wfn.org | Anti-homosexual passages in Bible reflect authors' biases, speakers

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Note #6256 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

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9-November-2000
00397

Anti-homosexual passages in Bible reflect authors' biases, speakers say

Covenant Network members say they're Bible-believing Christians

by John Filiatreau

PITTSBURGH, PA -- Scriptural condemnations of homosexuality merely reflect
biblical authors' cultural biases and are not among the "essential" messages
of the gospel, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians was told during a
recent three-day meeting on the theme of "Biblical Authority and the
Church."

	Several conference speakers said the Bible's condemnations of same-gender
sexuality call to mind other scriptural passages used in past centuries to
justify slavery and to keep women from participating fully in the life of
the church -- on the basis of long-held interpretations that are largely
abandoned today.

	The Bible is "shot through with vested interests," theologian Walter
Brueggemann warned his audience of more than 600 men and women in an address
titled "Biblical Authority: A Personal Reflection." Brueggemann, a professor
of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, said Christians should
"proceed with great modesty" in interpreting biblical texts, resisting the
temptation to cling to "our presumed absoluteness about things."

	"We are all selective fundamentalists," he said.

	Attendance at the 2000 Covenant Conference, hosted by East Liberty
Presbyterian Church, was up about 50 percent from last year's conference in
Atlanta, GA.

	Brueggemann said he reads the Bible with a sense of wonder: "It's a book
that is utterly beyond me in its richness and yet held concretely in my hand
-- what a remarkable gift!"

	Calling the Bible "inevitably disputatious," and remarking that "you can't
get the interpreter out of the text," Brueggemann said scriptural
interpretation is a "dynamic process," in which the text is always
"refracted through human authors with vested interests."

	"Nobody has the high ground, morally or hermeneutically," he said, adding
that all Christians face a "temptation to turn any little thing (in the
Bible) into an essential" of the faith. He said Amendment G-6.0106b -- a
measure requiring Presbyterian clergy to be married to a member of the
opposite sex or "celibate in singleness" -- "has tried to make a
non-essential into an essential."

	"Real issues of biblical authority," he said, "are not to be settled by
erudite exegesis."

	He added: "The church ought to engage in honest, pastoral conversation
about vested interests, anxiety, fear and pain. Nobody has a monopoly.

	Brueggemann, a United Church of Christ minister, summed up with a quotation
usually attributed to St. Augustine: "In essentials, unity; in
non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."

	Another plenary speaker, William Placher, a professor of religion at Wabash
College, said interpreters of the Bible must "draw a line between cultural
conventions and the truths that Bible stories convey," and always "keep in
mind the assumptions the author brought to his time and place ." He said the
apostle Paul, for example, was from a patriarchal culture in which it was
"socially acceptable to treat homosexuals with contempt."

	In some passages, he said, scriptural authors make passing references to
homosexuality "in the process of teaching about something else" -- using
homosexuality simply as "a good example of sin," something that at the time
was "taken for granted."

	Calling himself a "Bible-believing Christian," Placher told his audience to
dispute conservative Christians' claims "that they're being more serious
about the Bible than you are."

	When Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan, he said, we should
understand "that this is a parable ... in the realm of an invented story ...
not a crime report." While it is hard sometimes to tell what to make of
particular Bible passages, he said, "If we study the whole Bible its
critical truths come through loud and clear."

	"The Bible helps guide us home from exile," Placher concluded, "to the love
and knowledge of our sovereign God."

	During a workshop, Jack Rogers, a professor of theology emeritus at San
Francisco Theological Seminary, said of Presbyterians, "Sometimes we have
interpreted (the Bible) very badly as a church." For more than 300 years, he
noted, Presbyterian clergy cited Bible passages to justify the institution
of slavery. He pointed out that the denomination's debate over divorce
brought about  "a clear hermeneutical shift" -- from a flat condemnation of
divorce to a belief that, while lasting marriage is "an ideal toward which
we all strive," divorce is acceptable in some circumstances -- in just 30
years.

	"It's not always obvious what the Bible means," he said.

	Rogers said he didn't pay much attention to the dispute over homosexuality
in the church until he was appointed to a task force on the matter. "For the
first time in my life I had to study it," he said. "I thought, 'Well, this
is different from (previous debates in the church over) race and divorce.'
And the more I studied it, the more I realized that it wasn't different; it
was very much the same."

	Brian Blount, an associate professor at Princeton Seminary, spoke of
Presbyterians who cited previously "authoritative" texts to justify slavery
and consign women to "secondary status."

	"Were they right?" he asked. "Of course not."

	He said those archaic interpretations "might have been right for their
(authors') own time, twenty centuries ago, but may well be wrong for our
time." He said passages cited as condemnations of homosexuals arose in "a
world where sexuality was understood in a radically different way from our
understanding today."

	"The Spirit is alive," Blount said. "The Word is on the move -- not the
last word, but the living Word." Paraphrasing Galatians 3:28, he said,
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free ... but all are one in
Christ Jesus," which suggests that people of all sexual orientations are
"equally acceptable in God's sight and therefore (all) must be treated
equally well in human life."

	Several leaders of the Network, including its co-chairs, the Rev. Deborah
Block, of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee, WI, and the Rev. Laird
Stuart, pastor of Calvary Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, CA, urged
participants to begin organizing to influence the 213th General Assembly
next summer in Louisville, KY.

	John Buchanon, a founder and former chair of the Covenant Network, told the
conferees that the Presbyterian Coalition, a group of conservatives and
evangelicals that had met the previous week in Indianapolis, IN, has set out
to raise $200,000 to be used to champion Amendment 00-O, which would
prohibit Presbyterian clergy's involvement in same-sex union ceremonies.

	That wasn't the only rumor about the Coalition meeting that the Covenant
Network members talked about in Pittsburgh. They also were discussing the
news that the General Assembly Council (GAC) plans to review the way
speakers are chosen for PC(USA)-sponsored meetings.

	GAC Executive Director John Detterick told the Coalition that a speaker at
last summer's Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference in Orange, CA,
"articulated a concept that conflicts with a basic tenet" of the PC(USA)
when he suggested (in a discussion of whether salvation is possible for
people who have not heard of Jesus or who belong to a non-Christian faith)
that Jesus Christ might not be the only path to salvation. Detterick said
future speakers at such events will be more carefully vetted in advance.

	Detterick said he realizes that some theological conservatives want the
church to hold the offending speaker, the Rev. Dirk Ficca of Chicago,
accountable for his "out-of-bounds statements." Detterick, who to this point
has not recommended any disciplinary action, said, "I am sure that the full
General Assembly Council will take up this matter when it next convenes in
February."

	Commenting indirectly on Detterick's remarks, Buchanon said the PC(USA) is
"becoming a different church. We are hearing words like 'heresy' for the
first time in centuries.'"

	Detterick did not attend the Covenant Network meeting, but dispatched in
his stead Peter Pizor, the GAC chair, who told the conferees that the
council task force will address questions about how the church manages all
its conferences, not just those of the Peacemaking Program. He said the
study is not a "witch hunt," and said it will be conducted in a "thoroughly
Presbyterian" manner.

	Pizor also spoke about the GAC effort to prioritize all the church's
mission programs in connection with the 2002 budget -- a process that he
said has been difficult and painful, but won't require any personnel cuts;
and reiterated the church's longstanding support for the National Council of
Churches despite its financial difficulties.

	Participants in the conference also spent some time in synod and presbytery
meetings to determine how they can most effectively oppose Amendment O and
advance overtures to overturn or weaken Amendment G-6.0106b during the 213th
General Assembly.

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