“Why can’t the church talk about sexuality?”
A common conceptualisation of the current debate over sexuality is that it is one between traditionalists and revisionists. In this lecture, Mark Vasey-Saunders argues that this is based on a misunderstanding of the degree to which both conservatives and liberals represent a break with earlier tradition. The current sexuality debate is between two different ways of interpreting the tradition of the church in a modern context.
Just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body so it is with Christ for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks slaves or free and we were all made to drink the one spirit
Indeed the body does not consist of one member but of many if the foot would say because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less part of the body and if the ear would say because I
Am not an eye I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less part of the body if the whole body were an eye where would the hearing be if the whole body were hearing where would the sense of smell be but as it is God arranged the members
In the body each one of them as he chose if all were a single member where would the body be as it is there are many members yet one body the ey cannot say to the hand I have no need of you on the contrary the members of the
Body that seem to be weaker are indispensable and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect whereas our more respectable members do not need this but God has so arranged the body
Giving the greater honor to the inferior member that there may be no dissension within the body but the members may have the same care for one another if one member suffers all suffer together with it if one member is honored all Rejoice together amen let us pray and as this is Holocaust Memorial
Day let us first keep a moment of silence remembering the horrors of that event and the consequences which continue to plague us all today merciful god help us to speak in love what is in our Minds and to hear in love what is said by others to feel in love what is in our hearts and to sense in love what is in the hearts of others to confer in love to discern your truth and to be open in love to your guiding Spirit through our disagreements guide
Us in our agreements direct us together may we share the mind of Christ in whose name we pray amen I’m delighted to be able to welcome the Reverend Dr Mark R Saunders um currently the academic tutor at St Hills and leading modules on Doctrine ethics and anglicanism I’m grateful I’m not one of
Your students he previously had experience as a university chaplain as a team Vicor as a Pioneer Ministry and his book diffusing The sexual debate was published last year I’m sure Mark will say something more about the book If Only to encourage a few sales Mark we welcome you and look
Forward to hearing from you thank you thankk you um I will just very briefly say something about book I’m not going to say anything more after that um I do have a few copies um at the at the back there um the the publisher lets me have
Them for about 17 pounds so I I’m willing to send sell them to you for 17s if you’ve got it unfortunately I don’t do this very often so I don’t have one of those kind of you know card machines or anything so I I can I can really only
Take cash for it or a check but um if you would like to get one there are some at the back there but I won’t say any more about it than that um the whole sort of sexuality debate um has become such a difficult area to talk about um and
Increasingly a very complex area to actually even understand where we are about this within within the Church of England at the moment because there’s so much happening all the time there’s different kind of statements coming out from different people and different groups been so many different reports
And things what I’m wanting to do in the time that we’ve got today is I’m going to spend a little bit of time just trying to talk through some of that history so that you we’ve got a good understanding of where we are and how
We’ve got there um and then I want to spend a bit of time talking particularly about what is going on with the way the evangelicals in particular are responding to the question of sexuality um now I’m very aware that there is there are more than evangelicals involved in these discussions but I
Think understanding the way in which evangelicals are responding to this is a helpful way to kind of understand some of the Dynamics of of what’s going on in the discussions we’re having at the church in the church at the moment so that’s what I’m planning on doing um in the time that we’ve
Got um it’s probably helpful to sort of make you aware of where I’m coming from with this and what I am and I’m not planning on kind of selling to you in this lecture as well um I’m aware that anytime somebody’s talking about a controversial topic you’re instantly
Thinking oh where are they coming from on this what they’re trying to persuade me of um I am not going to make any case either for or against any particular position um in what I’m saying what I’m trying to do is to help us to understand the different positions that are out
There um these I think are the kind of The Guiding convictions that I’ve got in in what I’m saying to you first that these are these are very complex questions that involve real people and we need to Bear both of those things in mind when we’re talking about them and
These are there’s not going to be any easy answers to this and what we’re talking about are things that on all sides are affecting real people um and I firmly believe that the the major moral challenge that’s facing us as a church at the moment in relation to these
