homosexuality

Facebook Hermenutics Lesson

April 30, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 12 Comments

I am pretty sure God invented Facebook so people could argue about religion and politics. Nothing demonstrates the beauty of social media like a good legislative proposition against Gay Marriage to bring out the best in humanity…ugh.

Any way, my home state of North Carolina is being completely ridiculous and attempting to coerce people though the power of the state to comply with a particular religious vision for the home. That vision isn’t normative in scripture but don’t tell hetrosexist Christians it’s not, they got hermenutical skills no one can match. I use to think I had heard every contrived way of explaining the Bible failing to speak consistently on behalf of God’s favorite relation math equation, One Man + One Woman = Marriage, BUT THEN I posted a link to Protect All NC Families on my facebook wall saying that I wished I was still in North Carolina to vote against it.

I got a few negative comments, a number of HBC Deacons saying they would vote on my behalf, and then this masterpiece of Biblical exegesis. One of my former youth dropped a Bible verse and all hermenutical hilarity broke loose. I learned something. The patriarchs like Abraham should have just married and reproduced with one woman. Because Abraham failed to live up to Biblical marriage God cursed him and so Islam was born. That is disgusting. I hope this isn’t an idea gaining popularity. I had no idea what to say but a College Friend did. Check out this conversation and see some masterful facebook hermenutics in action.

FORMER YOUTH Genesis 2:23-24

COLLEGE FRIEND Former Youth – Unfortunately, The Bible is not an ally in the fight for such legislation, but rather a liability. If “one man & one woman” is the only definition of a legal marriage then – without venturing out of the book (Genesis) you’ve chosen to cite – the following men were breaking the law: Abram/Abraham (16:3), Esau (26:34), Jacob (29:23, 28; 30:4, 9), and Nahor (22:20-24). There are plenty more examples outside of Genesis that refute the notion that 1 Man + 1 Woman = “Biblical Marriage.”

FORMER YOUTH You are correct in saying that those men broke the law, and they suffered serious consequences because of it. Because of Abraham’s actions, it distorted his image of God, eventually leading to the creation of Islam.Just because men did these things in the Bible does not mean they were following God’s will in doing so. Judas was one of Jesus disciples, yet he betrayed him. Just because Judas had been a follower of Jesus does not mean he was doing God’s will in this instance. Jesus supported the Law of Moses (Lev 18:22 & Lev 20:13). Also, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul says “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

COLLEGE FRIEND It’s interesting that you have no evidence to back up your claim that these four men “suffered serious consequences” other than the fact that one of them was used as the foundation of an alternate religion, which is – in your opinion only – the serious consequence 1 of the 4 listed suffered (centuries after his death). I see nothing regarding polygamy in any of the verses you cited, and yet I see polygamists in the Bible who, unless you can show me evidence to the contrary, suffered no rebuke from God for living a polygamist lifestyle. What was Davids punishment? Moses’? Saul’s? Solomon’s? Caleb’s?

FORMER YOUTH Although Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death” I would say that Isiah 59:2 is also is a pretty severe consequence of sin of which we all suffer: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.” I am not as well knowlegded about the Old Testament as I would like to be and I am sorry that I do not have answers to all of your questions. But I do pray that in time the Lord will answer them. I therefore encourage you: that the power of prayer is enormous: Matthew 7:7 ”Ask, and it will be given to you seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

COLLEGE FRIEND Former Youth, it appears now you’ve taken to simply firing off Scripture that has no application here. The wages of sin may, in fact, be death, but we’ve yet to establish that polygamy is a sin. To the contrary, I’ve provided several unchallenged Biblical examples of Godly men who had multiple wives and God never chose to chide them for it. In closing, two things…

Firstly, and with all due respect, if you are admittedly ignorant of the Old Testament (OT) (and I give you tremendous credit for your humble admission of this), yet choose to use select passages from it to inform your decisions regarding your political voice, then I would encourage you to become more familiar with it. In doing so, you will find that the many commands regarding how to treat one’s slave(s) are not being put to their full use in today’s America and perhaps could spearhead a petition or legislation to re-introduce OT-based slavery in NC/America… or any one of the other categories of OT laws that are currently being ignored by our government: dietary, parenting, haircuts, clothing, etc.

Secondly, do pray that the Lord will clear up for you the confusion between “Love your [heterosexual, monogamous] neighbor as yourself,” and “the wages of [what I perceive to be] sin is death [and legislation to deny you man-made government/legal benefits].” Also, while we’re on prayer, I would encourage you, if you truly feel that “the power of prayer is enormous,” to act on that conviction (and encourage others to do likewise), by staying home from the polls on May 8th and, instead of voting against the Marriage Amendment, do something much more powerful: pray against it.

