Sinful Attitudes: A Response to Robert Ross

by Ernesto M. Obregon

Ed. Note: The following excerpted letter was written on February 12, 2004.

Dear Fr. Ross,

I received a supposed copy of your letter to Dean Zahl in my email. . . I will give an alternate viewpoint. Yes, I am diocesan staff in Alabama, and an Evangelical, and one born in the Global South, grown and trained in the USA, but ordained in the Global South. I suspect, Bob, that you can begin to see why I might be somewhat upset.

I am afraid that I was not at the ECF Fellows Forum on Thursday because I was at diocesan convention. But I have read a transcript of Dean Zahl's address and now your letter. While I do not know whether Dean Zahl will answer, as I do not have much contact with him, I think I would like to touch on some of the points you have made. Let me start at the top of your letter, though the points that bother me are a bit closer to the bottom.

1. This is a rather minor point, but as I understand it, the conference was a theological conference, not one on the various fields you named. In actuality, the length of the conference would have had to have been seriously larger in order to address all the other fields you mentioned. In this case your argument that "anthropology, psychology, medicine, sociology, history, and literature," needed to be included in that one conference is a distraction technique. No one conference can include an exhaustive presentation of all those fields. And I suspect that anything short of exhaustive presentations in each and every one of those fields would have then led you to charge that this was "conference lite." This one concentrated on the theological considerations. Other conferences can concentrate on other aspects of the issue. No one conference can deal with them all. Should you wish to look at reasonable dissenting viewpoints from people in the fields you named, you can simply go to the web and do a fast web search. For instance, even among non-religious researchers, there was quite a controversy several years ago over the numbers reported by Kinsey, his collection techniques, and the population he studied. His numbers have not been reproducible, yet they are the numbers used "convincingly" by those on one side of the issue. Were evangelicals to use such non-reproducible numbers we would be accused of a lack of understanding of scientific data, its collection techniques, control groups, and its proper interpretation. But I digress from the more important issues.

The position some (perhaps many) in favor of gay marriage propound is sometimes summarized as, "God would have never created me to experience feelings and attractions that he would not then expect me to fulfill." But the doctrine of original sin explains that all our feelings and attractions and even intellectual constructions and philosophical conclusions are tainted. That is, our whole being (not just our body) is involved in this sinful milieu.

2. You accuse Dean Zahl of sloppy interpretation and begging the question by stating that "the gay position as we hear it undermines the anthropology of the Gospel" (a quote from your letter). You say so because you state that the conflict is over whether "the mono-sexual position and life style [is] wrong, immoral, or sinful." But I think you missed the point being made. The position some (perhaps many) in favor of gay marriage propound is sometimes summarized as, "God would have never created me to experience feelings and attractions that he would not then expect me to fulfill." But the doctrine of original sin explains that all our feelings and attractions and even intellectual constructions and philosophical conclusions are tainted. That is, our whole being (not just our body) is involved in this sinful milieu. Parenthetically I should comment that in the field of Philosophy of Science, it is well accepted that the conclusions of researchers are always somewhat (more or less) tainted by the presuppositions with which one approaches the experiment. This is why there are double blind studies, control groups, insistence on reproducible results, and even experiments being repeated in another country to see whether they still replicate. The same it true in the field of Cultural Anthropology. But I digress again. The point is that since the Pelagian Controversy, the Church has accepted that experience, in and of itself, is insufficient to establish a doctrine because of the corruption of our emotional and intellectual faculties. Dean Zahl made an appropriate point, though you may not agree with it. His point was that the "gay" position, as it is popularly stated, assumes that the feelings we have are uncorrupted by sin and fully reliable. But previously accepted biblical doctrine (that Pelagius guy again) said that this is not the reality of fallen human existence. So, your charge that his technique was incorrect or that his theology was sloppy is actually a faulty conclusion on your part.

3. But it is in the next point which makes me hope that the letter on the web did not truly come from you. For if it truly came from you, Bob, then you need to repent in the most old-fashioned of Biblical ways. The contrast between the beginning of that paragraph and its end reminds me of the journey from what appears to be an enlightened position to the heart of darkness itself. You appear to begin well. You appeal to the three-legged stool, loudly proclaiming that you are not a fundamentalist and neither is the Anglican Communion. I could argue here that you conveniently change the third leg of the stool from Reason to Current Scholarship, a change that drastically changes the functioning of the stool, But no, Bob, that is not the place where your heart of darkness shows. If the letter is indeed from you, you go on to say, ". . . we are not likely to ever succumb to Biblical Fundamentalism, even when driven that way by third world Christians who are barely removed from animism and pantheism and whose primary problems about sexuality arise from their competition for converts with the Muslims in their own back yards."

Lines like that were said in the 1950's to justify the repression against all of us who are of color, for the John Birch Society hated me as much as they ever hated any black man. Bob, you are saying that a First World, mostly white, upper-class, denomination cannot accept the decisions of those who come from a swath of the world that actually includes most of the population of the world.

Bob, lines almost exactly like that were said back in 1901 when the then-new Constitution of the State of Alabama was written in such a way as to keep power in the hands of white man. Lines like that were said in the 1950's to justify the repression against all of us who are of color, for the John Birch Society hated me as much as they ever hated any black man. Bob, you are saying that a First World, mostly white, upper-class, denomination cannot accept the decisions of those who come from a swath of the world that actually includes most of the population of the world. You are saying that your (for obviously I, who was born in the Third World and ordained there am not included) position of intellectual enlightenment is so strong that you need to really ignore us and teach us better, for that must be what you mean when you say that you will not "succumb." May I remind you that the idea that you will not succumb to outsiders was certainly part of Alabama's heritage as expressed by Wallace.

It was the argument about the blacks' and Asians' and indigenous peoples' lower civilization and their being driven by animal needs that gave permission to and impelled the Europeans to form several empires to bring Christianity and civilization to us. It justified their failure to listen to us and their requirement that we be the ones who change. You even confirm it when you say that the "primary problems about sexuality arise from their competition. . . ." Bob, those are Darwinian terms that speak of us as though the preaching of the Gospel in our lands were nothing more than an instinctive act of a pack mentality competing with another pack for sustenance. In passing, may I mention that we have no Muslim problem in Latin America and yet most of us are still opposed? I am afraid that your heart of darkness is showing. You need to repent. The attitudes that you have shown at this point are not simply inappropriate, they are sinful. The rest of the letter simply drops into a "rant" in which your accusations become perhaps wilder and more abusive. You need to repent.

Were it not for those phrases, I think I might have just read the letter as another disagreement and either modified my thinking or dismissed it. Had it not been forwarded by a fellow diocesan staff member, I might not have replied in a public e-mail. But those phrases strike at the very heart of what we have been trying to change and the heart of the problem that the American Church has with the world communion. So change, Bob, change.

Sincerely yours,

The Rev. Ernesto M. Obregon

The Rev. Ernesto M. Obregon is the Diocesan Missioner for Hispanic Ministries in the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. Born in Havana, Cuba, he has served congregations in Peru and Bolivia and is a member of the South American Missionary Society. He may be reached by email at obregon@bellsouth.net.