Human sexuality and the Church
The Baptist Union Declaration of Principle states:
1. That our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and that each Church has liberty, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to interpret and administer His laws.
2. That Christian Baptism is the immersion in water into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, of those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ who ‘died for our sins according to the Scriptures; was buried, and rose again the third day’.
3. That it is the duty of every disciple to bear personal witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to take part in the evangelisation of the world.
It seems clear to me that the one basis for our faith is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures.
As it appears that our Baptist forbears understood, truth is not a creed or doctrine but a person - specifically the revelation of God’s truth, way and life in Jesus Christ.
Having received forgiveness and entered into a relationship with Christ crucified and resurrected, through the waters of baptism, every disciple bears witness to the life of Christ. This is Christ in us and we in Christ - resurrection life - life in the Spirit - Kingdom life - life in all the fullness that God intended for us.
Brian McLaren’s thoughts and reflections may help us in our debate about human sexuality. In his book, A New Kind of Christianity (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010), McLaren suggests that parts of the conservative Christian churchapproach the biblical text as if it were an annotated code [legal code or constitutional document] instead of what it actually is: a portable library of poems, prophecies, histories, fables, parables, letters, sagely sayings, quarrels, and so on.’ (103) We would be helped if we recognised the Bible as a library of culture and community - the culture and community of a people who trace themselves back to Moses and Abraham. Unlike a constitution we do not expect complete internal consistency in the Bible; rather we expect to find vigorous internal debate around key questions that were important within the theological culture in which it was produced. (107)
When we recognise that this is the nature of the Bible, we are placed in the text, not under or over it, in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping into the living God ... loving God, betraying God, losing God and being found again by God. (125)
As Baptists, as for all Christians the Bible’s highest value is in revealing Jesus, who gives us the highest, deepest and most mature view of the character of the living God (Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-5).
But we might ask: Is our picture of Jesus simply the one with which feel most comfortable?
The Book of Revelation celebrates not the love of power but the power of love. The Jesus, who is Lord in Revelation 19 is the alternative to the empires of this world in which so many of earth’s religions live. Sadly the desire for a military Messiah remains in many western evangelical circles.
Jesus promises those who ‘eat his flesh and drink his blood’ (take his life into them) the life of the ages (eternal life), abundant life, which sparkles in new significance - life that transcends life in the present age. (173)
Now to think about same sex partnerships and ‘marriage’. While I do not see same sex partnerships in terms of marriage as defined in Genesis 2 and Matthew 19, I find McLaren’s thoughts both challenging and helpful in my understanding of human sexual relationships.
In discussing this subject McLaren introduces us to‘fundasexuality’ rooted not in faith but in fear - of new ideas, people who are different, fear of criticism or rejection by its own community, or fear of God’s wrath on them if they do not conform fully to and enforce the teachings and interpretations of their popular leaders. He suggests that it is a kind of hetero-phobia: the fear of people who are different. It comes in many forms - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or even atheist. Something or someone is identified as the ‘devil’ - a threat, something for the majority to be against. (235) For fundasexuality it is lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people who are the target.
McLaren points out that there are a variety of ‘marriage’ relationships in Scripture such as polygamy allowed and even encouraged. He suggests that we might consider marriage in the same way as Sabbath, as in Jesus’ words: ‘the Sabbath was made for human beings not human beings for the Sabbath.’ This might suggest that marriage is similarly created to help humans in our sexual relationships, even gay humans. (237)
McLaren comes back to a biblical interpretation which is Jesus focused rather than constitutional, forensic and legalistic. So if Jesus is the climax of a dynamic biblical narrative and the supreme revelation of God, then Jesus’ treatment of the marginalised and the stigmatised requires us to question our approach. (241)
McLaren challenges us to see that ‘[as] a change-averse community, the Church sees the increasing acceptance of gay people as yet another slide down the slippery slope towards moral relativism and decay. [But] as a change-catalytic community, the Church sees this increasing acceptance as yet another step up in removing the old dividing walls of Jew/Gentile, slave/free, male/female, and so on.’ (242)
McLaren then presents his readers with a most significant pointer for our debate. He recalls that as the Gospel goes out into the Gentile world (Acts 8) the first conversion is of the Ethiopian eunuch, who is baptised by Phillip. We tend to hear this as a joyful conversion story, but maybe we need to read it in the context of the community of the early church. We need to stop and consider - this man is an Ethiopian, that is a Gentile of a different ethnic group, and also he has been castrated, both of which were barriers to acceptance into Jewish Temple worship.