Tripp – apologies for rambling on your page; much love and respect to you for standing up for love & equality in this world. Peace.

SARCASTIC MINISTER These comments have been such a blessing in my life, thank you! I always knew Islam was a lie! May the Truth of Jess Christ win the hearts of those who are under the devils grip.

SARCASTIC PHD STUDENT If there was such a thing as biblical marriage, it would include sexual hospitality, i.e. giving one’s wife/wives or daughters to establish social and political connections. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it would be good to read the bible.

NICE MINISTER LADY Former Youth, the Corinthians verse you quote above is also talking about having sex as a form of worship to a plethora of Roman deities. In this case, it was about the Corinthian cult of Venus who required worshippers to participate in orgies and things to supply worship. The scriptures have a long history of saying that sex in order to please God is a no-no. Sex as a worship and appreciation of what God made, on the other hand, is the subject of an entire Book (Song of Songs) and is lauded! Whenever Paul forbids LGBT stuff, he’s usually either talking about ritual sex or prostitution (usually boys prostituting themselves to men). There aren’t a lot of words to translate this super well, as the context of the culture the verse was written in is what makes it important. We’re not dealing with many of these issues today, so the verse is irrelevant. Also, Paul’s words are not the words of Jesus, and so many seem to forget that. Jesus doesn’t talk about LGBT stuff… except for that verse when he talks about how being transgendered is totally fine (Matt 19:12) and he DOES forbid divorce. We seem to have a narrow minded definition of what defends families in NC.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, politics, public policy Tagged With: homosexuality

What God doesn’t say and how not to read the Bible

January 24, 2012 by Bo Sanders 3 Comments

The unpleasant topic of what God doesn’t say has shown up in three different conversations this week (and its only Tuesday!) :

Tony Jones gave a little pushback to Daniel Kirk (a recent guest on Homebrewed) about homosexuality and the Apostle Paul. Both Paul and homosexuality are hot topics right now so the discussion was vibrant.

Kirk is clear about those infamous Old Testament ‘clobber’ passages but is a little more allusive when it comes to the New Testament. He pulls what appears to be equivalent to an ‘argument from silence’ saying that Jesus would have commented on it if he wasn’t OK with the dominant view of his day. Tony makes this argument:

Apply that logic to any number of other moral or ethical issues, and I’ll bet that Kirk and his fellow evangelical biblical scholars don’t agree. For instance, Jesus was silent about:

Slavery

Abortion

The death penalty

Corporal punishment

Racism

Rape

I could go on. Does that mean that we should argue that Jesus was implicitly endorsing each of these? Of course not.

The same line of reasoning has been showing up over and over again in blogs written by women about issues of church leadership, image-beauty, and marriage.

It is tough to argue about what the Bible doesn’t say.

I actually try to pull this off in the latest TNT (Eschatology and Resurrection) when it comes to reading the Old Testament. I use the story of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19) and point out that there is a noticeable lack of commentary in so many places in the Bible. In that Genesis 19 narrative it never says “and what they did was wrong” or “and they should not have done that”. It just tells the story.

I compare this to the Canaanite conquest when the Israelites come out of slavery, violence, and oppression – into a new land – and then become violent and oppressive to the inhabitants. It reads to me like a cautionary tale about groups who escape violent oppression and come into a new area will always think that A) God is on their side (which is different than saying ‘God is with them‘ B) God has prepared the land especially for them C) that God wants them to kill the current residents

I got this idea of the cautionary tale from a book called Native and Christian - specifically two essays entitled The Old Testament of Native America by Steve Charleston and Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians by Robert Allen Warrior.

These three topics: homosexuality, women’s roles in church & home, and religious violence are not just arguments from history … they are on our doorstep knocking angrily everyday of the 21st century. They also share something else in common: the make arguments from silence about what is not in the Bible.

Here is where it gets even stickier. I was reading an old article by Roger Olson (also a former podcast guest) from Christianity Today 10 years ago. He was illustrating how American Christianity came to be and specifically the influence that the 1800’s had on our contemporary situation.

I also stumbled into Tad Delay’s blog about American Populism in early American religion, dealing with The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch. Tad explains :

The language of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” a sinners prayer for salvation, and a strong emphasis on unschooled individuals reading the Bible without need for rigorous theology came out of this period. Those with any training or expertise were openly spoken of as the enemy. The most flamboyant and charismatic circuit preacher garnered fame- which was certainly a goal of many- but to be charismatic, you had to convince the hearers that the message was simple. So, the message became very simple.

And this is where I get really nervous. A plain & simple reading of the Bible is one thing – a surface understanding I am always encountering and navigating. That is one thing. But arguments about what God didn’t say and what is not in the Bible are complex and nuanced. Our popular simplistic impulse leaves us in a pickle – one that I am not sure we commonly have the tools to get out of and one that leaves us with an increasingly irrelevant message that our young people simply walk away from.

