I have been\ndeeply disturbed by reading a book which on more than one occasion rails\nagainst the compromise of the church with society at large (and, indeed, its\ntolerance) and uses as its prime example gay and lesbian priests and pastors.\nThe whole tenor of the argument is that anyone should immediately see what is\nwrong with this picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, I do not\nwant to recite here the arguments for or against homosexuality being regarded\nas a sin. There are certainly arguments for that position; many years ago now,\na friend asked me to review the scriptures and tell him if I thought they did\ncondemn homosexuality, and at the time I came to the conclusion that they did,\nand told him so. I very much regret having come to that conclusion, because he\nwas at the time feeling a strong call to the priesthood, and my advice was\nsignificant in dissuading him from that path. I think he would have made a very\nfine pastor, had the denomination of his choice been accepting of his sexual\norientation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, I\nhave read very many arguments against homosexuality as such being seen that\nway, and arrive at the position that things are much less clear than they\nappeared to me in 1972; I am not sure whether the Biblical writers did in fact\nintend to exclude as sins even the manners of sexual intimacy which we consider\nto be part and parcel of \u201chomosexuality\u201d, let alone an homosexual orientation\n(which I do not think is actually mentioned in scripture). In point of fact,\nhomosexuality as such is not mentioned either, as witness this\narticle<\/a>, but there are condemnations of, for instance, arsenokoites and\nmalakoites, two Greek words used by Paul the exact meanings of which are\nunclear and disputed, but which very probably refer to practitioners of some\nspecies of homosexual activity between men. Lesbianism is not mentioned at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul\u2019s argument in Romans 1-2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Three\nthings about these passage in the book immediately stand out to me. The first\nis that the writer assumes that his audience will automatically feel that\nhomosexuality is repulsive. I don\u2019t, and many of those of my generation don\u2019t\n(having grown up in the 60s and 70s), and I haven\u2019t found anyone of my children\u2019s\ngeneration who does. My parents\u2019 generation definitely suffered from this kind\nof instinctive revulsion, though. I grant you, I\u2019m a child of my time, and\nthinking too much about any<\/em><\/strong> kind of sexual activity,\nhomosexual or heterosexual, makes me slightly squeamish. I don\u2019t think sex is a\nspectator sport \u2013 though I hugely value intimacy with my wife of nearly 40\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing\nis, if you read Romans 1 (one of the key passages for those who want to condemn\nhomosexuality), you will definitely find \u201c<\/em>Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of\ntheir hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one\nanother\u201d<\/em> in verse 24 and \u201c<\/em>Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.\nEven their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.<\/em> <\/sup>In the\nsame way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed\nwith lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and\nreceived in themselves the due penalty for their error\u201d<\/em> in verses 26 to 27. The thing is, these are not isolated verses,\nthey are part of an extended argument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul introduces this argument with \u201cThe wrath of God is\nbeing revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of\npeople, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,<\/em> <\/sup>since what\nmay be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.\n <\/sup>For since the creation\nof the world God\u2019s invisible qualities\u2014his eternal power and divine nature\u2014have\nbeen clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are\nwithout excuse. For although they knew God, they\nneither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became\nfutile and their foolish hearts were darkened. <\/sup>Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools\n <\/sup>and exchanged the glory\nof the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds\nand animals and reptiles.\u201d <\/em>in verses\n18-23. It\u2019s beginning to look, at that point, very much as if Paul is using \u201csinful\ndesires\u201d and \u201cshameful lusts\u201d, which his audience will immediately condemn, as\nnot the target of condemnation but the obvious result of turning away from God,\nobvious to the audience who are going to be \u201cGod-fearers\u201d and therefore adhere\nto Jewish standards of behaviour for the most part \u2013 and Greek and Roman sexual\nculture of the time will have been as distasteful to them as they were to my\nparents\u2019 generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Move on, and don\u2019t stop at the end of the chapter (as the original\ndidn\u2019t have verse numbers or chapter divisions), and we find \u201cYou, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone\nelse, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the\nsame things<\/strong>.<\/em> <\/sup>Now we know that God\u2019s judgment against those who\ndo such things is based on truth. <\/sup>So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on\nthem and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God\u2019s judgment?\n <\/sup>Or do you show contempt\nfor the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that\nGod\u2019s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?\u201d<\/em> in Romans 2:1-4. I\u2019ve emboldened and underlined the main point \u2013\nagain, the original definitely lacked those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul\u2019s whole argument, therefore, is that those who are judgmental about\nanything<\/em><\/strong>\nare no better than those horrible sexually immoral people who his audience will\nnaturally be disgusted by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing is, studies show that only around 10% of humanity is born\nwith a homosexual orientation. Personally I\u2019d guess that the real figure is\nrather higher, particularly if you include people who are born bisexual and can\nchoose between the sexes for their sexual fulfilment; even in the much more\nrelaxed climate of the UK in the 21st<\/sup> century, social pressure is\nsuch that, having both options available, many bisexuals will just stick to\nheterosexuality in order to avoid the kind of instinctive condemnation the\nwriter of that book evidences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That makes it, for a very sizeable majority of the population, a \u201csin\u201d\nwhich they can happily condemn because they feel absolutely no inclination to\ncommit