Dear Colleagues,
 
Policies are blunt instruments. They are rarely able to take into full consideration the nuances of context and the complexity of personhood. They cannot anticipate all eventualities. Well-meaning theological statements are similar. Eugene Peterson told me he thought the making of polemical statements brought out the worst of the Church and got in the way of the work of God in the Church. For Eugene, ministry was relentlessly local and always carried out among named persons. I agree. 
 
The College of Bishops does not speak with the authority of a magisterium. The statement, Sexuality and Identity, says: We request that Provincial publications, teaching events, and seminars employ the recommended language and the biblical arguments that support this recommendation. Upholding our commitment to subsidiarity, we defer to diocesan bishops to discern these matters within their own diocesan communities and ministries.
 
I give the following pastoral guidance to help you live out the local and personal nuances of the statement.
 
Pastoral GuidanceI recognize the various arguments for and against using the phrases same-sex attracted and gay Christian. There is no phrase universally understood and free of baggage. In our pastoral work we want to encourage gay and/or same-sex attracted Christians to discern before God, in Scripture, with the Church, and among trusted mentors how to most faithfully describe themselves and their life stories. 
 
Asserting that one’s full identity should be in Christ is utterly uncontroversial. Yes—of course, amen! Regardless of one’s starting point, being “in Christ” is the primary direction and goal of spiritual transformation. We seek to make disciples who make disciples of Jesus Christ, including our brothers and sisters in Christ who are gay and/or same-sex attracted.

 I admire the heart of Paul, mimicking Jesus’ style of interrelationship:

I didn’t take on [others] way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. 1 Corinthians 9:19 (MSG)

While doing evangelism and discipleship, we don’t get to name our audiences. They self-identify based on where they are in a given moment. Formational conversations are not best begun by telling people how to self-identify, but by trying to understand their experience.  
 
Conversations work best when we confess that each of our sexualities is broken and falls short of God’s perfection. It wouldn’t take long to name more than a few evangelical leaders who have recently “fallen” in a sexual manner—including a bishop and an archbishop in our tribe. Too often the leaders of the Church have failed to embody what they proclaim. It is a tragedy that continues to harm our public witness. It is understandable that some feel frustration when we then try to control the language through which celibate, gay brothers and sisters self-identify. 
 
We mourn the many gay and/or same-sex attracted people who have committed suicide or lost their faith because of being mistreated in churches. Our work with people who are gay and/or same-sex attracted would be greatly helped by confessing the sins of the Church against these brothers and sisters in Christ: harsh, distant judgment; a lack of empathy; fear; disrespect; a failure to offer community in which we name their Image-bearing qualities, etc.
 
Celibate, gay Christians, commonly criticized both by the Church and those outside the Church, are often heroically seeking Jesus and are examples of faithfulness for all of us. I cannot imagine what it would be like, in the already-not-yet nature of our salvation, to walk in their shoes as they deny deeply felt attractions in order to keep to the traditional views of sex and marriage for the sake of being faithful to Jesus, the Bible and the Church. I wish many heterosexual sinners would have the same godly, transformation-seeking tenacity and fidelity to scripture.
 
Our work in human sexuality must include teaching on the call some celibate, gay people will have to life-long singleness and others to mixed-orientation marriages. This requires a renewed articulation of the goodness of singleness as a Christian vocation alongside of marriage, as well as a vision for marriage broader and deeper than what is currently on offer in the surrounding culture.
 
The process of identity formation begins with our children’s, student and college ministries. That formational window provides key moments for young people to engage in comprehensive, Christ-centered identity formation. 

 Our work must include the Christ-centered stewardship of sexuality for all persons. Christoformity is the work of the whole community. We are all in this together. We each and all have disordered desires of various sorts and must learn to submit them to the Spirit for transformation. Faithful, Compassionate Pastoral Care
 
I encourage you as local church leaders, within fidelity to the process of spiritual transformation, to discern how to best talk about sexuality through the dual lens of personal pastoral care and your context for local mission.  
 
My vision is that C4SO churches would create communities in which gay and/or same-sex attracted people are not left to make sense of their sexuality alone. Rather, we want C4SO churches to be places where we all can share our stories, find community, and seek support on our journey of transformation into Christlikeness.
 
We must recognize that in calling gay and/or same-sex attracted persons to vocational singleness or a mixed-orientation marriage, it is the Church’s responsibility to provide teaching and support so that such persons can thrive in either of those vocations with reasonable effort. 
 
Gay and/or same-sex attracted, celibate persons are vital members of our communities. They have agency in the image of God. They possess the gift of the Spirit. We have much to learn from them and we need their ministries. 
 
Whatever you might be wrestling with about a given issue, whoever your conversation partner might be, whatever you may be trying to redemptively name, I commend to you the way of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. That way leads to both blameless and effective ministry. 
Grace and peace,

Bishop Todd Hunter

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15 COMMENTS

  1. Let’s start with the first sentence… “Policies are blunt instruments.”. Right out of the gate he’s fired a polemical shot. Right away he’s insinuating that this statement from the CoB is a weapon.

    Blunt instrument – Wikipedia

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blunt_instrument

    A blunt instrument is any solid object used as a weapon,

  2. Is Todd Hunter saying then in effect we are basically going to use the term gay Christian in my diocese regardless of any recommendation from the ACNA College of Bishops otherwise of which I am a member?

