I would not present this section of my discussion of homosexuality to a workshop at the Annual Gathering of CBF, because a panel discussion would occur with different Baptist voices representing all four of these broad viewpoints. However, I am not in a workshop with a panel discussion. Though some might think it unnecessary, I am deeply indebted to students in my classes at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for more than twenty years and particularly to the students of the Divinity School of Wake Forest University for the last ten years. About half the students in Christian theology are Baptists, but nonBapist students generally reflect the same concerns and difficulty of   their Baptist friends. One fundamental difference: I lecture on “Homosexuality and the Church” with gay and lesbian Christian students who are commitment to Christ and Christian ministry sitting alongside predominantly straight students in the classroom. Thus “homosexuality” becomes more than an issue because “homosexual” inheres in the identity of some students and constitutes a major concern for heterosexual students. Though most pastors and church leaders never engage the issue of “Christian faith and homosexuality,” gay and lesbian Christians worship in moderate Baptist churches every Sunday morning alongside their straight brothers and sisters. Their friends know who they are, and their mutual experience of worship generates conversation about issues of faith occur from time to time. This section on “Devout Uncertainty” generally reflects the experience and attitude of most students in my classes, Baptists and nonBaptists alike. On “a blog” of their creation and attention, their voices can be heard.

Nevertheless, I say far more here than I would say in an open discussion. Why voice it here? Older persons in practically all denominational entities exercise organizational leadership…just as they do in their own local churches. The voices of younger persons committed to Christian ministry are often not heard or simply dismissed. Although this section has been written on short notice and requires revision, it does provide an opportunity for voices on both sides of the generational divide to be heard. Though the question of the attitude of the church toward homosexual persons is essentially not “a conservative or liberal issue” but a generational divide, we can nonetheless engage in serious study and conversation together for the benefit of all. Yet everyone changes in one way or the other in dialogue, regardless of attitude and viewpoint.  Many homosexual Christians and often their families wait in hope for change, for the dawning of new creation. However, waiting on an unarrived future significantly damages, even devastates the integrity of the church in its witness to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Like alleged thinking Baptists, these unwanted and unwelcome children of the church, wait in silence. These homosexual Baptist Christians know that they are thought to be untouchable and unclean. They are lepers excluded from the public life of the church. In the meantime church congregations wait in silence, knowing already that custom and culture will change. They wait in silence, because silence remains the most comfortable attitude. However, many homosexuals, their families, and their friends…inside and outside Baptist church life…will turn away or simply leave a onetime nurturing community of faith that does not practice the hospitality evidenced throughout the ministry of Jesus. There is absolutely nothing “missional” in this strategy.

Various Christians in practically every congregation remain unsure about revising church teaching in relation to homosexuality and same-sex unions. They stand inside the tradition of the church in prayer, bible study, worship, and service. If you were to insist that these devoted Christians make a decision on the issue of homosexuality in the church today, most (I think) would stand in church tradition with the compassion they sense in “welcome but not affirming,” edgy nonetheless in the midst of change. They do not want to pass judgment on this issue, because any public posture is less than certain in the moral ambiguity of this issue. However, for many other Christians, quite aware of the uncertainty amid moral ambivalence, the question of the integrity of gay discipleship is more than an issue. “Homosexual” refers to specific names and faces of those whom they know through the congregational life of the church. They have been in Sunday School classes and Youth Choirs. They are accepted with the friendship of most of their peers with whom they have grown up within the community of faith. These “homosexual” persons are children of the church whom we love. Indeed, some of those who identify themselves as “gay” or “lesbian” are our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Often they have been dedicated to God in a service of blessing at their birth. Many have grown up and into the life of the church, and we have witnesses their confession of faith in Christ as Savior and Lord (somewhere between 9 to 12 years of age). They are baptized Christian believers. What does it mean to love a homosexual person in the community of faith?