So now we listen to his question: ‘What is to prevent me from being baptised?’ - well, as far as becoming a Jewish proselyte is concerned, these two for a start! But Phillip takes this audacious action and baptises him. This man may well have been humiliated and rejected in Jerusalem, but in Christian baptism is accepted. How often we miss what is staring us in the face!! (242-7)
One further reflection, Stephen J. Patterson (the George H. Atkinson Chair of Religious and Ethical Studies at Willamette University, who addresses this question about eunuchs in the Bible in his Biblical Views column Punch Thy Neighbor in the May/June 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review) draws our attention to Matthew 19:12, where Jesus refers to some who are eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom. Patterson suggests that the phallus is a symbol of male dominance and power in the Graeco-Roman empires, and its removal is a statement of the Jesus-centred, love-focused, self-sacrificing Kingdom opposed to the empires of the world.
In our sexually charged and temptation filled society, McLaren ponders whether the gay community’s ‘coming out of the closet’ will help us all to address our sexuality. ‘... the longer we hide from the truth of our sexuality - in all its beauty and agony, in all its passion and pain, in all its simplicity and complexity - the sicker we will be, as religious communities, as cultures, and as a global society.’ (253)
Can we accept a variety of committed sexual relationships:lesbian, gay, transgendered, bisexual, and heterosexual in the same way as Phillip did when he baptised the Ethiopian eunuch?
I believe that this discussion should prayerfully and lovinglycontinue in our Baptist family.
John Weaver is a former President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, and was Principal of South Wales Baptist College until his retirement in 2011. He specialises in Practical Theology.
The Baptist Union Declaration of Principle states:
1. That our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, is the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and that each Church has liberty, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to interpret and administer His laws.
2. That Christian Baptism is the immersion in water into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, of those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ who ‘died for our sins according to the Scriptures; was buried, and rose again the third day’.
3. That it is the duty of every disciple to bear personal witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to take part in the evangelisation of the world.
It seems clear to me that the one basis for our faith is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures.
As it appears that our Baptist forbears understood, truth is not a creed or doctrine but a person - specifically the revelation of God’s truth, way and life in Jesus Christ.
Having received forgiveness and entered into a relationship with Christ crucified and resurrected, through the waters of baptism, every disciple bears witness to the life of Christ. This is Christ in us and we in Christ - resurrection life - life in the Spirit - Kingdom life - life in all the fullness that God intended for us.
Brian McLaren’s thoughts and reflections may help us in our debate about human sexuality. In his book, A New Kind of Christianity (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010), McLaren suggests that parts of the conservative Christian churchapproach the biblical text as if it were an annotated code [legal code or constitutional document] instead of what it actually is: a portable library of poems, prophecies, histories, fables, parables, letters, sagely sayings, quarrels, and so on.’ (103) We would be helped if we recognised the Bible as a library of culture and community - the culture and community of a people who trace themselves back to Moses and Abraham. Unlike a constitution we do not expect complete internal consistency in the Bible; rather we expect to find vigorous internal debate around key questions that were important within the theological culture in which it was produced. (107)
When we recognise that this is the nature of the Bible, we are placed in the text, not under or over it, in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping into the living God ... loving God, betraying God, losing God and being found again by God. (125)
As Baptists, as for all Christians the Bible’s highest value is in revealing Jesus, who gives us the highest, deepest and most mature view of the character of the living God (Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-5).
But we might ask: Is our picture of Jesus simply the one with which feel most comfortable?
The Book of Revelation celebrates not the love of power but the power of love. The Jesus, who is Lord in Revelation 19 is the alternative to the empires of this world in which so many of earth’s religions live. Sadly the desire for a military Messiah remains in many western evangelical circles.