If everything needs to be understandable to anyone … we might be in trouble when it comes to reading the Bible in 21st century.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, emergent, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: America, Bible, book, books, church, homosexual, homosexuality, Lot, Lot's daughters, Native American, Roger Olson, Tad Delay, Tony Jones, Women

Extremely White Male & Incredibly Homophobic

January 10, 2012 by Bo Sanders 20 Comments

The news is wild these days! Its almost as if there is a cultural shift underway!
Let me just highlight 4 news stories from the past week:

1) The Pope: Gay marriage threatens humanity’s future

2) Pastor Joel Osteen to Oprah: Homosexuality Is Sin — But Gay People Will Get Into Heaven

3) Rick Santorum: A Straight Dad In Prison Is Better Than Two Gay Dads Who Aren’t

4) Pastor Mark Driscoll’s book on Marriage hits the shelves

It is interesting that all four of these stories have come to my attention in the past week. What most people will focus on is whether there is a Bible verse to back up what they are saying or not.

What needs to be stated before that is two-fold:

All four are white males. Somebody may ask “are you implying that their gender or race somehow diminishes their right to speak with authority?” and I would answer “No – I just think that it is worth pointing it out in case later we wanted to examine how people come to power and in what ways authority is constructed, bestowed, or recognized.”
When you have the leader of all the world’s catholics, a guy who is renowned for not speaking up about anything or coming down on anyone, a presidential candidate, and one of the most influential evangelical pastors in America saying the same thing… one of a couple of things has to cross your mind.

Either
a) they are all sticking up for the truth or
b) they are all sticking up for an antiquated perspective of the past

The reason that this issue has grabbed my attention is that many are calling it ‘The Last Taboo”. In the past 2 centuries, the issues of race (civil rights) and gender (women’s lib) have advanced to the point the if anyone held an opinion from a century ago about either issue – the people around them would say “what is wrong with you?” or “wake up man, its the 21st century.”

I asked Tony Jones, Lauren Winner and Phyllis Tickle about this issues last year. Only Phyllis was willing to tackle it.

No matter which side of this thing you are on, it is worth noting that the ‘last taboo’ is predicted to be the worst and most vicious. The problem with the last of anything is that when it is over … it is really over. We tackled the race issue, we overcame the gender barrier, and now the sexuality issue is front and center. We can’t go back. This is the last taboo. Once we have dealt with this, there are no more big ones to fall. This is kinda it.*

I just think that it is worth noting A) who is framing the conversation and B) who is charge of the information and how the process is to be handled. There might be more going on here than simply the rightness or the wrongness of any given issue or the interpretation of 6 bible verses.

This will most likely be decided in our lifetime. Denominations will split over it. The future of the faith will be challenged because of it. Like race and gender before it, history will evaluate how we participate in it.

* somebody might say ‘economics’ or some form of disparity, but that is not really in the same category as it is not inherently value laden .

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, thinking Tagged With: Bible, black, book, books, Christian, Christianity, Driscoll, gay, gender, God, homosexual, homosexuality, jesus, last taboo, Lauren Winner, Osteen, Phyllis Tickle, Pope, race, religion, Santorum, sex, sexuality, Tony Jones, white

HBC Top 11 Blogs of 2011

December 23, 2011 by Bo Sanders Leave a Comment

Here are the top 11 blogs of Homebrewed Christianity in 2011 :

1. Theology Nerd Book Survey

2. That’s “Too Gay” – Brian Ammons’ Banned Chapter from Baptimergent

3. Your First Steps into Biblical Universalism…

4. 31 Reasons I Left Evangelicalism and Became a Progressive But Not a Liberal by Michael Camp

5. God Takes Sides….or When Karl Barth Was Right

6. Defining the Secular: Charles Taylor (pt. 3) by Deacon Hall

7. Rob Bell Wins

8. The classic ‘Footprints in the Sand’ poem revisited

9. Are you a Bellian or Piperian?

10. a big difference between Christianity and Islam

11. Goosing Emergents into the Mainline

Thank you all for your amazing participation and feedback – that was a wonderful year of conversation and theological brewing!

Let us know if you had a favorite that didn’t make the list.

From Chad, Tripp, and Bo – thanks for a great year, Brew On! and don’t forget to share the brew.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, living, media, news, philosophy, politics, thinking Tagged With: baptist, Biblical, book, books, brian ammons, Catholic, Charles Taylor, Chistianity, evangelical, evangelicalism, evangelicals, Footprints, gay, homosexual, homosexuality, Islam, John Piper, Karl Barth, Liberal, Michael Camp, Muslim, Nerd, NT Wright, poem, progressive, Protestant, Rob Bell, theology, universalism

Heaven – we have a problem! (with sexuality)

November 12, 2011 by Bo Sanders 4 Comments

This was a week of controversy in the Blogosphere – at least in my neck of the woods.

