The New Agenda

Edited transcript from a lecture given at Grace Valley Christian Center Saturday morning (10 a.m.), May 9, 1998

In this lecture I’ve decided to really concentrate on one aspect of the “new agenda.” In my previous lecture I discussed the ancient Gnostic overturning of the Genesis account, and it is interesting to note that one of the particular fall-outs of that attempt to get out from underneath the Creator’s power was a complete redefinition of sexuality.

Is there anything new under the sun? You thought that the new sexual movements were totally brand new, but in the Gnostic texts there are exhortations to “beware of maternity.” Women in the Gnostic sects were encouraged to not become mothers. Why? Because as a mother you are placing yourself within the structures of the creation, and therefore obliging yourself to participate in the reproduction of those horrendous creational structures. Saying 114 of the Gospel of Thomas, which has now been included with the four canonical gospels, ends on this incredible note-that “Mary will become a true Gnostic when she becomes like one of us men.” That’s the way to salvation, ladies-you have to become like a man. Is American culture going this way, by any chance?

Ending Sexual Distinctions

Remember that the “circle of life” seeks to include everything within it. Once you put everything in this circle, then you can pretty much justify everything as divine. But one thing that becomes an absolutely imperative policy in this circular way of thinking is the destruction of all distinctions. The great monistic vision for the solution of all our problems is the end of distinctions.

I believe that this is at the base of what’s happening to sexual thinking in our time. Yes, you can see it as the benighted experience of some folks who are born this way; or you can see the sexual social policies as one more turning of the wonderful wheel of American democracy; but at base I believe it is not by chance that at the same time as we see the rise of paganism, the rise of a monistic way of thinking, we are also seeing a massive reordering of the way we understand ourselves sexually.

Listen to these comments by Tony Campolo: “Not only do I love the feminine in Jesus, but the more I know Jesus, the more I realize that Jesus loves the feminine in me. Society has brought me up to suppress the so-called feminine dimensions of my humanness. When Jesus makes me whole, both sides of who I am meant to be will be finally realized. Then and only then will I be fully able to love Jesus.” Apparently Tony Campolo holds up as the future for himself the realization within his own body of an androgynous being, the two sides of Tony Campolo, male and female.

We are in the throes of a massive redefinition of what it means to be sexual beings. I believe that it’s no accident that the first basic thing that God did when he created human beings was to declare them to be male or female. Not male and female, but male or female. The fact that Eve is brought out of the rib of Adam is not to show that Adam was originally androgynous, as the Gnostics believe, but merely to show that Eve is of the same substance, and fundamentally the same in nobility and dignity and equality as Adam. As God looked around and he saw all the animals, there was not one that would suit Adam. Adam needed someone of the same substance as himself. So God created Eve-not out of an animal, not out of a tree, but out of his own rib. It’s a fundamental statement, I believe, of radical equality between males and females. But at the same time, God says that he creates us male or female.

I believe that sex and religion are a dynamic duo, that what you believe religiously will determine in the end how you are sexually, and what you believe about yourself sexually will determine what you believe religiously and spiritually. They are fundamentally tied together. Perhaps in our prudishness we for too long have failed to address the whole issue of sexuality. But the time is upon us where Christians need to speak out very clearly as to the Bible’s definition of sexuality. It is a wonderful subject, and it’s a subject that brings great glory to God. We don’t have to be ashamed of it.

Eliminating Patriarchy

The monists keep saying that the Christians think sex is evil and that we have to suppress it. Of course, that’s a major lie; it’s not the case at all. The Bible celebrates our sexuality, and it celebrates it by emphasizing the distinctions of sexuality, not by making everybody the same. But we live in a time that has developed a very seductive kind of apologetics. In this attempt to eliminate distinctions has risen a whole philosophy against “patriarchy,” which is described as an immense male conspiracy to suppress and to harass women. In other words, the whole hierarchical structuring of society is the result of the male desire for domination.

We also live in a time where it’s OK to crack jokes about how stupid males are. Have you seen the anti-male jokes these days? Well, I won’t go into them, but it is interesting that if males are so stupid, how did they succeed so well with their project? How did they manage to so structure the universe with such a successful hierarchical division? It’s amazing, how really good we are, guys.