Questions is actually how we live together as brothers and sisters who do not agree on this um I think that is actually the fundamental challenge that we’ve got at the moment um so that’s the kind of The Guiding presuppositions behind what I’m trying to say to you so um hopefully with
You’ve got some understanding of that you might might sort of feel okay that’s okay I can relax a little bit I’m not going to be try to be persuaded of something that I’m not sure about so to start off with then how did we get to where we are now you probably
Won’t be able to read all that I’m not going to go through all of these dates but it’s just to give you a sense of some of what’s been going on and how much toing and throwing there’s been about some of this um the decriminalization of homosexuality in this country happened in
1967 um since that point um I mean there was some church reports and things that came out engaging in that process of the debat around decriminalization we refer to that a little bit more later on but since that point there’s been a succession of different Church reports there’s also been a succession of
Different changes in the legal systems that we’ve got which have meant that this has been over probably the majority of our lifetimes there’s been constant debate and discussion there’s been shifts around different positions and understandings the legal position has been changing constantly the language that’s being used has been changing
Constantly so it’s not surprising that a lot of us end up feeling like this is quite complicated I’m not sure I can quite get my head around it um the one thing that I want to sort of focus on particularly though is um in 1991 1991 um issues in human
Sexuality um was was published now this was a major kind of statement by the church at the time just trying to talk about this is what our current understanding is of what we think the Bible is saying what we think science is saying and in the current kind of legal
Environment what we how we feel the church ought to respond now the thing I want you to notice about that first of all is that it’s in 1991 so that’s quite a long time ago and quite a lot of stuff legally has happened since then it’s also actually
At a point when um we’ve got within the country as a whole um a lot of worry and concern around questions around sexuality this is around the time where we we’ve we’ve had sort of a lot of stuff around AIDS there’s been a lot of um worry um about
Sort of what homosexuality represents within that context um you had the um in 1988 you had section 28 of the Local Government Act Banning the promotion of homosexuality so there’s this that’s the context in which that particular document comes out so it shapes some of the language that’s being used it shapes
Some of the way in which it’s presented now issues in human sexuality um it essentially said more or less what the church has still been saying is kind of our our current position so it says there’s an understanding that the the biblical material is largely saying that actually marriage understood as a union
Between a man and woman woman is the the only appropriate way for a sexual relationship um homosexuality and heterosexuality are not seen as kind of morally equivalent however there’s a strong statement that actually we should be taking a stance against homophobia um there’s a statement that
The conscience of lay people who are who are gay and are wanting to enter into sexual relationships should be respected they shouldn’t be excluded from the church um but a statement that because in fact the church is understanding of marriage and of the status of sort of gay relationships has not changed it’s
Not appropriate for clergy to enter into those relationships and it’s not appropriate to have those services in church so that’s more or less the position we’re still in um so that that’s broadly what it said however it’s now recognized that it’s a hugely problematic document in a number
Of different ways um the most obvious thing is the language that was being used um and the legal situation that it’s describing both of which bear no resemblance really to where we find ourselves today um issues in human sexuality doesn’t actually talk about people really as being gay it talks
About them as being homophiles which is not language that tends to get used by anybody on any side of the debate at the moment the legal situation it’s addressing is one in which there is no legal recognition of say sex relationships whatsoever um so this is a document that’s had to be supplemented
By a number of different statements coming out at different points to just address the changing kind of legal framework that we’re in um and it in fact encouraged and it’s widely recognized that this has had some quite difficult effects on sort of the way in which the church has operated encourag a
Kind of a don’t ask don’t tell policy where in fact people were sort of in this situation ation where as long as nobody kind of asked particularly probing questions and as long as nobody particularly kind of stuck their head above the Paris and said too much about
What they were doing everyone was quite happy to just kind of let sleeping dogs lie and that’s not a healthy situation for the church to be in the final thing that it did was that effectively it created a kind of a postcode Lottery of provision um if you
Were gay and you want some sort of um place where you could feel accepted and celebrated um because there were significant areas where issues was fairly broad or vague or General in its statements the things that it said could be interpreted in different ways by different Bishops and they were which
Meant that depending on what dasis you were in in some dasis it was completely normal that if you were a same-sex couple and you wanted to have some sort of prayers said for you as a couple as you made some sort of commitment to yourselves in church that was fine the