Then adolescence breaks through occasions new realities in their lives. A few, among the best of them, have no adolescent interest in the opposite sex. On the contrary, they realize slowly or surprisingly discover or shockingly recognize, “I am different.” They know their sense of difference inheres in their depths of sexuality. Eventually some say, “I am gay,” leaving the church as a “place” that does not welcome or love them any longer. Others stay inside the church, but they continue to be welcomed as Christians of integrity through the same friends with whom they have participated in countless church activities. Yet their sexual identity evokes little verbal discussion, because their friends in their (onetime) Youth Group do not exclude them but continue to accept them. To be sure, there is a clear division in the community of faith: Older persons who have invested in the life of the church during their adult years, who are the Bible teachers and Baptist interpreters of church, generally stand in church tradition: The question of homosexuality is a clear-cut issue that Christian churches have resoundingly rejected for centuries…from the earliest traditions in the beginning of New Testament churches. Younger persons reflect a very different perspective. “Homosexuals” are persons they know in the mutuality of friendship, and they accept them inside and outside the church as authentic persons worthy of respect.

Most of the older leadership of the church finds the open attitude of the younger generations to toward homosexuality to be causal and uninformed. They have not listened to the teaching of the Bible in areas of sexuality fidelity, and they have absorbed the contemporary cultural attitude that they have experienced at school and elsewhere. A word of caution at this point: The younger generations in church life are not naïve, for they know what their elders think and why they think it. The older generation has lived through the civil rights movement and seen the partial dismantlement of Jim Crow segregation; they observed the woman’s sexual revolution and their experience of freedom in the life of the church; they often experienced the public “embarrassment” of divorce, especially in the church. The younger generations think and say to one another: “Our church was wrong on every issue…racial segregation in schools and public facilities; the pain of divorce but worth of the divorced person; women’s rights extended beyond voting to education and opportunity; unanimity in support of war, any war.  These younger believers often do not know the Bible in any fashion comparable to their elders. They have concluded: “All of them found in the Bible what they already believed. Nothing else.”

These young people have not engaged in any serious Bible study about the subject of homosexuality, of same-sex relationships. Bible study did not help their parents, teachers and preachers on the crucial issues they faced. However, they love their gay friends, and the circles of friendship continue to grow beyond public school to university life to their participation in young adult classes in other churches. They look at their parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, beloved Bible teachers and Baptist advocates: They have asked them many questions over the years about the attitude of “white people” toward “black people” during the Jim Crow years of segregation and the murder of civil rights activists. Since one of their parents has been divorced, a Christian parent, they do not understand the contradiction of the words of Jesus and Paul with the relatively recent acceptance of divorce in church life and leadership. In the last decade or so they have seen their churches elect women as deacons and elders, though some remain quite opposed to women preachers and pastors. The churches, its teachers and preachers, those who guided them in their younger years…they sometimes admit that they were “partly wrong” in the turbulent years of significant social change, but they explain it was “a different time,” not much more. Why do the same people who opposed school desegregation, open public facilities, the leadership of divorced persons in church life, the continuing role of women in church worship…why are they so sure now that they are right now about the exclusion of “gay persons” from the friendship of Jesus?

Though some of their elders want to distinguish between liberal and conservative viewpoints on the issue of the acceptance of homosexual persons, many, perhaps most of the younger adults and youth in the congregation know it is not a liberal/conservative issue but an older/younger issue, a generational divide. They are bothered when their heterosexual and homosexual friends drop out of church, but many of their heterosexual friends (and couples) often find their way back. Of course, church people are talkers, and they talk about everything in small groups of like-mindedness. They don’t argue with each other very much. The “middle-aged” Baptists can speak eloquently about the importance of the separation of church and state. (Is it really a problem?) Everybody gets excited about next mission trip of the church to South America or Eastern Europe, because they really do provide help to struggling Christians thousands of miles away.

