I agree that we have labored too long and too hard on the question of homosexuality; I was ordained in 1970, and we've been going at it since the early 70s. In many ways … this is the essential test of everything else we claim to be central. The Southern Church had a doctrine — the spirituality of the church — to avoid politics and preach only Christ. But such a doctrine allowed for slavery and all the attendant social ills that followed. A good friend of mine lost his pulpit in North Carolina in the mid-60s for raising the issue of race in the pulpit. What good does it do for us to proclaim Christ and His goodness when we cannot resolve the question of love and openness?What shall we do? Close the door absolutely to ordination for those we consider ill-equipped, as some groups have done? There was a time when people of color were barred from our ranks, and there was a time, in the not too distant past, when women also were barred for want of "qualifications" and Biblical mandate. Those who oppose ordination for gays and lesbians work hard to separate the issue or gay and lesbian ordination from that of previous exclusionary questions: race and specifically bi-racial marriage laws, which prevailed in much of this country even into the 60s, and the exclusion of women from ordination. But I see it differently, and because the church had to work its way through Scripture on women and had to reorder its thinking on questions of slavery and then bi-racial marriage and civil rights, I'm confident that our work here is vital and valuable. Who now would question that work of previous generations, or decry the "waste of time" involved? It was not only vital, it was essential to the cause and character of the Christian gospel. There will be a time when we look back on all of this with a quaint bewilderment — as with women in ministry, and bi-racial marriage. We'll wonder what the fuss was all about. Tom Eggebeen, interim pastor
Covenant Church
Los Angeles, Calif.
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