The church's teaching on whether non-celibate homosexual persons should be ordained was expressed by the House of Bishops at Port St. Lucie, Fla., in 1977: "The Church is right to confine its nuptial blessing exclusively to heterosexual marriage. Homosexual unions witness to incompleteness ... In the case of an advocating and/or practicing homosexual," ordination is inadmissable because, "It involves the Church in a public denial of its own theological and moral norms on sexuality," and because "it would require the Church's sanction of such a life style, not only as acceptable but worthy of emulation."

The 66th General Convention, in 1979, confirmed this teaching saying " ... it is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual, or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside of marriage." There have been numerous attempts to change this teaching including open transgression of it with impunity (and thereby establishing centrifugal precedents). The issue needs to be seen in its historical and theological context.

Nestorianism was the Christological cul de sac which was distinguished from true Christian teaching by the Council of Ephesus in 431. Nestorianism's implicit claim was that our belonging to Christ depended on our wills being his will. As the humanity and divinity of Christ were united on the basis of Jesus' will (not his being), so we are at unity with God on the basis not of our being established in baptism, but by our wills obeying Christ's will.

The sad result of this ever-recurring heresy is that it teaches us that we are no longer "in Christ" if and when we sin because our wills are no longer at one with his. It has been said that two-thirds of the epistles would be irrelevant if Christians were not still sinners. But the insatiable self-justification of the human heart produces a chronic temptation in us all to deny our sinfulness. The Nestorian teaching is the abiding refuge of the self-righteous as it assures us that we are, in ourselves, righteous.

Scripture, especially the Sermon on the Mount, makes this conceit very difficult. It divides Nestorians into two groups: Hard Nestorians and Soft Nestorians. The first group takes such passages as 1 Cor. 6:9,10, that lists sins of idolatry, fornication, adultery, active and passive same-sex, robbery, drunkenness, and greed, and lifts out those less socially acceptable, those of which they are not usually guilty, for special condemnation. At the same time they ignore the ones like idolatry (putting anything above God) and greed which are universal. Hard Nestorians feel themselves immune from Paul's claim that "none is righteous, no not one" (Rom. 3:10). Homosexual and adulterous behavior have been especially useful to Hard Nestorians since their easy condemnation of others seems to divert attention from idolatry and greed. Much of the aggressive "Act Up" behavior among homosexuals of recent years is a reaction to this unfair singling out of homosexuals for special condemnation.

On the other hand, Soft Nestorians, laboring under the same disadvantage of not being able to accept one's own sinfulness, resolve the difficulty by changing the nomenclature: Any sin they have yet to relinquish, or that they cannot overcome, they refuse to call sin. The Episcopal Church's "Continuing the Dialogue" turns itself inside out trying to avoid the three-letter word and substitutes for it the term discontinuities. (One might contrast the teaching on racism published at the same time which doesn't hesitate to name the name, The Sin of Racism.) It would seem that we are hard on those sins we feel not guilty of and soft on those "discontinuities" of which we may be guilty. It recalls Viet Nam days when "hawks" were soft on the sixth commandment ("Bomb for Peace"), and "doves" were soft on the seventh commandment ("Make Love not War").

The question before us is whether, as a church, we are now going to sanction officially Soft Nestorianism and bless what is sin, thereby removing the option of repentance and forgiveness, while encouraging self-justification and behavior that is dangerous both physically and spiritually and threatens to undermine the already precarious dominical institution of marriage.

Hard Nestorians have lamentably failed in the church's history (cf. C.F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism) to bear witness that our dignity is not based on our own righteousness but on the fact that we are forgiven sinners.

This failure, which condemns sinners, does not justify the Soft Nestorian failure to condemn sin. Because envy is so prevalent, universal and understandable, we should not disannul the condemnation of envy as deleterious to the fullness of human nature. The current attempt to reflect the spirit of the times in changing the teaching of the church has been characterized by the Soft Nestorians' turning the tables on Hard Nestorians.

If the latter unfairly lifted homosexuality out for special condemnation, Soft Nestorians now take their revenge by claiming it as a source of pride and a civil right. They ride the tide of the times which privatizes morality and accepts virtually anything "if it works for you."

The civil rights justification is based upon the assumption that people who are in same-sex activity are like blacks being blacks and women being women and no one has the right to condemn anyone's essential being. In spite of the erroneous claim of Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning and others, that recent data have shown this to be true, no such evidence can be said to have convinced the scientific community (cf. Scientific American, Nov. 1995. The much publicized brain research by Simon LeVay has never been replicated and that by Dean Hamer has been contradicted by another study). Even if genetics were shown to be determinative, it would not justify behavior. If aggression were found to be inherited, would we thereby excuse assaults?

The genetic claim, however, does discourage people who have been abused or seduced from seeking help. It is undoubtedly true that simplistic assumptions by Hard Nestorians are never helpful, but it is equally true that the church's traditional teachings have given many the realized hope of change in seeking help. The widespread denial that change is possible is a lie.

The gay lobby's dogma, that homosexuality is an essential identity of one's being, precludes any scholarly discussion that might question this assumption and tragically often prevents people from seeking help. Five eminent psychiatrists have written an open letter to the Wall Street Journal protesting the cruelty of this dogma:

"Help is available for men struggling with unwanted homosexual desires [but are prevented from finding this help by the lobby's dogma]. As we grieve for all those lives so abruptly ended by AIDS, we would do well to reflect that many of the young men who have died of AIDS have sought treatment for their homosexuality and were denied knowledge and hope. Many of them would be alive today if they had only been told where to find the help they sought."

There are even wonderful examples of how such outstanding Christians as W. H. Auden, Stephen Neill, Julian Green, and perhaps Dag Hammarskjold, did not resort to lowering Christian teaching to the level of their condition.

The sordid history of our church's "studies" on sexuality in the exclusively one-sided Sexuality: A Divine Gift and the slanted committee (seven of the nine bishops appointed voted against the resolution asking all clergy to refrain from sex outside marriage) that produced "Continuing the Dialogue" is something that any authentic liberal should protest. The former had included nothing that represented the church's traditional teaching and the latter refused testimony of, among others, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, a priest and psychiatrist, who is a published authority on the subject. Although working under the explicit mandate to consult the scholars in the field of moral theology and Christian ethics, this was done only after three drafts of the document and two meetings of the House of Bishops.

To change the church's teaching on ordination of non-celibate homosexual persons without balanced study, without ecumenical consultation, and without dialogue with the Anglican Communion threatens the very catholicity and biblical base of our church. o

The Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison is the Bishop of South Carolina, retired. He lives in Charleston, S.C.