"A new consciousness has
arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian
people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I
will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of
ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any
longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various
forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or
who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon." Bishop John S.
Spong
"Homosexual orientation
has no necessary connection with sin, sickness, or failure; rather it is a gift
from God to be accepted and lived out with gratitude... Human beings do not
choose their sexual orientation; they discover it as something given."
John McNeill, PhD
"Not even the strictest
fundamentalist or Biblical literalist gives the same authority and moral weight
to every word of scripture. Few of us would hold Paul’s injunction against
women appearing in church with their heads uncovered to have the same moral
weight as Jesus’ injunction to forgive our enemies. Few of us are willing to be
bound by all the commands given to us in the Biblical text – otherwise, we
would give all we have to the poor to follow Christ, redistribute all the land
every 50 years, refuse to charge any interest on our loans/investments, share
our worldly possessions communally as did the early Church, and refuse to
support our nation’s defense budget in accord with Jesus’ commandment not to
resist evil. We have come to understand certain things as acceptable in the
Biblical culture and time, but not in our own – among other things, polygamy
and slavery – which few Christians would promote despite their acceptability in
Biblical times. As we approach the Biblical texts about homosexuality, we must
not conveniently change our stance to one of asserting that every word of
scripture is inerrantly true and universally binding on all people for all
time." Bishop Gene Robinson
“…the Bible does not discuss committed gay relationships…[and] the
Bible condemns numerous activities that today have social sanction, such as
divorce, while it speaks in favor of slavery…
[Some] argue that just as Christians need not abstain from pork or
prawns, so they need not abstain from same-sex sexual encounters - in other
words, the Levitical codes are utterly irrelevant. The story of Sodom in
Genesis 19 condemns lack of hospitality and the threat of rape, not homosexual
love (see Ezekiel 16:49).
Scholars still debate exactly what Paul intended by
"unnatural" relations in Romans 1, and what the Greek term arsenokotai in
1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 actually means…it appears in the context of
crimes against others: adultery, kidnapping, murder, greed. Clearly the loving
gay couple does not fit into this context…
[We need to realize that] all readers interpret. Nobody takes everything in
the Bible literally. When Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "If your
right hand causes you to sin, cut it off" (Matthew 5:30), most readers,
appropriately, conclude that he is not advocating self-mutilation. We decide
what to interpret literally and what figuratively. Similarly, we determine what
to practice and what to ignore, we decide what is time bound and what is
universal. Many churches that do not ordain women on the basis of 1 Timothy
2:12 ("I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man")
have no problem with women wearing "gold, pearls, or expensive
clothes," which is decried three verses earlier. Likewise, the Bible
condones slavery; today we do not.
We read biblical texts on sexual practices selectively. For
example, again from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins by citing Deuteronomy
24:1-3: "Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of
divorce." He then continues, "But I say to you that anyone who
divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity (the Greek is porneia),
causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits
adultery" (Matthew 5:31-32). Offering no such loophole for unchastity,
Mark 10:11-12 makes the statement harsher. And yet the divorce rate in
industrialized countries hovers near fifty per cent.
In order fully to understand the Bible, there must be attention
given to the cultural context in which it was written…
The biblical discussion is ultimately one of how we manifest love
of neighbor … thus giving the "love of neighbor" the quantitative
edge over passages possibly concerned with same-sex relations). This love means
we cannot demonize people. It means we have to address all humanity as in the
image and likeness of the divine, with the same needs for a helper and the same
hopes for a welcoming community. It means, for those of us who find the Bible
to be important in our lives, we stand before it in some humility, as we try to
figure out how to interpret it in our own lives…
The conservative probably will not be convinced by my suggestions…[but] both [conservatives and liberals] can recognize that the Bible should be a rock on which we stand, rather than a rock thrown at others.” New Testament scholar, Amy Jill-Levine, PhD
The conservative probably will not be convinced by my suggestions…[but] both [conservatives and liberals] can recognize that the Bible should be a rock on which we stand, rather than a rock thrown at others.” New Testament scholar, Amy Jill-Levine, PhD
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