Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 28:48–62, 2009 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1542-6432 print / 1542-6440 online DOI: 10.1080/15426430802643570

Sexuality, Religion, and Authority: Toward Reframing Estrangement

MARK HENRICKSON, PhD Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

This paper proposes that the difficulty some religious traditions have with homosexuality represents a crisis of authority within those religions. Sources of religious authority are usually categorized as scripture, tradition, and reason; some traditions add experience. The paper reconstructs the religious debate into a possibly irreconcilable dialogue between closed (tribal) and open (individualistic) societies. Social work, a construction of an open society, must be interested in this debate because of the impact on society, families, and individuals, and may support both lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons as well as religious conservatives by reframing the debate.

KEYWORDS Bible, church, closed society, gay/lesbian, homosexual, open society, religion

The brief for this paper is to address within a social work context why some religious traditions have such a difficult time with homosexuality. I acknowledge at the outset that it is unlikely that readers who are entrenched in their own points of view on this issue will be satisfied at the end. However, the very staunchness that has solidified opposing sides on this issue, the hackles that are raised, the eyes that are rolled before we even begin, is one of the reasons why such an attempt is important. The way diverse communities of faith around the world approach same-sex sexuality has become an important issue, one that is tearing not only religious communities but also families apart, and it is important for social workers to understand why. It would be much easier to avoid this question as one that

Received September 18, 2007; accepted October 1, 2007. Address correspondence to Mark Henrickson, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]

48 Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 49 is irrelevant to social work, which has heretofore been constructed as an essentially secular profession (Jimenez, 2006). Religionists and nonreligious alike would probably prefer that each would go away or at least keep silent about their points of view, as both religious (Hodge, 2005) and sexual minorities (Lease, Horne, & Noffsinger-Frazier, 2005) claim oppression from the other. The estrangement then occurs from both sides of the debate. What I hope to do with this article is create a kind of taxonomy for understanding the challenge that same-sex sexuality presents to some people of faith and to begin to understand some of the perspectives that contribute to the construction and maintenance of this estrangement. This taxonomy may allow us to see afresh that the fundamental issue has to do not so much with sexuality as with authority and the structure of societies that address these issues. Finally we will explore some of the implications of this debate for social work. At the outset I must set out my own assumptions about this task and share some of my limitations as well as personal identity and commitments. I come to this issue from what may be triple-insider perspectives. First, I am a person of faith, theologically educated, and ordained in my own (Christian, Anglican) religious tradition. Second, I am a professional social worker who has worked as a practitioner and in academe in two countries. Finally, I am a gay man who has been subjected to the professional risks and penalties that being transparent about my identity inevitably incurs. I am also inevitably bound by that perspective and acknowledge that feminist perspectives in this debate may be quite different. To begin, I do not assume that all religions and all faithful people, even so-called ‘‘traditional’’ ones, have moral or theological difficulties with homosexuality; I acknowledge that some people in some traditions have some difficulties, and some people hold these views quite passionately. We cannot universalize a monolithic community of faith from some few particulars. I do not hold that there is a consistent definition of ‘‘homosexuality’’ that we can apply throughout history and across cultures today. Although same-sex behavior and/or attraction have appeared in every culture throughout history (Crompton, 2003; Naphy, 2004), anthropologists and ethnologists have shown us that there are as many ways of understanding and interpreting same-sex attraction and sexual behaviors as there are cultures and subcultures throughout the world (Boellstorff, 2005; Herdt, 1997; Murray, 2002; Murray & Roscoe, 1997, 1998). While I do not hold a radical Foucauldian view that sexuality is exclusively socially constructed, it is simply inaccurate to apply twenty-first century Western understandings and interpretations of sexual identity to other times and to non-Western cultures. It is, for example, just as mistaken to claim that Jonathan and David, Sergius and Bacchus, or Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were ‘‘gay’’ as it is uncritical to assume that they were not sexually active with or romantically attracted to each other. My third limitation is that I do 50 M. Henrickson not claim to speak with authority about any particular religious tradition and its understanding of sexuality but inevitably write from my own context; there is a growing corpus of literature in this area that the reader may wish to explore. Wilcox’s (2006) excellent survey of the historical and current state of the literature on religion and queer theory uses the categories of theology and the study of sacred texts, historical studies, comparative approaches, and social scientific studies to organize her discussion. This article will reorganize these categories into the language of the threefold cord of traditional sources of religious authority: scripture, tradition, and reason (Brydon, 1999); Wesleyan traditions add experience to these sources (Porter, 2004).

