October 6, 2014 |The new Showtime series, “The Affair,” premiers next Sunday, but students, faculty, staff, alumni and other members of the Andover-Newton Theological School (ANTS) community recently got to “explore the effects of an extramarital relationship” up close and perhaps too personal as it was preparing to inaugurate the Rev. Martin Copenhaver as its president this past Sunday.

The ANTS community learned last week through a letter from Martin Copenhaver and one from the Board of Trustees (both arrived at my house together) that Copenhaver had an affair, that he repents of his mistakes and the pain he has caused his family and wider community, and hopes the community will forgive him. The Board of Trustees expressed its support of Copenhaver and desires to move forward “in grace,” choosing, as I read the letter, to use this occasion of repentance and forgiveness as a model for how healthy Christian communities behave.

I am interested in public theology, social media, sexual ethics and clergy image and personae, all of which at play in this situation, so the story would naturally have caught my attention. Aside from my intellectual interest, I have emotional loyalty to Andover-Newton Theological School, having earned my Doctor of Ministry degree there in 2011. Since the letters arrived in my box, behind the semi-closed doors of Facebook and e-mail, I’ve had much conversation about the Copenhaver crisis. But it seems to me that the questions the situation raises with regard to Christian leadership, both at individual and institutional levels, including how Christian leaders are viewed in the Church and the wider world, invite a much fuller conversation.

Let me say first, there is no shame in being an institution dealing with human failing. Those of us who work in the church do it all day long and we ourselves fail all day long as well. So I start from a theology of grace and a personal commitment to humor and intentional lightness of being:

This has happened before. We are not players in a unique tragedy here. This is common human messiness.

I am first and foremost personally concerned about covenantal relationships—marriage being the most important one in this situation. It concerns me that my alma mater’s president should have violated the covenant of marriage for a long period of time, and that he and the board of trustees ask our forgiveness for that violation.

I assume that the president of a Christian seminary, unless he explicitly states otherwise, upholds the covenant of marriage according to the definition of two people who are faithful to each other unto death. Many couples have negotiated different terms to their marriage, but it is clear from Martin Copenhaver’s letter to the community that he and his wife did not do so, nor are they polyamorous. If they were, it would certainly be within their rights to allude to that and ask that the community respect their privacy. Non-monogamy within marriage is one commonly negotiated between spouses. I do not object to non-monogamous married people serving in leadership roles in the Church.

Given that there was apparently not some other understanding in his marriage vows in place, President Copenhaver’s violation of his marriage covenant reveals distressing facts about his character and religious integrity. In the letters from Copenhaver and the board member, we are asked to forgive. The request for forgiveness confuses me and feels like a misdirection of my attention. These letters contained not just information about an affair, but a revelation of Martin Copenhaver’s character. How am I to forgive a revelation?

If forgiveness is required from me or other members of the ANTS community, wouldn’t that forgiveness have to do with the violation of our trust in Copenhaver as a leader and in the board who selected him and has seen fit to allow him to be inaugurated as president despite a significant personal failure that has implications for the Christian character of the school?

Because he has served on the Board of Trustees and been involved with the school for a long time, we have actual information about Copenhaver’s character. People on the ANTS board know him. Ostensibly, they admire and respect him. I would rather have had the board write to the wider community about their firsthand knowledge of Copenhaver’s good character than preaching to us about grace and forgiveness, which are not as germane to Copenhaver’s ability to do the job as is his reliability and integrity.

In the Christian tradition, we like to hope the Holy Spirit is at work in these sorts of crises. She is at work in truth-telling and blowing fresh air through harmful secrets. But to try to force the Holy Spirit of forgiveness through a bellows and into community when that community has just been knocked over by truth is inauthentic at best and manipulative at worst.

The central role of the covenant in Western religious thought is that God chooses us to be God’s people. In the covenantal theology of the Congregational Way (of which both Copenhaver and I are descendants; he as an ordained United Church of Christ minister and I as an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister), God gathers congregations together so that they may “walk in God’s ways as are known and shall be made known” to those individuals, who have been made a “people” by entering into covenant with each other and their God.

A seminary is not a church, and there are ecclesiastical questions about what kind of ministry a seminary president really has. It is not exactly pastoral, priestly or prophetic — the three traditional roles of the parish minister — and no one in the community has said if Copenhaver is under review for ministerial fitness by the ecclesiastical body to which he is accountable as a UCC minister. (A 2011 case that seems to provide a precedent is reported here). I think it would have been wise for the Board of Trustees to wait and postpone Copenhaver’s inauguration until those questions had been answered and any ministerial review conducted and concluded. This is practical information that the community deserves to know before being counseled to forgive.

It seems important, too, that this information came to light after a third party threatened to make the information public. It seems to matter that the affair reportedly went on for a number of years, and that it ended recently. It matters that rather than resigning, Copenhaver offered to resign and therefore left the decision in the hands of a volunteer board that was probably very tired, very inclined to want to be able to trust him, and that is mostly not clergy. Clergy, after all, have a particular stake in this decision because it is we who suffer most the public’s scorn when we behave in ways that validate their sense that religion is a special haven for hypocrites.

What’s to forgive?

It feels so good to be able to forgive. It is so Christian to forgive. But as I reflected on this crisis on the Sabbath eve of Yom Kippur, was reminded of the differences in Jewish and Christian teachings on forgiveness. In Judaism, you cannot forgive someone for something that was not done to you.

I cannot forgive Martin Copenhaver for his extramarital affair because it isn’t my place to forgive him. I am not married to Martin Copenhaver and cannot forgive him for committing adultery. That open question lies between him, his wife, and the person from whom he accepted love, romantic energy, comfort, emotional support, and whose contributions to his life can never be honored in public.

