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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I guess we see what we expect.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Standing in a queue, I had a discussion with an Elim minister a few years ago. He was reading a book about Biblical reinterpretation of slavery, the role of women and homosexuality*. He said that the book's view (and his) that although the verses on slavery and the role of women could be reinterpreted, those on homosexuality could not.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
It's one of the pleasant bits of fiction that the early 19th century church was all the Clapham Sect, rather than recognizing that for most of the struggle folks like that were regarded as a small group of heretical oddballs.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Now I'm dying to know what it used to say.

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
It's one of the pleasant bits of fiction that the early 19th century church was all the Clapham Sect, rather than recognizing that for most of the struggle folks like that were regarded as a small group of heretical oddballs.

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At least is is a pleasant fact (for the church) that the Clapham Sect led the fight against slavery. Clearly there were other more establishment figures of the Church such as the Bishops of Bristol and Exeter who were strongly pro-slavery, but the fact remains that it was Christians acting under Christian inspiration who led the charge.

I don't think any amount of revisionism is going to produce a similar picture for LGBT rights. History is going to judge us harshly.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Their reasoning was that reducing hours and limiting child labour would threaten the viability of vulnerable families - so even if the situation was bad, it was better than the alternatives.

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Originally posted by Eliab:

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Standing in a queue, I had a discussion with an Elim minister a few years ago. He was reading a book about Biblical reinterpretation of slavery, the role of women and homosexuality*. He said that the book's view (and his) that although the verses on slavery and the role of women could be reinterpreted, those on homosexuality could not.

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I've heard a similar argument made (tentatively and by way of example of one way of reading Scripture, rather than as a personal conviction) by a speaker a Spring Harvest. The rationale was that over the course of Scripture there is some discernible movement towards greater equality between the sexes, and in recognising the common humanity of slaves and slave-owners, but no movement at all, only consistent disapproval, of homosexuality.

I'm not convinced of that as a matter of detail, but I suppose that a case may be made for it. It seems to be to be problematic as a general approach in that it must inherently and necessarily be a rejection of the binding authority of large parts of the Bible without open acknowledgement of that fact, and while purporting to accept the binding authority of the Bible as a whole.

It doesn't work for me. The reason I reject (as authoritative teaching) the apparently sexist parts of the OT is not that I've peeked ahead and know that centuries later an apostle is going to write that in Christ there's no male or female. I reject it because sexism seems to me to be obviously and indefensibly wrong. I can successfully read the Bible as "the story of how people who didn't even know that much encountered God" - and see God's inspiration in anything to mitigate the sexism, but not in the sexism itself. I couldn't successfully read it as saying that it was OK for God to specifically permit forcible marriage (rape) of women captured in war because in a few hundred years later he planned to drop a vague hint that it might not be so great an idea after all. That doesn't work for me. If the Bible contains stuff that isn't right because God was planning to correct it, then the key point - the Bible might contain stuff which, at least on the surface reading, is just wrong, has already been conceded. After that, we can't be certain that the anti-gay stuff is right, either.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The very same debates we are hearing about the introduction of the living wage. (Along with those on wages just above complaining they've lost their increments for responsibility or exxperience.)

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

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Originally posted by Eliab:

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Standing in a queue, I had a discussion with an Elim minister a few years ago. He was reading a book about Biblical reinterpretation of slavery, the role of women and homosexuality*. He said that the book's view (and his) that although the verses on slavery and the role of women could be reinterpreted, those on homosexuality could not.

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I've heard a similar argument made (tentatively and by way of example of one way of reading Scripture, rather than as a personal conviction) by a speaker a Spring Harvest. The rationale was that over the course of Scripture there is some discernible movement towards greater equality between the sexes, and in recognising the common humanity of slaves and slave-owners, but no movement at all, only consistent disapproval, of homosexuality.

I'm not convinced of that as a matter of detail, but I suppose that a case may be made for it. It seems to be to be problematic as a general approach in that it must inherently and necessarily be a rejection of the binding authority of large parts of the Bible without open acknowledgement of that fact, and while purporting to accept the binding authority of the Bible as a whole.

It doesn't work for me. The reason I reject (as authoritative teaching) the apparently sexist parts of the OT is not that I've peeked ahead and know that centuries later an apostle is going to write that in Christ there's no male or female. I reject it because sexism seems to me to be obviously and indefensibly wrong. I can successfully read the Bible as "the story of how people who didn't even know that much encountered God" - and see God's inspiration in anything to mitigate the sexism, but not in the sexism itself. I couldn't successfully read it as saying that it was OK for God to specifically permit forcible marriage (rape) of women captured in war because in a few hundred years later he planned to drop a vague hint that it might not be so great an idea after all. That doesn't work for me. If the Bible contains stuff that isn't right because God was planning to correct it, then the key point - the Bible might contain stuff which, at least on the surface reading, is just wrong, has already been conceded. After that, we can't be certain that the anti-gay stuff is right, either.