AUTHORITY Each religious tradition contains some elements of the three primary sources of religious authority, and each balances them differently. We might even say that variations in the balancing have given rise to different religions, denominations, and sects over time. N Religious faiths that lay claim to the Torah, Bible, or the Qur’an, for instance, as the source of their beliefs and as guides for right living, give a central place to scripture as a source of authority. A religious group, for instance, might describe themselves as ‘‘people of the book’’; clearly, this is a religion where scripture is a predominant source of authority. To place scripture at the center of a religion is, however, not to assume that there is agreement about how that scripture is interpreted or applied; hermeneutics is a point to which we will return later. For Christians, at least, issues of sexuality need to be located in wider debates about the authority of the Bible (Brewer, 2003). N Some religions have elaborate commentaries, liturgies, and ceremony; these are religions in which tradition plays a strong role, because these traditions— although they may be based originally in sacred texts—have developed over time. Creedal formularies, confessional statements, midrash, hadith, prayer books and hymnals, and a well-developed cultus around saints or holy figures can also be classified as traditional sources of authority. Religions with a defined clergy class and a well-organized ecclesiastical structure, polity, and reasonably centralized decision-making process place heavy emphasis on tradition as a source of authority. N Reason includes the extent to which critical thinking, scholarly rigor, contemporary scientific and social theories, and, to some extent, human experience, is acknowledged as authoritative in shaping doctrine or determining moral behavior. The debate about so-called creationism (or ‘‘intelligent design’’) and evolution, for example, exemplifies two competing claims of authority: one claims scripture (Bible), the other reason (science) as the dominant source of authority. Conflating these two sources results in an intractable conflict of language and authority. Reason also can include the ways we understand and interpret human experiences. While ecstatic religions, for instance, appear to Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 51

place great emphasis on direct, empirical, individual experiences of the divine, interpreting and mediating the meaning of these experiences for a community of faith requires the use of reason (and, inevitably, tradition). Wesley, for instance, drew on constructs of the relatively new scientific method to develop a phenomenological understanding of what truths could be validated. He understood individual experience as a source of knowledge that could provide ‘‘experiential confirmation of the truth of what Scripture teaches, an inner assurance of … Christian beliefs, as well as a means of coming to empirical knowledge relevant to the doctrinal categories, content and boundaries set by the Scriptures’’ (Porter, 2004, p. 195). Often the design of sacred spaces reflects the relative importance of the sources of authority for a particular religion. A centrally located lectern with a large Bible will emphasize scripture; an ornate space with an altar, iconostasis, or large chairs for worship leaders communicates the importance of tradition; a relatively plain space with a central speaker’s platform or pulpit communicates the centrality of reason. Rarely is only one source of authority promoted exclusively, and robust debates continue within religions about these sometimes competing sources.