The topic of gender, femininity, and sexuality were the touch points. I am going to highlight 3 controversial blogs from this week … but first I want to acknowledge that it mirrored (albeit in a much smaller way) something happening in the larger culture that we are embedded in.

This was also a week that saw the Penn State football sexual abuse scandal rock the nation, the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations, and several other national news story related to discrimination, abuse, and harassment.

These three christian conversations that follow are not happening in a vacuum – perhaps that is why they illicit such a heated response and so much attention. It impacts all of us.

Post 1: from Stuff that Christians Like – a post called ‘Girls with a Past’ was a little test (written by a man) that women could take to see if one qualified as intriguing or not. It was satire (which not everyone gets or likes) and it pointed out a real problem. Now, some people were offended and took it out on the author. I just want to say that the situation is infuriating but we can’t take it out on the person who illustrates the problem, Jon was articulating a severe inconsistency between what we say and what we do in the ‘church’.

Here is his post: http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/2011/11/stuff-christians-guys-like-girls-that-have-a-past/ let me know what you think. It got over 500 responses.

Post 2: Rachel Held Evans (one of my favorite bloggers) put up a post called “13 things that make me a bad feminist”. It is part of a series that she does from time to time – she has also admitted to being a bad ‘evangelical’ and ‘progressive’. This post went over like a lead-balloon . This led to a guest-post the following day.

Here is the post: http://rachelheldevans.com/13-things-lousy-feminist . It got 149 responses.

Post 3: my co-host Tripp Fuller came out of the closet as not being ‘open and affirming’ on a video from Two Friars and a Fool. His contention was that affirming letters – whether L, B, G, Q, T, I or any other dash or asterisk – is an inherently limited response. It has two great dangers:

it makes us feel like what have really done something, when all we have really done is
conceded the initial ground rules to the entrenched system.

The problem is that the system is capitalism and that means that ‘acceptance’ is becoming both something to market and a new group to be marketed to.

Tripp’s point of contention is that the gospel of Jesus calls the whole system into account. We can’t concede the rules of the game and then think that we are going to bring about the best-of-all-possibilities. The structure itself must be contested. The system can not be catered to – it must be undermined and subverted. People are too valuable to God to be classified by their genitalia or the genitalia of who they are attracted to. This was not received too well for the most part.

Here is the post: http://twofriarsandafool.com/2011/11/identity-politics-are-not-the-gospel/ it got 84 responses.

___

My take:

The 3,000 year old gender roles in the oldest parts of the Bible merely reflect that culture’s understanding and are not the last word on ‘natural’ design.
The 2,000 year old gender roles in the New Testament were written in context where women were basically property. They need to be revisited and revised.
The idea of ‘original sin’ is a constructed idea and not biblical. What it is addressing, however, is real and I think we all acknowledge that. It needs to be addressed in better ways without pre-modern understandings imposed upon it.
Until we address these three subject the conversation will always circle around and around in endless and unhelpful loops of misunderstanding: 1) social conditioning 2) constructed reality 3) biological implications of being mammals.

I would be very excited to enter into this conversation if we did not live in such a contentious and acidic ‘Argument Culture‘. Thoughts?

Filed Under: bible stuff, conversations, engaging, latest, living, news, politics, post-something, Stuff Liberal Christians Like, thinking Tagged With: Bible, church, female, feminine, feminist, genger, homosexuality, male, rachel held evans, sex, sexuality, Stuff Christians Like, Tripp Fuller

Reframing Sexuality

February 21, 2011 by Tripp Fuller 5 Comments

Brian Ammons is a Duke professor, progressive Baptist church planter, blogger, tweeter, and Big Tent Christianity veteran (as in he was at both!). This is one of his talks from Big Tent on reframing sexuality. Soon you will see him and Richard Rohr talking it up too!!!

Filed Under: engaging Tagged With: Big Tent Christianity, brian ammons, homosexuality, sexuality

God Hates Shrimp!

January 23, 2009 by Chad Crawford 1 Comment

Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God’s law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye’s shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.

GodHatesShrimp.com

Facebook Group

ht: Bobby Hopkins

Filed Under: engaging Tagged With: homosexuality, Leviticus, LGBT

Facebook Hermenutics Lesson

What God doesn’t say and how not to read the Bible

Extremely White Male & Incredibly Homophobic

HBC Top 11 Blogs of 2011

Heaven – we have a problem! (with sexuality)

Reframing Sexuality

God Hates Shrimp!

Search

Support the brew

The latest

Transforming Christian Theology

The Homebrewed Hosting Service

Friends