What's the Problem with Marruage Equality?

I have been musing for a while about why some conservatives are so vehemently opposed to marriage equality. I recognize that for many of them the objections are based upon their religious convictions. However at least some of these people have accepted in other areas of life that what they would not do because of their convictions others are legally allowed to do. One may believe that drinking alcohol is wrong without trying to reestablish prohibition. So why is marriage equality such a problem for them?

 

I think, and I certainly could be wrong about this, that for many of these folks their opposition has roots in patriarchy. Marriage has for most of its history been the union of unequal partners. Why, until recently, was the proper way to address a letter to a married woman "Mrs. John Smith"? It was a vestige of patriarchy. Marriage equality is an assault upon patriarchy. Although I would make no claim that there is perfect equality in all same-sex marriages, I suspect that there is an unacknowledged fear among some who cling to patriarchy that marriage equality will challenge the inequality of their marriages. If two men can establish a marriage of equals, then why shouldn't opposite sex couples do that? And if two women can show us that a marriage doesn't actually need a man, what happens to the idea that the husband is always the head of the household? (Actually, most of the married women that I know think that idea is a joke.)

 

I am convinced that marriage equality is a gift to all of us, even to those who oppose it so vehemently. It can teach us about equality in relationships and begin to free us from thinking that culturally created gender roles are permanent. It can do that only if we let it shed much needed light upon marriage as we have understood it. 

Lament

I awoke suddenly very early this morning feeling very sad. I had been dreaming about putting containers of food in a freezer but I have no idea about what connection there was between the dream and my sadness. Deciding that trying to go back to sleep would be futile, I parked myself on the sofa in the living room, played solitaire on my phone, which didn't make me any happier, and thought about sadness - mine, that of people I love, the world's sadness.

 

For a few minutes I entertained useless thoughts about how I have no real reasons to be sad.  After all I am more prosperous than most other people in the world, so why should I be sad? But strong emotions aren't logical and there is nothing to be gained by telling myself that I have no right to be sad. Emotions simply are.

 

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of being with Malcolm Boyd, whose Are You Running With Me, Jesus? played a significant role in the journey that led to my being ordained. Malcolm is still very insistent that prayer is one of the most important parts of the work that we do as people committed to justice. Real prayer, honest prayer is what is needed, and these days honest prayer will often be a lament.

 

Someone said recently that we need to reclaim our capacity to lament. The people of ancient Israel understood the importance of lament, at least that is what I see when I pray with the psalms, and Jesus, we are told, lamented when he looked at Jerusalem. The world is a sad place and denying it, saying that God is in heaven and all is right with the world, only makes it sadder.

 

In 1976 the Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall published Lighten Our Darkness: Toward an Indigenous Theology of the Cross. Hall began the Preface of the book with these words: 

The subject of this book is the failure of a people and the courage that can come to those who contemplate this failure in the perspective of the cross. The people are the North Americans.

Hall is right that it takes courage to face our failure and that we can find courage as we see that failure in the light of the cross. We have adopted in both his country and mine an almost official optimism that denies the presence of darkness, that refuses to lament. Hall took as his title a phrase from one the collects for Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. How can we pray that collect with any integrity if we refuse to admit that "our darkness" is real? How can we move to honest confession of our failure when what we too often hear from our elected officials is the far less than honest "Mistakes were made"?

 

Perhaps my early morning sadness was a gift, a nudge from God who wants me to be honest in my prayer, who wants me to lament.

 

Unity, Not Uniformity

In her sermon on Sunday, my colleague Jo Barrett focused on Jesus' prayer that we all might be one as he and the Father are one. Although she did not say it, it seemed clear to me, sitting in a pew, that she understood that the unity of the Trinity is a unity of love. I think the language of the Nicene Creed, drawing as it does on categories from Greek philosophy, is not at all helpful today if it ever was. What meaning does "one in being" or "consubstantial" have for us? Apart from love these terms sound very hollow.

 

If the unity of the Trinity is not a matter of uniformity, then the unity of the disciples of Jesus need not be a matter of uniformity. Just as it is orthodox teaching that the Father is not the Son, so it might be considered orthodox to say that Baptists are not Roman Catholics and to mean that both are recognizable as members of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which is the Body of Christ in the world. 