Bishop wasn’t going to make a fuss about it um as long as it wasn’t sort of like in your in the main act of worship it wasn’t a big kind of making a big deal of it it was very very quiet nobody was going to say anything about it if you’ve
Seen the series rev um there’s a reference to that kind of service happening there in some dases it was just understood that was just something that happened in some dases if it was ever discovered that that actually happened then you’d be talking about clergy getting dismissed and you did have this sort of
Sense that actually there was no par of provision anywhere so everybody recognized this is problematic this is this is not a situation that we we can really carry we need to have some sort of updated statement um the problem was this was the last time that the church could ever
Really get sort of the sort of agreement that allowed you to kind of pass something without massive outcry and there had been successive attempts to try to get something out there and every time it had failed um the most recent of these was the pilling report now the pilling
Report was the thing that came immediately before we started Living in love and faith um the pilling report talked about um having a period of debate and discernment um which which happened they they had the the lisening process if you remember that talked about reconsidering sort of what sort of
Teaching document we would have so have something to replace issues in human sexuality talked about reconsidering the distinction between lay and ordained in the guidance that it had so potentially opening up the possibility that perhaps ordained people could also enter into same-sex relationships um and talked about how we
Handle having Public Services of blessing for same-sex relationships those were the areas it said well we need to address these areas um and the way in which particularly on that last one because this is the area we’ve had some movement on uh the way in which pilling talked about that was to talk
About the idea of Asal accommodation and this was drawing of the work of the Evangelical ethicist Oliver odonovan who was talking about the idea that in fact it’s entirely appropriate that in certain situations for pastoral and missional reasons we might want to offer blessings to people where there’s something about their lives that
Actually isn’t okay but we’re still wanting to offer blessing and affirmation for them as a person and he pointed out that we do this all the time anyway um there are all sorts of people in in fact most of us have things around our lives that are not entirely the way
That they should be we don’t generally see that as a reason why we can’t offer some sort of blessing um and on that basis he sort of said look you know actually it’s entirely appropriate that we might find a way of doing this however um pilling was rejected um so it was rejected
Because for um for the uh for the conservatives it went too far for the Liberals it didn’t go far enough um and it was because of that that the llf process started and said right well we need to have another period of thinking about this further talk about this further and come back
With a radically different approach now that brings us to the last February syod which is where proposals have been brought forward for some prayers of blessing for people in same-sex relationships um now there was there was some agreement at that point that we should move forward with it but the at that
Point it was there was some drafts which were this is draft this will definitely not be used that were being presented but it will be something along these kinds of lines so it was agreed that we would do that and it was agreed we would we would move forward with that however
There was an amendment that went through to say we absolutely must make sure that this does not apart from the existing doctrine of marriage so that was what actually got passed in February then of course they had to work up what this actually was going to look
Like in order for it to then get approved in November so between the two sins in February and November um you had this piece of work done on what these prayers of love and faith would look like and there was separated Ed into What’s called the resource section which is a a
Selection of liturgy prayers blessings and things that can get used in a variety of different contexts they could be used in Acts of worship they could be used privately in sort of pastoral meetings with people and some outlines for what’s called Standalone services so the understanding was that this would
Break down in practice into there being three different ways in which you might offer some sort of prayers for people in same-sex relationships the first would be clergy could just use this as part of their normal pastoral Ministry you might meet with people in their homes say some
Prayers with them and the the resource section of prayers could be used for that you had then had the of the second option which was that actually you might be able to use those prayers within an existing act of worship so much the same way as you would have say a baptism in
Your regular Sunday service um you can incorporate this sort of pastoral blessing within a normal act of worship and then the third thing that was suggested was what’s called a standalone service which would be like a baptism outside of a normal act of worship it’s an a service that’s
Entirely focused around meeting the Pastoral needs of this particular couple so that was the kind of the division that they they had um when it came through what was proposed was that those first two would initially be approved for use and that the third one
Um in a sense would kind of we we held off until there had been some some further discussion about it um the theological rationale for this that was presented was very much looking back to this idea of possible accommodation it was very very clear we’re not talking about any change in our doctrinal