No, that structuring is there because God has placed it in the universe. But today we are living in a time where we are told that patriarchy-which of course is the very notion that God has placed the responsibility for protection of the family in the hands of the father-is said to be “the great evil” to be extirpated from modern culture. It’s no use fighting for the family and traditional values if you don’t understand that. Of course, what you need to understand as well is that when you eliminate patriarchy, you eliminate the Great Patriarch of all, the God who made the heavens and the earth.

Identify a Crisis

Here’s how the ideology goes: First of all, the identification of a crisis, then the dismantling of the structure that’s creating the crisis, and then the promotion of a new paradigm, a new reconstruction in the light of what we’ve now learned. You see this very revolutionary technique in many places. I saw it at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. First of all, identify a crisis. It’s very interesting that all those 125 religions for the first two plenary sessions talked about ecology. I know ecology is important, but why did we have 125 religions that had come together for the first time in a hundred years talking about ecology? Why weren’t there any theologians there talking about the major issues of theology? Of course the whole thing was to create a sense of crisis: that we’re about to implode. Mikhail Gorbachev says we have between thirty and forty years before the world will self-destruct. The idea is that if you get people into a sense of crisis, then maybe they’ll change.

Then you have to deconstruct the way we’ve been doing things to avoid this impending crisis. Finally, of course, you present a new reconstruction of the way we view the world, given in liberal Christian-Buddhist terminology, and you will finally be able to solve all the world’s problems. That’s the kind of approach that is used. It’s the same now with patriarchy. Since patriarchy is called a crisis, we must deconstruct all those things that promote patriarchy. After we’ve done that flattening out, we can then reconstruct sexuality on a different model.

Rosemary Radford Ruether is a ruthless opponent of patriarchy and a leading feminist theologian who is invited to speak in all the mainline denominations and denominational seminaries, even though she often gives lectures on all the pagan goddesses. According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, patriarchy is “the work of the devil  . . .  the mark of the beast . . . the great Babylon . . . the evil land of Egyptian slavery from which the church should organize a modern-day exodus. It is the great Leviathan of violence and misery . . .  a mechanical idol with flashing eyes and smoking nostrils who spews out blasphemies in the temple of patriarchy which is about to consume the earth.” Just a few choice phrases from her very powerful prose. She really is a pagan and says so very clearly. She finds paganism, the worship of various goddesses, much more inspiring and fulfilling than the Christian gospel. She is the one who says that modern theology cannot be done from the basis of the Bible anymore. So she really has moved outside of Christianity.

But it’s certainly odd to hear something of that viewpoint coming from evangelicals, or at least ex-evangelicals. Virginia Mollenkott, who was a teacher at Nyack College for many years, who as a matter of fact recently came out publicly as a lesbian and really has moved light years away from her original Christian confession, also blames what she calls heteropatriarchy for virtually all social ills, including racism and classism. Here’s what she says: “It is vital for us to understand the ways in which distorted concepts of human sexuality, gender distortions, and misconstructions of our God-language have blocked human freedom and healthy relationships.” Patriarchy is found to be the cause for all social evils.

Radical Revolution

I’m not saying that those who practice patriarchy are angels. Men have indeed oppressed women for millennia. Sometimes the things that women, even some of these radical feminists, have to say should stop us male macho guys in our tracks to get ourselves to ask, “What on earth am I doing? Am I really expressing what the Bible says?” But it’s also true that the legal system has been run by sinners as well. We can find many judges, male and female, who are venal and who misuse the system. But do you get rid of the legal system? No, you reform it. That’s also true about the system of patriarchy that God has placed in the universe. It is ultimately reformed by the revelation that Jesus brings of who the Father is and what it means to be a male. But of course what we’re seeing is a call for the very destruction of patriarchy.

