You’ve almost answered your own question. The Bible doesn’t explicitly promote slavery, but it regards slavery as normal throughout both the OT and NT. It is never denounced as an institution, and there is no prohibition against owning slaves.
See some of the quotes above, or just google it.
Not just about acts, but about specific acts as opposed to same-sex activity in general. To take the most obvious and egregious example, the story of Sodom in Genesis, in which strangers to the city are threatened with homosexual gang rape, has been used to condemn homosexuality per se, which is really a stretch and reads a lot into what the Bible actually says. (Other passages are more problematic, I know.)
Mostly but not entirely true. There have been times and places where it wasn’t safe to come out as even a chaste, celibate homosexual.
So, God creates the Universe, physics, nuclear fusion, humanity, etc. and you’re telling me that it’s unreasonable to expect him to buck the social norms of the day and tell people to do something else?
Not really. Anglican Thomas Hooker famously described Anglicanism as a 3-legged stool built on Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. Removing any one of the three causes the whole thing to topple.
Neither of those quotes say anything about homosexuality or gay marriage.
If anyone wants to really understand how many mainline Christians read the bible, I recommend Paul Enns The Bible Tells Me So or, more recently, Rachel Held Evans Inspired. Both grew up in conservative Evangelical circles. Paul is, IIRC, a Lutheran (?) and Rachel attends an Episcopal church. Both understand the Bible as a collection of written stories, poems, prophecies, letters, etc that help us understand God by telling us how people over the centuries have understood God.
I’m learning a bit about Anglicanism as I go along. I don’t really know much about it. In fact my only interest in it is that I’ve been following the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge for a few years, and it’s a bit of background for my musical interest.
It seems that the three-legged stool of Richard (not Thomas) Hooker is well known, but many Anglican theologians say that it’s a myth and has been misunderstood. The legs are not equal.
From the 39 articles (which Hooker subscribed to):
What Hooker actually said was:
**
i.e. Scripture is primary, reason is secondary, tradition is tertiary.**
Quotes: (spoilered for length)
[SPOILER]
If you’ve read any on contemporary Anglicanism, I’m sure you’ve come across the term “three-legged stool” in relation to Richard Hooker. … The problem with this paradigm is that it betrays both the classical Anglican understanding of Scripture and Richard Hooker’s theology on the matter. In fact, it’s quite erroneous to presume that Hooker had any “three-legged stool” in mind at all.
– Anglican Myths: Hooker’s “Three-Legged Stool” cite
“It’s amazing how many people think that something called the “Three-legged Stool” is Anglican. Actually, it is contrary to true Anglicanism. I wrote a paper about it back in seminary, which is included here. The punch-line, if you don’t want to read the entire thing, is that an author from 400 years ago has been misquoted, and that misquote has been further twisted and misused over time.”
– The Rev. Dr. Susan I. Bubbers, D.Min., Ph.D cite
Anglicanism is known more for Hooker’s proverbial “three-legged stool” of “scripture, reason, and tradition.” Without bogging down in detail, it needs to be made clear that “reason” for Hooker and traditional Anglicans is not the autonomous reason of Descartes and post- Enlightenment thought, nor is it the “common sense” of modern Americans. Reason in classical Anglicanism echoes Augustine’s credo ut intelligam (I believe in order to understand) or Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). It is hermeneutical use of the intellect to interpret Scripture in its original setting and the tradition of the church, and to apply it in the present. Hooker’s “three-legged stool” is not a stool at all, since Scripture and Scripture alone is normative and authoritative. Reason does not function as an independent source of authority. Its is to understand Scripture in order to follow and obey it.