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This.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Slavery was not abolished because of people discerning such a trajectory, but because people became rationally convinced that it was utterly wrong in spite of what the Bible allowed.

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Originally posted by mdijon:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Slavery was not abolished because of people discerning such a trajectory, but because people became rationally convinced that it was utterly wrong in spite of what the Bible allowed.

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Most of the clapham sect would have said "because of" rather than "in spite of" the bible. Granted they had a different interpretation but that's the point. My view of LGBT rights is informed by what the bible says about the importance and worth of humanity, not the more homophobic passages.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
mdijon

I agree with you. According to Jesus, the more important matters of the law are justice, mercy and faithfulness. Which is why I so detest the "cherry-picking" accusations, the assertions that we set aside the "plain meaning of scripture".

For folks who still give scripture a high, authoritative value, the obligation is to wrestle with this stuff. Particularly if our general sense of what is just, merciful and faithful seems to come into conflict with specific verses. There needs to be a weighing of what is most important.

Of course there are scriptures which strike us as homophobic today. There are also many verses in the Penteteuch, described as uttered by God, which strike us as partial, unjust, cruel. The understandings of what is just and merciful and faithful are themselves on some kind of trajectory in the biblical material. Romans 12, 1 Cor 13, are a thousand years and a thousand miles removed from Joshua 6 and 7. When we think about the biblical material, we have been trying to handle these justice, mercy and faithfulness conundrums for a very long time. And painfully, gradually, partially, moving towards kinder, more loving, less selfish and self-centered understandings. Well, at least some have.

The wresting over this specific issue needs to be seen in the context of that more general movement.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'd say that's a pretty obvious misuse of the word 'obviously'!

You haven't been around here for that long, certainly nothing like my 11 years, but feel free to browse around my posts in DH on the various hot button issues, such as biblical inerrancy, the role of women, homosexuality, evolution and creation. You'll find a pretty consistent voice arguing against obscurantism and intolerance. And what I say here I say in RL.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Well, I come from the nonconformist tradition. As well as being grounded in scripture it places a high value on dissent for reasons of personal conscience. Received wisdom is open to question. In general I think the received wisdom about scripture - that it is perspicuous i.e that its meaning is also plain - is in fact an error.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
otherwise why would Christians not have caught these hints from the start: they're in the Bible for all to see.

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Because people are complex and selectively blind and even if they weren't the Bible is not easy to read and interpret.

(Obviously )

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Same applies to slavery, IMV, whether the Clapham lot were aware of it or not.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
The Clapham lot gave extremely compelling accounts of their own thought processes and motivations which were Christian. It seems quite counter-intuitive to set all that aside on the basis of abstract reasoning. What's more, the culture they swam in was quite pro-slavery.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Casting it in that way makes it sound like the average English person of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century was Zoroastrian or something and just needed some righteous Christians to show them The Way™.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
It was a simple statement of facts. I don't have any problem acknowledging that the established Church of the day was pro-slavery and did so in my first post on this topic.

What I have a problem with is claiming that the Clapham Sect's inspiration for their stance was anything other than their interpretation of Christianity and that is what I was responding to. It's what they claim for themselves and they set out their reasoning with great lucidity.

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That, I think, is the problem with most of our theological and/or historical discussion of American slavery and American “biblical” Christianity. It paints an accurate portrait, but it hangs it wrong-side up. Last week, I discussed what I thought this means for historian Mark Noll’s invaluable writing on what he calls the “theological crisis” of the Civil War:

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The perverse part of that argument and that narrative is this: It asserts that pre-1865 “biblical” Christians approved of slavery because of the way they read their Bibles. That’s not true. That’s the opposite of what is true. Pre-1865 “biblical” Christians read their Bibles the way they did because they approved of slavery.

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<snip>

The problem was not that white evangelicals “could not break free of a biblical hermeneutic that led them to support slavery,” but that they were committed to support for slavery and therefore devised and adopted a hermeneutic that allowed and encouraged them to continue doing so.

Their hermeneutic did not lead to support for slavery. Support for slavery led to their hermeneutic.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The inverse is possibly true of the Clapham sect; that they didn't oppose slavery because of their interpretation of Christianity but rather they interpreted Christianity the way they did because they opposed slavery.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
This lends credence to the idea that most anti-gay people aren't anti-gay because of their interpretation of scripture, they interpret scripture the way they do because they're anti-gay.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
most anti-gay people aren't anti-gay because of their interpretation of scripture, they interpret scripture the way they do because they're anti-gay.