However, they do not talk much about what our church should do in relation to persons who are not straight but gay. They exclude them with dead silence. The apparent difference between these generations has less to do with what they have learned to really believe than the persons they accept in genuine conversation. They do not know any gay and lesbian persons (or that a person they know is gay or lesbian). They have never engaged them in conversation about the significance of their “Christian faith” in the way they live life and often live in monogamous relationships. “The issue has gotten all mixed up with politics and the homosexual ‘agenda’…too divisive and too emotional.” So Baptists today by and large what they did throughout the second half of the twentieth century. These “thinking Baptists” (called moderates) demonstrate in their silence their unwillingness to engage in Bible study or church conversation about the most “divisive” question in American life today:  Are gay and lesbian persons created in the image of God? Can homosexual persons be recreated in the image of Christ…but remain homosexual? Must the church wait until the “humanism” of our culture changes attitudes outside and inside the community of faith? Are the people in my church able to disagree with each other and talk about controversial issues as “Christians” and “moderate Baptists” with continuing respect and love for one another? Of course, these kind of conversations require years of back and forth, not weeks, and variations of differences will remain.

The truth is that most congregations have not studied the issue of homosexuality in the Bible from various Christian viewpoints, and they have not engaged in serious conversation with each other in recognition of the moral ambiguity in any option chosen. Yet they do recognize that homosexuality is not a question that simply hinges on a majority vote (as though 51 per cent eliminates the difficulty and moral ambiguity in defining the best viewpoint).  Most active Baptists I know experience at this point in time some measure of what I call “a devout uncertainty,” a faithful hesitancy in the encounter with the moral ambiguity about God’s attitude toward persons born homosexual. They are committed to the integrity of the Church in faithfulness to Christ, and simultaneously they generally refuse to exercise violence on anyone…those with whom they agree and disagree. Is it an act of violence to exclude homosexual Christians from the life of the church? Of course, it would be an act of violence to superimpose a majority viewpoint on a congregation, whatever the majority might be. Furthermore, if the church must be concerned about accepting and understanding homosexual persons, as the proponents for “affirmation and celebration” insist, the Christian community must maintain the same concern for other members of the congregation who remain “welcoming but rethinking not affirming”…what I have (awkwardly) called “devout  uncertainty.” Since gay as well as straight persons are children of the church, children of our extended families, children in our own household, and already children of God, we could welcome heterosexual and homosexual persons alike. Perhaps in an eventual larger conversation, a congregation talking to the gay and lesbian Christians within its congregational life, a genuine consensus with “ifs” and “buts” will emerge. However, Baptists can be contentious, disorderly, and unloving in articulating a specific point of view on almost any issue. If we attempt to follow the attitude that characterized Jesus, if we read the letters of Paul from both sides of every argument, e. g. the role of women in the church, without claiming Paul’s “apostolic authority” over those with whom we differ, perhaps…perhaps…thoughtful Baptists can come to a friendly consensus without the devastation of verbal, attitudal, and doctrinal violence.

You can find the opening post here and the 4 different views presented (1,2,3,4).  Big Daddy Weave, Pop Theology, and Baptimergent have also blogged about this series.

The union of a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage constitutes the normative purpose of God for humanity in the goodness of creation.  The goal in the relationship of male and female is the intensifying oneness of marriage.  Children are the special gift (the promise of blessing) in this complementary relationship.

Celibacy, the choice of life-long singleness apart from marriage, is an authentic human variation in the human calling, but celibacy is not normative in the male and female relationships.  It is not a choice in opposition to the calling of marriage, but it is a choice of variation in response to marriage:  Celibacy is a gift, but not a gift for everyone.  The celibate person does not experience the union of male with female, of the female with the male, essential to the continuation of creation, nor does the celibate person experience the blessing of children.  These gifts are not incidental to humanity’s calling; nevertheless, these gifts are not gifts for everyone.  A person’s positive response to the call of celibacy as the distinct gift of God is a variation in authentic humanness; celibacy does not require the repudiation of the covenant of marriage between man and woman and the promise of children through the marriage.

Like celibacy, homosexuality is a variation in creation that does not diminish the authenticity of a person’s humanness.  Unlike celibacy, neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality entails a choice: It is a genetic (and early environmental) given.  Like the heterosexual orientation of life, the homosexual way of being human is the gift of God to be celebrated: It is not the disorder of human fallenness.  Homosexuality…the homosexual orientation precisely in its variation…belongs to God’s declaration of the goodness of creation.  [Otherwise, God has created that which is not good, or the Creator has distorted creation itself into that which is less than good.]

