74. CHRISTIAN SEXUAL ETHICS (Bev Fabb and Christine Cargill)

That the Assembly:

74.1 declare "Celibacy in singleness and Faithfulness in marriage" to be an inadequate basis for Christian sexual ethics;

74.2 adopt as its standard the Christian sexual ethics based on the concept of "Right Relationship" as outlined in Uniting Sexuality and Faith.

Rationale:
In 1985 and in 1988 resolutions were presented to the Assembly to adopt "celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage" (CISAFIM) as the expected sexual ethic for Christians. On both occasions the Assembly moved the previous question. It would appear that this occurred because whilst it considered CISAFIM an inadequate basis for Christian sexual ethics, the Assembly was concerned about rejecting it without putting an alternative in place. When a similar resolution was presented in 1991, the Assembly agreed to establish a sexuality task group to investigate the whole question of Christian sexual ethics.

In 1997, after six years of study and listening to the church the task group reported that considered CISAFIM to be simplistic and inadequate. However it did propose an alternative basis for Christian sexual ethics based the concept of "Right Relationship". Uniting Sexuality and Faith proposed that sexual expression is appropriate only in Right Relationships. Right Relationships are those marked by the following qualities: honesty, trust, faithfulness, equality and mutuality, vulnerability, freedom and responsibility, setting limits and self control, giving and receiving of affection and pleasure, communication and intimacy.

In essence this resolution picks up some unfinished business from the 8th Assembly - for while the Assembly received the report "Uniting Sexuality and Faith" and encouraged its use within the life of the church, it did not formally adopt "Right Relationship" as a basis for Christian sexual ethics. This has caused confusion in the church about the churches position of Christian sexual ethics.

The purpose of this resolution is to provide clear guidance to the church on our expectation in Christian sexual ethics. This resolution recognises that the question of the ordination of persons in committed same gender relationships is unresolved. It is not intended to resolve this question through this resolution.

Uniting Sexuality and Faith reflected the following elements of Right Relationship.
(excerpt from Uniting Sexuality and Faith, 1997 pp 30-34)

"Elements of Right Relationship in Friendship
What are the elements of friendship and right relationship that we value as a Christian community and seek to reflect in our living?

Honesty
Honesty is an important component of justice and truth in friendships. It is something we look for in our relationships with one another. Honesty involves being open to the expression of feelings. It also involves congruence in the expression of our feelings, speech and behaviour. Friendship is enhanced when people can share openly and listen to one another's feelings and thoughts. Couples who break a relationship often note dishonesty and secrecy as a problem.

Trust
God is the one we can trust absolutely. Knowing that we can trust God helps us to be more trustworthy and prepared to trust others. Good friendship is built on and is sustained by trust. It is at the heart of our understanding of 'covenant'. As trust increases people become more honest and vulnerable with one another. A breakdown of trust is frequently hard to heal.

Faithfulness
Faithfulness, like trust, is a key element in God's covenant with God's people. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit. Our ability to be faithful in relationships and friendship is possible because of God's faithfulness. We learn how to be faithful and how to enter into commitment because of our confidence in God's sustaining love. We dare to commit ourselves to marriage, to parenthood, to friendship, to community. We make deliberate decisions to persevere in our relationships.

Equality and Mutuality
Jesus is our model. He treated all people with respect, holding them to be equally loved, respected and judged by God. Paul also affirmed our equal standing in Christ (Galatians 3:28), as does the Marriage Service. Equality involves the absence of domination and double standards.
As well as a mutual honouring of one another we look for the kind of mutual dependency/empowerment which is experienced in a relationship between two people when each other goes beyond self to be present for the other, without either person being diminished. In such a relationship both people are enhanced.

Vulnerability
The supreme model of someone giving themselves for the sake of the other or allowing themselves to become vulnerable, is God's gift in Jesus. Risking being vulnerable and offering oneself for the sake of another are qualities we look for in Christina community. This is the friendship we have seen in Christ and involves the risk of being hurt. To be vulnerable to another can also be regarded as an act of profound freedom. We are released for the protection and the security with which we have enclosed ourselves.