– William Witt, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Trinity School for Ministry [PDF]
It would, I believe, be better to view Scripture, Tradition, and Reason as three ascending levels of a tower. Scripture is the foundation. Tradition, rests on Scripture and is built upon it but cannot go where there is no foundation. Reason rests on Scripture and Tradition and builds upon it but, again, cannot go where there is no supporting foundation. Thus, Scripture provides the matter upon which our faith is based. Tradition is the guide to our interpretation of Scripture. It makes certain that our understanding of Scripture is not a matter of private interpretation but is, as in the canon laid down by Vincent of Lerins, in line with that which has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all” - the test of true catholicity. Reason is the guide to our contemporary application of Scripture and Tradition. This is a significant point: Reason is not an independent source of authority that is the arbiter of truth, it is the tool and the method by which we apply the truth (based in Scripture and interpreted by Tradition) to our contemporary experience.
– The Very Rev. Canon Robert S. Munday, Ph.D. cite
“Hooker won’t get us all the way we need to go. To begin with Richard Hooker didn’t actually give us the image of a three-legged stool and likely would protest a simple, balanced treatment that suggested Scripture, tradition, and reason were of equal importance. The oft-cited “three-legged stool” is a bit of Episcopal folklore based on a distillation (and reinterpretation) of Hooker. A three-legged stool suggests equal reliance on scripture, tradition and reason. Several (often conservative) sources will tell us that Hooker was a lot closer to Sola Scriptura than today’s liberal Episcopalians.”
– Rev. Donald Schell cite
The classically Anglican and Reformed approach to doctrinal authorities is not “Bible-only”, nor is it a two-, three-, or four-legged stool. None of these templates is true to the thinking of the Reformation. Without critical understanding of how these terms, reason and tradition, were used in the context of the era, Anglicans and Episcopalians will only distort history and theology.
– Rev. Gavin Dunbar cite[/SPOILER]
You’re wrong, but only by ten or twenty years. Before that, you would have been right. But the great thing about liberal Christians is they can change their minds about which laws they pick and choose out of the Bible, or which parts of the Bible are meant to be historical, and then pretend that only a small minority of Christians ever (were against gay marriage/took Genesis literally/supported slavery/believed in the subordination of women/etc.).
GreenWyvern: Interesting. Thanks for sharing your research with us.
I’ve also run across (though not learned much about) the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral,” which throws in Experience.
2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6 then his master must take him before the judges.[a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,** he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
The bible explicitly lays out how to buy and sell people as property. It sets up a cruel trap by which you can trick your slaves and force them to either stay with you forever or abandon their family. Female “servants” are never permitted to leave, and are the property of the man. This is never rescinded in the new testament - the closest to commentary on slavery Jesus offers is, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” in Ephesians 6:5 (and similar passages like Colossians 3:22). Biblical morality is overwhelmingly horrific and immoral, and this is just one obvious example of how that’s the case.
Romans 1:26-28:
“God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.”
In the new testament, homosexuality is seen as just as unnatural, shameful, and worthy of penalty as in the old testament.
Not God, but the people who took down his words. I would guess that the message got filtered on the way.
As I had suspected, the Bible is quoted very selectively and the more embarrassing bits get left out. Most of which seem to be secondary sources such as Paul anyway, and not direct quotes from the big J.
Very true. The big difference is that we have managed to separate procreation and recreation through reliable contraception. Historically marriage was meant to provide security, mainly for the woman and the children, and the strictures on morality were meant to ideally eliminate, or at least reduce, the number of illegitimate children. These days marriage is simply a more committed form of sexual relationship with another person, plus some legal ties concerning property, etc. The legal side is often a consideration for moving from living together to becoming married, especially for older persons (it was in my case).
Society has changed, but the churches essentially base their social mores on a society as it was 2,000 years ago. Or for that matter, 200 years, ago there was not all that much difference. Since we now regard sex as a matter of recreation, it means that we do not necessarily need to marry our partner, but equally, that the partner need not be of the opposite sex. The logical progression to this that we might in future consider and even legalize what would now be considered deviant forms of sex, such as with animals or non-human/part-human androids. I personally regard that as pushing the envelope a bit too far, but human society and technology move on with scant regard for traditional morality. I can’t find quotes regarding bestiality and cyber-sex, but there’s something out there in the 'Net.
