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This updated collection of linked pages explains the issues and background to the proposed Anglican Covenant, and why it will not create open, forward-looking, twenty-first century churches.
These pages were written by Jonathan Clatworthy and Paul Bagshaw.
First edition July 2010, updated January 2012 with extensive links to other literature.
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Yes - and many hundreds of other things as well, some of which you probably do every day.
In some circles there is a lot of rhetoric about Christians being obliged to obey the commands in the Bible, but nobody obeys all of them. There are so many that precious few people know what they all are. In practice, what happens is that the people who claim to be loyal to the Bible's teaching just focus on a few commands and ignore the others. This is because some Protestant groups have inherited the contradictions in early Reformation theories of the Bible. (More on biblical interpretation).
So: how do we decide which of the commands in the Bible we should obey today? The Bible doesn't give us guidelines for deciding. In practice Christians are guided both by tradition and by the insights of their own culture. We balance different authorities against each other.
Very few texts in the Bible even mention same-sex partnerships. They are as follows.
Angels visit Lot at his home in Sodom. The locals call out to Lot 'Bring them out to us, that we may know them'. He thinks that would be dreadful, and invites them to rape his daughters instead.
The majority of Hebrew scholars think what is being condemned is gang rape of people with a particular social status as honoured guests. The text does not imply any more general condemnation of gay sex. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, where the word 'Sodomite' is used it just means someone who lives in Sodom.
This story has a parallel in Judges 19.
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination (18:22)
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death (20:13).
These texts clearly condemn gay sex acts as 'abominations'. They are contained within the 'Holiness Code' which laid down laws specifically to distinguish Jews as a 'holy nation' from their neighbours. It forbids many other 'abominations' like eating certain kinds of animals, sowing a field with two kinds of seed and wearing clothes made up of more than one kind of material (19:19, 20:25).
This text condemns male-to-male cultic prostitution. A recent Church of England publication, Some Issues In Human Sexuality, argues that in the ancient near east cultic prostitution was the most culturally acceptable form of homosexuality (because it was the command of a god) and for the Old Testament to condemn it implies at least as much condemnation of other forms of homosexuality. Other ethicists argue the reverse: in the case of females, the Old Testament is more strongly opposed to cultic prostitution than to independent prostituion precisely because of the association with gods other than the god of Israel.
26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
This is part of a long rhetorical passage by Paul, condemning other people in general terms for turning away from God's law - which he thinks pagans as well as Jews should have known. In this text he treats lesbian and gay sex as contrary to both the natural order and God's will. Many Jews of his time will have been equally disgusted by some of the practices of Romans and Greeks.
Today the evidence indicates that although same-sex activity is unnatural for most people, for some it is natural. Recent research indicates that this is true not only of humans, but also of animals, birds and even some fish.
In this text there is an issue about how to translate the relevant Greek words:
Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, malakoi, arsenokoitai, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers - none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates the relevant words 'male prostitutes' and 'sodomites'. Unfortunately it is impossible to establish exactly what Paul meant. The first is a common word with a wide range of meanings. The second is rare and vulgar, literally meaning 'man-bedder'. The Greek of his time had a much wider range of words for sexual acts than modern English has, and the acts being condemned may have been more specific than English terms like 'homosexuality' would imply. It is also possible that Paul did not intend to be precise in his condemnations.
Arsenokoitai are condemned again in 1 Timothy 1:10.
In the Bible gay and lesbian sex is rarely mentioned and is never a significant issue. Where it is mentioned it is condemned, but that is true of many hundreds of things we no longer condemn today.
If we want to know the reasons for the current emphasis on condemning it, we need to look at what is going on in society today, not at what the Bible says.
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