 

Several years ago when I was teaching at a Roman Catholic high school I spent some time thinking about what gift the various denominations of Christians  offered to the Church and the world. I am thankful for the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, for the Baptist's clear teaching about the necessity of a mature commitment to Christ, and for other gifts that have enriched my life as an Anglican.

 

In her serm0n Jo used her own experience of being awakened by the dawn chorus of birds as a image for the offerings of praise that the different churches in our community make. Reflecting on that image now I remember being part of a chorus several years ago. Another member told the director that she didn't think we sounded right. The director asked her to stand next to him as the chorus repeated what we had just sung. When we stopped singing she said that the music sounded right from that perspective. Perhaps we can't hear how the offerings of all the different denominations become one. Perhaps only God can hear that.

Memorial Day

Yesterday I was talking with a couple of friends at church about Memorial Day. Not surprisingly the conversation was not about picnics but about the memorials our nation has built to honor those who died in our wars. What I found a bit surprising was the interest that both of these men had in the way our country has honored the women who served in our armed forces. In one case, that of the women who flew airplanes during World War II from the factory to the air bases, the honoring took a while in coming.

 

Honoring those who served and died has not always been an easy matter. In the years after the Civil War some communities that sent men to serve on both sides were involved in fights over which war dead they should honor. After Viet Nam many of those who had supported the war and of those who opposed it failed to welcome back those who had served with the gratitude and honor they deserved. 

 

There are lessons to be learned from our nation's less than perfect history. Perhaps the most important one on this Memorial Day is that those who serve, even in wars that we oppose or wars that end in defeat, are owed our thanks.

Equal Value - Equal Claim

This past week I was at Episcopal Divinity School for my final meetings as the Trustee elected by the alumni/ae. As we prepared for Thursday's Commencement we were treated to a Wednesday afternoon panel of the honorary degree recipients. The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, President of the Episcopal Church's House of Deputies spoke abouit her commitment to the principle that is the title of this blog post. For Jennings, and for me, all members of the Church have equal value, and therefore equal claim on the Church's resources. That Gospel principle was clearly at work in the description of the life of the Church recorded by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds^[j] to all, as any had need. (2:43-45) While I am sure that Luke's picture of the earliest communities of the followers of Jesus is somewhat romanticized, his inclusion of this description points to how important this aspect of community life was to Luke's community, even if it rarely if ever lived up to this ideal.

 

Christian communities have rarely lived up to that ideal, nor have Christians in our society today advocated for that ideal as one for our country. Only a few of us have suggested that the resources of this country are to be shared by all. Only a few of us have made the connection between our theology of creation - The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it (Psalm 24:1) - and our social ethics.  Making that connection is, of course, not enough. There remains the complicated work of engaging in public policy discussions about the role of government in meeting the needs of all of us. Should government provide, as President Nixon proposed, a guaranteed family income? Should government provide enough food assistance so that people do not go to bed hungry? Or should government leave to the churches and other institutions responsibility for providing for the needs of the least among us? 

 

In the spirit of Episcopal Divinity School I take a both and approach to such questions. I believe that religious communities have an important role to play in the work of distributive justice and that it would be a mistake to leave the work entirely to government agencies. Not only are we called to serve those in need, but in serving them we can discover the necessity of moving beyond service to advocacy. We can begin to ask, as Dom Hélder Câmara did a generation ago, why so many people are poor. We can begin the hard work of social analysis to discover the systemic causes of poverty. And we can advocate loudly and persistently for the elimination of those systemic causes.

 

Engaging in this work may well get us into hot water. Dom Hélder Câmara was accused of being a communist when he asked that question, and we are likely to be called, if not communists, unrealistic or utopian. But is it unrealistic to work for a world in which children aren't condemned to being hungry? Is it unrealistic to believe that those who are in the image of God should not be abandoned to lives of poverty? Is it unrealistic to hope and pray and work for God's will being done and God's reign of justice coming on this good earth? No, it isn't unrealistic. It is, in fact, the most realistic of hopes imaginable.