Understanding um we’re just simply sticking to the same thing but saying this does not stop us from offering blessings um and it was recognized that alongside all this there would need to be some very careful pastoral Guidance the consciences of those on all sides would need to be respected clergy should
Be able to use prayers if they feel that they need to use them in pastoral situations churches should not have prayers imposed upon them if they weren’t happy with them um clergy and churches who had agreed to use them should not be penalized for using them there was also some discussion that
Actually the would be people who would find that they they couldn’t um actually engage with this or be part of a church that was engaging with this and would need some sort of some sort of structure that would need engage them in a different kind of structure a parallel
Structure in some way though that was quite vague so that was the kind of the the package that went to the cod in November when you got to the CN in November what was agreed in fact was that the the resource section would be used the um
This the use of those prayers within existing acts of worship would be agreed but there was also an amendment passed to say actually we ought to have approval on the same basis to offer the Standalone Services now since that point those first two have gone through it is now
It’s now been approved by the house of Bishops that they can be used um in every individual dases dasis and Bishops have tended to put out guidelines which have been slightly different on how they are proposing this should go in effect in their dasis but that has gone through
The thing that hasn’t yet is the Standalone services and there’s some discussion about the the way in which that would that would need to happen so that’s kind of where we are um we are now in the midst of all the reactions to that and the strongest reactions predictably have been from
Conservatives who have felt that this has been a step too far and from conservative evangelicals particularly from the CC the conservative um the conservative Evangelical um Council for the Church of England um they have um announced various measures to enable churches to kind of step outside of existing Church structures so they’ve
Announced something called the Ephesian fund which allows churches to ensure that their giving doesn’t go to support churches that might be using these these prayers they’ve also announced measures for allowing churches who are feeling uncomfortable with um being in in sort of having their diis and Bishop supervising them and offering oversight
Over them to be able to opt to find some other Bishop who would be more conservative so they have sort of suggested some things like that they’ve also very heavily been sort of saying actually we need much much stronger sort of Provisions in terms of structural differentiation that will
Keep us separate from the rest of the church if we are to remain part of the Church of England so that’s kind of where we are at the moment the most recent thing has been a statement that’s come out from um from the lead Bishops on this process saying actually we’ve recognized at
Present what’s happened is that we’ve now in a sense we’re needing to shift gear we’re moving into a different phase of this where we have made this decision we are now definitely moving forward with this there has been a clear sense this is the the sense of direction we’re
Heading in um we now need to say where does that leave us and how do we cope with that as a church um and there’s conversations going on at the moment about what that will look like and I would anticipate that when we get to the next Sy there will be various things
Coming forward about what sort of things that might mean in terms of the way that different churches who have different positions on this would relate to each other other so that’s that’s kind of where we are now I’ve taken quite a long time to go through that which is I hope has been
Helpful for you but I think it’s it’s it’s good to get a sense of where we are and what’s the kind of the key issues and why those are the key issues what I wanted to do now in this kind of the second half is to look through um understanding um where are
Evangelicals coming from on this um now probably the best starting place with this would be to say that actually there’s what what’s probably best understood as a kind of a consensus position on what sexuality how you approach issues of sexuality that was it was held as a consensus position by
Evangelicals fairly commonly around the period of around the ’90s I think since then there’s been some movement there are some people who were now not necessarily hold to all aspects of it but I think it’s kind of if you look at around that point it was what was seen
As kind of the consensus between most evangelicals and this would be that all Christians should be accepted as full members of the church regardless of their sexual orientation and there’s a strong condemnation of homophobia um there was a a recognition that um engaging in samex sexual
Activity is sinful but only on the basis that any sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful it’s not a different category of sinfulness and something like adultery um and marriage is understood as only between um opposite sex couples um and because of that any sexual relationship outside of marriage cannot be celebrated
By the church or treated as equivalent to marriage so I’d say sort of around the 19 that was kind of seen as a kind of the consensus sort of position um the biblical basis for that um would tender to be drawn from um Genesis 1 and two the creation