HERMENEUTICS Because sacred texts are at the heart of almost every religion, a brief discussion about the ways that scripture and text are used is important. Hermeneutics is the science and art of interpretation, particularly in relation to scripture. Some religions take the words of, say, the Bible, literally, and maintain that very little interpretation is required; I once saw a bumper sticker that read, ‘‘God said it; I believe it; that settles it.’’ Literalists claim that the words of the Bible are (more or less) the exact words of God, and are the clearest and most direct way to transmit the will of God for human beings. Others recognize a fundamental difficulty with this perspective: that most sacred texts were not written in English or any other modern language (not even the Book of Mormon) and that therefore even to translate the words, concepts, and meanings of original texts in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, and so forth, into contemporary languages also requires some interpretation. For instance, the fact that the word ‘‘homosexual’’ and concept of ‘‘homosexuality’’ was not coined until the latter part of the 19th century presents some challenges when attempting to discern ‘‘what the Bible says about homosexuality.’’ This does not mean that there are not related concepts to be found in historical documents, but they are not exact concepts, and they are certainly not what we mean by contemporary use of the words ‘‘homosexual’’ or ‘‘gay’’ (Tolbert, 2002). In addition to the seven specific apparently condemnatory, or so-called ‘‘clobber’’ biblical texts— Genesis 1:27–28, Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1: 26–27, I 52 M. Henrickson

Corinthians 6:9, I Timothy 1: 9–10— biblical literalists propose that the context of teaching about sexuality and relationships in the Bible appears to support the notion that sexual activity belongs in the context of a marriage between a man and a woman (Bates, 2005). That interpretations of all of these passages are contended by scholars, religionists, and others is indicative of the multifarious hermeneutics that have currency. To review or summarize these arguments adequately is beyond the scope of the present article, but a basic and quite balanced presentation of the various perspectives may be found at http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_ bibl.htm (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 2007). What must be noted is that biblical texts and contexts on sexuality, marriage, and relationship are highly contended, and their use frequently selective. Biblical texts on diet, usury, slavery, and the like are frequently ignored or reinterpreted, while the previously noted texts and other texts on marriage tend to be cited more literally, notwithstanding Abraham’s ill treatment of the mother of his first child, the slave girl Hagar (Genesis 21:14), David and his (at least) seven named wives (I Chronicles 3:1ff) and 10 additional concubines, Solomon and his 700 wives and 300 concubines (I Kings 11:3), and the apparent lack of married relationships of Jesus, his disciples, or Paul. It requires a hermeneutical tour de force to construct a consistent theme of biblical family values drawing exclusively on biblical texts. Furthermore, Brewer (2003) proposes that it is not only biblical texts themselves that should be contended but that the production of the Bible itself as text needs to be considered in the hermeneutic process. For instance, he notes that the early seventeenth century English-language Authorized Version (also known as the ‘‘King James Version’’) was used by the church and state of the time to support the existing social order as part of a Protestant nation-building project in England (" 4.3 and 4.5). This meta- context of the document itself, he maintains, must also be considered by anyone seeking to understand and apply Judaeo-Christian scripture to their lives. Although Wilcox (2006) notes that such textual studies are rare in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, Wafer (1997) undertakes a similar hermeneutic exercise with Qur’anic texts. The Qur’anic texts usually constructed as related to homosexuality are mostly concerned with the stories of Luth [Lot] at Sodom in Suras 7:81, 26:165–166, 27:55 and 29:28–29 (contrast with 52:24 and 76:19 where boys in paradise appear like young pearls); an interesting queer take on these texts may be found at http:// www.well.com/user/aquarius/Qurannotes.htm. With the notable exception of the few