The overtures before the body were four, and four was their number, and I read all of them, just as I always read every single action item all the way through. Two dealt with matters of investment policy and grantmaking, together pushing for a reallocation of resources into sustainable and renewable energy production. One was a paean to regenerative agriculture, encouraging Presbyterians to engage with systems of food production that don't rely on industrial and extractive methodologies. These were all well and good, if a teensy little bit on the dry side.
The fourth was...unsettling. I wrestled with it mightily, and struggled to process it.
It is my responsibility, as the pastor, to report back on Presbytery goings-on to the elders who lead my little congregation. When we met last week, I don't think I did the most effective job of it. I hemmed. I hawed. I equivocated, struggling to find words that worked. It was an awkward moment.
“On Confession, Repentance and Renewed Theological Engagement Regarding HIV/AIDS and Human Sexuality," or so it was named by the folks who want it adopted as the official policy of the church. The essence of it is veiled in the circuitous semiotics of contemporary progressive language, but there were two primary action points.
Action point number one was a call for the church...by which the authors mean the PC(USA)...to formally confess culpability for causing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The logic behind this is a weensy bit convoluted, but as I grasp it, goes as follows: In 1967, the PC(USA) formally affirmed that entropy in sexual relationships was destructive of human personhood, and that the culture of the "sexual revolution" was antithetical to human thriving. This was defined using binary and heterosexual language. This explicit heteronormativity shamed queer folk whose sexuality and desire for sexual expression was neither heterosexual or binary in nature, and the trauma of that shame led to actions that made them vulnerable to AIDS. Therefore and quod erat demonstrandum, the Presbyterian Church USA and its moral theology are responsible for the AIDS epidemic, and must formally repent for all of the trauma, suffering, and death that it caused.
Action point number two was grounded in the first, and called for a revisiting of the nature of relationship itself, and a formal theological re-imagining of our understanding of the "...full spectrum of relational and family structures, exploring ethical approaches to consent, mutuality, and care." This action point is a little more linguistically veiled, far less direct than the first. It involves charging two General Assembly committees with establishing frameworks for the acceptance of "relationship structures beyond traditional monogamy" and "diverse intimate arrangements."
This, to the best of my capacity, is my reflecting back what I read.
To be utterly honest, one part of the reason I struggled to verbally convey this to the good souls on my Session was that the whole thing both alarmed and bugged the crap out of me.
The call to covenant fidelity in relationship in a confession that's fundamentally about social justice is responsible for the AIDS epidemic? The Book of Confessions, Section 9, paragraph 47, subsection D is the reason people were infected by HIV? A denomination that sweated blood and tears and worked for decades to become a place of gracious inclusion of Queer folk must now repent in sackcloth and ashes for inflicting the spiritual trauma that caused AIDS? Sweet Mary and Joseph, what a wild causal stretch all of that is.
That most of it is argued using contemporary therapeutic trauma language and Newspeak was equally unsettling. It doesn't read like theology. It reads like carefully calibrated psychological manipulation, and in a very particular direction.
That first action point has a particular intent rhetorically. It is, in design and argumentation, preparing the subject to accept the second action point as the necessary outcome. Given the language used, the goal is not to get the denomination to affirm the covenant fidelity of Queer folk in their life partnerships. There'd be no point in that, as that's what the PC(USA) already does. This is pressing for something more.
The authors of this overture appear to be utilizing a trauma-forward shaming framework as the pretext for a wholesale re-imagining of the concepts of marriage, covenant and fidelity. Or, to put it as my anger would put it, they're engaging in some weapons-grade gaslighting to coerce the church into blessing open, non-dyadic, and polyamorous relationships. If you speak Presbyterian, that's what it says, depending on whether you're feeling more neutral or royally pissed off.
So, nothing controversial. Can't imagine this proving disruptive to my community in any way. Ahem.
And all of this got dropped on the meeting website just days before the meeting, and on which we were supposed to vote on over...Zoom. Zoom, where discourse is constrained, and engagement is minimized, and tone and the reality of incarnate presence are missing.
It was recommended for concurrence by the committee responsible for such things. So I realized, Lord help me, am I going to be That Guy in a hundred-plus-participant Zoom where I'm not really personally known, given my increasingly sparse connections to the Presbytery? Still struggling to process this, I wrestled with participation mightily all day. On the one hand, I had strong feelings. On the other, I still had strong feelings. I got more and more anxious about being That Guy, to where I finally couldn't bring myself to even engage in the meeting.
Which is the other reason I had so much trouble explaining it. I felt more than a little cowardly, to be honest.
Shame does work, eh?
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