Breaking down the dividing wall: ending the silence about sexuality - Homosexuality: Some Elements for an Ecumenical Discussion

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 1998 by Melanie A. May

It was not easy to say yes in response to the invitation to write this article. For more than 40 years I have lived with a "dividing wall" (Eph. 2:14) at the heart of my life. On one side of the wall, I have been a theologian and leader in church and ecumenical bodies. On the other side, I have torturously come to terms with my sexuality with the emotional and physical passion I have always felt in relation to women. This wall tears through the heart of me. It is a wall made of stones carved in silence so severe that self-hatred haunted my days and nights for years and years.

This silence has been most deafening in the church. I grew up in the Church of the Brethren and was ordained as a minister in 1984. On one hand, the Church of the Brethren nurtured me and called me into leadership. On another hand, however, the fullness of my being was unacceptable to my formative community of faith. The price of my membership and ministry in the Church of the Brethren, therefore, was silence about being a lesbian. It is a price paid by most lesbians and gay men in most churches.

It has taken many years for me to know -- really know, body and mind and spirit -- what African American lesbian poet Audre Lorde meant when she said long ago: "Your silence will not protect you."(1) There is, as Virginia Mollenkott has put it, a "price" to be paid for "passing"(2) as someone other than who I am created by God to be. I reflect on the various forms this price for passing takes in my book. A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection:

There are the feelings of being left out, of being invisible, in various

social settings. There is the torture of trying to make a relationship

or a living arrangement acceptable, presentable, so to speak. There

is the stress that accrues. . . and also alienates.

"But," I continue, "all these and more taken together do not add up to the highest price of passing, the price I can and will no longer pay."

This highest, indeed death-dealing, price for me is perpetrating a sin of

omission. Silence is a sin of omission. It is a sin of omission not

only because silence is dishonesty to others and

to my self What is even more unlivable for me is this: by being silent, by

perpetrating the sin of omission, I omit my self from being the fullness

of the image of God as God created me to be.(3)

I am fully alive in God's image as a woman loving women, as a lesbian. I am Also fully alive as a Christian, as a member and minister in the body of Christ.

Of course, many people say this is impossible. Some say that homosexuality Is antithetical to the gospel and that homosexuals ought therefore to be excluded from the church, certainly from its ordained ministry. Some say the church is an unwelcoming place of judgment to be avoided by lesbians and gay men for the sake of self-respect. But it is precisely within the church that I was taught to respect all persons as persons created in God's image, as persons God loves. It is precisely within the church that I first heard the call to live the integrity of word made flesh and flesh become word. No coverup. No deception. Words not empty or evasive. Words not "become flesh as brutal or destructive deeds. But words bearing witness to our selves born of flesh in the image of God, whose Spirit is the Spirit of life and love, and of the truth that sets free." I affirm that this troubled, tempestuous conjunction -- I am lesbian and I am a member and minister of the body of Christ -- is not of my own making, but was born in me at my baptism.

So I still believe the truth sets free. As I affirmed in A Body Knows:

The truth sets me free to be who I am created by God to be. And I believe

I am created by God to give glory to God for and as who I am. Put in

other words. I am created, not to explain or to justify, but to enjoy

and to be joyous being a lesbian, being a lover of women.(5)

My concern therefore is not to rehearse the issues debated relative to Christianity and homosexuality per se.(6) Although I am aware these issues are among the most church-dividing issues of our day, I do not believed debate -- reasoned, or otherwise -- will convince persons with conflicting, even hostile, points of view to change their minds. I do believe we are called to recognize and respect one another as uniquely created in God's image. Accordingly, my concern is whether on the basis of this mutual recognition and respect we can engage in committed conversation, not in order to convince one another but in hope that the Holy Spirit of love as well as truth may transform us all. My concern is whether committed conversation may enable us to confirm what the delegates to the first assembly of the World Council of Churches declared now fifty years ago: "We intend to stay together." We intend to stay together, in the face of serious disagreement and beset by dividing walls, because, as the first assembly also said: "Christ has made us his own, and He is not divided."

There are three arenas for committed conversation which I believe the Churches must address in order to be able to stay together and, by God's grace, to be blessed with life abundant. These are: (1) theological anthropology, or what does it mean to be human? (2) ecclesiology, or what does it mean to be the church? (3) authority, or by what will we order and orient our lives, individually and corporately? In what follows, I will sketch some aspects of these arenas to be addressed in further conversation.