genuine theocracies in the world, religions in the 21st century generally do not have the power of state to enforce their regulation of members or to define their membership, although there are certainly frequent attempts to influence state policies. Religions Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 53 must therefore find internal ways to define their boundaries and assert their authorities over their members, in much the same way that the ancient Hebrews used the Holiness Code to define and separate themselves from the gentiles who surrounded them. These sources of authority—scripture, tradition, and reason—are the ways that religions define those boundaries and establish criteria for membership in good standing. These sources have been in play in the Christian Church at least since the Council of Nicaea in AD 353, when the church produced its doctrinal statement (the so-called Nicene Creed) to define orthodoxy and heresy, and, arguably, since the Book of Acts was compiled or the earliest letters of Paul. With this taxonomy in mind, we may begin to understand and contextualize some of the now- familiar struggles that religionists have about homosexuality. Johnson (2007) writes that the present crisis in Christian denominations over homosexuality is not really about sex but rather ‘‘with perceived threats to the authority of Scripture and the teaching authority of the church’’ (p. 14). Bates (2005) concurs with this perspective: ‘‘But ultimately this [controversy] is not so much about homosexuality. … It is about control and authority. And at its heart are base issues of control and power’’ (pp. 13–14). Bates dates the current controversy to the origins of biblical criticism in Germany in the 1860s, which suggested that not all Bible passages were factually accurate, and to the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. These two concurrent events threw into question the inerrancy of scripture and consequently its authority. That the debate about sexuality is more about church authority than homosexuality itself is borne out by the example of the Anglican Church’s response to the denomination’s current crisis about sexuality. This response was occasioned by a decision by the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster to bless same-sex relationships, the appointment of a gay priest to be an assistant bishop in the United Kingdom, and the ordination of a gay priest in a relationship to be a bishop in the American Episcopal Church. The recommendations of the Anglican Church’s response to these events, The Windsor Report 2004 (The Lambeth Commission on Communion, 2004), were largely focused around polity, restructuring ecclesiastical ‘‘instruments’’ of authority. The response proposed the establishment, for the first time in its nearly 400-year history as a church, of a (nonbiblical, noncreedal) ‘‘covenant’’ that would require endorsement by its member churches or they would be considered ‘‘out of communion.’’ There are those in the postcolonial and developing world who understand and have seized on the issue of homosexuality (and the ordination of ‘‘Sodomite’’ Anglican bishops) as a sign that the church is ‘‘under Satanic attack’’ (the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, cited in Bates, 2005, p. 215) and that Anglo-American dominance of global geopolitics is coming to an end (Mead, 2007). A former Anglican archbishop of New Zealand envisioned ‘‘a world without gays,’’ a view based, interestingly, not 54 M. Henrickson on scripture but on ‘‘human accepted norms’’ (Masters, 2004). This purple rhetoric of course amplifies the tone and volume of the debate and raises the stakes to near-apocalyptic levels. The struggle to impose differing sets of values, the use of various sources of authority in various ways, and the high tenor of the rhetoric are all attempts to define clearly what is orthodox and what is heterodox. The discourse implies either that the forces of lawlessness, evil, and chaos are at the gates of the City of God eagerly seeking to invade and destroy it so that defenders must with equal passion to reinforce its walls or that a fascist regime of intolerance has risen up to consume with everlasting fire anyone who dares to deviate from the path of soi-disant righteousness. In order to contextualize and reframe the debate in a more dispassionate way, it will be helpful to consider the work of two philosophers of science, Henri Bergson and Karl Popper, who developed some understandings about the use of authority.