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Originally posted by mdijon:
I used to feel that scripture was anti-gay and reluctantly accepted that interpretation. I was deeply uncomfortable about it and tried to find various ways of re-interpreting it but couldn't find any of them convincing. Finally I came to believe in a much less literal, less fundamentalist interpretation of scripture in general (weighed down by many contradictions an other areas) and then didn't have a problem any more. I experienced this as an enormous relief.

Of course it's possible that I was subconsciously homophobic (and perhaps still am) and only pretending to want to ditch the interpretation I had, and only pretending regarding the nature of my previous conflict even now. If it suits an a priori view to believe that then fine, but my experience was different.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Slavery as depicted in the Bible is quite clearly a human institution.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
It's not to be found in the Garden of Eden portrayal.

Male and female are portrayed as created characteristics, and the Genesis narrative can readily understood as having sexual implications (which are of necessity heterosexual); Jesus certainly interprets the early chapters of Genesis that way in Matthew 19.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The mis-named Curse of Ham certainly looks like God ordaining the enslavement of certain ethnic groups. And this is not the only instance where we see God decreeing the enslavement of certain people.

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And yet those passages are, if anything, a complete non sequitur on the subject of marriage and divorce (which was theoretically what Jesus was discussing). Adam and Eve weren't married during their time in Eden, at least not in any sense we'd understand the term nor in any sense that would require anything like a divorce.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The mis-named Curse of Ham certainly looks like God ordaining the enslavement of certain ethnic groups. And this is not the only instance where we see God decreeing the enslavement of certain people.

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Whatever one makes of that, unlike male/female and the mention of the "two becoming one flesh", those instances all come quite a long way after The Fall™, which can I think be fairly construed as a qualitative difference, even if it's not one you personally accept.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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And yet those passages are, if anything, a complete non sequitur on the subject of marriage and divorce (which was theoretically what Jesus was discussing). Adam and Eve weren't married during their time in Eden, at least not in any sense we'd understand the term nor in any sense that would require anything like a divorce.

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If they are as non-sequiturial (?) as all that, it begs the question of why they are lined up side by side in the mouth of Jesus.

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The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky [and a personal trainer]. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals [and the personal trainer he named Steve].

But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
And again, irrespective of what one thinks about that, would it be too generous to admit that people might see a qualitative difference between this rapprochement between the creation of male and female and the estate of marriage by Jesus and the condition of slavery (which off the top of my head I cannot think of Jesus saying anything positive about at all)?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Even if you think this qualitative difference is a result of sloppy thinking, it's rather a jump from there to labeling all such sloppy thinkers as "anti-gay".

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
But [slavery] does take place in a world washed clean by the Great Flood, supposedly to cleanse the earth of the wicked. The old order has been wiped away and humanity can begin again.

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The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 does not really seem to justify the conclusions or morals drawn from it. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother . . . " Really? How does that work? Adam didn't "leave his father and mother" for the fairly obvious reason that he had neither. None of the conclusions we're told we're supposed to draw from the narrative seem to logically follow from the story as presented. Some kind of explanation is warranted.

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The way I understand this passage, is that Jesus is saying

a) in a perfect world ('how it was in the beginning'), we'd have people getting married living happily ever after
b) because of our human condition ('hardness of hearts') this is not always the case, so provision was made for divorce in the Mosaic law
c) the Pharisees are wrong to take what was meant as a provision when all else fails in a marriage as a right to be exercised, as inherently positive as the union in the first place.

["for this reason" I think means "because the man found the woman to be the right match for him". The Genesis narrative at that point could indeed be understood as meaning "the right match" in preference to the animals, but in addition, it highlights her difference to Adam as well as her similarity, by virtue of her name, which designates sexual difference: she is a woman and not another man.

(We can argue, and indeed have, about whether that difference matters today in terms of the reproductive function of marriage, but I would contend that in the beginning, this difference was there and significant).

Furthermore, I'd argue that Jesus' use of Genesis in Matthew supports the idea that "male/female difference" is what's important for him, not "difference from the animals". In Matthew, Jesus quotes the verse beginning "for this reason", not after quoting from the "animals" passage, but instead right on the heels of a verse in Genesis from the parallel creation narrative, the one that says God made them "male and female".

For this reason it is surely not simply special pleading to suggest on these grounds that sexual difference, and not simply difference from the animals, was part of the raison d'être of marriage uppermost in Jesus' mind.]

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More to the point, there's nothing in there that would lead us to conclude ". . . and that's why homosexuality is evil!"

