The Newest New Morality

In two days, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will ordain an openly gay man to the office of Teaching Elder. Last weekend, there was yet another ceremony, called a wedding, of two women performed by two Presbyterian ministers.

We only need for 87 presbyteries to approve a change in our rules for it to pass. Ninety Six of our presbyteries voted in favor of a change allowing for the option of a presbytery to ordain an openly homosexual candidate to the office of pastor in a local congregation and for congregations to elect and ordain gay men, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered persons to the offices of ruling elder or deacon.

Since church officers are viewed as mature Christians and thereby offer an example of the mature Christian life, all Presbyterians who overtly or passively consent to this new rule, are saying to the world, we are bearing witness, that one can be openly homosexual and a mature Christian.

In the Bible; for example in the first chapter of the Book of Romans, we read that homosexuality is an indicator of our wanton sin and even an indicator of being unsaved or in a lost state. It is said to be the consequence of exchanging the truth of God for a lie. It is said to be the result of worshiping creation over the Creator God. Yet, 96 of our Church councils voted across the nation, including every presbytery in Alabama, to say that homosexual persons can exhibit morally exemplar lives. How can this moral conclusion be justified in the light of what Scripture teaches?

Here is how such a moral conclusion is reached.

While taking a course in ethics a few years ago, the professor assigned a book by Bruce C. Birch and Larry Rasmussen. The title of the book is The Bible in Christian Ethics. The book teaches that ethical decisions ought to be made in community or in conversation with other Christians. Our moral stances should flow organically from our communities. The writers introduce a term of art they call “formative” material from the Bible. They contrast this to a more traditional approach they call “normative” material from the Bible. While norms remain fixed in divinely revealed principles, ethical forms are products of human culture and thereby change with the times and with new insights.

Everyone has moral standards. We may say something like “That’s just not right.” Or “I am doing this because it is the only right thing to do.” We must ask ourselves what informs our moral decisions. If we choose to say no to an opportunity to cheat on our spouse, we should examine what principle informed that decision. There is a clear moral teaching, a norm, in the Bible against adultery and for fidelity in marriage, so we remain faithful to our marriage vows. In the Bible we read that we ought not to defile or adulterate the “marriage bed.” That is applying a normative approach to ethical decisions.

In a formative ethical approach the Bible becomes one of many sources that we might turn to in making a moral decision. All considerations are made, or formed and reformed, in the context of the full community of persons. Since that community is becoming more and more tolerant of homosexuality and finding more and more evidence that such relationships can be mutually nurturing to its participants we take this into account in forming our ethics. We read the Bible through the lens of all this new insight. The community in the First Century viewed homosexuality as wrong and that view is reflected in the biblical material. But, some would say, "that was then and this is now. We are more enlightened about homosexuality than Saint Paul was. We simply know better today."

They would teach that moral principles are not set in stone as eternal laws or norms, but moral biblical principles are merely snap shots in time. They do not dictate our morality. They depict where ethics were then and help us form where ethics might be today. They are formative and not normative to the Christian. What was thought wrong then, in now understood to be right.

Knowingly or unknowingly, this ethic is how the majority of the commissioners (elders and ministers, who are supposedly mature Christians) justify voting in favor of electing and ordaining homosexual church officers. We have applied this formative ethic to justify the aborting of pre-born children. Society, including many Christians, supports a woman’s right to end a pregnancy anytime before birth. In some circumstances, this action is viewed a morally good deed and an expression of God given dominion over creation.

Given this way of forming ethics, what new moral stances will come in the future? Perhaps open marriages where partners agree to enjoy sexual relationship with many others. Ministers in trial marriages or living together before marriage must surely be next. It is possible that incestuous relationship will be justified, that mutually agreed upon sexual relationship between adults and young children will be viewed as a moral good. All of these are consistent with a formative view of morality. Most Christians believe in the sanctity of life and marriage. Most Presbyterian, Episcopalian, many United Methodists, and many others in mainline Protestant denominations freely accept a formative ethic and reject strict moral norms derived from biblical morality.