A religious think tank has issued a manifesto about breaking the silence in religious communities about a host of sexuality issues. It hasn’t stirred much media attention, but Frederick Clarkson thinks it could be revolutionary.

(WOMENSENEWS)–The Religious Institute has just issued a 46-page report on the state of sexuality in religious communities and a manifesto that seeks to transform the status quo.

Goals include improved pastoral care of marital relationships, domestic abuse and infertility, and training for prospective clergy in sexuality-related matters.

The institute calls for religious leaders to provide lifelong age-appropriate education for youth and adults and to become more effective advocates for comprehensive sexuality education and sexual and reproductive health in society.

Clergy are often first responders in matters of domestic violence and potential (and actual) suicides by young people struggling with sexual identity. The Religious Institute points out that these first responders have usually received little to no training for the job.

A singular strength of the document is that it offers an uncompromised progressive vision that does not conform to recent fashions in seeking “common ground” with conservative
evangelicals and Catholics.

Particularly striking in this regard is its call for a society in which there is full access to reproductive health care, including abortion, marriage equality and full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the life of religious communities.

Since it was announced two weeks ago, the report, “Sexuality and Religion 2020: Goals for the Next Decade,” has generated little media attention beyond a few regional newspapers and online news sites.

Sometimes, this is the quiet way revolutions begin.

Manifesto Seen as Subversive

Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., immediately responded to the manifesto on his blog. He saw it as “evidence of the continued subversion of biblical authority and confessional integrity that characterizes the revolt against orthodoxy in so many churches.”

Nevertheless, he acknowledged: “Our pews are filled with people worried about their sexuality, wondering how to understand these things, struggling with same-sex attractions, tempted to stray from their marriages, enticed by Internet pornography and wondering how to bring their sexuality under submission to Christ.”

And while he thinks evangelicals “will rightly reject just about everything” in the Religious Institute’s report, he did conclude that “they should not avoid its urgency in calling pastors and Christian leaders to teach and preach about sex and sexuality.”

Indeed, he seems to be worried about the competition. “The Religious Institute wants liberal preachers to talk more about sex. My guess is that they will. But what about evangelical pastors?”

Rare Experience Spawns Effort

The Religious Institute, based in Westport, Conn., has a national network of more than 5,000 clergy and religious leaders from 50 religious traditions, from which they seek to build an activist Faithful Voices Network to take their agenda forward.

Rev. Debra Haffner, founder of the Religious Institute, brings a unique background to the effort.

After several years as executive director of SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), the nation’s leading association of sex educators, she attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City, became a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Association, headquartered in Boston, and founded the Religious Institute. Her mission: to break the silences and transform the conversation about sexuality.

The report grew out of a consultation held by the Religious Institute last summer with two dozen theologians, activists, clergy and academics from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Unitarian Universalist traditions. They sought to envision how in 10 years “all faith communities will be sexually healthy, just and prophetic.”

The report also summarizes dramatic progress in the past 10 years.

Now female clergy are taking leadership roles in major denominations. A woman is presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church. Lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people are gaining acceptance. Marriage equality is recognized by the United Church of Christ, the Union for Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The Unitarian Universalist Association also recently announced that clergy will now be required to be “competent” to address matters of sexuality in the lives of their parishioners. Haffner says that several other denominations are likely to do the same in the next few years.

But the manifesto also addresses the silence surrounding sexuality.

It cites survey data that show that 75 percent of even progressive clergy had not addressed sex education and 40 percent had not preached about sexual orientation over a two year period.

Seventy percent had never preached on reproductive justice.

Desire to Turn to Clergy

“People want to be able to turn to their clergy,” Haffner said in a phone interview. “One in 4 has a history of sexual abuse. Half of marriages are going to break up. Infertility is an
issue.”

The list goes on, she said. “But people are looking for an ethic that does not currently exist.”

The consequences of avoiding matters of sexuality, she said, show up in clergy sex-abuse scandals. “Countless millions of dollars are paid out playing clean up because of this lack of training and attention. And it’s not just the Catholics,” she said.

“If these are issues that cannot be spoken in your churches,” she asks, “where can you bring them? Silence contributes to people’s alienation and aloneness. People don’t know
what to say and how to say it.”

Haffner says that mainstream religious institutions have a head start. She says she is working with five denominations on mandatory sexual competence for clergy and 15 denominations on matters that affect everyone “across the board.”

Rev. Ann Tiemeyer, who heads the Women’s Ministry at the National Council of Churches, said in a press teleconference call earlier this month that not all of the council’s 36 member Protestant and Orthodox denominations, representing 45 million Christians in 100,000 congregations, would support everything in the document.

But she said that all would benefit from clergy training and open discussion of matters of sexuality, including the teaching of young people and strategies for keeping children safe from sexual predators.

