At a Communications
Team meeting of Chain of lakes Church last week I shared that I would come back
to blogging. My initial goal is to blog
three to six times a month.
Last week Eugene Peterson was interviewed by
Jonathan Merritt, award-winning columnist for the Atlantic and Religious News Service. The interview was shared in three parts. Peterson was asked questions about why he was
stepping away from public life, his thoughts of Donald Trump, and whether he is
afraid of death.
Peterson is the author of “The Message,” a translation of
Scripture that is widely used and sold.
I have a copy of the Message in my library and refer to it almost every
week I preach. Peterson has written many
books. One of my favorites is his memoir
called “The Pastor.”
Eugene Peterson is one of my heroes. I regret that I haven’t read every word of
what he’s written. I would change my
schedule to hear him speak. I have
tremendous respect for him as a person and for his writings. If I’m in a tricky situation in my work I have
asked myself the question of how Eugene Peterson would respond.
The last part of the interview became controversial and prompted many responses on the Internet. This part of the interview can be found
here: http://religionnews.com/2017/07/12/eugene-peterson-on-changing-his-mind-about-same-sex-issues-and-marriage/
The following is an excerpt of that interview:
Eugene Peterson: I wouldn’t have said this 20 years ago, but
now I know a lot of people who are gay and lesbian and they seem to have as
good a spiritual life as I do. I think that kind of debate about lesbians and
gays might be over. People who disapprove of it, they’ll probably just go to
another church. So we’re in a transition and I think it’s a transition for the
best, for the good. I don’t think it’s something that you can parade, but it’s
not a right or wrong thing as far as I’m concerned.
Question: A follow-up: If you were pastoring today and
a gay couple in your church who were Christians of good faith asked you to
perform their same-sex wedding ceremony, is that something you would do?
Eugene Peterson: Yes.
The fallout from this comment was immediate and
swift. Lifeway Books, the publishing arm
of Southern Baptist Convention, immediately announced they would stop selling
his books. See more: http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/july/lifeway-prepared-to-stop-selling-message-over-eugene-peters.html
The next day Peterson came out with the following
statement. It’s worth reading the
statement in its entirety. I found this
at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/07/13/popular-author-eugene-peterson-heres-what-i-actually-think-about-gay-marriage/?utm_term=.d4c0601986aa
I included the statement at the bottom of this blog.
The bottom line of this statement is Peterson shared that
he would not officiate a same-sex wedding.
Many excellent blogs have been written about what
happened.
Here is one written by an Irish pastor who worked with
Eugene Peterson. Thanks to Neil Craigan
for sharing the blog.
Here is one written by Dennis Sanders that I found
helpful.
This is a complicated story that illustrates the fracture
of the church.
Because of my respect for Eugene Peterson I give him the
complete benefit of the doubt on the shift of his position that was reported.
My hunch of what happened is Peterson was surprised by
the initial question, wasn’t comfortable with his first answer, reflected some
more, and shared his belief. I would
call this this discernment.
Peterson lands at a different place on his willingness to
officiate at a same gender marriage than me.
But his position doesn’t diminish my own respect for him.
A question I haven’t seen asked about this controversy is
how large is our biblical tent? Can we
accept that some people look at the Bible differently on issues that each of us care
deeply? And does another person’s
different biblical views make the person any less of a Christian? And who am I to judge another person for
their view? I believe judgment is left
to God.
I get that the idea “come let us reason together” is not
guiding us. The sense of coming together
to pray, talk, and ask hard questions about how the biblical witness and ultimately Jesus Christ guides each of us rarely takes place.
One reason I love the Presbyterian Church (USA) is we are
not a subscriptionist denomination. Ever since
Jonathan Dickinson helped develop the Adapting Act in 1729 religious leaders
have the freedom to develop their own views.
This freedom comes under the authority of an appropriate governing body,
but nonetheless the freedom is essential.
The issue in 1729 was whether Dickinson was going to subscribe to the
Westminster Confession of Faith; the issue in 2017 is whether Eugene Peterson
is going to subscribe to someone’s view of same-sex marriage.
I’m glad that both have had the freedom to their own views. How wide is our biblical tent?
Here is the statement from Eugene Peterson:
“Recently a
reporter asked me whether my personal opinions about homosexuality and same-sex
marriage have changed over the years. I presume I was asked this question
because of my former career as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which
recently affirmed homosexuality and began allowing its clergy to perform
same-sex weddings. Having retired from the pastorate more than 25 years ago, I
acknowledged to the reporter that I “haven’t had a lot of experience with it.”
To clarify, I
affirm a biblical view of marriage: one man to one woman. I affirm a biblical
view of everything.
It’s worth noting
that in my 29-year career as a pastor, and in the years since then, I’ve never
performed a same-sex wedding. I’ve never been asked and, frankly, I hope I
never am asked. This reporter, however, asked a hypothetical question: if I
were pastoring today and if a gay couple were Christians of good faith and if
they asked me to perform their wedding ceremony—if, if, if. Pastors don’t have
the luxury of indulging in hypotheticals. And to be honest, no is not a word I
typically use. It was an awkward question for me because I don’t do many
interviews at this stage in my life at 84, and I am no longer able to travel as
I once did or accept speaking requests.
With most
interviews I’ve done, I generally ask for questions in advance and respond in
writing. That’s where I am most comfortable. When put on the spot by this
particular interviewer, I said yes in the moment. But on further reflection and
prayer, I would like to retract that.
That’s not
something I would do out of respect to the congregation, the larger church
body, and the historic biblical Christian view and teaching on marriage. That
said, I would still love such a couple as their pastor. They’d be welcome at my
table, along with everybody else.
When I told this
reporter that there are gay and lesbian people who “seem to have as good a
spiritual life as I do,” I meant it. But then again, the goodness of a
spiritual life is functionally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
We are saved by
faith through grace that operates independent of our resolve or our good
behavior. It operates by the hand of a loving God who desires for us to live in
grace and truth and who does not tire of turning us toward both grace and
truth.
There have been gay
people in a variety of congregations, campuses, and communities where I have
served. My responsibility to them was the work of a pastor—to visit them, to
care for their souls, to pray for them, to preach the Scriptures for them.
This work of
pastoring is extremely and essentially local: Each pastor is responsible to a
particular people, a specific congregation. We often lose sight of that in an
atmosphere so clouded by controversy and cluttered with loud voices. The people
of a congregation are not abstractions, they are people, and a pastor does a
disservice to the people in his care when he indulges in treating them as
abstractions.
I regret the
confusion and bombast that this interview has fostered. It has never been my
intention to participate in the kind of lightless heat that such abstract,
hypothetical comments and conversations generate. This is why, as I mentioned
during this interview, I so prefer letters and will concentrate in this final
season on personal correspondence over public statements.”
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