It’s very interesting to see how radical revolutions are. They want to start from the beginning. They want to eliminate. But they never succeed, oddly enough. The French Revolution wanted to get rid of all the aristocrats, and so they cut off twenty thousand heads. But in a few years all the aristocrats were back. The people that were cutting off the heads took on the titles of the people whose heads they’d cut off. And the Russian Revolution was to get rid of the owners, the capitalists. It never worked.

These radical revolutions want to start from the beginning and raze to the ground what has been constructed. Here you have it in so-called evangelicals. Says Mollenkott: “If society is to turn from patriarchy to partnership, we must learn that lesbian, bisexual and gay issues are not just bedroom matters of ‘doing whatever turns you on.'” In other words, this is no longer simply about freedom in the privacy of your own room to do what you want to do. Now, it’s true that we don’t want Big Brother television screens in all our bedrooms telling us what to do. But Mollenkott says that’s not all that it’s about. She says lesbian, bisexual and gay issues are “wedges driven into the superstructure of the heteropatriarchal system.” Indeed, heteropatriarchy is today described as “sin” by some so-called Christian scholars. Anybody who would affirm that the norm is heterosexuality- let’s leave aside for the moment the patriarchal element-anybody who affirms heterosexuality as the norm is guilty of sin, according to two scholars that I have cited here.

On a much less radical note, movements like Intervarsity Fellowship and the Council for Biblical Equality, an egalitarian feminist evangelical movement, are equally opposed to patriarchy. Gretchen Gabelein Hull, a member of the board of the Council for Biblical Equality, speaks of the “sin of patriarchy.” She says, “to Christianize patriarchy is to end it.” One doesn’t reform patriarchy in the light of the Christian revelation of God as Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; one eliminates it.

You also get people, like Tony Campolo and others, who are very close in so many areas, but in this area of sexuality seem to have been seduced by this message of equality and fair play. I don’t believe they see clearly enough what are the consequences of taking such a stand. I don’t want to accuse them of paganism-far from that-but I do want to emphasize that this issue is not simply the issue of democratic and civil rights. The radicals understand this. Jewish feminist, Naomi Goldenberg, who first met feminists in the seventies, realized that when you reject patriarchy, ultimately the God of the Bible has to go. In her book, Changing of the Gods, she says: “We women are going to bring an end to God” in the name of true spirituality.

Radical Deconstruction

Well, when you’ve identified a crisis situation of males totally in control, who are really injecting radical sin at every occasion, this must be wiped out, must it not? We are in a crisis situation, and things need to change. Things have indeed changed. There has been a radical deconstruction in this culture. In the seventies, Time Magazine said that it was one thing for homosexuals to call for freedom in expressing themselves within their own privacy; it was quite another thing for them to ask for social affirmation and government programs. I quote: “It is one thing to remove legal discrimination against homosexuals. It is another to mandate approval.” In the nineties, Time Magazine invites its readers to understand and “accept homosexuality the way they accepted black Americans, women voters or the automated-teller machines.” That was the phrase they used. So, apparently this is quite benign, and something that we should get used to.

I talk about the destruction of patriarchy, and that is clearly a radical feminist notion. But alongside the feminist movement that has taken root in our culture has developed the movement for gay liberation. It seems to me that the homosexual movement and the radical feminist movement have urged one another on to more and more radical positions. This is stated in a well-argued and well-entitled article in First Things – “Coming Out Ahead: The Homosexual Moment in the Academy.” The author notes that the Office for Multicultural Studies in many universities has not only taken on the cause of radical feminism, but equally of the gay movement; at Harvard each dorm has a designated gay tutor; at Columbia University, the chairman of the English department is committed to “hiring, tenuring and working with” gay and lesbian scholars; and many universities, including Stanford, Chicago and others, offer spousal benefits to homosexual partners of faculty members.

Radical Reconstruction

I don’t have to actually develop with you the progress of these two agendas; that is for all to see. I want to move quickly to the whole issue of reconstruction. If the crisis is heterosexual patriarchy, and if one approach is to begin to deconstruct the situation that has created that crisis, you surely cannot leave it there. You have to move to a new reconstruction, a new view of sexuality. What is true of this whole sexual movement is true in general.

