Almost 30 years ago, the Anglican
Church and United Church began dealing with the issue of homosexuality and
different expressions of gender. Both have since come up with positions that
are more progressive, if that is the proper way to describe it, then what we as
Mennonites have so far arrived at. A sister recently remarked that these
denominations had dealt with this issue in the past and now it was coming to
us. Actually, The Conference of Mennonites in Canada passed a resolution in
this area in Saskatoon in 1986, so that is also 30 years ago. However, where
the other two denominations mentioned move forward, as some would call it,
Mennonites nine years later, in 1995, adopted a Confession of Faith in a
Mennonite Perspective that held to the traditional or orthodox view of
sexuality and marriage, with the latter referring to only heterosexual unions.
So, when people in 2016 complain that we are being rushed to make further
decisions in this area, I sometimes struggle with remaining patient.
I struggle with this even more
perhaps with my knowledge of this area as a recently retired psychiatrist. I
know all too well that people who are not 'straight/heterosexual' suffer more
bullying and violence directed at them. More of them are killed or suffer
mental illness and commit suicide in proportion to their numbers relative to
the 'straight' population. I will interject here that I sometimes hear from
those who reject homosexual or other variant of gender lifestyles that these
people have more mental illness because of their choices, which these
individuals understand as rebellion against God when they want to be accepted
for who they are, including lifestyle and sexual practice, without repenting of
all of it.
In connection with all of this,
it seems to me that there was an article written within the last year or two in
our minute circles with the title or theme of "We Are Dying Here",
being a plea from this LGBTQ community for them to be heard, understood and
ultimately accepted. Otherwise, with their being excluded from our churches and
memberships, they felt as if they were disregarded, abandoned and dying, not to
mention the fact that too many do die prematurely as mentioned in the paragraph
above.
Indeed, we use words such as
subject and issue which are words to describe this topic, along with others.
There are those in the midst of this fray though who remind us that we are not
just talking about concepts in those terms. We are talking about real, living
people among us and how it is affecting their lives. We are not just talking
about the individuals who are LGBTQ either, but also their families and friends
who are affected when the church is negative towards these people. However, and
I beg pardon for this, I find it difficult to discuss this without using those
non-personal words at this level, and will continue to do so in this essay.
Now let us bring this issue home
to what is no longer The Conference of Mennonites in Canada but Mennonite
Church Canada. As we should know, many in our larger body and its leadership
have worked diligently over the last nine years, and much has been written and
discussed, in the Being a Faithful Church (BFC) process. So again, when we talk
about being rushed, we have been at this for a while. As has been stated since
July, this process began with a look at how we interpret the Bible and apply it
to several issues. One of them turned out to be the whole issue of
non-heterosexual sexuality and to the apparent consternation of those who
started this process, this became the consuming subject of BFC. As such, it was
felt that it really needed to be dealt with more definitively so that we could
move forward and put some of our energies into other areas. Thus, in its
Assembly 2016, Mennonite Church Canada in its now biannual national meeting, passed
the following resolution by a wide majority of delegates in attendance:
A Resolution to the Mennonite Church Canada Delegate
Assembly July 2016: Being a Faithful Church
|
AMMENDED
Based on what the Task Force has heard in our discernment
process concerning same-sex committed relationships, and in the spirit of the
church speaking again, the General Board has approved for consideration at
the 2016 Delegate Assembly, the following BFC task force recommendation:
CARRIED
|
The last two bullets on this page
are what the resolution called for in terms of ‘going forward.’ The first one
basically states that it was recommended that we allow different congregations
to follow their own paths of discernment towards alternative understandings of
the larger body and the Confession of Faith In a Mennonite Perspective. In some
way then, these movements were to be evaluated to see whether this was of the
Spirit of God or not.
There are some who appear to not
want to progress further with discussion or discernment in this area when it
appears to run contrary to the current Confession of Faith. Whether they are genuine
in this concern - I must give the benefit of the doubt to at least some of them,
I wonder if for some of them it is not an easy excuse to try and shut down the
process. I guess, just as we interpret Scripture differently, we interpret the
role of The Confession differently. We might overlook that the document itself
says in its introduction that it is a guideline. The very fact that this
document has been revised a number of times over the centuries indicates that
we change our thinking on things. I would think we have obviously done so
without disrespecting or disregarding the particular version of the confession
that was extent at the time. So why only acting differently about it now?
Not specifically described here,
but certainly much spoken about is the perhaps-not-clearly-implied message that
we need to accept individuals with different understandings of sexuality in our
congregations so that we could get to know them and hopefully their stories. We
are to be an open and welcoming body.
There would be many who would
readily affirm that as Christians, we can really do know other than this. After
all, did not our Lord associate with and welcome all manner of sinners while he
walked on this earth? I can think of no examples where he excluded or judged,
let alone condemned the sinner in front of him. Where he did use such harsh
language was towards the self-righteous segment of the Jewish population, the
Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes and lawyers, that he claimed were misleading and
even abusing the people whom they were ostensibly the spiritual leaders of and
examples to.
