On the brokenness of Western cultural self-evaluation

Liberal evangelical personality Tony Campolo recently shocked no one by formally announcing his approval of monogamous gay marriage, coupled with a plea that other Christians do the same. A more surprising similar announcement came almost simultaneously from former Christianity Today editor David Neff on Facebook. The latter put conservative Evangelical "thought leaders" on social media into a relative state of disarray, and Christianity Today issued a response to the whole ordeal aptly titled, "Breaking news: 2 billion Christians believe in traditional marriage."

It's worth reading both Campolo's announcement and CT's response. However there's a disconnect between the two, in that while Campolo makes an essentially emotional and cultural appeal, CT responds primarily with theology. As appropriate and important as such a theological response is, there's a problem with Campolo's reasoning--and hence the reasoning of the larger Christian community that has become sympathetic to gay marriage--that goes untouched. Although the title of the CT article hints at the problem, the writer doesn't expound on it in his piece. That problem is the narrow, cyclical nature of Campolo and Company's "cultural" self-evaluation.

The late Orthodox priest and seminary dean Fr. Alexander Schmemann had some thoughts about Western cultural self-evaluation when once asked about the Episcopal Church's then burgeoning controversy over the priestly ordination of women. Though the provoking issue was different, his observations about typical Western reasoning on these issues has relevance for today's latest cultural flash point of gay marriage. Here's an excerpt below, in which I've replaced every mention of "women's ordination" with "gay marriage," so as to bring Schmemann's point about the overall Western mindset into better focus without distracting on the topic of women's ordination (emphases my own).

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The debate on [gay marriage] reveals something which we have suspected for a long time but which now is confirmed beyond any doubt: the total, truly built-in indifference of the Christian West to anything beyond the sphere of its own problematics, of its own experience. I can only repeat here what I have said before: even the so-called "ecumenical movement," notwithstanding its claims to the contrary, has always been, and still is, a purely Western phenomenon, based on Western presuppositions and determined by a specifically Western agenda. This is not "pride" or "arrogance." On the contrary, the Christian West is almost obsessed with a guilt complex and enjoys nothing better than self-criticism and self condemnation. It is rather a total inability to transcend itself, to accept the simple idea that its own experience, problems, thought forms and priorities may not be universal, that they themselves may need to be evaluated and judged in the light of a truly universal, truly "Catholic" experience. Western Christians would almost enthusiastically judge and condemn themselves, but on their own terms and within their own hopelessly "Western" perspective. Thus when they decide -- on the basis of their own "cultural situation" -- that they must "repair" injustices to [gay and lesbian persons], they plan to do it immediately without even asking what the "others" may think about it, and are sincerely amazed and even saddened by the lack on the part of these "others" of ecumenical spirit, sympathy, and comprehension.

To me, the debate on [gay marriage] seems to be provincial, deeply marked, and even determined by Western self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, by a naive, almost childish, conviction that every "trend" in the Western culture justifies a radical rethinking of the entire Christian tradition. How many such "trends" we have witnessed during the last decades of our troubled century! How many corresponding "theologies!" The difference this time, however, is that one deals in this particular debate not with a passing intellectual and academic "fad" like "death of God," "secular city," "celebration of life," etc.-- which, after it has produced a couple of ephemeral best-sellers, simply disappears, but with the threat of an irreversible and irreparable act which, if it becomes reality, will produce a new, and this time, I am convinced, final division among Christians, and will signify, at least for the Orthodox, the end of all dialogues.

It is well known that the advocates of [gay marriage] explain the Scriptural and the traditional [treatment of marriage] by "cultural conditioning." If Christ did not [speak on gay marriage], if the Church for centuries did not [embrace gay marriage], it is because of "culture" which would have made it impossible and unthinkable then. It is not my purpose to discuss here the theological and exegetical implications of this view as well as its purely historical basis, which incidentally seems to me extremely weak and shaky. What is truly amazing is that while absolutely convinced that they understand past "cultures," the advocates of [gay marriage] seem to be totally unaware of their own "cultural conditioning," of their own surrender to culture.

Personally, I would expect Schmemann's angle on these issues to be a non-starter with a culture so deeply and hopelessly obsessed with itself as ours. But it would behoove historically grounded Christians engaging culture on gay marriage not to concede the purity of the Western moral guilt complex at the outset. Two billion Christians would appreciate it.