CLOSED AND OPEN SOCIETIES A full exploration of Bergson is beyond the scope of this paper, but a brief explication of his concept of closed and open societies is helpful. Closed societies, in Bergson’s sense, can best be represented by a walled city. Such societies are highly authoritarian and essentially tribal: all participants in such societies know their places, assigned to them by their births. ‘‘The way of the tribe or the clan is the way of nature; to violate custom is to rebel against the gods’’ (Mead, 2007). Tribal control is maintained through what Bergson called static religion. Static religion is instinctual and mythic, and it reinforces the unity between custom, religion, and law; indeed, ‘‘morality is co-extensive with religion’’ (Bergson, 1935). In the same way,

[T]he solidarity between the members of the group is such at first that all are bound to feel that they share to some degree in the lapse of any single one, at least in such cases as they consider serious: moral evil … is regarded much the same as physical evil spreading from one person to another, until it contaminates the whole society. (pp. 102–103)

Certainly the contemporary antigay discourse of some religionists, with its concerns about the putative contaminating and contagious evil of homosexuality, resonates with this statement. The evil must be stopped and appropriate barricades erected; the way closed societies maintain safety and control of their members is to enjoin difference and aberrant behavior with the threat of moral sanction, the threat of punishment by the god(s), maintains the stability of the tribe. Popper (1945/1966) adopts and modifies Bergson’s concept of the closed society. He writes that in such societies relationships are concrete and Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 55 physical (e.g., family relationships), rather than abstract (e.g., contractual or legal). Interaction with nontribal members is closely controlled, as it is ‘‘liable to undermine the feeling of necessity with which tribal institutions are viewed’’ (p. 177). He cites ancient Sparta with its tightly managed, antidemocratic culture as an example of a closed society; every effort was made to arrest change, every aspect of life closely regulated, and population growth was tightly controlled. In this society, marriage within class for the maintenance of family status, property, and population is encouraged. In contrast, open societies are essentially liberal (in the classical meaning of the word) societies that encourage growth, individuation, autonomy, and difference. Human beings who rise above instinct, who experiment, who are open to the new, or who encounter one another in different societies and cultures learn that there are new ways of thinking, being, and living. They create a dynamic religion, which encourages more open societies, and creates, in our taxonomy, opportunities for human experience and reason to have greater voice in the development of morality and customs. Dynamic religion clearly has looser interpretations of scripture and tradition than static religion. Open societies are more democratic and ‘‘equalitarian’’ (Popper, 1945/1966). For Popper, open societies are ‘‘abstract,’’ where interactions are based on and governed by role and abstract relationships that maximize the free choice of personal relation- ships; spiritual bonds are strengthened where biological or physical bonds are weakened. The individual is more important than the tribe. In this kind of society the union of couples for love alone is possible. He cites Athens, with its highly democratic society, as an example of an open society (even though it was based on slavery) and posits that the Peloponnesian war was fought between Sparta and Athens effectively over the very issue of the maintenance of control over citizens and serves as an icon of the struggle between closed and open societies. (Even open societies have their limits on tolerance, however: Popper cites the execution of Socrates for treason as an example of the limits to Athenian openness.) Although every society has both closed and open elements, for Bergson (1935) the categories of open and closed societies, static and dynamic religions, are mutually exclusive and nonlinear, that is, that a closed society is not necessarily an evolutionary precursor to an open society. ‘‘Never shall we pass from the closed society to the open society, from the city to humanity, by any mere broadening out. The two things are not of the same essence’’ (p. 230). What is required to move from a closed to an open society is a kind of ontological shift brought about by a ‘‘dream dreamt’’ (p. 230) leading to personal transformation. Popper (1945/1996), however, suggests that the process is more evolutionary, and that ‘‘the transition from the closed to the open society can be described as one of the deepest revolutions through which [hu]mankind has passed’’ (p. 175). Nevertheless, Popper was pessimistic about social transformation: ‘‘For Popper the 56 M. Henrickson psychological forces that support open society are as weak as reason: the deep instinctive drives pull us back to the comfortable world of tradition and closure’’ (Mead, 2007, p. 198). In our taxonomy, then, it is the dominance of the authority of sacred texts and the traditions of the cultus that create static boundaries against the contagion of the external in closed, tribal societies and against human reason and individual choice, which are the dynamic features of an open society. This perspective is certainly compatible with existing analyses that frame the homosexual person as sinful, because even in the most authoritarian religions sin is an elective aberration that can be repented and the repentant sinner eventually welcomed back into the community. The power to define sin—and to determine that the condition that led to sin is a free choice by the sinner—is the power to define acceptable boundaries and thereby to protect the authority and infrastructure of the community itself. The bifurcation between individual identity and individual actions has led to some religious conservatives taking a dualistic ‘‘love the sinner hate the sin’’ approach to homosexuality. The estrangement between religion and homosexuality can, and must, I propose, be understood as a contemporary icon of the struggle between open and closed elements of society, between static and dynamic religion. Were the struggle not about homosexuality, it would undoubtedly be about something else. However, homosexuality has become a cultural battle- ground, for reasons variously attributed to the residue of the sexual revolution, the emergence of AIDS, perceived threats to religious traditions in many parts of the world, the atomization of Western society, rising divorce rates, and even anxieties about changing constructions of masculinity (Tushnet, 2007). The immediacy of the Internet, which provides opportu- nities for unmediated communication among people all over the globe, now allows instant communications among the various interest groups on the issues (Bates, 2005) and allows unmediated rhetoric to circle the world. Over the last 25 years HIV/AIDS has provided