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Bruce Reyes-Chow is pastor of the Mission Bay Community Church in San Francisco and a blogger. He served as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) from 2008 to 2010. He recently spoke at the Proposition 8 verdict rally and march in his hometown and blogged about what the community can do about LGBT teen suicides.
What is one of the defining moments in your life as a Christian?
What comes to my mind is when I decided to get married at the age of 19. No one other than myself, Robin and God knew that this was the right thing to do. It was a moment in which I set aside communal wisdom. This helps me understand the marginalized who are outside the common thinking. It also helps me understand that God sometimes speaks to individuals in a way that others cannot hear.
Is there a prayer or meditation that helps you make it through trying times?
There are many quotes I use a lot but what has helped me longest is what my mother would call out as I left for school every day, “Make good choices!” This still resonates in my mind as I choose who I interact with and how I engage with other people.
How has your personal journey to being an LGBT ally strengthened or challenged your faith?
There was no unique journey for me. It was part of my upbringing in my family and in my church to have LGBT people around me. All along I was invited to see how people experienced the Christian community in a different way from what my experience was and to appreciate that other experience.
In your mind, what are the Biblical foundations for LGBT inclusion in the church?
LGBT inclusion is part of the fullness of human inclusion in God’s creation. It fits with the complexity of God’s greater story told in Scripture. I am informed by Jesus’ treatment of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. I avoid verse-to-verse arguments that lose the larger vision of the themes, the stories and the beautiful nuance of Scripture.
What would you say to those Christians who have a different view on inclusion?
What I often say is this: I hope folks who disagree with me will trust that I am seeking to discern the same mind of Christ as they are. We are all searching for God as our lives unfold. In the midst of our differences, we share a conviction that our relationship is built on God and our faith in Christ. I acknowledge that God is playing a role in the other person’s life.
What can we do to foster dialogue and build bridges with people with different views on inclusion?
We can appreciate where people are coming from, which is different from agreeing with them. We can agree that a win/lose approach has proven that it is not helpful.
In the PCUSA, I say to my colleagues: Keep in mind, as you worry about people leaving the church, that loads of people have left the church because of our present policies. We have lost people the way we are. When we do not change, we lose people.
And I ask them: If the PCUSA does change and we open ordination to LGBT people, is ordination so central to your faith that you will leave the PCUSA? Is this so central to how we are to love Jesus and how Jesus loves us? Is this is a Cross issue, a measure of what is most important to our faith in Christ?
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9 Responses to Conversation with Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow
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this is one of the most powerful interviews I have ever read.
Perspective. What is most important to us as Christians? We have lost people the way we are — because of our discriminatory policies. Absolutely.
Now is the time for reflect upon what is most important to our faith, in our faith, in our faith practice. It is time for the Church to change.
thank you, Rev. Reyes-Chow and thank you, Rev. Janet Edwards.
The church has changed so much from its origins. It needs to shed its crusted engrandizements and return to the heart and soul that birthed it. As Rev. Reyes-Chow elegantly states, “This is a cross issue.” We need to keep to the larger vision and the simple center. Then the core necessity of inclusion would be obvious.
Dear Michael and Gail,
Thanks to you both for lifting up for us the crucial question we can ask of our faith in Christ–What is most important?
Or, as Bruce Reyes-Chow asks, “Is this a Cross issue?” Our friend Vikki Dearing asks it this graphic way, “Is this the hill I am willing to die on?” If we are unwilling to answer this question then our faith is too tepid and does not honor Jesus.
And it is time for us to answer it with the same loving embrace God’s offers to LGBT people who have been too long fenced from full participation in the body of Christ.
I know you share this passion with me. Thanks for prompting me to say it. Peace, Janet
Thank you Janet for the good interview with Bruce. I am one of those folks who disagree with him but I do trust that we are all seeking to discern the same mind of Christ and belong to him. I do share Bruce’s conviction that our relationships are built on God and our faith in Christ. We are one family and I know that God is doing far more than “playing a role” in Bruce’s life, and mine, and in each of us who find ourselves in disagreement on this or any point of faith or practice within our church.
In that spirit let me offer this reply to Bruce’s question, “Is this a Cross issue?” He asked if the ordination of LGBT people was “so central to how we are to love Jesus and how Jesus loves us?” Bruce acknowledges that it was and is for the “loads of people who have already left the church because of our present policies. It is also for others who have left simply because the question has been so predominant in our church for years. Michael and Gail seem to be saying it is a Cross issue in their comments to this interview. And it has been a Cross issue for all who have passionately pursued change in our church all these years. So really Bruce shouldn’t imply that it it shouldn’t be central also for those of us who do not believe we should change our church’s current constitutional belief and practice.
I would ask also sincerely, is there is a win / win approach? What can we do that would not be win / lose? Is it contained in the proposals to our constitutuion we are about to vote on? Thanks for letting me participate.
Dear Harry Slye,
I am deeply, deeply grateful for your comments and question. Engaging in earnest dialogue with Christians who disagree with me is my greatest desire for this website and only people like you, willing to share your heart, can make that possible. Thank you.
I expect we can agree that the contention over the place of LGBT people in the church would not have persisted for so long were it not a Cross issue for all involved. And I expect you and I agree that this means it will persist until that win/win place is found. I certainly know that LGBT Presbyterians will not rest until the full responsibilities of Baptism are ours in the PCUSA.
