Sight for World Vision

On Monday many of us in the evangelical Christian world were surprised to hear that World Vision had decided to change its policy and allow the hiring of persons in same-sex marriages.  After reading World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns's explanation of the reason behind the policy change, I was personally gladdened by World Vision's honest acknowledgement that there are faithful Christians on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate.  Stearns said the decision came as a carefully-considered response to the growing number of Christian denominations and churches and individuals now recognizing same-sex marriage.  His reasoning reminded me of the old church maxim, In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas meaning, "In necessary things unity, in doubtful things freedom, and in all things love."  The World Vision decision seemed to me to be an appropriate step toward freedom in what is no-doubt an uneasy, and many would argue, increasingly unsettled, issue.  Needless to say, I was taken aback on Wednesday when I read that World Vision had reversed its decision due to intense pushback from Christian conservatives.

It was obvious from Monday's policy change announcement forward that World Vision would be in a storm.  Facebook lit up with reactions from conservative critics and counter-reactions from liberal Christians alike.  In a strangely ironic twist both sides were using the same points to argue for opposite outcomes.  Presuming many evangelical Christians would begin pulling their sponsorship dollars, conservatives asked why World Vision would risk the lives it serves in the developing world?  Presuming the conservatives were right about the sponsorship dollars being pulled, progressives asked why the conservatives would do the same thing.  Both groups marshalled the authority of Scriptures - one pointing to the Bible's injunctions against homosexuality, and the other to its commandments to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, and clothe the naked.  In the end, the conservatives won out - speedily.

Even those most committed to the full inclusion of gays in society and in church would have a hard time faulting World Vision for its waffling.  When I first saw that World Vision had backtracked on its policy change I thought of Henlee Barnette, who was professor of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during the height of the civil rights movement.  Barnette had a standard reply for those who said his invitation to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak on Southern's campus had cost the seminary hundreds of thousands of dollars.  "Money well spent," he said.  There could be no Henlee Barnette among the World Vision ranks.  No one would have said "money well spent" had the organization gone through with its policy change and large numbers of conservative Christians withdrew their donations.  The real threat of loss of money resulting in the loss of life would be enough to make World Vision reconsider - and the rest of us to understand.

But in the end I don't think it was ultimately money that decided the matter.  It was not so much the threat of economic boycott that resulted in the World Vision retraction, but rather the ongoing theological uncertainty over human sexuality more generally.  Within Christianity itself, there is now a deep ambivalence about how we are to treat gays, lesbians, and transgendered persons.  We as a church have come a long way toward recognizing and respecting the human dignity of sexual minorities and doing so has now created a great divide within Western Christianity - not so much between conservatives and liberals, but within the soul of people in both camps - which is seen to pit necessariis unitas and dubiis libertas against one another.  The policy change and the policy change change (I'm underscoring the double-mindedness of the week) each happened as a result of the tremendous pressures now pulling at the heart of not only World Vision, but also North American Christianity as a whole, and many individual Christians within their very selves.  We have sought to be in all things and ways loving and that has created a tension within us about what is absolutely fundamental about Christian conviction and what is up to individual conscience.

Stearns is a case in point.  On Monday he announced the World Vision decision and couched it in the same context as other issues such as divorce and the ordination of women, which individual churches are divided on.  Stearns said World Vision would approach same-sex marriage as it does these other matters - by allowing its hiring policies to be reflective of the broad constituency of Christians who make up World Vision.  The change was to be "symbolic not of compromise but of [Christian] unity."  This was one theological place - the place of dubiis libertas.  But then on Wednesday when Stearns announced the reversal he spoke from a very different theological place - the place of necessariis unitas.  "What we are affirming today is there are certain beliefs that are so core to our Trinitarian faith that we must take a strong stand on those beliefs," Stearns said.  "We cannot defer to a small minority of churches and denominations that have taken a different position."

Stearns spoke accurately when he said the majority of Christians do not support gay marriage.  Nevertheless, the context of the week's events contradicted his broader point.  World Vision had already deferred to the minority of Christians and did so, as Stearns himself said on Monday, not as an act of compromise on a matter of doctrinal essentiality, but rather as recognition of the good faith of the many (there are are still many in the minority) Christians who have come to see gays in a new and different light.

I use the words "see" and "light "intentionality as this coming Sunday's Gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary is the story of a man born blind in Jerusalem whom Jesus gives new eyes.  Jesus' disciples see his blindness as a condition resulting from his own sins or that of some other person.  But Jesus sees it otherwise.  Jesus sees it as an opportunity for the works of God to be revealed through the man.  Jesus heals the man and for the first time in his life he sees light.  But the Pharisees are not happy when the learn of this.  This healing did not take place according to the dictates of their sanctions and did not conform to their understanding of the world.  They do not believe God could be revealed through the life of such a "sinner" and so they throw the man out of the Temple.  Jesus then defends the man, saying that this is why he - Jesus - came into the world, "For judgement, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind."  Indignant, the Pharisees then say, "What?  Are we blind?"  To which Jesus responds, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."

By now anyone reading this will probably expect me to draw a parallel between the blind man and our gay brothers and sisters.  And indeed, one can be made.  Like the blind man, our gay brothers and sisters are born different and have that difference attributed to moral sin and are therefore barred from participation in the religious institutions.  But it is not really gays that I am thinking of as those who are represented in the story of the blind man.  Rather, it is that "small minority of churches and denominations" Stearns spoke of on Wednesday  - those who have come to see things in a new light, and for that have now been told they do not toe the orthodox line well enough - who are best represented by the blind man.  And it is the authoritarian Christians - those who demand that their own understanding of the orthodox line must be toed - who in my understanding are best represented by the Pharisees.  It seems to me, what Jesus said to the Pharisees that day in Jerusalem is a good and cautionary word for all us still 2,000 years later.  It is a word about humility - a reminder that what we know to be true might turn out not be the true at all when greater light is revealed.  And the only real way to escape judgement is to admit that we may be wrong.  "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."

We see through a glass darkly and from different angles.  We need to admit that.  There is probably a much greater need for dubiis libertas within Christianity than we might be comfortable with.  Yet, beyond what we see differently, we still share necessariis unitas in the heart of our faith - more so than some would have us believe.  There are many faithful, Trinitarian Christians on both sides of the gay marriage issue.  And what Lincoln said about the two sides of the debate over slavery and the Civil War in the 19th century, is well said of our own battles today - one side must surely be wrong; and both sides may be wrong.  Because we may both be wrong, the true necessariis unitas of the Christian faith is not to stand on being right, but rather to confess we are blind and in need of God's vision.

May that kind of vision come to World Vision and to each of our own eyes as well.