Freedom and Responsibility
The linking of freedom and responsibility is part of our vision of a new people in Christ. We would expect to find both elements in our relationships with one another. God has given us freedom and we give it to one another. A good friendship allows each person to grow and retain their individuality, which each is enriched within the context of mutual commitment. We see this in God inviting us into friendship and allowing us in freedom to respond. We see it in God's reconciling love which entrusts us with the message of reconciliation available to all people. (2Corinthians 5:18)

Setting Limits and Self Control
The incarnation involved the self-limiting of God in order to be with us, as one of us. Part of the honouring of the other person requires us to set limits on our own needs and behaviour; that is, to exercise self control for the sake of the other and the good of the community. (Romans 14:21) In this way freedom and responsibility are bought together and we truly wait on one another.

Giving and Receiving Affection and Pleasure
Enjoying being together, feeling free with the other and when separated, looking forward to being together, are all part of the warmth of friendship. Affection is a natural expression of our pleasure and delight in each other which nurtures the relationship. To hug and kiss a friend is part of the warmth and endearment of being friends. While the expression of affection may vary according to the culture, it is part of our human nature and indeed is a deep need in all of us. How pleasure is experienced in sexuality will differ from person to person; gender too may be significant. For instant in love making, women and men tend to be aroused to sexual pleasure in different ways. However, care needs to be taken not to draw firm conclusions in this regard.

Communication
Some sexual activity is culturally conditioned and therefore can be learnt. The important thing is that couples need to communicate their sexual needs and be patient with each other. Good skills need to be learnt and practised to resolve conflicts and deepen our understanding of each other.

Discovering Intimacy
As these qualities of friendship find expression between individuals and within faith community, intimacy can be discovered. We recognise it as a particular experience of depth and closeness in relationship. Intimate relationships are built on trust, good communication and on the willingness to be vulnerable with each other. Intimate relationships do not necessarily include genital sexual activity.

Sexuality as Part of Relationships
As an integral part of our personhood, our sexuality is part of all our relating and friendships though expressed in different ways. While warm affection may be appropriate in all our friendships, more intimate sexual expressions belong with the more intimate relationships. That is, there needs to be congruence between the nature of the sexual expression and the depth of trust intimacy and commitment of the friendship.

Sexual Passion and Setting Boundaries
Sexual passion and desire for the beloved are part of God's good gift of sexuality, which moves towards the joy and the delight of sexual intimacy. The security of a committed relationship is the most appropriate context for sexual union.

The intensity of passion and desire needs to be tempered according to the nature and depth of relationship. This requires sensitivity and open communication between a couple in deciding how far it is appropriate to go. Such a discussion is not easy in the heat of the moment, but needs to take place openly and honestly as the relationship grows. It requires the willingness to listen to each other's feelings and needs to exercise self-control for the good of the other and the growing relationship. Another aspect of this issue of setting limits is to be found in the concept of 'waiting'.

Waiting with Patience
As a community of Christ's friends we need to recapture the important spiritual discipline of 'waiting', giving the time and space to wait on God and the other person. This gentle approach to our friendships is strongly linked within our willingness to limit our own needs and behaviour in order to allow space for the friendship to grow and flourish. Including sexual expression as part of this gentle 'waiting' approach enables relationship to grow in depth. This concept of 'waiting' is one which cuts across the expectation of the instant gratification in today's society. In seeking to model this in community life and in individuals' friendships, the Church has something important to offer to all people and to society as a whole.

Repentance, Forgiveness and Reconciliation
We recognise that we live in a world of brokenness, to which we contribute by our sinfulness and by which we are hurt. We fail to live as friends of God and as a community of friends. In our sinfulness, we can be guilty of dishonesty, selfishness, betrayal of trust and an unwillingness to risk being deeply open to each other. God's love enables us to seek God's grace to forgive which we are hurt and to seek God's forgiveness in genuine repentance when have hurt someone else. IN forgiving and being forgiven we grow in love. Forgiving is one path to healing; repenting and taking reasonability for our actions is another. What that happens forgiveness is no longer cheap, but can be given and received as part of the healing process. We need as a Church create opportunities in our life together and in our worship, to give expression to this healing process. The process of confession, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation may be enhanced if it includes a liturgical act designed for the particular situation.

Sin, Abuse, Exclusion and Brokenness
Sadly many people do not experience, in the family, their marriage or in their personal friendships, the quality of deep friendship we have described. The sin and brokenness of our society and its structures, of the individual lives and of our life as a Church cuts us off from God and one another. The violence depicted in films and TV programs is a reflection of the violence in the life of society and its individual members. The economic pressures placed upon people have a way of poisoning relationships as does the prevailing drive for competition and individualism.

