The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church has revised its housing policy to permit “committed same-sex couples” to live in seminary housing.
The policy change follows a complaint to New York City’s Commission on Human Rights alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation. Deirdre Good, a professor of New Testament, challenged the earlier policy when seminary officials told her she could not continue living on campus with her female lover.
The new policy requires faculty and seminarians to obtain written approval from diocesan bishops if they live in a same-sex relationship on campus. Bishop Craig B. Anderson, the seminary’s president and dean, sees that requirement as the main strength of the policy, calling it “shared responsibility.” Under shared responsibility, Anderson wrote to his fellow bishops in January, “diocesan bishops and appropriate ecclesiastical authorities will be asked to share their theological position, concerns and expectations to the seminary in sending us students to prepare for the ordained ministry.”
Cohabiting heterosexuals will find no room in seminary housing, however. “In accordance with the teaching of the Episcopal Church on holy matrimony, heterosexual couples may live in Seminary apartments only if they are married,” says the seminary’s housing policy. An advisory committee of students, faculty members, trustees, staff, alumni, and clergy drafted the policy.
“The discussions on the advisory committee represented all points of view,” Anderson told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “The committee heard all sides, and a consensus formed.” The seminary’s 42-member board of trustees made few revisions and adopted the policy on January 10.
Bishop William C. Frey, dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, says the controversy illustrates the need for clearer resolutions from the denomination’s triennial general convention.
“The inability of our church to address that question [of sexual ethics] clearly and forcefully leads to a lot of confusion among lay people,” Frey says. “I don’t think any of our ethics—sexual, political, or economic—should be governed by what the law of the land is. Ethics does not come from the political Left or Right, but from above.”
Roger Boltz, associate director of the renewal organization Episcopalians United, says the Episcopal Church’s teaching is clear. “The teaching of this church has always been, and still is, that genital sexual activity is only appropriate between a man and a woman, within the bonds of holy matrimony,” Boltz says. “A religious institution is obligated to defend, to the point of death, what it believes to be true. Here’s yet another instance of an institution, a diocese, or a bishop going off on its own.”
By Doug LeBlanc.
