church History, 74 (1),97-137. doi: 0.1017/S0009640700109679.
[iv]
https://sydneyanglicans.net/blogs/ministrythinking/archbishops-letter-to-churches
[v] Name changed
[vi] For a comprehensive discussion on
different approaches to understanding what the bible teaches about
homosexuality, I thoroughly recommend, ‘Two views on homosexuality, the Bible
and the Church’, edited by P Sprinkle,
published by Zondervan.
[vii] Matthew 7:1-5