There are those who are too abused and hurt to risk deep commitment and friendship. many do not have the models of right relationship or the skills to enable the building of fulfilling and just relationships. This central aspect of living is not formally taught, it is learned from our experiences as children. Then there is our sinfulness expressed in self-centredness, selfishness and the wrong use of power, which seeks to control and manipulate rather than enhance and empower the other.

Role of Power in Relationships
From the responses to the Interim Report (op.cit.) many people do not understand the role of power in relationships. The misuse of power inflicts violence on people, mainly women and children, though not exclusively so. While the misuse of power is clear in abusive relationships, rape, incest and pederasty, power is also misused in more subtle ways to intimidate, frighten coerce or demean. These forms of mental, emotional, verbal, economic and psychological abuse violate a person's spirituality when it occurs within a family or the faith community. This is the very antithesis of the way Christ and the picture of mutual empowerment we have tried to draw earlier in this chapter.

The Impact of Child Sexual Abuse
Many people are too abused and hurt to risk deep commitment and friendship. In the 1990's childhood sexual abuse has emerged as a significant social issue. Mostly occurring in families, fathers and others older males dominate as perpetrators. (Stranger abuse forms only 1% of cases.) The effect on children is devastating, interfering with the normal bonding, confusing them over issues of right and wrong, undermining their capacity for trust in adult life. The adult sexual intrusion into childhood leaves the child no moral guide for future behaviour. Encounters with authority figures may get sexualised in later life without any understanding of the underlying motivations.

The adult abused in childhood may suffer serious psychiatric conditions. 'Dissociation', which is a protective form of forgetting, may help the child survive. But in later life, it may underlie a whole range of psychiatric problems from eating disorders to severe neuroses and personality disorders. Apart from stunting their emotional and spiritual growth, childhood sexual abuse may also lead victims to becoming perpetrators themselves.

Sexual Exploitation of Children
In the past, the violation of children for adult gratification was termed 'paedophilia' (love of children). Now we name this aberration as 'sexual abuse of children'. one of the many forms of violence committed against children and adolescents. As a society, we have become more aware of endemic child pornography and prostitution through publicity surrounding tourism in Asia organised by Australians. World-wide networks of child pornography via the internet are a cause for concern.

The Role of the Church
The Church has an important role in this.
§ We must speak out against all forms of abusive, violent and predatory behaviours such as rape, stalking, abuse in all its forms, the ongoing trades of pornography and prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children wherever these occur.
§ The Church needs to model right and just friendships in its own life and maintain the quality of community life as an expression of the Gospel. It must name the sinfulness within its own community life and act with compassion towards those who have become its victims.
§ Child abusers are known to infiltrate child care agencies and youth organisations for their own purposes. We need to be vigilant about our choice of adult leaders of children so that we can help create safe places for children and young people.
§ The Church needs to pastor people who have been abused and those who are abusers, always working for justice and healing. Within the Church community, we offer an environment of wholeness and nurture which people begin to trust again.

Right Relationships as an Expression of Community
Right relationship is essential in building community. The integrity of individual begins with seeing themselves in community. In other words the basic unit of society is not the individual, but the individual in the community. For the Christian that entails seeing the individual in the community under God. We need to be aware lest our actions become a cause of stumbling to others. All relationships, including our intimate relationships, have an effect on the community. We need to be open to the challenge and discipline of the faith community. This is both our limitation and responsibility. (Romans 14)

It is within the community that all our relationships and friendships are worked out. Not only are our friendships nurtured by the Christian community, our relationships and friendships enhance the community. In other words, how we 'do' friendship is an essential element in building of community, both in the faith community and in society as a whole. The community is weakened which people are excluded and abused and when power is misused and trust dishonoured. The issue of right relationships and of faithful friendships is a community issue. It is not simply a private matter between individuals involved. This places enormous responsibility on the community to provide a framework which encourages and nurtures good friendships. It also means that the Uniting Church has a responsibility to work against the structures and forces within itself and society that divide and put people at enmity with one another. This is a response to God's call of reconciliation made possible in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:16-21). In such ways we may be part of a ministry of healing and wholeness for all people."