The philosopher E.R. Norman recently said this: “Pluralism is a word society employs during the transition from one orthodoxy to another. Pluralism is a fundamentally unstable situation.” In other words, from the Judeo-Christian culture we’ve had a deconstruction, and that has been the relativization of all notions. But you don’t stay there. You cannot live in a relativized society, and so you move to a new absolutism. Pluralism is the word society employs during the transition from one orthodoxy, or one absolutism, to another.

This is true as well on the sexual level. The deconstruction of Judeo-Christian sexual norms has given rise to absolute chaos in our society. The more I travel, the more I realize how much we have all suffered from this sexual liberation. It seems like virtually everybody I meet is somehow affected by divorce. Even many Christian people are divorced. Society and our own personal lives have been ravaged by this so-called “liberation,” by this so-called “relativization of norms.”

But now we’re moving to a new reconstruction. Not to worry- -a new absolutism is on the way. What is it? Robert Muller, who was undersecretary of United Nations to the general secretary, and a key mover in the so-called “New Age Movement,” was the plenary speaker at the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He was making an appeal to a great global union of all things. He said this: “a new and higher form of humanity [is taking] control of the planet . . . Homo noeticus is the name I give to the emerging form of humanity.” Homo noeticus-the new rational, spiritual human being.

Androgynous Man

What is this human being like? Well, this new human of pagan monism is no longer limited by the hard and fast separation of reality into right and wrong, true and false, male or female. Indeed, if the ultimate goal on the theological level is the joining of the opposites, the union of all things within the circle of life, the ultimate goal on the sexual plane is androgyny, the joining of the sexual opposites of male and female.

Am I making this up? Is this just part of my theory that should flow out of a monistic view? Well, perhaps you have heard of Mary Daly. She is an ecofeminist lesbian witch, teaching theology at the Jesuit Boston College, with tenure, who is a radical of the radicals, with two PhDs from major European Catholic universities. She says this: “What is at stake [in this sexual revolution] is a real leap in human evolution, initiated by women to an intuition of being . . . of human integrity or of androgynous being.” Clearly she sees feminism as in the vanguard. Indeed, Shirley MacLaine, in her book, Going Within, claims that her higher self is both masculine and feminine. It makes you think again about the words of Tony Campolo.

Matthew Fox is a pagan Roman Catholic Dominican who was so liberal he was asked to leave the Roman Catholic Church, and of course he was welcomed with open arms into the Episcopal Church. It’s very interesting that on the front cover of his book, The Cosmic Christ, is the picture of a naked adolescent youth of uncertain sexuality, who is called Holy Sophia, Holy Wisdom.

Mircea Eliade is an expert in the comparative history of all kinds of non-Christian religions. Mircea recently died. He said that the androgynous being sums up the goal of the mystical, monistic quest. Indeed, the psychologist Carl Jung believed that “homosexuality preserve[d] an archetype of the androgynous original person.” So, Carl Jung, who has been very influential in thinking about psychology and who we are as people, argued that there is an ultimate ideal archetype of the androgynous human being.

Let me identify what androgyny is. Androgyny comes from two Greek words – andros, male, and gunê, female. So androgyny is the bringing together of those two, male and female. Hermaphrodite is another joining of Hermes and Aphrodite, the male and female gods, into one. Once in a very long while doctors observe that one person in millions is born with both male and female genitalia. Of course it’s sort of a shame to build your entire future reconstruction of who we are as sexual beings on such a rare chance occurrence. Yet spiritually that is exactly what monism leads you to. Since virtually none of us ever get to experience that androgynous reality on the physical level, it becomes really a spiritual notion. I believe that this is one of the reasons why homosexuality is not simply a physical condition, however people get there, but really it is part of the new spirituality. I’ll tell you why I think that in a moment.

Virginia Mollenkott, whom I mentioned earlier, says this: “To live in the gender I preferred: this striking phrase causes me to think about the native American shamans who were permitted to live and dress like the other sex without stigma and with a great deal of respect for their spiritual power.” Virginia Mollenkott herself has moved into a monistic spirituality, and of course her own lesbianism is part of that move.