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We do however have an explanation as to why Eve was a suitable match for Adam, and what an unsuitable match looks like.

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Jesus seems to have said exactly as much about slavery as he did about homosexuality: nothing.

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Interestingly though, Jesus does take the time to reiterate the OT premise that Canaanites specifically are an inferior class of person

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
discomfort at the implications of a particular hermeneutic method eventually drove you to select another one you were much more comfortable with.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Let me get this straight. You're arguing that such an argument must be motivated primarily by anti-gay sentiment because it's not patristic enough? When did "considering it on its merits" fall out of fashion?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I find that ceasing to suspect opponents' motives is the first step towards meaningful dialogue of any kind on this and many other issues.

Questioning motives can be a neat way of not engaging with the argument.

I don't think that you get that IRL, I'm more "pro-gay" than almost anybody I get to discuss these issues with, and quite minded, should the need arise, to take a "pro-gay" stand, albeit not as "pro" as some here would doubtless wish.

Having objections that crop up around me and which I find at the very least legitimate thrown back in my face as "anti-gay" does not encourage me to do so, though. In fact it positively discourages me.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I find that ceasing to suspect opponents' motives is the first step towards meaningful dialogue of any kind on this and many other issues.

Questioning motives can be a neat way of not engaging with the argument.

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
The arguments are constantly shifting

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but the will to condemn is constant.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
The way I understand this passage, is that Jesus is saying

a) in a perfect world ('how it was in the beginning'), we'd have people getting married living happily ever after
b) because of our human condition ('hardness of hearts') this is not always the case, so provision was made for divorce in the Mosaic law
c) the Pharisees are wrong to take what was meant as a provision when all else fails in a marriage as a right to be exercised, as inherently positive as the union in the first place.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
["for this reason" I think means "because the man found the woman to be the right match for him". The Genesis narrative at that point could indeed be understood as meaning "the right match" in preference to the animals, but in addition, it highlights her difference to Adam as well as her similarity, by virtue of her name, which designates sexual difference: she is a woman and not another man.

(We can argue, and indeed have, about whether that difference matters today in terms of the reproductive function of marriage, but I would contend that in the beginning, this difference was there and significant).

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This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Jesus seems to have said exactly as much about slavery as he did about homosexuality: nothing.

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What I am calling into question is whether the parallel between the issues of slavery and sexuality is as direct as you make it out to be above.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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Interestingly though, Jesus does take the time to reiterate the OT premise that Canaanites specifically are an inferior class of person

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The dynamic of what's going on in that passage is, I think, hotly disputed (for instance, whether the Canaanite women is really being forced to grovel, or pulling off game set and match in a rhetorical jousting match), but we can perhaps agree that the end result demonstrates that it it shows that access to the grace of God is open to all, whatever the residual prejudices of the onlookers.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

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but the will to condemn is constant.

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I can see how you might conclude that, but to demonstrate a constant will to condemn, you have to first do a proper job of demonstrating why the argument is contrived and/or invalid.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I find that ceasing to suspect opponents' motives is the first step towards meaningful dialogue of any kind on this and many other issues.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

And finally, one could argue the existence of a similarly constant "will to justify". If a christian self-identifies as gay, has searched their heart and conscience on the issue and decided their sexuality is just as legitimate as anyone else's, they are bound to bring that presupposition to their (re)interpretation of Scripture, aren't they?

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Originally posted by Eutychus:

I'm not convinced either side has the monopoly on that kind of approach. "Wonderful things in the Bible I see, some of them put there by you and by me".

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Actually "in the beginning" was Adam and a series of various animals, if we take the narrative at face value. If the very beginning is supposed to represent "a perfect world", doesn't the later creation of Eve represent a step away from that initial perfection, according to the premises you've stated?

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Actually the gender difference wasn't "there". You (and Jesus) have to C&P a chunk out of the previous chapter

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I think you're missing the point. It's not that the issues are parallel, but rather that the same hermeneutic seems to be at work in the anti-gay arguments of today that was at work in the pro-slavery arguments of the past (legalistic references to various "clobber texts" without reference to context).

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It also seems to demonstrate that, while the grace of God may be open to all, it's more open to some than others. Some folks (descendants of Seth, heterosexuals, etc.) are invited to the metaphorical feast, while others (Canaanites, homosexuals, etc.) are only fit to get the metaphorical crumbs that fall from the equally metaphorical table.

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It seems a little bit arrogant and a lot like stacking the deck to demand those who are condemned explain why their condemnation is invalid rather than expecting the condemner to have to justify himself. Why shouldn't the one making the argument have to demonstrate it's validity rather than expecting those it condemns to justify their worth?

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