Emmanuel United Methodist Church

by. Rev. Vader

My cousin is an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) Pastor and at a recent family gathering we talked about some of arguments that are made in the debate about whether openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be ordained in the ELCA church. 

My cousin told me about one of the arguments that was made by Rev. Nestingen ( an ELCA pastor) who argued that during the last 20 years the church has engaged in what he calls “Gospel reductionism, a philosophy that reduces God’s word to the Gospel, not the entire Bible.” Rev. Nestingen made his case against inclusion of gay and lesbian clergy persons and laments that over time “the church has yielded and yielded and yielded.” (Argus Leader, 1.11.10) 

I always cringe when people begin to talk about using the whole Bible for their authority. The Bible is a complicated collection of 66 books, written and redacted and translated over a huge sweep of time. Bright people study it all their lives, and still find themselves understanding only parts of it. It contains poetry, prophecy, history, myth, correspondence, wisdom literature, apocalyptic writings and, of course, gospel –actually it contains four different versions of gospel. It is more like an entire bookshelf than a simple book you can read once and tuck away for a rainy day.

When people talk like Rev. Nestingen does, I am always tempted to proof-text right back at them – lift little pieces of the Bible that support my point of view out of their context and onto the billboard in the public square as if that was a good way to hold serious and informative discourse about sacred texts. I want to talk about the prohibition on usury, for instance - you’re not supposed to charge interest on loans to one another (or, presumably, accept loans where interest is charged). That’s not an easy thing to hear in the United States of America, where the economy has long been driven in part by the credit card industry. Why don’t we fuss about how people are not following the prohibition against eating shellfish and pork and wearing clothes of two kinds of fabric at once?  Much easier to fuss about sexual orientation that that.

But, ah....now I am guilty of exactly what I condemn. In fact, we are, all of us, Bible reductionists. We use that which we find most useful, most life-giving, most relevant. And I am indeed, by Rev. Nestingen’s definition, a gospel reductionist. When all is said and done, as a follower of Christ, I give more authority to the four gospels, which tell the story of the teachings of Jesus, as well as his life, death and resurrection, than to any other part of the Bible. And I do my best to be honest about that and offer the arguments that lead me to that conclusion. And I also do my best to listen to those who disagree with me.

I will give Rev. Nestingen the benefit of the doubt, as I hope he would give me. Most of us are doing our level best to figure all this out and live faithful lives. One person’s slippery slide into a moral vacuum is another person’s arc of progress up and over the mean pettiness of human provinciality. One person’s valor becomes another’s urgent greed. One person’s utter certainty becomes another’s call to embrace the freedom of ambiguity. This has always been true. We have always had to wrestle with the Biblical texts until they bless us. 

Some people see all this as a good reason to exit the church, hollering “good riddance!” as they go. But as Carol Zaleski has commented in a recent article in Christian Century, “How would we know Christ without the institutional church? Who else would preserve the great secret of the gospel for us through the centuries, keeping it safe in the wilderness of opinions?”

Amen, sister, I say. I happen to love the church. And I happen to be very glad that the church has “yielded and yielded and yielded” on the position of women in leadership, in particular, women in ordained leadership. I happen to think that what has happened is that we have caught the whisper of continuing revelation as it has unfurled all around us, that God is still and always speaking to us, that the Bible is a wonderful source of authority about a God who is always moving in our direction before we find the wisdom to move in God’s direction, but not the only source of authority.

There. That’s a place to start today. Would you like to take up the conversation for yourself?