It has been made clear that the long-term relationship Copenhaver had while married was not with a parishioner or intern under his pastoral care, and therefore the relationship does not fall into the category known as sexual misconduct. For some, this may be reassuring. For me, it says a lot about our low expectations of religious leaders that we should find it occasion to breathe a sigh of relief that our ministers are having perfectly kosher extramarital affairs—morally fraught, perhaps, but otherwise not-illegal. Sad commentary.

From the moment I heard the news, my first thought was not about sex but about lies. How many lies does a person have to tell to his family, his spouse, his staff, his congregation in order to conduct a long term extra-marital affair? Too many to count. To live in such deceit requires impressive powers of compartmentalization, and I would wish for Martin Copenhaver a period of recovery from such a long, bad internal practice. I believe that time away from important leadership roles are necessary in such recovery, and I am troubled by the Board of Trustees’ lack of recognition of that fact.

We talk of clergy burn-out all the time in the ministry. For some, clergy burn-out looks like depression and isolation. For some, it feels like a desert. For some, it takes the form of alcohol abuse or illegal drug addiction. For some, a heart attack sounds the alarm. For some, it looks like an escape from covenantal obligations in a romantic relationship. In rushing forward with the Inauguration, I feel that the Board of Trustees is forcing a dangerously exhausted star back onto the stage. “Get out there and dance!” This does not look like grace. This looks like enabling and exploitation of a career-driven pastor who has very recently driven his car off the road and into high weeds, and requires time and privacy to get it back on the road.

Like almost every other seminary in the nation, Andover-Newton desperately needs funds. Copenhaver’s most recent tenure — and a long and very successful one — was as Senior Pastor at a very large and very wealthy congregation in Wellesley Village, Massachusetts. He is a talented fundraiser.

Who am I to judge?

Many have suggested that the options for Copenhaver’s future with Andover-Newton are either judgment or forgiveness. This is a false and distracting dichotomy, and I am embarrassed by the simplicity of the arguments of those who claim that asking for Copenhaver’s resignation is non-Christian and “judgmental.” They speak of casting first stones and quote Jesus.

In the gospel passage during which Jesus admonishes an angry mob that they should only throw rocks at the woman caught in adultery if they themselves are without sin, he was taking the side of a powerless woman who had no other advocates present and was about to be executed. Copenhaver is no less a vulnerable child of God than that woman caught in adultery, but he is not at all without power or without advocates. He is a gifted and well-loved professional who has a long and esteemed ministry among people who know his good works as well as his fallible human aspect.

If Copenhaver takes time away from leadership in order to better attend to the strengthening of his faith, his marriage, his spirit, his joy and happiness, that should not be regarded as a punishment or failure by any community except one that regards any career path but a strictly vertical one as a failure.

There are many secular ideas and anxieties about job security and career paths being woven into the community’s reflection on forgiveness and reconciliation. This trend can be seen most clearly in those who conflate forgiveness of Copenhaver with his right to remain in the job of Andover-Newton president. In the Christian tradition, forgiveness does not guarantee any worldly honors. Those who are reconciled with the covenanted community may worship within it and receive Communion. I personally welcome and embrace Martin as my brother in community even as I question his fitness to represent a seminary I want to be able to unequivocally and unashamedly speak well of and support as an alumnus and internship supervisor.

It is not judgmental or un-Christian to resist the urge to move immediately from knowledge of someone’s long deceit to warm “forgiveness” so that one’s seminary president can be inaugurated as the official head of the institution. It is possible to forgive someone but still not feel that they are the best possible person to represent one’s institution in the top leadership role.

The Seminary President from central casting? Maybe too much so.

Finally, I am interested in this moment as it allows us to think about the image of clergy in the church and the wider world. I have seen Copenhaver preach and lead worship, and he fulfills every physical attribute that most New Englander’s have in their mental image of The Reverend Mr. Trustworthy Pastor. Andover-Newton Theological School has a widely acknowledged commitment to studying and teaching anti-racist/anti-oppression theologies of justice, so it seems legitimate in this situation to examine the ways most members of the community have been socialized to respect the power and authority of able-bodied, white, heterosexual, married men in the Church. We are all responsible for understanding unconscious needs and scripts that are being activated here. Andover-Newton has a large international student body for whom these unconscious associations are not in play. I crave their perspective but have not had a chance to hear it.

No one has had sufficient time to hear anything. That is how shock works in a system. I did not attend the Inauguration out of respect for the community’s shock, anger, and legitimate unanswered questions; out of respect for the ministerial fitness review process that I believe is warranted here; and as a protest against what I feel was a premature and immature plea for forgiveness on behalf of a fairly sequestered body of busy volunteer leaders that is responsible for the fiscal well-being of the seminary. I do not blame the board for its decision; I simply think it was the wrong one. They have made their decision, and communicated it to the wider community. Now it is time for us to respond, and I hope we will.

Victoria Weinstein full-time parish minister serving a Massachusetts congregation in the Unitarian Universalist Association. She is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and earned her Doctor of Divinity degree from Andover-Newton Theological School. She blogs at PeaceBang and Beauty Tips for Ministers and can be found on Twitter as @PeaceBang.

A version of this article previously appeared on The Rev. Dr. Weinstein’s blog PeaceBang. It was edited for publication in The Narthex. -Eds.

Cover photo: Quantumlars, 2010. CC2.0 licensing.

Photo of Martin Copehaver, Andover-Newton Theological Seminary.