I commend to you the text of Amendment 10-A which is now before the presbyteries as a good step toward a win/win.
I see 10-A as a correction of the mistake made, actually in 1974, when the inalienable right of bodies (congregations and presbyteries) to elect their own officers was pushed aside and a national standard on ordination was imposed. And this is not easy to say because I know my presbytery might not have ordained me in 1977. I do think it is accurate both historically and with regard to presbyterian governance.
10-A will return us to the solution put in place by the Adopting Act of 1729 which was meant to hold the church together in exactly the kind of situation we have experienced through these 38 years of passionately held differences.
It will allow the sessions for elders and deacons and the presbyteries for ministers to define “calling, gifts, preparation and suitability for the responsibility for office.” It will allow a presbytery like mine to probably vote down an LGBT candidate or already ordained pastor and I, in the minority, will accept the vote with mutual forbearance. At the same time, it will allow presbyteries like New York Presbytery to ordain or seat an LGBT person who has been examined and called according to our polity. The minority in that presbytery will then mutually forbear.
And then we will see what the Holy Spirit will do with us. Is that a sufficient win for you?
It is for me because I know the gifts for service of our LGBT Presbyterians are so great and the PCUSA will shine brightly with the Gospel when we lift the basket over most of us.
I am eager for your response. The peace of Christ be with you Janet
Dear Janet,
Thanks for your warm invitation to share our questions and thoughts. I have cringed in some of our presbytery meetings when the passions arose and the conversations became unkind and insensitive. And we have a good presbytery where we have engaged in this disagreement when called upon but then got back to work side by side on so much else, with sincere love for each other.
Your history of our church governing struggles goes back a little further than mine. I’m one who chose to be a presbyterian rather than being born into it, but as some of us say about Texas, “I got here as quick as I could.” When you say that a mistake was made in 1974 taking away the inalienable rights of sessions and presbyteries to elect their own officers, was that when the UPCUSA and the PCUS adopted amendments to their respective constitutions to ordain women to all offices?
Was ordination of women an option for sessions and presbyteries before that? Was there no denomination wide standards for ordination before that year? I need to get a better book on our denomination’s history. I had not heard that Amenment 10-A is a way to return us to an earlier position.
Dear Harry,
Thanks for coming back to this conversation and for your great question. The history of women’s ordination is an important example for us all of the way the PCUSA is Reformed, always Being Reformed. We have followed this path before and we can this time as well.
I know the history of women’s ordination in the “northern church”(though, of course, there were northern churches in the South from after the Civil War). Women elders became possible but not required by action of the General Assembly in 1930. Ordination of women to Minister of Word and Sacrament became possible (not required) in 1958 by action of the GA.
In 1974, the Pittsburgh Presbytery voted to ordain a candidate who shared that he could not participate in the ordination of a woman. A remedial case was brought against the presbytery and the GA ruled upon appeal that equality of men and women is an essential of Reformed faith and polity based on the creation in Genesis. That was understood to mean that all candidates for ordination needed to state a willingness to ordain women and churches were required (though presbyteries could grant exceptions in certain circumstances) to have both men and women on the session. This remedial precedent is known by the name of the candidate in 1974, Wynn Kenyon.
So, women’s ordination was possible but not required for 44 years for elders and deacons and for 16 years for ministers of Word and Sacrament. What Amendment 10-A will do is make it possible, but not required, for LGBT Presbyterians to be ordained and installed after fulfilling all the requirements for office.
And this tradition of possibility, not requirement, reaches back to the Adopting Act of 1729 when Cross issues threatened to divide the Presbyterian Church spreading across the American colonies and our ancestors in the faith found the solution that is held in 10-A
The Advice of the ACC on Amendment 10-A in the materials sent to the presbytery (Proposed Amendments to the Constitution–Part 3 of 3) or probably available on the pcusa,org website mentions some of this history.
There is more I could say but I hope that is helpful and I treasure your response.
Peace, Janet
Thank you for the wonderful dialog! As a glbt ally, it has been very hard to stay in the denomination since G-6.0106b was added to the Book of Order in 1997, and I’ve often wanted to bolt — so I may be able to empathize at least somewhat with how people would feel if their consciences were bound in the other direction. I am wondering how different it would be to have your conscience bound by a presbytery’s action rather than by the whole denomination’s action…. ?
Dear Betty,
You are very welcome and back at you with thanks for joining in!
As to your great question about what it would be like to have one’s conscience bound by presbytery action rather than be denominational action, here is my response. I am in the minority in my presbytery most of the time.
It would be heartening for me to know that a local LGBT Presbyterian could be considered in another presbytery and I would encourage that person to seek out and come under care as a candidate there. This would make ordination a more difficult road than for others but a clear road would be possible which is not the case now.
These LGBT candidates will be ordained, their gifts will bless the church, we will all see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives and the PCUSA will inevitably be reformed. Eventually, I think my presbytery will consider such pastors for openings in our churches because we will want their pastoral skills. Through that, eventually, my presbytery will then, also, take LGBT candidates under care.
There may still be a minority in my presbytery whose reading of Scripture will never lead them to vote for LGBT people. I hope some reading this who see that coming for themselves will speak to your question from that point of view.
That’s how I see this revision of G-6.0106b in Amendment 10-A working. I am very interested in your answer to your question and your response to my expectation.
Peace, Janet