Narratives and this understanding that if you’re looking at the story of the creation of Adam and Eve you are talking about this is a foundational understanding of what marriage looks like um there’s reference to the way in which Jesus refers to this passage when he talking about questions um around
Divorce um there’s ways in which Paul refers to this when he’s talking about various questions around um around uh sex um there’s less use actually made of any passages that directly refer to homosexuality and homosexual behavior um homosexual action um there are seven places in Scripture um where homosexual
Relationships or homosexual activity are directly referred to um the consensus position that developed in the 90s recognizes that there are these passages and that scripture whenever it does make these direct references is always fairly negative but it doesn’t tend to put lots of weight on that what it puts weight on
Is this understanding of marriage and the nature of marriage based on Genesis 1 and 2 now there’s a presupposition in the way that evangelicals talk about this that this um this understanding and this this sort of this sort of way of reading scripture these particular sort of
Passages used in this way represents the long-standing tradition of the church that’s been held unar for centuries and amongst a lot of Christians in a lot of evangelicals in the 90s at least though it’s become I think a lot less clear since there was this insistence that
Scripture is actually so clear on this um that it represents you know if you depart from that it represents a sort of a refusal to recognize the authority of scripture um now I think in fact it’s not quite as straightforward as that um that particular understanding of scripture um that uses
Genesis 1 and 2 um that doesn’t put much emphasis at all really on those seven passages that directly reference um homosexuality um that is actually not um what’s the traditional position that’s the church through the centuries has tended to hold to and certainly the position that the church throughout the centuries has
Tended to hold to is not one that would say homophobia is wrong and that samex relationships are only wrong in the same way that any sexual act outside of marriage is wrong in fact if you go back um if you go back to um say medieval
Times it’s fairly clear that there is no clear understanding of orientation there is a basic understanding that essentially everybody is much the same everybody is essentially um oriented so that their most natural thing that they would do would be to have sex with somebody of the opposite sex um if you did engage
With any other kind of sexual activity the understanding was well that is in itself just something that sort of it’s not a particular orientation it’s not you about you being a particular sort of person it’s just about you giving into excesses of lust um and in fact anything
That departs from that kind of natural order of a man and a woman having sex was seen as something that departs from the natural order in that way because of that it wasn’t seen as morally equivalent to just sex outside of marriage so if you look at somebody like
Um aquinus a coinus talks about um samex sexual offenses as being the worst kind of sexual offense because it’s going against the very built-in nature of the sexual act and the way in which scripture was being used in these discussions was very different um by and large um the church
At that time did not look to Genesis 1 and 2 as the key passage they looked to the story of Sodom and gomorah as the key passage this was the decisive passage that made it very very clear what God’s judgment on those who engaged in the same sex sexual activity was um
If you looked at somebody like um like ainus when he was referring to this he would also back that up by reference to to Romans which made it clear that actually this is also because it’s a sin against the very nature of the created order but he didn’t make reference to
Genesis 1 and 2 as the basis for that it was very much a kind of a philosophical understanding of that rather than rooted in a reading of Genesis 1 and 2 so the tradition was different and in very significant ways the tradition was different because the tradition was homophobic the tradition was deeply
Deeply homophobic um it it had a a great great difficulty in recognizing gay people people as being in any way in the same category as straight people in fact it it it refus to recognize those categories at all so when you come to um evangelicals starting to engage with
Some of these sorts of questions um they largely accepted this tradition um and would have been no different from it until something around the middle of the 20th century um if you look at the first time when evangelicals become really significantly involved in debate on social issues in
This country which is around the 19th century when they’re gaining some significance and power um there is a debate around reform of what was then the the buggery Act of 153 33 um which was this act that kind of was it was sort of initially it punished
Um it punished uh any sort of any of these sexual offenses with with death um you get a debate around the reform of this that evangelicals get quite involved in um in sort of in the 19th century um which um replaces the prohibition of buggery with a Prohibition of gross indecency between
Men um now this was a change that was lobbied for heavily by the spcc which had been set up by the Evangelical Lord shafts spry the year before um they desperately want this change in the law largely because um it’s a change in the law that will actually make it make it
Much harder to kind of actually uh have a situation where you get children involved in prostitution that’s one of their their key their key concerns around this um however there is no indication whatsoever um that they see any problem with acting in any way against gay people they have no issue with actually