a window of opportunity and outrage, as sexual practices never before imagined by some people are placed in the public domain, and the popular media often present sympathetic portraits of men who have sex with men courageously battling for their lives. The battlefront of same-sex marriage became, in some ways, the skirmish that neither side could afford to lose. Opponents to same-sex marriage see such marriage as an attempt to expropriate a sacred tradition that members of the tribe must protect at all cost; same-sex couples are bemused because they cannot understand how they dishonor a tradition merely by wanting to participate in it. All of these elements have combined in recent history to provide a confluence of influences that magnify the focus on homosexuality by closed religious societies that seek to maintain what they perceive as their traditional authority. There is no genuine dialogue Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 57 between the closed, tribal, and open, individualist societies, between static and dynamic religion, because they are not using language and authority in the same ways. Words like love, commitment, family, justice, rights, sin, tradition, and authority are all constructed in radically different ways by members of closed and open societies.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK Canda and Furman (1999) develop a typology of Christian ideological responses to homosexuality and set out some implications for social work based on that typology. They note that American National Association of Social Work Code of Ethics presents a dilemma for individuals who are opposed to homosexuality or homosexual persons on religious (or any) grounds, for while the code support religious diversity, it also prohibits any direct or indirect form of discrimination. It also promotes the right to self- determination. They propose that the way to resolve the dilemma presented by the Code of Ethics is ‘‘constructive dialogue for mutual understanding’’ (p. 113); these dialogic opportunities are created in direct practice settings, professional education, and social advocacy. Constructive dialogue has also been the usual response when religions attempt to address issues of religion and spirituality. The motivation behind the calls for dialogue appear to be predicated both on research that knowing homosexual persons increases tolerance and acceptance (Altemeyer, 2001) and a postmodernist stance that there are multiple truths, and each is worthy of hearing. The present paper raises the question of whether constructive dialogue is possible between inhabitants of closed and open societies, static and dynamic religion. The fundamental structure of these societies is such that authority, goals, values, and language are used in entirely different ways. Popper anticipated the pressures that encourage reversion to the comfort of a closed society, and Bergson wrote that only an ontological transformation (a ‘‘dream dreamt’’) would lead members of a closed society to an open one. In contemporary religious culture change has frequently been occasioned by pressure from within and without: the increasing (but far from universal) acceptance of women as ordained leaders is one example of this. The pressure to conform to the tribe militates against such individualistic transformations. It states the obvious to say that the coming-out process—of coming to terms with one’s sexuality—is a highly individual process, one that each lesbian, gay, or bisexual person undergoes. Collectivist and clan- based societies frequently have the most difficult time accommodating Western constructions of individual identities precisely because they are individuating. The individuating aspect of that ontological process requires the lesbian, gay, or bisexual person to make a decision not merely about their sexual identity but about the kind of society they will live in. They may 58 M. Henrickson choose to continue to live hidden lives, maintaining the values of the tribe, appearing to conform, or they may choose to live in a society that encourages and respects their individuality and personal freedoms. But science is increasingly finding that nonheterosexual identities are innate, and that once they have come to terms with their identities, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people can no longer pretend that their identities do not exist. They cannot repent their individuality or ‘‘repair’’ themselves to remerge with the tribe, and such attempts have been declared unethical by an array of major human service professions (e.g., American Medical Association, 2007; American Psychological Association, 1997; National Association of Social Workers, 2000). Social work is a profession and discipline born of an open society. ‘‘Professional social workers are dedicated to service for the welfare and self- fulfillment of human beings; to the development and disciplined use of scientific knowledge regarding human behavior and society; to the development of resources to meet individual, group, national and international needs and aspirations; to the enhancement and improvement of the quality of life of people; and to the achievement of social justice.’’ (International Federation of Social Workers, 2005). These are goals of an open society. Social work has, in this sense, already made a decision about which ‘‘truths’’ are worthy of hearing in any dialogue. Individuals from closed societies who seek a career in social work will always experience a fundamental disconnect, for tribes do not support individuation. There have been calls by religious conservatives for greater tolerance of ‘‘traditional’’ religious beliefs (Hodge, 2005), for conservative religious communities may be the only identifiable group holding coherent negative beliefs toward gay men and lesbian women (Rosik, Griffith, & Cruz, 2007). Such tolerance will simply not be possible for social work, because the construction of ‘‘traditional’’ in this sense is a closed society construction. The attempt to adopt the traditional individualistic language of open societies (inclusive- ness, diversity, representation) and apply it to the tribal authority of closed societies does violence to the integrity of both kinds of societies. The attempt by religious conservatives to own the language of religion—people of faith, orthodox believers, traditional Christians—ensures that the language is defined and used in specific, tribal ways. The 1986 Roman Catholic statement on homosexuality, calling it ‘‘a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil’’ and ‘‘an objective disorder’’ (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1986) has the integrity of internal consistency with the Vatican’s understanding of authority: the condition is not of the order of the tribe, and therefore must be disordered; it does not promote the good of the tribe and is therefore evil. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons are, of course, very aware of the attitudes of religious communities toward them. Many such persons report being wounded or angry by the response of religious traditions to them Sexuality, Religion, and Authority 59