It’s not for nothing that a classic atheist refrain is “the bible is the best tool to deconvert someone”. The bible is full of absurd immorality, contradictions, and just outright bizarre passages, like the bit about Ezekiel cooking his bread over human feces.
Thoughts:
Well, yeah, of course. It’s not like Christianity, or even the Abrahamic religions, have a lock on God, have the final word on what you have to believe in order to believe in God.
Can you be a Christian and believe in gay marriage? Well, sure: Skammer’s a Christian and he believes in gay marriage. I’m a Christian and I believe in gay marriage. So you can be a Christian and believe in gay marriage, because it’s been done.
(By ‘believe in gay marriage,’ I mean ‘believe that God’s OK with gay marriage.’ Variation on old joke: “Do you believe in gay marriage?” “*Believe *in it? Why, I’ve even seen it!”)
There are of course books that list the ‘apparent’ contradictions in the Bible, and how to resolve them so that there ‘really’ aren’t any. That’s nice, but:
a) the resolutions often involve some serious bending and twisting of the meanings of the passages involved - and if you allowed the same level of bending and twisting to the meanings of Biblical passages generally, you wouldn’t have much left; and
b) the resolutions themselves come from people, not God. If you’re claiming that the Bible is inerrant because it comes from God, but it takes the addition of some 21st-century apocrypha that’s clearly of human origin in order to make it so, then you’ve undermined the very reason for believing in the Bible’s inerrancy.
So on what basis do I, as a Christian, think God’s perfectly OK with gay marriage? I’ll come back to that in my next post.
You can of course flip the question, and ask why so many Christians consider homosexual activity to be so evil.
Yes, it gets a couple mentions in the bible but not much more than the “don’t eat shellfish” stuff, or the verses seemingly condoning slavery.
Adultery gets mentioned a heck of a lot more, yet many evangelicals’ savior right now is a serial cheater.
My theory remains: evil acts give us a feeling of disgust. So to many people the association starts to work the other way: something that gives them a sense of disgust must be immoral.
I agree, and I’d go beyond this to say that everyone more or less treats the Bible the same way. You decide your view of morality - or accept some leader’s view - and then you filter the Bible through that moral position. Jews do it also, but we show our work.
This works for small things like homosexuality or evolution as well as large things like what the Messianic prophecies say.
Of course some religious people admit they are filtering and some do not. But you all do.
My theory is, it’s easy. As in: are you gay? No? Okay, cool. So, listen: gay stuff, that’s evil and sinful and to be condemned; so nod knowingly, and cluck your tongue, and agree that people shouldn’t succumb to that temptation — and, hey, just like that you’re on Team Praiseworthy with the community’s respected luminaries.
No, I know you’re not tempted by it; I know avoiding that ‘vice’, and getting called ‘virtuous’ by default, takes zero effort on your part — which of course means there’s something in it for you if you go along with this, just like there’s nothing in it for you to stick up for Those People. I realize that every once in a while you’re going to hear a sermon about not drinking too much or whatever, and you’ll maybe think, oh, wow, what he’s saying hits a little close to home — but this part? This is the easy part, the feel-good part, the scored-100%-on-a-test-without-even-trying part.
Please don’t be giving them any “good ideas”.
I think an important point is being missed.
Everyone seems to talking as though it’s only Christians or only the Abrahamic religions who have traditionally been opposed to homosexuality, but that’s not the case.
Throughout world history, many other cultures and religions, and even officially atheist states such as the Soviet Union, have been strongly opposed to homosexuality or have criminalized it. Hindus and Buddhists of different sects or schools of thought have had varied views, but many actively condemned homosexuality. China had laws against homosexual acts from the 16th century. Homosexuality was only legalized in China in 1997. The pre-Christian Roman army had the death penalty for homosexuality. In Viking law a man had a legal right to kill someone who even called him gay. None of this this came from Christianity.