Sort of seeing gay people as people that you might want to take legal action against there is no indication they’re concerned about homophobia that um change in the law was actually the one that meant that you had um uh effectively what was what was recognized as a kind of blackmailers
Charter because it became it was so nebulous the terminology around what was actually involved in Gross indecency between men that an accusation could be brought against almost anyone um and it was um it was widely abused um and this in fact then was the the immediate leadup to the decriminalization debate
In the in sort of the the 50s and 60s was the recognition that this law was so problematic now I think it’s it’s very unlikely evangelicals intended that to be the case when they lobbied for that law however it’s it’s certainly true that they had no idea they would no
Really no awareness that acting to avoid homophobia might be something you ought to be concerned about just like everybody else at that point it was not on their radar it was not an issue they were concerned with it was not something they felt scripture said anything particularly about evangelicals don’t really
Significantly engage with questions around um around um homosexuality and samesex relationships again um until after decriminalization now the reasons for that um are complex but they’re to do with the fact that there was a big for falling out between more liberal evangelicals and conservative evangelicals at the beginning of the
20th century and as a result of this um those people who carried on calling themselves evangelicals which was the conservative evangelicals um basically decided we don’t want to do any of this getting involved with social action because it turns you liberal um and that kind of attitude carried on until around
The middle of the 20th century um you still find traces in some places is and evangelicalism that in fact you know actually we all this kind of getting worked about social causes is is all well and good but really the the thing we fundamentally ought to be concerned
About is simply just saving Souls um actually it doesn’t really matter what sort of social conditions people might be in so because of all of that you get to around the middle of the 20th century before evangelicals start re-engaging with social action questions with questions of social justice when they do
They are engaging with a situation in which homosexuality has been decriminalized um and for for Anglican evangelicals they are re-engaging at the same time with saying we want to be full members and in actively involved with a church that has supported decriminalization because the Church of England had a major input into arguing
In favor of decriminalization so that’s the that’s the position at which evangelicals then re-engage with this when you do when they do that effectively they have to start from scratch they have to reinvent what their position is and the key figure in this is John stot John
Stot was the kind of the key figure behind evangelicals re-engaging with questions of social justice and re-engaging with the church of England um he was out there making the case look we cannot just sort of ignore the world outside we have to see social justice as an issue that we are equally concerned
About as evangelism um we have to be actively engaged with the church of England if we’re Anglican evangelicals um so he’s pushing this engagement and one of the major things that he writes that kind of puts the case for this is issues facing Christians today and issues facing
Christians today is the book that sets out here is a principled Evangelical position on this whole range of different social justice issues and one of them is same-sex relationships and in the process of writing that what stock does there are a few people he’s drawing on who went
Before that but this is the major statement of it he effectively comes up with a completely new biblical basis for an Evangelical position the that adapts to the position of the Church of England at the time because the position of the Church of England at the time was actually homophobia is
Wrong there is nothing that says that samex sexual offenses are worse than um than opposite sex sexual offenses U we need to stand apart from any Prejudice on this um actually yes we want to uphold marriage as just being between a man and a woman but we need to actively stand against
Homophobia and that is the position that St writes an Evangelical theology to support So effectively what you have is is not a tradition that goes way way back through centuries with the Christian Church you have a a tradition that starts in the mid 20th century and it is a tradition that is specifically
Designed to speak into a position where we accept the reality of orientation and we actually want to say very strongly that we think homophobia is something we ought to take a stance against I’m aware this is probably too small for you to read but I wanted to
Have the the quotes because it’s it’s helpful when you look at some of these early um these early statements from evangelicals they are really really strong on repenting of the homophobic past of the church so um you have David Fields the Christian can offer a welcome For Those whom society ostracizes and a
Desire to educate both young inverts that’s the language that he was using at the time themselves and those among the heterosexual majority whose attitude towards homosexuals is compounded of Suspicion and misunderstanding um David Atkinson it’s incumbent on The Wider Christian Fellowship to repent of its attitudes of rejection and work at being the
Fellowship of support in which the summoning of practicing homosexuals to repentance and change in their lifestyle can be made realistically in the context of warm and supportive charity and not cold phic legalism a recognition of the fact that homosexuality is involuntary should provoke sympathetic and caring responses rather moralistic appor or