(Henrickson, 2007a, 2007b). Some choose to conceal their identities. Those who wish to be transparent about their identities and remain spiritually active within a faith community have two choices. The first choice is to resign themselves to the reality of religions as closed communities, disengage from them, and found their own independent religious communities. Since before the Reformation there has been a tradition of protesting religious communities, and this is something that many lesbian and gay communities of faith have done throughout the world (Maher, 2006). A second choice is to remain situated within existing religious communities of faith with the hopes of transforming them into more open societies and continue to engage and negotiate their identity with their religiosity (Buchanan, Dzelme, Harris, & Hecker, 2001; Glaser, 1996; Rosser, 1992; Yip, 2005). This second choice can lead lesbian, gay, and bisexual people into direct confrontation with authoritarian traditionalists, whose goal is to do precisely the opposite: to maintain or transform such communities into closed societies. There are, however, gay apologists who are members of traditionalist churches (Bawer, 1993; Sullivan, 1995) who advocate a softer approach to such traditionalist communities, just as there are some who have advocated for a revisionist approach to ‘‘tradition’’ (Boswell, 1995). This debate is of importance to social workers because some researchers have begun to conceptualize homophobia as a psychopathology and even personality disorder (Rosik, Griffith, & Cruz, 2007; Guindon, Green, & Hanna, 2003). Social workers work with lesbians, gay men, and bisexual persons who are people of faith and who are struggling with spiritual issues. Some of these people will have been deeply wounded by their faith communities or by media reports about statements and actions by religious conservatives. Social workers, therefore, cannot ignore these issues as irrelevant to their practices. They must be aware of these issues and the impact they have on their clients and their clients’ families of origin and families of choice. Equally, they must be aware of the painful challenge that having a lesbian daughter or pastor, or gay son or sibling, will be to religiously conservative people of faith. By helping clients reframe the debate into one about authority, closed and open societies, social workers may support both groups—lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons and religious conservatives—without losing its integrity as a profession. The debate can then perhaps be undertaken in a less personal way and the pain of the rhetoric will be less acute. It is far outside the scope of this article to suggest what conservative religions or sexual minorities should do to resolve the estrangement between them. It is possible to suggest how each may reformulate their understandings of the relative strands of the cord of authority. Social work, however, already has its standpoint: to continue representing the values of an open society. Popper concludes his first volume in this way: 60 M. Henrickson

We can never return to the alleged innocence and beauty of the closed society. Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to rely on our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. … [I]f we wish to remain human then there is only one way, into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom. (1945/ 1966, pp. 200–201)

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