Spiritual Sexuality

You must admit that androgyny on the sexual level is a very powerful expression of monism, because it relativizes distinctions and finally brings the opposites to a sort of union. In very broad and theological terminology, I would argue this: that homosexuality, in particular androgyny, and in particular various expressions of that, such as bisexuality and androgyny, express a monistic view of the world, whereas heterosexuality expresses a theistic view of the world. Heterosexuality emphasizes distinction, just as theism emphasizes the distinction between God and the creation. Androgyny emphasizes the union of things, just as the monistic worldview eliminates the distinction between God and the creation.

The radical Episcopalian Bishop Spong produced a book which denies all the orthodox notions of Christianity. Spong is Bishop of Newark on the East coast. He affirms: “Feminism and homosexuality lie at the very heart and soul of what the gospel is all about.” In other words, he is saying that this kind of sexuality is deeply spiritual. And it is. Our sexuality is spiritual. Lesbian and gay peoples have always held a shamanistic function and ceremonial office in every society.

Emily Culpepper, a colleague of Mary Daly, is an ecofeminist lesbian witch who teaches at Redlands University. She calls herself an “amazon, pagan, oddwoman, and Nag-gnostic”-a very nice play with words. She sees gays and lesbians as “shamans for a future age.” In other words, homosexuals have always had a shamanistic function in society, a spiritual role, and now she is saying that homosexuals and lesbians will have this important role for the future age. She gives a definition of what a shaman is: “a charged, potent, awe-inspiring, and even fear-inspiring person who takes true risks by crossing over into other worlds.” She defines shamans as “witches, sibyls, Druids . . . [who are able] to communicate with the non-human: extra-terrestrial and subterranean . . . spirit-world of the dead.” Now maybe she is taking this to its extremes. Yet she sees, in this radical break with normativity, that homosexuality represents a break with normative theistic spirituality and an opening up for this new kind of spirituality. Indeed, in language we understand more easily, Virginia Mollenkott calls lesbians and gays “God’s ambassadors.”

What is it about this sexuality that is so spiritual? Well, clearly it is the breaking down of the distinctions between males and females. Apparently bisexuality is becoming a very chic sexuality among young people in our time. Recent articles in major journals and weeklies such as Time Magazine have indicated that young people today are finding it a fascinating experience to hold off on the definition of who they are sexually and to toy with the very notion of bisexuality. That’s why I find statements like that of Tony Campolo, who has such a ministry with young people, to be so dangerous. Bisexuality certainly breaks down those distinctions, because someone who is engaging in bisexuality becomes both male and female. Homosexual couples experience this same reality, because both couples in a homosexual relationship get to be both the male and the female partner.

The New Agenda

Do you see what this is ultimately in terms of spirituality? It is the breaking up of the structure that God the Creator has put into the universe. Adultery is horrendous; I would describe adultery as sort of heresy. But homosexuality and bisexuality are really apostasy, a radical turning away of the very structures of creation. At least in adultery there is maintained something of the creational structures, even though God condemns it, just as he would any other kind of perversion. But you see where our youth are being led-to a massive apostasy, away from theism and into a monistic world that is not simply sexual but also spiritual. There is an incredible religious agenda.

It’s very interesting how naive Christian people can be. A member of the Task Force on Sexuality for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, defending its acceptance of masturbation and same-sex marriage, said, “We are not coming in with an agenda.” There’s no agenda? These poor people don’t understand that there even is an agenda! But that radical Jewish feminist I mentioned understands quite well that there is an agenda. She said this; “The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahweh. Yet very few of the women and men now working for social equality within Christianity and Judaism realize the extent of their heresy.” This woman, by the way, has become a witch.

This is the reconstruction of human sexuality for the age of Aquarius. This is the new human being for the spiritual monistic world of tomorrow. I believe that, while we need to show love and openness to all these poor folk who have for one reason or another been brought into these perversions, ultimately we have to show them that this is part of a massive spiritual apostasy. Perhaps as we talk about sexuality in our times we need to not simply be giving legalistic “taps on the hand” to people who are going beyond the boundaries. We need to be showing people the real issues and the real stakes involved in their sexual choices.