Marcus says that the churches don’t need to abandon the supernatural worldview of traditional Christianity in order to survive, but that they should re-think their sexual ethic, since the sexual revoution is a fait accompli.
I think he may be on to something, though I might quibble about a few things.
During much of the 19th and 20th centuries Christians were subjected to a torrent of commentary, much of it by theologians and clergymen, that “modern man” is no longer able to believe in the worldview of the Bible with its anthropomorphic God and his interventions in the physical cosmos. No one can “use the wireless” and beleive in the three-tiered universe of earth, heaven, and, hell.
The funny thing is that this appears to be flatly untrue. In point of fact, people seem quite able, psychologically, to believe in all sorts of supernatural phenomena while being quite comfortable with the world of modern technology. Just walk into any bookstore in America and note the ever-expanding “New Age” sections, not to mention those dedicated to the more traditional faiths. Fundamentalist Protestants expertly deploy the latest in communication technologies. It seems like every other week we read about a new apparition of the Blessed Virgin. Creeping secularism seems to have given way to a proliferation of quirky ideas about the supernatural world.
And, anyway, the hermetically sealed universe of Englightenment philosophy never made much logical sense either. If there is a God who created the universe and the laws that govern it, and who sustains it in its being at every moment, why couldn’t he intervene if he so chose? This point hit me like a ton of bricks when reading C.S. Lewis’ Miracles after spending a couple of years plowing through theologians like Tillich and Bultmann who insisted on demythologizing everything in the Christian story that smacked of “supernaturalism.” (Young and foolish as I was, I wanted to see if there was anything left of Christianity that an enlghtened modern such as myself could still believe in.) Lewis simply pointed out, quite cogently I thought (and still do), that if “we decide that Nature is not the only thing there is, then we cannot say in advance whether she is safe from miracles or not.”
Moreover, the drift of philosophy and theology in recent years has been away from the Englightenment view of the world due in part to a realization that “reason” as the Enlightenment understood it is far to narrow to make sense of all our experience. In this sense someone like Bishop Spong is something of a throwback – someone who still thinks the philosophy of Voltaire is cutting edge.
So, I agree with Marcus that “miracle and mystery” are not quite the obstacles for “modern man” that they’ve been made out to be.
But I think he’s right that the Church’s tradtional ethical teaching, especially its sexual morality, does provide an obstacle for many people. But I don’t think we should pose the choice as “traditional morality” vs. the sexual revolution. Even if we agree that the traditional sexual ethic may need rethinking, there are certain aspects of the “sexual revolution” (and I’m sure Marcus would agree with this) that the church should say “no” to. I don’t think she should make peace with promiscuity, prostitution, and pornography, for instance.
If the church’s sexual ethic has to be rethought, I think it needs to be rethought within a theological context. That is, what is sexual love for, theologically speaking?
One approach that may have promise is suggested by Eugene Rogers in an essay in the Christian Century from last year. Drawing on the Eastern Orthodox tradition Rogers says that sexuality is not (primarily, at least) for procreation, but for sanctification:
Sexuality, in short, is for sanctification, that is, for God. It is to be a means by which God catches human beings up into the community of God’s Spirit and the identity of God’s child. Monogamy and monasticism are two ways of embodying features of the triune life in which God initiates, responds to and celebrates love.
Rogers goes on to argue that for people who find themselves attracted to members of the same sex, monogamous partnerships can provide the kind of context for growing in holiness that traditional marriage provides for heterosexuals.
I’m not sure if his argument succeeds; for one, he seems a little too dismissive of the weight of Scripture and Tradition. (And I confess to being pretty conflicted about the matter myself.)
But the point, I think, is this: the church shouldn’t simply go along with whatever the larger society is saying, be it in sexual mores or any other area. But instead of simply saying “no” it needs to provide a powerful positive vision of what sexuality is for in God’s plan. To the extent that the Christian tradition has given the impression that marriage is simply a way to contain lust or strictly for procreation it may have failed to uphold that kind of positive vision. Maybe such a vision is already there, but if so I think it’s fair to say that the churches haven’t done a great job communicating it. And I think people want sexuality to be meaningful; surely the kind of banal hedonism that our culture all too often promotes must be leaving a lot of people unsatisified.
Oops – I just broke my rule about not posting on sex or gay marriage. Oh well.
A Thinking Reed 
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