The second bullet called us as
member churches to continue to stay involved in this struggle. Indeed, there
were many at Assembly 2016 in Saskatoon who felt that this resolution really
did not go very far, not much beyond what was said in Saskatoon in 1986. Therefore,
the least the large body felt it could do was to recommend that we not drop the
ball now, but put some effort into continuing to develop ways in which we can
hear one another around this topic and what we can do with it.
As a result, looking now even more
locally at Mennonite Church BC, the leadership convened a closed meeting of our
BC pastors at Peace Mennonite Church in Richmond on September 20. All I know of
that discussion was that there was quite a variety of opinions and responses to
this resolution. Then, our Area Church called a meeting of interested
individuals from our congregations for Emmanuel Mennonite Church In Abbotsford
on October 22. There, we were initially invited simply to share around our
tables where our different congregations were at. Secondly, we were invited to
brainstorm ideas of how we might move forward.
During this last portion of the
meeting, we were introduced to a group of pastors and church leaders representing
11 of our BC congregations who had written the following letter to Mennonite
Church BC, and were given the floor to share it:
Response to BFC 7 by some MCBC Churches & their Leadership
We believe
that with BFC 7's adoption, MC Canada has fundamentally changed our Confession
of Faith and
have adopted a new hermeneutic (way of interpreting the Bible)
that we are opposed to and is incompatible
with our MCBC Covenant. We are
calling for October 22nd, 2016 to be a special delegates meeting to
settle the issue based on the 2 options given below:
We see that MCBC has 2 options and we heartily recommend
the second:
1. Scrap MCBC's re-covenanting document of 2007
(essentially what BFC 7 does) and
adopt BFC 7
and then make our decisions based on that.
OR (our recommendation):
2. We believe that our MCBC covenant is clear
that it is those who distance themselves
from the
relationship with us.
a. We reject the national adoption of BFC 7 as a
faulty interpretation of Scripture
and
alteration
of our common Confession of Faith.
b. With the adoption of BFC 7, MC Canada has
distanced themselves from our
common
Confession
of Faith.
c. In doing so MC Canada has distanced
themselves from MCBC according to our
covenant.
d. Therefore MCBC maintains unity separate from
MC Canada based on our
Confession of
Faith as re-covenanted at the special delegates meeting of MCBC
on June 3, 2006.
(documents attached)
I think some of us feel that we
are being rushed by our leadership into making more liberal and open decisions
in this area. Actually, at present here in BC, looking particularly at the
above document, I think the impetus to make decisions, is coming more from
those who want to maintain the status quo. It seems to me that they're the ones
pushing more strongly for decision-making in this area. I think their
motivation is essentially that they want to leave this issue behind, shut down
the conversation and focus on other areas.
Sadly, I have to say that I think
BC is the most conservative in this whole area. There are several congregations
in every other Area Church across the country that have put a great deal of
energy into this area, holding many meetings and study sessions, and have come
up with accepting non-heterosexual individuals into their congregations. A
number of these churches have developed inclusion statements as they're called
and posted them on their websites. Some even include representations of the
LGBTQ rainbow on their websites. I do not know of any MCBC church that has gone
in this direction, let alone as far as some of these congregations to the east.
We know that earlier this year at least one congregation in Saskatchewan
performed same-sex marriage. This was performed in the home church of the
couple, even though it was another Mennonite church in Saskatchewan that had
done much of the groundwork that led to the marriage.
Indeed, even as a young man in
Manitoba in the 1960s and 1970s, I already picked up a sense from discussions
of church leaders and conferences that BC was on the conservative side. We know
that readership of the Canadian Mennonite is lowest in BC. I know from personal
comments even from our own church members that they no longer wished to receive
this paper largely because of the ongoing discussion of this issue in its
pages. I find it sad when people are so closed to a subject that they do not
even want to run the risk of reading something from "the other side"
that might force them to re-think their opinions. What are we really afraid of?
BC has, I believe, also had the most churches leave Mennonite Church Canada, at
least in part over this issue, although I know that several congregations in
Alberta have also left and this is beginning to happen in Manitoba.
So, we can see that this subject
has become divisive. I am not sure where we can lay the blame for that. I
really do not see that it needs to be that divisive. If we look back at The
Church over the first few hundred years of its existence, I am not aware of any
great debate or division over such issues of lifestyle, practice, ethics or
socio--cultural considerations. The Church in those days was dealing with more
fundamental threats such as the groups that did not believe that Christ was
human, or did not believe that he was God and could not accept The Trinity.
Even now, I don't think any of us
in Mennonite Church Canada, regardless of where we stand on these gender and
sexual issues, do not still hold to the same basic beliefs and doctrines when
it comes to creedal substance such as our beliefs in God, Jesus, the Holy
Spirit, and what Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection, among
other things. These are the important things that define the church. Our stand
on LGBTQ individuals and where they fit in is not of that order and so should
be something that we can work through over time together as the spirit leads.
We do need to keep working at it though because it is not going to go away.
Other denominations and our society are also very much involved in this.
Hopefully, we can do so in the spirit of love, humility, respect and unity
without feeling rushed.
Lorne Brandt
2016 11 11
No comments:
Post a Comment