By a happy coincidence the great news from New York just preceded a session last Sunday on what the bible says (and doesn't say) about homosexuality. It was the third session in a series on tradition and change through the bible. It occurred to me that perhaps the recent New York vote might make the series of interest to some folks here. If you would like to see the case for marriage equality from a biblical perspective, or if you'd just like to have some counter-arguments in political discussions with fundamentalists, you're welcome to join me below the swirl. (If you already believe the bible is the source of all evil in the world or that Christians are all fools, other diaries will probably have more fruitful material for you).
Dive in below the swish!
The group I am working with is a small Episcopalian congregation in a small Iowa town. A couple of years ago the previous rector developed a strenuous case of dissenting conscience and led about half the congregation away to form an "Anglican" congregation in town. In January I began spending time with them twice a month and among other things offered to lead a bible study if they were interested. I offered a range of topics but this was the one they wanted. As one person said, "We're pretty sure we made the right choice but we'd like to understand why better."
The Episcopal Church's recent moves to supporting marriage equality and in general gay rights are clearly a change from past traditions. So the larger question we looked at was what purpose traditions serve and how as a group people can come to know when they need to change. Since for practical reasons we met once a month I developed somewhat structured materials for the series which are on line here, if anyone wants more details.
In the first session we looked at the amazing diversity of marriage traditions in the Hebrew scriptures: multiple wives, concubines, the levirate law (widows marrying a younger brother to raise up an heir to their dead husband - the story of Tamar opened some eyes!) and Abraham taking his half-sister as wife. We also noted that tradition changed within the Hebrew Scripture: Abraham's marriage to Sarah and Isaac's to Rachel were both prohibited under Levitical law. We talked some about how marrying a half-sister made some sense for polygamous, nomadic pastoralists.
The second session picked up two more recent changes in tradition, the council of Jerusalem and the abolition of slavery (this could easily have been two sessions but Easter intervened). The decision of the council of Jerusalem was the one that formally lifted the obligations of the Jewish law from Gentile Christians, such as circumcission and kosher food. I took pains to make clear that the council did not reject the law as bad; James the brother of Jesus was just one of the Jewish Christians who continued to be observant, praying so frequently in the temple that his nickname was Camelknees.
The second case study was much closer to our time, the abolition of slavery. We read the pro-slavery passages as well as the passages against and discussed how (for the most part) people came to see the emphasis on love, liberty and equality as being more important, more central, more fundamental than specific passages that were compatible with slavery.
This set the stage for our discussion of marriage equality on Sunday. The key points of our discussion were that there are actually very few references that might be about homosexuality (compared, say, to justice or compassion). Of those few passages some or all are not referring to adult consensual sex. None of them refer to faithful, monogamous relations between two adults. We finished with these passages:
Leviticus 19.18
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19.34
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
1 John 4.7
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
1 John 4.16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Galatians 5:19-23
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
Galatians 3.28
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
And with that there was a warm and general agreement that marriage equality was a change in the tradition whose time had arrived.
A final note: I don't want to leave the impression that these great folks needed to see something in the bible before they believed it. Rather, in this as in secular life if you can arrive at the same conclusion by several methods that strengthens your confidence in it. Conversely when two methods you trust appear to produce conflicting results it is often informative to figure out why. As I said in the beginning, these folks were already supporters of marriage equality. What we worked out together was the case for why that was not merely consistent with, but a call from, their faith. It is yet another place where love, liberty and equality make it possible for humans to become more fully human.