The error in the literal interpretation of the biblical traditions concerning homoerotic relationships roots in the inability of these ancient traditions to recognize that such relationships can be natural, i.e., ‘according to creation.’  This is the new insight in contemporary experience that requires review and revision of the church’s historic teaching on homosexual life and same-sex relationships. (For a homosexual person to engage in heterosexual erotic relationships is unnatural [as the failed heterosexual marriage of a homosexual person in a heterosexual marriage has often demonstrated].)

The prohibition of any possibility of human sexual fulfillment to a homosexual person is far more than the regulation of sexual behavior in the context of the norm of marriage between male and female.  It is nothing less than the repudiation of his or her personal identity, of which sexuality is only a part (a decisive part nonetheless). Contrary to the trajectory of the traditions in the Old and New Testaments, the gospel of Christ is life-giving and person-affirming.  Today the gospel requires the church to read the Scriptures from a different angle to discern the Jesus way in a critical reformation of church tradition on the covenantal homosexual relationships:  The gospel norm of interpersonal sexual relationships is “covenantal fidelity.”

The summons to the heterosexual Christian and the homosexual Christian is chastity in singleness and fidelity in covenantal union. Covenantal Christian union includes monogamy, unity, and permanence…whether heterosexual or homosexual.  Same-sex union does not abrogate the importance of heterosexual marriage, because only the oneness that occurs in the union of male and female transcends the otherness of male and female, female and male.  Nevertheless, a homosexual union is more than “alikeness,” of like with like, because a gay or lesbian covenant involves two different persons who remain “other” to each other.  The relational difficulties in heterosexual and homosexual covenantal commitments are quite comparable.

Similar to the proponents of Option 3, advocates of Option 4 affirm: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). However, the Christian community today recognizes what Paul apparently did not and could not recognize: Oneness in Christ ultimately destroyed the structural diversity between “slave and free.” Through discipleship in Christ and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the concrete division of slave and free was not a structure transformed into oneness in Christ but a social construct that oneness in Christ entirely destroyed. A Christian cannot love his brother who is also his “property.” The Gospel of Christ destroyed the institution of slavery, a consensus not established through Bible study and discussion but through the bloody violence of the Civil War. Baptist biblical interpretation followed the “change in understanding” about the evil of slavery won on the battlefields of the Civil War that set brother against brother. Can the Scriptures of the New Testament move the Christian community beyond established social structures through the dynamic experience of the freedom of the Spirit of Christ? Ephesians provides positive direction. Paul said:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and who has broken down the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new person in the place of two, so making peace; that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing hostility to an end. (Ephesians 2:13-16).

Proponents of Option 4 finally ground their viewpoint in the reconciling work of the crucified Christ who has broken down all the walls of hostility…all the walls of custom and tradition that separate and divide us…for us to work with God to establish the grace of “peace.”

NOTE: each of the four options posted are attempts to artuclate the perspectives on thier own terms and do not represent any particular individual’s view.  Details can be found here.

It has become increasingly clear that the homosexual orientation is not essentially a choice or an environmental production: It is more than an orientation because it roots in the personhood of the homosexual male or female. Human “genetics” not only accounts for the sexual distinction between male and female in a heterosexual person, but it is constitutive for the sexual identity of a homosexual person, male or female. Therefore, the activity of God in creation that accentuates the norm of male and female complementarity for the purpose of marriage and the reproduction of human offspring does not exclude the activity of God in the sexual identity of the homosexual person.. Although homosexuality does not fulfill the normative purpose of God in creation for human personhood, homosexuality is an unintended given in emergence of human life in the world. Using the criteria for human personhood in Genesis 2-3, homosexuality occurred in the creative working of God as an unwanted given that diverged from God’s intention in creation. A person who is constitutionally homosexual exhibits the disordering of God’s purpose in creation and ought to live out his or her life in a responsible fashion. Thus a gay or lesbian person exists through the creativity of God, but he or she is a recognizable “alteration” and not a perverse “deviation” from the life-giving work of God.