Legalistic coercion John St love is just what the church has generally failed to show to homosexual people there’s a really really strong emphasis that actually the church has been wrong on this the church has been homophobic and we need to repent yes there’s a very clear conservative statement about what
Their position is but there is also a recognition this is a change from what went before we are repenting of a position the church has historically held and we are wanting to come and present a new Fresh understanding based on our current reading of scripture and despite the way it tends
To get talked about this has continued to develop when you look at the scholarship in Evangelical circles on this sort of area there are new things being written there are new interpretations of passages that are continuing to develop and change the way in which evangelicals understand this um
So St is the first to kind of make Genesis one and two Central um and essentially kind of reduces the significance of any other passages to kind of the margins um right in 1984 um makes a strong case for understanding a a particularly hard word AR aoto in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1
Timothy 1 as a new word that was invented by the writer um that’s derived from a Greek version of Leviticus and that gets kind of incorporated into Evangelical understandings which means that some of these passages they start saying well this one might represent something that’s a bit more meaningful than we
Thought it was there’s a general tendence see amongst more conservative evangelicals to start to kind of rehabilitate the importance of some of these passages that if you look at St he was saying well these are kind of these ones that are directly referring to it they don’t have much that we can learn
From we need to focus on Genesis 1 and two um by the 90s you have more conservative evangelicals starting to assert that there there’s a an understanding of a fixed and exclusive same-sex attraction in the ancient world even if it’s not quite the same as what we would Now understand as orientation
And that means you can take these passages as as still being relevant to today’s debates um stot effectively was denying that he was saying you can’t compare these and they’re not really relevant today’s situation by the 90s you’ve got evangelicals on the more conservative enstein say no we think
These these can be applied um 2001 and one of the decisive kind of conservative scholarship shifts comes with the work of Robert Gagnon who makes a much stronger case for when you look at Genesis 1 and 2 the thing that above all is being upheld as this is Central to
God’s kind of blueprint for sexuality is a a notion of sexual complementarity that there is some decisive difference between men and women that means they are designed to go together and that is what means that actually um homosexual relationships are wrong now alongside that Gagnon is also
Wants to make various other points about the relationships between men and women and the relative Authority that it’s appropriate for them to have um and that’s very much part of the same kind of argument that he’s making it’s a it’s an argument that gets a lot of hearing in more conservative
Circles however alongside that you have evangelicals who are not wanting to support that kind of reading so someone like Richard Hayes doesn’t want to support that reading of it and in fact um starts to kind of disagree with someone like gagon on whether in fact we
Ought to see these things as a central and what’s called A first order issue or not is this a central issue that Christians have to hold to um or in fact you know they’re no longer being faithful or is this something that Christians who are faithful can disagree
On so you get some shifts and changes and this tradition of scholarship is actually it is developing it first emerges around the middle of the 20th century but it has continued to develop people are writing within this tradition and both Gagnon and Hayes would be recognized as very good kosher Evangelical biblical
Scholars um so this genuinely is a developing tradition um where does this leave us um what I’m trying to kind of make a case for is that what I introduced to you as the kind of the Evangelical consensus position that certainly around a per the period of around the
90s most evangelicals would say yes that’s what an Evangelical understanding of sexuality would be and it’s probably the one that you’re familiar with that understanding originated in around the 60s and 70s you can’t find any anybody who’s really writing with that understanding of of scriptural passages putting forth that
Kind of argument any earlier than about the 70s it first gets decisively stated by St in the 80s and it is a tradition that’s continued to develop and you have different Scholars taking it in slightly different directions it is not the same as the historic tradition of the church the
Historic tradition of the church has been recognized by both liberals and evangelicals as being profoundly homophobic um and certainly if you look back at the the earliest 20th century writings from evangelicals who are very conservative on this they would be very very clearly saying we reject that earlier homophobic
Tradition so when we are looking at the debates we are having in the church at the moment although it’s very easy to to kind of categorize it as we’ve got a debate here between on the one hand people are holding to the tradition of the church as it has always been and on
