Sex, Moral Teaching, andthe Unity of the Church
Copyright © 2014 by Timothy F. Sedgwick
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Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sedgwick, Timothy F.
Sex, moral teaching, and the unity of the church : a study of the Episcopal Church / Timothy F. Sedgwick.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8192-2966-3 (pbk.)—ISBN 978-0-8192-2967-0 (ebook) 1. Episcopal Church—Doctrines. 2. Christian ethics—Episcopal authors. I. Title.
BX5930.3.S43 2014
283'.73—dc23
2014016184
Contents
2. The Episcopal Church and Moral Teaching
3. Ways of Teaching
4. Authority and the Bonds of Unity
5. The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics
A Postscript: The Challenge for Anglicans
In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. … He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Truth, therefore, according to the one who declares, “I am the truth,” is not simply given, but unfolds over time according to what our fragile humanity can bear, in the sense of appropriating it and making it our own. Truth is also personal and relational: when Jesus says he is the truth and that the Spirit will draw from him what is his and declare it to his friends, he is speaking of his abiding relationship with them as the ground of their ability to grow in the truth. He is not saying I will tell you the truth, but that we, his followers, must live into the truth through union and communion with him. Such union and communion are not, however, a solitary relationship, but a communal experience of life and discernment: they are ecclesial. The well-known Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon, observes that truth is discovered “in communion,” that is with others who, through baptism, have become limbs of Christ’s risen body and together, in all their singularity and difference, constitute the church.
Moral teaching, as Timothy Sedgwick makes plain, is grounded in the life and worship of the Christian community. As such, it is a dynamic process rooted and grounded in prayer and sacrament and the embodiment of the gospel in the lives of those who are bound together “in solidarities not of our own choosing,” as Rowan Williams describes what it means to be baptized into Christ.
Life in Christ, as Sedgwick observes, is rooted in the life of the Trinity, into which we are drawn by the Holy Spirit: a life of overflowing self- forgetting love. Consequently, moral teaching and ethics cannot be reduced to a simple declaration of “who is right.” Just as the union of persons within the Trinity presupposes difference, that is an Other to love, so too in the body of Christ unity presupposes difference and distinction. As Paul declares, if all limbs of the body were the same, there would be no body. The hand needs the difference of the eye in order for the body to be complete.
Focusing on the issue of sexuality, which has so overtaken and polarized churches of the Anglican Communion and other Christian households of faith, Sedgwick guides us through a careful and thoughtful consideration of how this need not be a source of division. He offers in these pages a theological grounding for a way forward such that we can learn from one another and discover that, even with our different perspectives, we are being drawn together by the Spirit into deeper union—koinonia—with the One who is the truth.
Frank T. Griswold
25th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
This book draws together research and writing from recent years as well as my own experience in the process of moral teaching on human sexuality in the Episcopal Church. It arose particularly in light of my participation in the Anglican Roman Catholic Theological Consultation in the U.S.A. (ARC-USA) on moral teaching and the church over the last seven years. This book has grown out of our work together sustained in prayer and friendship.
I am also thankful to complete the writing of this book while on sabbatical leave at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at Saint John’s University and Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. The balance between my “hermitage” apartment looking out over a dazzling, winter-white lake and the hospitality and rhythm of Benedictine life and worship is what has made this sabbatical time for writing a time of discernment and growth in faith.
My appreciation of the challenges and opportunities to live more fully into the unity of Christian faith came through my own ecumenical education, beginning in my doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University in the early 1970s. My ecumenical development continued while I taught at Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. There each year for nineteen years, I taught at least one course with colleagues across the street at what was then named Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. I am especially appreciative to have taught with Dick Tholin, then professor of Christian ethics and society and the academic dean of GETS. More broadly, it is sufficient to say, the field of Christian ethics and moral theology is ecumenical; hence, I am thankful for the opportunities to work ecumenically in the field of ethics in a variety of professional settings.
For the last seventeen years I am grateful to have served as professor of Christian ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary, for colleagues and students, for the community of worship, and for the broader support to serve the church. For this work on ethics and the church, I especially want to thank two colleagues in ecumenism: Mitzi Budde, professor and head librarian at the Bishop Payne Library at VTS, and John W. Crossin, OSFS, executive director for ecumenical and