Repent? Or get over it?

July 7, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Church of England bishop says gays should ‘repent’

Associated Press • 07.06.2009 11:30am EDT

(London) A senior Church of England bishop has angered gay-rights campaigners by saying homosexuals should repent.  Archbishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that the Bible defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. He said the church welcomed gay people, “but we want them to repent and be changed.” Nazir-Ali is a leading member of the conservative wing of the global Anglican Communion, which is riven by divisions over homosexuality and the ordination of women. . . .  He was quoted as saying that people who depart from traditional Biblical teaching “don’t share the same faith.”

(Read the whole story here)

My comments

Here we go again! From ancient times the Christian church has had creedal statements to define what its faith really is. Three historic creeds come to mind, known as the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian Creed. I have written about the Nicene Creed in the past, for example: May 19, 2008; also December 9, 2007.

No doubt many local preachers, priests and pastors (myself included) can get caught up in the moment and say things which are quite arbitrary, or unnecessary, or even stupid. After all we’re all human and we try to speak to contemporary issues as things happen. But I find it remarkable that an archbishop should exhibit such irresponsible ignorance or get caught up in such momentary, knee-jerk opinions.

Gay or straight, lesbian or trans, closeted or activist, if we are Christian we share the same faith in Jesus Christ. No formal creed of the Christian faith has ever had a statement about sexuality or gender in it. Clearly, Christians do not put faith in sex or sexuality. We put faith in God. We put faith in Jesus Christ, not our understanding, or somebody else’s understanding, of sex and human sexuality.

This may be the journalist’s phrase in the story above, not the archbishop’s, but I need to voice my thoughts about the phrase “traditional Biblical teaching.” The “traditional Biblical teaching” which Nazir-Ali apparently thinks some Christians are departing from reflect a “condemn-first-ask-questions-later” attitude about the Bible’s clobber passages. Yes, we are well aware that the Bible has a handful of passages often used to condemn homosexual behavior. But for most of Christian history these were not flashpoints, they were not interpreted in other times the way they are now, and most importantly they do not constitute a “Biblical teaching.” The clobber passages (Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26–27 , 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10) are a loose collection of ideas written by different authors, centuries or even millennia apart, which embed cultural prejudices if not personal bigotries about certain practicies. They do not form a whole or uniform doctrine of human sexuality. In some cases it is not entirely clear what is meant at all. Some additional passages, occasionally cited, such as Deuteronomy 23:17 and Jude 1:6-7, are completely irrelevant to the discussion. Even the famous “Sodom and Gomorrah” passage in Genesis 19 could be quite irrelevant since what it appears to condemn is attempted gang rape, not sexual attraction or making love.

It appears to me that this archbishop, among others, has just caved in to bumper-sticker thinking—the kind of thought that is so shallow it can be reduced to a slogan: “God said, I believe it, that settles it.” In fact, you can order this very slogan and glue it to your car!

More importantly, “the Christian faith” by definition is the faith that Christians hold, not the faith that some authoritative leader says we must hold. What gives the Nicene Creed its authority, for example, is not that it was formally adopted in the 4^th century by a council of bishops but that it has been recited and accepted by millions of Christians world-wide ever since.

This particular archbishop should be gracious enough to admit that not all Christians agree about either the meaning or the significance of this handful of passages about sexual behaviors. If we don’t share the same faith, in his view, perhaps it is because he is trying to add on to the historic Christian confession of faith a narrowly interpreted conservative view of human sexuality — trying to make his attitudes about sex into an article of faith.

For example, in the Athanasian Creed (a statement which is also quite narrow and that I personally do not like), there is this key language: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold the true Christian faith.” It goes on to spell out the true Christian faith in 40-some lines, all of which explain what Christians are to believe about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and their inter-relationship, and none of which define or spell out one word about human sin, or human sexuality, or homosexuality. As dated or triumphalistic as this historic statement seems now, it sticks to the core content of what it means to be Christian: to cling to the faith we hold in common, not our opinions about sex.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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