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Rejecting the Third Way

How the Church Keeps Hurting LGBTQ People

By Daniel PaynePublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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The church has not been kind to queer folk throughout most of Christian history. It has been clear to most queer people that they are not welcome in most churches if they wish to maintain the dignity of their sexual orientation. Within the last few decades, though, things have changed a bit, especially in mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church USA, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and a few others. These days, a queer Christian typically has one of three choices: remain in a fundamentalist, homophobic church, join an affirming mainline church, or leave Christianity altogether for a more affirming faith tradition or atheism.

More recently, however, a new kind of movement has arisen within churches that consider themselves more progressive then before, yet still evangelical. This movement is known as “The Third Way.” According to leaders of these churches, it is not important to come to a definite conclusion on the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality. All that is important is “accepting people as they are.” Let me be clear: this “third way” makes me even angrier than fundamentalist homophobes, and I think it is more dangerous than fundamentalism.

Ken Wilson, founding pastor of Ann Arbor Vineyard Fellowship, is one of the most prominent voices in the Third Way movement. He has written the following in A Letter to My Congregation:

"It’s a way to fully include people who are gay, lesbian, and transgender in the life of the church, while recognizing that the church has not yet resolved the question of the morality of gay relationships."

A third way departs from the "open and affirming" and the "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach by regarding the question of whether and how the biblical prohibitions apply in the case of monogamous gay relationships as a "disputable matter" in the Romans 14-15 sense.

I am sure Ken’s intentions are good. I know what it’s like to have a pastor’s heart, and I believe Ken definitely has a pastor’s heart. But I ultimately think this Third Way philosophy on the issue of same-sex relationships actually does more harm than an explicitly homophobic theology, and I believe this for three main reasons.

The first, and primary, reason is the ambiguity such a position requires. The queer person, with a queer sexual orientation, is not ambiguous. Such a person is concrete, and should not be treated like just another theological idea to be debated. Ken says that the Church has not yet resolved the question of same-sex relationships, and that is true, but that is the Church’s problem, not the queer person’s problem. Imagine, if you will, a black person sitting in a church full of white people in the 1930s, and being asked to participate in the debate as to their full humanity. Asking an oppressed person to “have fellowship” with their oppressors is just further abuse, plain and simple.

The second reason, related to the first, is that the Third Way conversation remains couched in the terminology of “sin.” Greg Boyd, another pastor who subscribes to the Third Way, wrote the following:

"This message leaves unanswered a multitude of questions that could be raised regarding LGBT people and the church. The goal of this message is to simply point us in the direction of a third way of addressing these issues—a way that transcends the “either-or” dichotomy we’ve usually been presented with. It’s a way in which we confess that we are all sinners, saved by grace, and in the process of being transformed by the love of God. It’s a way in which we wrestle with all of our issues in love and from the inside of the faith rather than in judgment and as a precondition for being accepted into the faith."

You see what Boyd has done here? By writing that we are “all sinners” and that we are all “in the process of being transformed,” he’s effectively implying that homosexuality is sinful and that if the congregation will just leave it up to God, the homosexual’s heart will be transformed. Now, I’m sure Boyd would reply that I’m misunderstanding him, but I’ve been in the evangelical subculture far too long not to recognize doublespeak when I see it.

The final reason I am opposed to the Third Way is that it almost always references monogamy. In the Third Way view, if homosexuality is ever to be recognized as holy, it must be within the confines of a monogamous relationship. This limits relational freedom and the possibility that varieties of sexual relationships may be spiritually fulfilling.

I would always much rather have bias and prejudice out loud and up front, not hidden in terms designed to abstract an issue that is very concrete and real. And one of the many sicknesses of Christianity is that it has always required the abused and oppressed to face and teach their abusers and oppressors in a “turning of the other cheek” kind of attitude. It’s simply a furthering of such abuse.

At least with fundamentalist Christian organizations, one can clearly see through their efforts in so-called “reparative therapy”—a mixture of counseling, prayer, and sometimes electroshock therapy and ice baths—that they are out to harm queer people. For them, the destruction of the body is worth the salvation of the soul, but reparative therapy kills both the body and the soul. With Third Way philosophy, the death is just a bit more drawn out and wearisome.

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