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Sexual Minorites as a Challenge to Christian Fellowship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Judith Pinnington
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It may be that the following comments will appear to some readers applicable to all ‘sexual minorities’. I myself do not so apply them. I have trans+exuak, entirely in mind as I write, and not merely because they tend to be the most seriously discriminated against. However, it is not for me to dictate to others how they should or should not make use of these ideas. If readers wish to see the trans-sexual’s dilemma as a paradigm of some larger or even quite different dilemma, then so be it.

The Open Church Group in Great Britain has been campaigning to persuade homosexuals who “feel separated from their churches because of their nature to reconsider their position and return to the practice of their faith”. The problem which the group envisages is a real, though variable one. Attitudes among theologians may be slowly changing (though not all of us would agree that in this field all change is for the good); but, as two American writers on female homosexuality have put it, “Inroads into religious thought and re-evaluation are a slow and cumbersome process. [Lesbians] live in the now.” It is scarcely sufficient to shrug the shoulders and say “In time, it will all work out”. This is not enough for Christian fellowship, because Christian fellowship belongs to the now, not to the contingent future.

Attitudes in the Churches which go so far as to deny Christian fellowship to ‘sexual minorities’ may be reduced to one simple, if generally unrecognized factor: dread. Mystery misconceived is dread: it is distracting, zwiespältig — dividing the mind against itself, making neutrality impossible. It is the negative side of holy fear: it is what St Paul presumably meant when he warned against the destructive consequences of unworthy communion. Whatever the aetiological reasons which might be adduced in hard clinical fashion to ‘explain’ what has been called ‘sexual deviance’, it remains at the end of the day for a great many ‘normal’ people, and therefore for a great many Christians, an object of dread, something which unsettles their security.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 61 , Issue 726 , December 1980 , pp. 524 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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