The other hand people who are trying to revise that tradition in view of kind of modern understandings I think that’s a mistake what we’ve actually got is a debate between two different groups of people who are both trying to present a revised version of Christian tradition the difference between them is how much
Of a revision they feel is appropriate now that in itself I do not think means that conservatives are wrong they may well be right it might be that that is the most Faithful Way of interpreting it however the thing it does it does mean is that you cannot say
It is a debate between people who are holding to a long-term tradition of the church and people who are moving away from it both of these are positions that have been that are moving away from the older homophobic tradition of the church and in fact if you want to go in strict
Chronological terms the liberal understanding predates the Evangelical one because you have EV liberals writing about this earlier than you have evangelicals writing about this so these are not debates where it’s as straightforward as saying you’ve got the traditionalists on one side you’ve got the revisionists on the other
Um it’s also the case that there is not a single understanding on either of those sides there’s more than one way to be a liberal on this issue there’s also more than one way to be an Evangelical on this issue Evangelical Scholars do not all agree with each other
You can find Evangelical biblical Scholars who will interpret every single one of those passages differently sometimes they’re even all conservatives who will say well I interpret this passage different from this person but overall I still hold to this conservative position you can find Evangelical Scholars who will be saying I feel this
Is so Central that it is a first order issue of faith it is something on which actually if we must hold to or we depart from the center of our faith altogether you can also find evangelicals who are holding to a conservative position but will say I think this is something which
Christians can disagree on so you do have quite a a variety of different positions on this it’s very easy to forget that when you’re actually in debates and the church and it feels like it’s just there’s two monolithic sides one against the other um in fact
You know if you get any group of kind of evangelicals together they will probably all have slightly different understandings if you get a group of liberals together they’ll have even more different understandings because that’s what Liberals are like um there’s a whole spectrum of different views on this and that means that the
Debate we’re having is not the sort of debate it tends to get presented as in kind of popular presentations of this very popular presentations tend to be very black and white um you’ve got the kind of you got the conservatives you’ve got the Liberals um in fact what I’d suggest is
The more helpful way of understanding this is that actually you’ve got two broad kind of camps though depending on exactly what the question is the boundaries of those might shift a little bit but even with within those you’ve got a variety of different understandings and if we can get our heads around
That I think it helps us to recognize that actually the sort of disagreements that we’re having are not inevitable there’s often an awful lot more that the people somewhere in the middle on each side have in common with each other than either of them do with the people at the extremes on each
Side this is not not as hopeless a debate as we sometimes kind of despair of and think that it is just a few kind of bits of ad this is one of the things I I end I end the book with just some bits of advice for kind of how we might
Helpfully have this debate in a better way the first thing is I think we need to avoid declarations um that we’re saying you know if you if you hold this it’s this is a first order issue of Faith you can’t possibly disagree on that as much
As possible we need to avoid doing that unless we’re absolutely certain um we need to allow space for people who don’t know we need to allow space for people to say actually I’m wanting to think through this some more I’m not sure without them thinking they they’re kind
Of imperiling their salvation by doing it we need to find ways of depolarizing the debate and some of that is about actually trying to slow things down a bit trying to actually hear what people are saying and reflect on it before responding because the way these things
Tend to work is that you get this very very quick cycle of one person says something another person responds and so on and things escalate very quickly we need to avoid demonizing modernity um one of the things that’s tending to happen as part of this debate
Because it’s been set up as it’s between kind of traditionalists and people who are kind of revising it in light of modern understands is that is some of the language that goes around is say well the modern world is a terrible thing both of these are modern understandings both of these are coming
From people who accept so much about the modern world demonizing modernity doesn’t help anyone we need to stay humble and we need to listen openly we need to recognize that actually our own understandings are probably limited we probably haven’t read everything that there is to read on this um we’ve
Probably still got things that we can learn from people we disagree with and we need to recognize the complexity of the conversation it’s very easy to approach this and feel that actually you know this is a hopeless situation there’s just going to be terrible Fallout and
And you know the church is just going to fall apart I don’t think that has to happen I think this is an opportunity to actually listen to each other better and understand each other better and I think that the more that we do that the more we’ll find out that actually the things
We’re disagreeing about may not be the fundamentally divisive things we think they are thank you