She pointed to a number of efforts already underway that fit the Religious Institute’s recommendations. For example, a number of denominations, as well as her office, have focused on issues of domestic violence. And the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association co-produced in 2000 a sexuality education program for children and young people, “Our Whole Lives.” She called it “an incredibly great model. Indeed, a dozen denominations have since developed various programs of their own.

Dr. Martin Marty, the eminent historian of religion at the University of Chicago, joined the Religious Institute’s press teleconference and compared sexuality to religion. “If you get it right, it’s beautiful. But if you get it wrong, it really messes you up,” he said.

The encouraging trend is that some of our major religious institutions, with the help of the Religious Institute, are working hard to get both sexuality and religion right.

Frederick Clarkson is the editor of the anthology, “Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America” (Ig Publishing, 2008).

For more information:

Religious Institute:

http://www.religiousinstitute.org/

Women’s Ministry/Justice for Women Working Group:

http://www.ncccusa.org/womensministry/

Unitarian Universalist Association:

http://www.uua.org/

http://www.womensenews.org/story/commentary/100223/us-religions-quietly-launch-sexual-revolution

March 2-13 marks the 53rd Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. Each year, the Commission meets to “evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.”

Throughout the two weeks, work is done to complete and modify a document known as “agreed conclusions.” The agreed conclusions formulated by the representatives of 45 member states at the end of these two weeks will be submitted to the Economic and Social Council for adoption, setting a precedent for governmental and non-governmental action and policy on a certain issue. This year, the theme of the CSW is the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS, and this year’s agreed conclusions can be found here.

But what does all of this international bureaucracy and UN jargon have to do with the National Council of Churches, the ecumenical community, and the Justice for Women Working Group? Lots. Participating as an NGO, Women from the NCC work together as part of a coalition of sixteen organizations called Ecumenical Women , striving to get our recommendations for the agreed conclusions to the representatives who will be debating them. Watching all the women who participate as part of NGO’s in the CSW, nearly 2000 in all, is inspiring, and watching the over 200 delegates who also count themselves as Ecumenical Women is a true witness to the Spirit moving in all contexts and corners of the world.

This sight should not surprise us, though. Women of the ecumenical movement have always been a part of the United Nations, working to influence and advocate for themselves and their sisters and children around the world. In 1941, 100 women representing 70 Protestant denominations and three large interdenominational women’s groups joined together to form the United Council of Church Women, now known as Church Women United. The CWU petitioned the United States to “join and take its full responsibility in a world organization,” and in the inaugural meetings of the UN General Assembly in 1946, it was the American First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke to the importance of addressing the situation of women in the world. It was this same year that the CSW was created, and challenged with the task of finding out about the status of women worldwide–no data like this had ever been collected.

Perhaps most visibly, women of the ecumenical movement contributed to the life and discussions of the United Nations as women from the United Methodist Church raised the money to build the Church Center of the United Nations (CCUN). Built in the early 1960’s, the CCUN was envisioned to be, and still functions as today, a space in which the agencies working for peace and human rights could collaborate more fully.

And it was in the CCUN that this diverse coalition called Ecumenical Women gathered on Saturday, February 28, to learn, share, meet one another, and prepare to advocate. Among those representing the National Council of Churches was a group of 9 young women from around the country, some in seminary, some in international and public relations, all with a yearning to follow God through the work of advocacy. Their presence was part of the growing involvement of young people in the ecumenical movement, and their stories will be shared here in the coming weeks.

There is so much to find out about the CSW and what is going on there these two weeks. History, more on the CSW, the Advocacy Statement of Ecumenical Women for this year, and the Ecumenical Women’s Advocacy Guide are all available online. For now, just to pique your appetite, take a look at the report on a panel discussion on Positive Masculinities sponsored by Ecumenical Women, and take with you the words of this song, sung together at the beginning of the Ecumenical Women Orientation last Saturday:

Sister, take my hand; walk with me today.

Walk across this land; God will lead the way

Through the wilderness, to the promised land.

Sister, Walk with me and take my hand.

Note: text and music by © Grace Pugh Hubbard for Ecumenical Women Orientation opening worship at the 53rd Commission on the Status of Women at the UN.

*Credit is due to the Ecumenical Women’s Advocacy Guide for the information they provided about the history of the ecumenical women’s movement and the UN.

Apart from the ecumenical scene, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said today in the UN programme commemorating International Women’s Day, “I am deeply convinced that, in women, the world has at its dosposal the most significant and yet larglely untapped potential for development and peace… Women are still severly hampered by discrimination, lack of resources and economic opportunities, by limited access to decision-making and by gender-based violence.”  He called on everyone in the international community to increase investments in women and girls.

Ecumenical Women wishes you a fruitful and informative International Women’s Day! 

From February 22 – 26, 2008, seven young women between the ages of 21 to 28 years old participated in the first Young Women’s Leadership Experience facilitated by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC). The group received intensive orientation about the NCC, Ecumenical Women at the UN, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO’s) at the UN and the history of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).  More>>