IMO attitudes towards homosexuality are mostly cultural, but in some cases those cultural attitudes then became embedded in religion and law.
OK, that next post:
AFAIAC, it’s not too complicated. Jesus distilled the Law and the Prophets down to two simple commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
In both of these commandments, the command is to love.
One big, important thing we do with people we love is, we listen to them. We don’t dismiss them out of hand. Sure, if they tell us fantastical things about themselves, we’re going to question their veracity, but by and large, we listen to those we love, and we give them the benefit of the doubt when they tell us their stories, when they reveal to us who they are. If it turns out later that their stories don’t make sense, we take that into account in our later conversations with them.
We’ve had plenty of time to hear plenty of stories from gay men and women. Some of them are people we know well personally, some of them are people we know in or through fora like this, and we hear the stories in various media of many others that we have no personal connection to.
And it’s pretty consistent: this is who they are. Just like my crushes on girls go all the way back to kindergarten, friends of mine who are attracted to persons of the same sex had that attraction going way back into their childhoods.
So how would God love them? What would God want for them? The obvious answer is, God would want the same things for them as he wants for straight people like me. And that would include fulfilling romantic and sexual relationships for those that want them, IOW the vast majority of them. Which would necessarily be same-sex relationships for those that are not sexually attracted to the opposite sex.
Now many evangelicals weasel around this by equating a same-sex orientation with a call to celibacy. I’m gonna call bullshit on that, for a few reasons.
First, it’s presumptuous as hell to say that you know what someone else’s calling from God might be, when they don’t know it themselves. Second, callings in both the Bible and in my own personal experience tend to be individual things. We who love the Lord are all called to love our neighbors as ourselves, but since it’s a calling we all share, it’s right there in the Bible, one of the two Great Commandments. The rest of them tend to be directed at individuals. Third, there’s no indication that the persons allegedly called in this manner are sensing from the Lord a calling to celibacy.
In short, the whole thing just reeks of bullshit concocted to square a belief that same-sex relationships are un-Christian with the reality that same-sex attraction has proven to be pretty much immutable.
And immutable is what they’ve proven to be. Forty-eight years ago this month, I had one of those transformative religious experiences known as being ‘born again,’ and believe me, no lesser term could have captured it, the changes were so sweeping. It’s powerful stuff, enabling a person to shed every way that they’ve been crippled and corroded inside, the way a snake sheds an old skin, and to walk out of all that into a new and free life.
And yet this incredibly potent life-changing experience has been proven ineffective against same-sex attraction, in the lives of so many gay Christians who really bought into the notion that same-sex attraction was wrong and this would ‘cure’ them. I can only conclude from that consistent failure that same-sex attraction isn’t a wrongness, it isn’t a crippling or a corroding, it isn’t sin. It’s not something that the Lord is asking the new Christian to leave behind.
And believe you me, if being born again didn’t make same-sex attraction go away, some silly gay conversion therapy bullshit doesn’t have a prayer of touching it.
There’s no remedy for it even in Christ, because it isn’t something that even a Christian needs a remedy for. If you’re attracted to persons of the same sex, that’s who you are, and God loves you that way, just the way he loves me as a straight person.
God loves you. God’s not expecting you to be someone you’re not, in order to be worthy of his love. (None of us are worthy, but that’s another story. I love the Firebug, not because he’s worthy, but because he’s my son and I love him. Similarly, worthiness has jack shit to do with God’s love for us. He just does.) If you’re gay, God wants you to have a joyful, fulfilled life as a gay person. That would include marriage, if marriage is something you want. It’s that simple.
Well actually that’s why I go with my “disgust” theory. Because, yes, it’s not only Christians that have oppressed homosexuals.
It’s just the standard tribal shit, plus it’s a short jump from “A man kissing a man? Eww…” to “We must stop this”