Changing Attitude supporter Bar Nash Williams has been choosing some books for her Resources Centre. See her choices for children here. Here she reflects on making good choices for adults and explains her top ten, most of which are available through our bookshop.
Introduction
I have been delving into our Resources Centre’s wide and ever-growing range of publications on the contentious topic of sexuality, theology and church order. Enlightening, infuriating, but an essential read if we are to engage in meaningful conversation with emerging science, culture and ethics. But there are two problems with any resource on this subject:
1. In the field of human sexuality, scientific understanding is changing so fast that most books are out of date before they’re on the shelves. So much is published from so many points of view that any selection is bound to miss out brilliant contributions that have not yet come to our attention. Perhaps the attempt to keep up to date on this topic is possibly as overrated as it is impossible: some older texts are still of great value and interest.
2. The ‘opposing sides’ of the debate are rarely talking about the same thing: one side may be profoundly moved by issues of justice, pastoral care and mission to a modern world, while
another is equally passionate about witness to truth & holiness, and protection of vulnerable people in a different culture. They appear to use the same language, but are unlikely to accept each others’ hermeneutic approach to the Bible.
I’ve studied over 50 books, Grove booklets, Audio, DVDs and study materials for different ages.
The most depressing part of the exercise was that the overwhelming majority of resources expressed the sense that ‘We’ inside the church must try to understand ‘Them’ outside. So few essays, let alone whole books, acknowledge the fact that this huge range of voices is all from within the Body of Christ.
Instead of focussing on the latest, I have highlighted a few which seek not only to be authentic voices, but make a serious attempt to LISTEN to the voice of the often uncomfortably, disconcertingly Other within the church body.
Feel free to scream ‘why didn’t you mention X?’ – new voices, and new ears are always needed.
1. Dormor and Morris (Eds) An Acceptable Sacrifice
The early chapters are re-iterations of many familiar arguments about biblical understanding,
church tradition etc. A good enough start if you haven’t studied these already, but nothing new if you have. HOWEVER the later chapters – on biology, politics and economics – are well worth a look. Will the ‘Pink Pound/Dollar’ break apart the strong alliance between American Conservative Churches and Free Market Liberal economics?
2. ‘Michael’ and ‘Chris:’ A Gay – Straight Dialogue Grove P104
Two friends talking in easy-to-read language, without attacking the church or the ‘other side.’
3. Terry Brown, Ed: ‘Other voices, Other Worlds, the global church speaks out on
homosexuality.’
Some of the voices, especially from the Far East, are too rarely heard. A refreshing change from the stereotypical voices from the ‘West’ or the ‘Global South.’ With a pastoral warning about the damage powerful interests on either side of the debate can cause to those without a voice: ‘when elephants fight, the grass suffers.’
4. Elisabeth Stuart, Gay and Lesbian Theologies, Repetitions with a critical difference.
While acknowledging the ‘miraculous’ emergence of LGBT identities within the church over the
last 30 years, Stuart challenges them all. Starting with what she believes the funeral service says about the essential nature of human beings in God’s eyes, she suggests all our carefully built identities are contingent rather than necessary. Denis Nineham decades ago said we were blinkered by beliefs we held as facts, and could not know they were mutable until new ‘facts’ took over. The ‘God-given’ polarity of male and female may well be one of those ideas.
Stuart suggests – from Gal 3.28 – that Christianity is essentially ‘queer’ – ie challenging to ALL attempts to place people in fixed categories.
5. Lance Pierson: No-Gay Areas, Pastoral Care of Homosexual Christians
Pro-gay readers might resent the wish to ‘cure’ people, and feel too much of this Grove booklet is out of date. But the attitude seems so genuinely caring that it is a voice worth hearing.
6. Craig. L. Nessan: Many Members yet One Body
Using 1 Cor 12 as his base, Nessan tries to argue for churches’ freedom to differ from one another, especially over blessing same-sex relationships and ordaining homosexual priests, but remain in Communion. Unfortunately his two kinds of hermeneutic only highlight the problem: one kind seeks authentic interpretations, the other seeks the one truth all should honour.
(There are two kinds of people in the world; those who divide the world into two kinds of people,
and those who don’t.)
A good example of the two kinds of hermeneutic is:
7. O. Via and J. Gagnon: Homosexuality and the Bible, two views.
A quick read and a serious attempt at bringing two monologues into dialogue, but no common
ground is achieved.
8. Philip Groves Ed: the Anglican Communion and Sexuality
From the facilitator of the ‘listening process’ so aimed at enabling listening for all across the worldwide Anglican communion. It is carefully unbiased and academic, but less engaging than more passionate voices from either side.
9. Oliver O’Donovan: A Conversation Waiting to Begin
Acknowledges that something is broken and needs fixing – what used to be the middle ground has been shifted to a pole. Positive, sympathetic but leaves you wanting other voices to speak for themselves.
And finally here’s a fiction:
10. Michael Arditti, ‘Easter’ Arcadia 2000
A bit like ‘Rev’ but the humour is more surreal and there is so much more space to explore the depths, and really tries to turn ‘The Body of Christ has AIDS’ into more than a slogan. You won’t like (but may recognise) many of the congregation to begin with, but give them time. It attempts to restore ‘middle of the road’ liberal Anglicanism to the middle ground, after it has been pushed to one extreme by the hard right wing.
Unfortunately it does this by harsh caricatures of both the closed evangelical wing, and the high Anglo-Catholic FIF wing. The gospel parallel decent into hell on Hampstead Heath will appall the nice, safe, middle-class ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ brigade, but those who have to walk the knife-edge of faith, identity and various gay sub-cultures with rejoice in its candour.
And if God doesn’t manage to touch you at some point before ‘love’s redeeming work is done’
you’re having a really bad day!