Advocates of accommodation are neither “welcoming but not affirming” or “welcoming and celebrating,” but they provide a place for homosexual persons into the fellowship and life of the church. However, accommodation cannot simply be equated with or construed as unqualified acceptance. Rather, accommodation is “accommodation,” making a place for one who would otherwise not have a place. This perspective understands homosexuality to be “a tragic distortion” of the intention of God in the “order” of creation. It is tragic, because it cannot fulfill the intention of God in the marriage of male and female into oneness or the blessing of child-bearing. The tragic element is inescapable in a heterosexual society (and church). Unlike other tragic elements that occur in life, the gay and lesbian persons experience the tragic inalterably in the definition of their sexual identity. While distinct and different from the specific intention of creation, the homosexual Christian is summoned to live his or her life in faithfulness and obedience to Christ…just as the heterosexual person. Against an isolation and loneliness devastating to human personhood, the homosexual Christian may choose a covenantal same-sex union within which to live out his or her gift of life. Such a same-sex union in form and essence remains nonetheless under the shadow of human fallenness.

The Christian community should accept the integrity of homosexual Christians and same-sex unions, demonstrating hospitality and compassion to their brothers and sisters who are homosexual. Since the heterosexual relationship of marriage remains normative, a homosexual union is admittedly less than God’s intention in creation, but nonetheless understandable. Thus Paul’s counsel to those who feel that they must marry and cannot remain single as he are permitted to marry (1 Corinthians 7:36-38)…permission that provides parallel counsel for those who are homosexual but who cannot remain celibate.

Advocates of accommodation recognize the difficulty of their “evaluation” of the issue of homosexuality and therefore homosexual persons within its congregational life. Yet the intention of genuine accommodation remains positive but recognizes limits. Perhaps one way to heighten the positive purpose in accommodation would be to characterize accommodation as “welcoming and accepting.” The language within the characterization of this attitude and perspective is quite different from and much more than “welcoming but not affirming.” Nevertheless, this viewpoint remains less than “welcoming and celebrating.” Option 3 entails a qualified acceptance that is nonetheless genuine and welcoming.

The great strength of this perspective is its inclusiveness:  “Welcoming and Accepting” with the qualification of God’s purpose in creation does not exclude anyone. To be sure, “accepting” remains qualified on the basis of the norm of heterosexual marriage, but it is an accommodation, “accepting with qualification.”

Proponents of  Option 3 stand inside the actual circumstances of Paul’s conception of authentic unity together in Christ that was a real possibility for the churches in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The essential identity of everyone in the Christian community on the basis of birth endures: Race and gender are givens. Paul’s solution in Galatians 3: 26-29 provides a situational option for a divided church to claim its unity in Christ.

NOTE: each of the four options posted are attempts to artuclate the perspectives on thier own terms and do not represent any particular individual’s view.  Details can be found here.

The second option shifts the argument by distinguishing between homosexual behavior and homosexual persons. The advocates of this viewpoint generally accept the biblical warrants against homosexual activity characteristic of church tradition, but it does not reject homosexual persons as “perverts.” “Welcoming but not affirming” is an affirmation of Christian love that requires openness, receptivity, and kindness to all human persons…regardless of any other factor, including the particularity of any kind of human sin. Indeed, all those whom the Christian community welcomes into its worship and fellowship are sinners. The characterization of any human person as a “pervert” is a denial that all human persons have been created in the image of God and all persons are included in God’s affirmation of the creation of humanity with “Very good.” Like all persons who have failed in the intention of God in creation, the homosexual person is welcomed into the life of the church. However, like other patterns of habitual sin, the homosexual person must repent of his or her homosexual behavior and accept the intention of God in creation: the norm of heterosexual relationships. Repentance for this sin is mandatory, “to turn to” the recognition and that any homosexual relationship constitutes sin, requiring the forgiveness of God. Moreover, as all other forms of habitual sin, homosexual relations ultimately prove to be self-destructive. That is, homosexual relationships cannot provide the wholeness and productivity of life that God promises to heterosexual relationships grounded in monogamous love.

“Marriage” requires the union of a man and a woman committed to each other in a monogamous union. The affirmation of “marriage” has been defined through the creation of God and accepted in the social structures of common human history. The characterization of a “same-sex relationship” as a “marriage” rejects the action of God in creation and elevates a sinful human construct above the intention and purpose of God in joining male and female together as “one.”

