Biblical Bludgeoning

One aspect of coming out for those brought up in non-gay friendly religious traditions that I have talked about before is the need to educate one's self on the fact that there are other traditions that are gay affirming if not out right fully accepting of gays. If the religion of your birth is toxic to your mental well being, LEAVE it and find a different one that allows you to embrace spirituality without the poisonous side effects of self-hate and frustration of not being able to buy into the "change myth" so prevalent still in many denominations. I've recommended books before and the Washington Blade has a story on a book, “Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality,” that looks like it might be useful too. (The boyfriend has me headed to Barnes and Noble today to pick up books for him, so I will look for it). Here are some highlights from the Blade story:

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Jack Rogers, a theology professor and nearly lifelong Presbyterian, didn’t want to get involved with the issue of homosexuality. He’d been opposed to the ordination of gays within his denomination, but was implored by a friend in 1993 to sit on a task force at California’s Pasadena Presbyterian Church to study the issue thoroughly.

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“It was just not a problem I wanted to take on,” Rogers writes in his book “Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality,” re-released this week in a revised and expanded edition by Westminster John Knox Press. Rogers, who’s straight, has become an advocate of full inclusion of gays in both the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Christian church in general.

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“I want you to know that I believe the Bible, properly understood, looking at it through the lens of Jesus’ redemptive life and ministry, is very positive toward equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” Rogers says during a Blade phone interview. “There are a lot of people who are eager to hear that message.”

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In the book, Rogers traces how his denomination previously used scripture to justify slavery, policies that prevented women from being ordained and divorced and remarried Christians from fully participating in the church. Rogers argues that the scriptures that are used against gays (he calls them the “seven or eight clobber texts”), are no different than those used in previous church disagreements.

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“A literal, proof-texting way of reading the Bible is wrong,” he says. “You’re going to come to wrong conclusions. You have to read it as a whole. It’s a book with a long history and at the center of it is Jesus … who was not the kind of person to knock people down and exclude them. Yes, Jesus sets ideals, but he also picks people up and gives them a second chance.”

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He says conservative Christians and fundamentalists who argue that the Bible is free of error and should be taken literally, do their own selecting and interpreting. So if the mainline denominations have sound answers to this and other issues, why are they dwindling while independent evangelical churches such as those led by Joel Osteen and Rick Warren are thriving? Rogers says it’s because those pastors give people “what they want to hear.”

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“It’s all about wearing your Hawaiian shirt to church and taking your coffee in with you,” he says. “And then preaching a feel-good, prosperity gospel and appealing to the current prejudice. It’s pure cultural mish-mash in my judgment. The way you grow in the culture is to adopt the cultural attitudes. There’s not a lot of orthodoxy when you look at (these megachurches). It’s more, ‘Hey folks, we’re going to give you what you want to hear.’”

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Rogers is hopeful about the future of gays in the church. “I know the church as an institution cannot change in a major way unless people feel that the Bible, which is their primary source of authority, permits it ... I’m presenting a biblical case. I’m saying if you go to the Bible with scholarship that looks at it in depth, it is not anti-gay.”