it. Exactly what Paul was condemning in Romans (the argument continues\nto Rom. 2:11 and then takes another turn). It\u2019s \u201cnot my sin\u201d<\/strong>. What Paul was asking people to do was to focus on\nwhat was \u201ctheir sin\u201d, which was primarily judgmentalism at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By using this kind of easy method of attack, what the writer is\ndoing is diverting focus from what the sins of the church actually are to one\nwhich they can avoid by the simple means of excluding (judging) a minority\nwithin their ranks. That distresses me hugely, and I note that the writer\nexpressly says that tolerance is wrong \u2013 whereas Paul is saying that lack of\ntolerance is sinful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compromise with society<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I actually have\nsome sympathy with the writer in thinking that the church as it stands has\ncompromised with society in a way which needs correcting (and this is the\nsecond thing which stood out to me). However, Paul\u2019s career as a whole shows that\nwe must not make easy arguments about compromising with society being a bad\nthing. A huge focus of his mission to\nthe Gentiles involved persuading the church generally that converts did not\nneed to practice the Jewish dietary laws (in which respect let me note that\neating seafood is condemned as an abomination in Leviticus, just as is lying\nwith another man as with a woman) and that they did not need to be circumcised.\nTo the average Greek or Roman of the time, the removal of the foreskin in males\nwould have appeared to be a mutilation, and extremely distasteful, as witness\nduring the period of the Greek Antiochid rule of Israel the number of Jews who\nsought an operation to reverse the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In these two\nthings, therefore, Paul was absolutely \u201ccompromising with society\u201d, and\nChristianity continues to do this \u2013 it is, for instance, not considered a sin\nfor me to eat a bacon cheeseburger, at least not on the grounds that it is\ntwice forbidden in Leviticus, once as eating a pork product and once as mixing\nmilk and meat. I might also ask at this point why we are ditching one provision\nin Leviticus but emphasising another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as in the\ntime of Paul, it would clearly make it much more difficult to evangelise for\nChristianity if among the first requirements were lopping off part of a man\u2019s\ntackle and forswearing bacon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus, of\ncourse, makes no mention anywhere in the gospels about same-sex relationships,\nand where I think the Church has compromised with society is in going against\nclear commands of Jesus. We do not, for instance, sell everything we have and\ngive it to the poor (except in some extreme cases, such as St. Francis).\nIndeed, we tend to exclude the poor, even in those churches which avowedly\ninclude them \u2013 you do not, for instance, see homeless people asked to be\nsidesmen or greeters in any church I\u2019ve ever encountered, though if we were\nreally following Jesus, they would no longer be homeless. We hang national\nflags in our sanctuaries and pledge allegiance to those who currently occupy\nthe position which Caesar one did, and support our countries when they kill\npeople either as a legal penalty or in war; we frankly worship money, and consider\nthe possession of it to be the primary indication of the value of individuals,\nwe argue that financialised free-market capitalism is the way we should live,\ndespite it being based on greed and self-centeredness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we exclude\nnot just the poor, but also those who have slightly different beliefs from ours\n(heretics!) who follow another religion (Satanic!) who have a different skin\ncolour or speak a different language (invasion!)… or, of course, who are of a\nminority sexual orientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, in\nrecent polls, by far the most common attribute ascribed to Christians by\nnon-Christians was \u201cjugmental\u201d. Exactly what Paul was arguing against in Romans\n1-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conduct and character of clergy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The third point\nis that the writer clearly thinks it entirely inappropriate for a member of the\nclergy to be gay. This goes even further than thinking that homosexual activity\nis sinful and that clergy should not engage in it (and has no scriptural\nsupport which I can find). The writer clearly thinks that being gay is a \u201cway\nof life\u201d which is in and of itself sinful, a position which is scientifically\nuntenable (sexual orientation is not something that people can choose,\notherwise there would have been no homosexuals at all in my parents\u2019 generation,\nbecause it was not just more or less universally condemned but actually\nillegal) and instinctively wrong \u2013 if you are heterosexual, ask yourself\nwhether you could adopt \u201cthe gay lifestyle\u201d. No? It isn\u2019t a choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, most\npeople I talk to who take the view that homosexual behaviours are biblically\ncondemned restrict their disapproval to clergy who are actually in a same-sex relationship.\nThey argue that one cannot lead a congregation if one not only sins but carries\non doing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, let me\nrecall some Church history. In the early fourth century, there was a major\npersecution of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian. In North Africa, the\ngovernor was relatively lenient, and allowed those clergy who handed over their\nscriptures as a token of their repudiation of the faith to go free, something which\nmany of the laity thought was an unpardonable sin (both in repudiating the\nfaith and in handing over the scriptures, in Latin being labelled \u201ctraditors\u201d\nfrom the word \u201cto hand over\u201d, which gives rise to our word \u201ctraitor\u201d). After\nthe persecution ended, many of those clergy sought to resume their ministry,\nand a group grew up which repudiated their authority to administer the\nsacraments, called \u201cDonatists\u201d. This proved a problem to the developing\necclesiastical hierarchy, and the result was that Donatism<\/a> was condemned as a\nheresy in 314. After many years discussion in the church, the position was\nclarified at the Council of Trent in the 16th<\/sup> century for Catholics\nas \u201cThe worth of the sacrifice does not depend by the celebrating priest\u201d; it\ndid not matter for this purpose if the priest was in a condition of mortal sin\nor not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I can label\nthis position heretical, and, for protestants, it\u2019s a declared heresy which is\nfar older than the Reformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n