Homosexuality is “an unfortunate deviation” from what God intends in creation, “a tragic given” that persons engaged in homosexual activity must accept. Sometimes persons who have been caught up into the practice of homosexuality are heterosexual, and these persons experience the healing of their perverse sexual behavior in the celebration of heterosexual marriage, i.e. the lifelong commitment to one another, male with female. In these instances it is quite clear, whatever the level of clarity, that the practice of aberrant same-sex relationships constitutes some measure of choice. To be sure, the measure of “choice” is shaped through human genetic make-up as well as the experience of their human environment. Like forms of sin, nonetheless, the person guilty of homosexual sins may not recognize that his or her behavior, attitude, and life orientation is sinful until he or she experiences it in the bondage of sin…a choice made without any awareness of the deliberation of choosing. Even after the liberation from sin through Jesus Christ, the continuing threat of homosexual sin remains a graphic part of life, the possibility of succumbing to the luring lust in homosexual activity a lifelong vulnerability (and therefore, for all practical purposes beyond the wholeness of healing). As with other negative predispositions, whatever the situation, the person living with daily homosexual temptation must exercise a ‘severe’ discipline for the sake of the integrity of her Christian commitment, for participation in the goodness of creation, and for escaping an otherwise destructive form of life.

Although sexual identification is an essential part of human personhood, sexual gratification, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is not essential to the wholeness of a person’s humanity.  Neither the celibate person nor the single person can equate the absence of sexual gratification with human deprivation: Thanksgiving for the gift of life endures apart from sexual fulfillment. Granted, some persons remain celibate through the particular affirmation of the gift of their humanness, quite content with a wholesome life that does not include the element of sexual satisfaction. However, celibacy is not always a gift but the consequence of personal circumstances. Admittedly, many persons remain celibate despite their wholesome desire for sexual fulfillment in marriage.  The intrinsic sexuality that significantly defines all human persons is only one dimension of life among other dimensions that remains unfulfilled, or perhaps better said, not actualized; but the specificity of one’s particular situation becomes an opportunity for God to bless a person in a fashion that would otherwise not be possible. Yet the hard truth remains: Fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness requires self-discipline and self-control, because the loss of self-restraint in self-indulgence, whether single or married, proves personally and relationally destructive.

NOTE: each of the four options posted are attempts to artuclate the perspectives on thier own terms and do not represent any particular individual’s view.  Details can be found here.

Since male and female are complementary physically and otherwise, such sexual complementarity essential for the blessing of the children through the union of marriage, same sex relations are contrary to the intention of God in creation and must be repudiated as an abomination (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13).

Human rejection of God in idolatry occasions innumerable kinds of depravities, but the lust for sexual gratification through the manipulation of homoerotic coupling remains the most obvious and vivid (Romans 1:18-32).

Homosexual behavior is contrary to nature…God’s natural design for human sexual relationships in creation.  It is not a variation in creation, but contrary to creation.  This unnatural behavior abrogates God’s purpose in the creation of marriage between man and woman.  It is a rejection of the goodness of human creation as male and female as well as a perversion of the complementarity between male and female (Romans 1:26-27).

Some forms of sexual activity violate the integrity of personal relationships, e.g., adultery, incest, bestiality, and homosexuality.  Since all these forms of sexual expression undermine the goodness and sanctity of marriage and constitute a perversion of healthy interpersonal relationships, they are evil and must be repudiated in the life of the church (1 Corinthians 5:1-13, 6:9-10, 12-20).

The form and content of the traditional prohibition of any homoerotic or homosexual activity is well-known. However, one other factor must be noted in the contemporary discussion: The Bible speaks with different voices on the role of women in the church, but the Bible speaks with one clear voice on the question of homosexuality.

NOTE: each of the four options posted are attempts to artuclate the perspectives on thier own terms and do not represent any particular individual’s view.  Details can be found here.