Jesus promises those who ‘eat his flesh and drink his blood’ (take his life into them) the life of the ages (eternal life), abundant life, which sparkles in new significance - life that transcends life in the present age. (173)
Now to think about same sex partnerships and ‘marriage’. While I do not see same sex partnerships in terms of marriage as defined in Genesis 2 and Matthew 19, I find McLaren’s thoughts both challenging and helpful in my understanding of human sexual relationships.
In discussing this subject McLaren introduces us to‘fundasexuality’ rooted not in faith but in fear - of new ideas, people who are different, fear of criticism or rejection by its own community, or fear of God’s wrath on them if they do not conform fully to and enforce the teachings and interpretations of their popular leaders. He suggests that it is a kind of hetero-phobia: the fear of people who are different. It comes in many forms - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or even atheist. Something or someone is identified as the ‘devil’ - a threat, something for the majority to be against. (235) For fundasexuality it is lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people who are the target.
McLaren points out that there are a variety of ‘marriage’ relationships in Scripture such as polygamy allowed and even encouraged. He suggests that we might consider marriage in the same way as Sabbath, as in Jesus’ words: ‘the Sabbath was made for human beings not human beings for the Sabbath.’ This might suggest that marriage is similarly created to help humans in our sexual relationships, even gay humans. (237)
McLaren comes back to a biblical interpretation which is Jesus focused rather than constitutional, forensic and legalistic. So if Jesus is the climax of a dynamic biblical narrative and the supreme revelation of God, then Jesus’ treatment of the marginalised and the stigmatised requires us to question our approach. (241)
McLaren challenges us to see that ‘[as] a change-averse community, the Church sees the increasing acceptance of gay people as yet another slide down the slippery slope towards moral relativism and decay. [But] as a change-catalytic community, the Church sees this increasing acceptance as yet another step up in removing the old dividing walls of Jew/Gentile, slave/free, male/female, and so on.’ (242)
McLaren then presents his readers with a most significant pointer for our debate. He recalls that as the Gospel goes out into the Gentile world (Acts 8) the first conversion is of the Ethiopian eunuch, who is baptised by Phillip. We tend to hear this as a joyful conversion story, but maybe we need to read it in the context of the community of the early church. We need to stop and consider - this man is an Ethiopian, that is a Gentile of a different ethnic group, and also he has been castrated, both of which were barriers to acceptance into Jewish Temple worship.
So now we listen to his question: ‘What is to prevent me from being baptised?’ - well, as far as becoming a Jewish proselyte is concerned, these two for a start! But Phillip takes this audacious action and baptises him. This man may well have been humiliated and rejected in Jerusalem, but in Christian baptism is accepted. How often we miss what is staring us in the face!! (242-7)
One further reflection, Stephen J. Patterson (the George H. Atkinson Chair of Religious and Ethical Studies at Willamette University, who addresses this question about eunuchs in the Bible in his Biblical Views column Punch Thy Neighbor in the May/June 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review) draws our attention to Matthew 19:12, where Jesus refers to some who are eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom. Patterson suggests that the phallus is a symbol of male dominance and power in the Graeco-Roman empires, and its removal is a statement of the Jesus-centred, love-focused, self-sacrificing Kingdom opposed to the empires of the world.
In our sexually charged and temptation filled society, McLaren ponders whether the gay community’s ‘coming out of the closet’ will help us all to address our sexuality. ‘... the longer we hide from the truth of our sexuality - in all its beauty and agony, in all its passion and pain, in all its simplicity and complexity - the sicker we will be, as religious communities, as cultures, and as a global society.’ (253)
Can we accept a variety of committed sexual relationships:lesbian, gay, transgendered, bisexual, and heterosexual in the same way as Phillip did when he baptised the Ethiopian eunuch?
I believe that this discussion should prayerfully and lovinglycontinue in our Baptist family.
John Weaver is a former President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, and was Principal of South Wales Baptist College until his retirement in 2011. He specialises in Practical Theology.