    • the House of Bishop’s statement itself said it was not binding and that Bishops were free to dispense from the recommendations as they saw fit. Hunter’s diocese is one of the largest and growing faster than the others, so I really don’t understand why the HoB wanted to release a statement at all

  3. “Eugene Peterson told me he thought the making of polemical statements brought out the worst of the Church and got in the way of the work of God in the Church. For Eugene, ministry was relentlessly local and always carried out among named persons.”

    Eugene Peterson (and his disciple Bishop Todd) seem here to take for granted the battle for the soul of Christianity which took place during the first five centuries of the Church. It’s simply wrong to drive a wedge between conciliar/doctrinal statements of the Church and local/particular ministry. The polemical statements Eugene Peterson (and his disciple Bishop Todd) lament are developed in response to a specific crisis and/or teaching – in other words, they are ‘local’ and aimed at ‘named persons’.

    You know what else gets in the way of the work of God in the Church? Heresy. What is required in response to the ever present threat of heresy is clarity regarding the words we use and how we use them to express our thoughts and beliefs. Then we need to discern whether our words, thoughts, and beliefs are in accordance with Scripture and the faith of the Church. Our age demands clarity and candour because it so full of resurgent errors and heresies, which often coexist as a kind of chimaera. I think Bishop Todd’s quoting of the Eugene Peterson paraphrase indicates his preference for studied ambiguity and emotivism.

    It’s a poor statement which reveals (again) that the ACNA is nothing like of one mind when it comes to how we are to speak about the Gospel, and the people towards whom it is aimed. Bishop Todd’s response expresses one aspect of this internal conflict/confusion. The ACNA is tempted to accept as real and true the language and identifiers which undergird identity politics. As everyone knows, there is no ‘Golden Age’ in which the Church did not have to address the drift towards error and heresy. It exists in every age and place, and the temptation is in every individual heart (a temptation to compromise and tinker with ‘truth’ to suit our own preferences). This is why I’ll regard polemical statements of the first five centuries as being aimed squarely at me in particular, as well as the Church of which I’m a part.

    • I just appreciated this line of yours:
      “You know what else gets in the way of the work of God in the Church? Heresy.”

  4. So, change Gay to Alcoholic or Drug Addict. Do we “walk with the Alcoholic”. Do we seek to find a more compassionate term to show respect to the, Alcoholic? Do we call the Alcoholic heroic for staying the course of his/her Alcoholism while they are discerning whether God is calling them to be an Alcoholic? Do we mourn the Alcoholic who commits suicide because people didn’t walk with him in his Alcoholism, or do we mourn the suicide because the person wouldn’t admit they have a problem and seek help for that problem?

    I love the part about Paul and Jesus………..did they become homosexuals to experience what the homosexual was feeling? Did they become alcoholics so they could empathize with the alcoholic?

    This is TEC all over again. Afraid, ashamed, too prideful to preach the Gospel and declare Jesus Christ Lord and Savior and the one in whom we learn what our identity is, our calling is, and what the path to righteousness is.

    • are you against Alcoholics Anonymous having folks at meetings calling themselves alcoholics even after 20yrs sobriety? Why is using a human weakness as an identifier offensive?

      the College of Bishop’s statement amounts to the same “quarreling over words” that St Paul warns St Timothy against in his flock.

  5. Notice the fixed assumption in Bp Todd’s statement when he refers to “celibacy or mixed orientation marriages” — The homosexual orientation is fixed, immutable. Christian transformation, dying to the old man and living to the new, somehow doesn’t seem to apply to sexual brokenness at least not the homosexual kind. The Gospel has no power to transform. Such ungodly beliefs, if held, need to be renounced not written into pastoral guidance. Did it even occur to the good bishop that the college of bishop’s statement provides much needed support to those leaving a gay identity behind? Just who is wielding the blunt instrument? A recent Hillsong release expresses a more helpful and biblical theology when it joyfully proclaims “I am who You say I am.” Thank you COB for this prophetic word that divides darkness from truth.

    • “The Gospel has no power to transform” Has this “bishop” never read:
      ” For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. ” Romans 1:16

  6. C4SO is where most of ACNA’s growth is coming from. It is the most missional diocese. Bp Hunter’s (only slightly veiled) anger here makes me wonder why the Bishops felt the need to release a statement at all, especially when it is not binding and has only served to grieve the most vibrant part of the denomination.

    • “It is the most missional diocese”. That kinda sorta almost sounds like code language for it being the diocese of cheap grace. Cheap grace comes from evangelizing with the Gospel of Affirmation rather than the Gospel of Redemption. It’s proven fact that people are more attracted to the message of “you are just fine the way you are” than “pick up your Cross and follow the One who died on the Cross for your chance at new life in Him”

      • Do you have a lot of interaction with C4SO?

        I’m not sure where you are getting ‘cheap grace’ from in this message?

  7. There is no such thing as a homosexual Christian. There are homosexuals, and there are Christian who are praying the Lord will relieve them of their homosexual lusts.
    1 John 3: 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. 8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

    “My vision is that C4SO churches would create communities in which gay and/or same-sex attracted people are not left to make sense of their sexuality alone.” They need to know that they chose sin when they accepted the lie that they were anything but heterosexual.

    “They possess the gift of the Spirit.” Not until they renounce their sin. Christ won’t share someone with satan.
    “1 John 2: 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,”
    Why does this person want homosexuals hurt more?

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