A few months ago a group whose names I do not know decided that such a divisive issue could best be addressed in the local church rather than a workshop at the General Assembly. I disagreed with their decision, or I would never have made the workshop proposal for our annual meeting. If I had not been concerned for the environment and tone of the conversation, I never would have suggested we not do the workshop in Memphis but wait and convene it in Houston. I had thought (and still do): One of the ways that Baptist pastors and church ministers could introduce the conversation in their own church would be through material and conversation from a regular workshop in our June meeting. The pastor could refer to this workshop and panel if he or she thought it would be helpful. Otherwise, the minister must accept full responsibility for raising an issue not on a Baptist agenda anywhere. Although I regret the decision not to include the workshop this week in Houston, I am grateful to Dan Vestal and Bo Prosser for their patience and openness in the consideration of the viability of my proposal.

Although I have lectured on the issue of homosexuality and the church for the last ten years, one of my Baptist friends asked me about my interest in the subject. Beyond my academic concerns and responsibility, I am deeply interested in the subject because it is an issue throughout the United States that we Baptists have not addressed and may never address until the achievement of a consensus in American culture that will resolve the issue for us. Moderate Baptists are corporately among the most timid collection of Christians in the world. If we address an issue with openness and candor that does not correspond to biblical inerrancy, we are terrified at the prospect that fundamentalist Baptists will use it to smear us in outrageous caricature that will decimate the integrity in our identity. Likewise, we are genuinely concerned that some doctrinaire, liberal Baptists will ridicule our dialogue as a lack of courage to offer leadership on the issue, because they already know that everyone in the Christian community should echo their viewpoint as the unambiguous declaration of the Gospel. I think moderate Baptists are strong enough not to be intimidated by fundamentalist Baptists and secure enough not to allow anyone to tell us what to think. After discussion and dialogue we will have a better understanding of the issue and each other, but unanimity is not a Baptist virtue. To insist on unanimity is as unBaptist as to cower in silence.

However, my primary concern for discussion of the issue of homosexuality is the simple truth “it is not an issue.” Responses to the question of Baptist attitudes toward “homosexuality” is actually a response to many of our children or friends children, persons we have taught in Sunday School, young persons whom we have seen confessing faith in Christ in the waters of baptism. Some say, the homosexual population only entails 5 to 10 per cent of the population. Yet when that 7 per cent involves families I know, friends of my children, persons in my congregation, the percentage turns into the question of bringing my children to Jesus for his blessing and grace.

I do not expect everyone to have a strong interest in the subject of homosexual persons in the life of the church in contrast to other missional concerns. Yet it is a concern, because homosexual persons who have grown up and been baptized Baptist Christians think that the last place on this side of hell that will welcome them in the hospitality of Jesus is a Baptist congregation…fundamentalist or moderate one and the same.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE CHURCH: ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS

Perhaps my oversensitivity has occasioned an unnecessarily long Preface, but my primary purpose remains the same: What are the major alternatives that the churches encounter in the endeavor to understand and discuss homosexuality in the life of the community of faith? I will identify four broad options, each one subject to internal variation. The description of each major perspective is brief and limited, but the essentials that differentiate each from the others remain plain. They only provide a starting-point for understanding the rationale of each viewpoint as well as for conversation respectful of the perspectives of others.

The coming posts on “alternative viewpoints” constitutes a rough copy of what I would have presented in a workshop on “Homosexuality and the Church.”
4 alternative view points in outline:

1. Rejection of homosexual persons: the norm of heterosexual marriage

2. Acceptance of persons but rejection of homosexual behavior: the norm of heterosexual marriage, the affirmation (or requirement) of celibacy

3. Homosexuality ‘In the Shadow of Human Fallenness’:  “Accommodation”

4. An affirmation of the human calling to covenantal union: ‘Welcoming and Celebrating’

All four of these broad viewpoints can be heard in discussion and debate in the church today, often with a distinct variation. Each position can lay claim to Scripture and tradition, but they do so in different ways. The Christian integrity of the “proponents” of all these viewpoints (within their variation) is accepted and affirmed. Therefore, we approach the issue of “homosexuality” and attempt go gain mutual understanding through conversation with our  brothers and sisters in Christ.

5. A Devout Uncertainty