1. How Did It Come To This?
Every United Methodist church is having to make a decision in the next few years. That decision is whether or not to remain a United Methodist church. In general terms, the current split is over the church’s stance on homosexuality. There is a long and complicated history surrounding this issue, and so over the next several blog posts I will attempt to cover as many issues as I can. For now I will just talk about how we got to this particular point.
In 1968 two denominations joined together, the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church, creating a new denomination known as the United Methodist Church. One of the practices set in place was to have a General Conference every four years. In the United Methodist Church, a General Conference is a gathering of elected leaders, both clergy and lay leaders (regular church leaders who are not pastors) who act as the legislative branch of the church. It might help to think of it almost like a session of congress. At the 1972 General Conference, the first official stance on homosexuality made its way into the Book Of Disciple, the rules and regulations that every United Methodist church is supposed to follow. The words have changed a little over the past 50 years, but here is the official language as it stands now.
Human Sexuality
We affirm that sexuality is God's good gift to all persons. We call everyone to responsible stewardship of this sacred gift.
Although all persons are sexual beings whether or not they are married, sexual relations are affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.
We deplore all forms of the commercialization, abuse, and exploitation of sex. We call for strict global enforcement of laws prohibiting the sexual exploitation of children and for adequate protection, guidance, and counseling for abused children. All persons, regardless of age, gender, marital status, or sexual orientation, are entitled to have their human and civil rights ensured and to be protected against violence. The Church should support the family in providing age-appropriate education regarding sexuality to children, youth, and adults.
We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God's grace is available to all. We will seek to live together in Christian community, welcoming, forgiving, and loving one another, as Christ has loved and accepted us. We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.
There is a bit of extra history to this statement then I’ll get into at the moment, but if you want further reading, click here. Almost all of the talks about splitting the UMC is about one particular statement, “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” This statement seems fairly benign on its own. But just to be abundantly clear, what this statement means in practice is that the United Methodist Church currently does not allow the ordination of practicing homosexuals, ordained pastors are not allowed to perform homosexual weddings, and homosexual couples can not get married in United Methodist churches. This has never been a completely accepted stance. What I mean is, this issue has been debated at nearly every single General Conference since the first. However, at every single General Conference there haven’t been enough votes to change the statement.
In 2019, there was a special Conference to discuss just this issue. It was called the Commission on a Way Forward. They presented three options to vote on: The One Church plan, The Traditionalist plan, and the Connectional Conference plan. The connectional conference plan was too complicated and never had a serious backing. The Traditionalist plan was designed to leave the language in the discipline the same. The One Church plan would essentially remove that one phrase and allow, but not require, conferences to ordain homosexual pastors, and allow, but not require, local pastors and churches to perform or host same sex weddings.
The Traditional plan won by a slim majority vote of those delegates (438 yes to 384 no). It was scheduled to be sent to the Judicial Council (the UMC’s equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States) and then other parts pertaining to it voted on during the General Conference in 2020. One thing that was officially approved and put into action was paragraph 2553 of the Book of Discipline. This lays out the process for disaffiliation. I believe the original assumption was that this would provide a way for progressive churches to disaffiliate. However, progressive church leaders have clearly stated that they won’t be going anywhere. As a result, Traditional churches are now the ones leaving the UMC.
This seems to be a counterintuitive response. If the Traditional plan, which has been in place for 50 years, is still the official plan, why are the churches who are the most supportive of it leaving? There are a few different reasons. Because progressive churches have stated they aren’t leaving, this means that the UMC will likely continue to see debates and calls for change at every General Conference. There is definitely a weariness factor where Traditional churches are just tired of the debates and would love to spend time and energy on other matters. There is a concern that, as the American Church becomes more and more affirming, eventually the traditional view will be overturned, or that there will be a split between the American church and the more traditional churches around the rest of the world. Another factor is that there is no guarantee that the current guidelines for disaffiliation will continue to be offered. Paragraph 2553.2 (also referred to as the “sunset clause”) only lasts until Dec. 31 of 2023. This doesn’t mean that churches will no longer be able to disaffiliate, just that the terms and conditions that currently apply will likely change. The prevailing assumption is that they will be harsher, or more costly, and so there is a sense of urgency to disaffiliate before that deadline. Perhaps the most stated reason Traditionalists are leaving the UMC is due to the disciplinary actions for those churches and pastors who do not abide by the current book of Discipline. The disciplinary action prescribed as of the 2019 Commission on a Way Forward conference for performing a same sex wedding is a year suspension without pay for the first offense and being defrocked on the second offense. There have been several instances where this action has not taken place, which is seen as a way of circumventing the official stance of the UMC.
A plan was proposed and signed in December of 2019 to have the Traditionalist side of the UMC create its own denomination. It was going to the General Conference in 2020 to be voted on. Unfortunately, COVID not only caused that Conference to be delayed, but essentially that conference has been delayed until 2024 (which also happens to be when the next scheduled conference would have been anyway). This means that the guidelines in Paragraph 2553 expire before this plan can be voted on.
Instead of waiting for the next General Conference, a group of United Methodist churches, largely collaborating with the Wesleyan Covenant Association, created a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church. This new denomination started May 1 of this year and its launch has caused some to start talking more seriously about disaffiliation. There are more things to be said about the GMC, but that will be saved for a later time.
All of this leads to our current situation. There are many unknowns and few certainties. Yet, it is a hotly debated topic and one that many feel needs to be addressed immediately. First, I want to caution against giving into a sense of panic. From the time of this writing, we have over 500 days before the the deadline of the “sunset clause”. We have plenty of time to assess our current situation, explore options, and prayerfully discern what we believe God is calling us to do. Over the next couple of blogs I will start to explore what options are before us, but what you find below are the basic options.
Continue to be a United Methodist Church
Join another existing denomination
Partner with a group of non-denominational churches
Create our own non-denominational church.
2. Joining Another Denomination
Last time I laid out my understanding of how our church has gotten to the point where we need to make a decision about whether or not we continue to be a United Methodist Church. Today I am going to explore in a bit more depth the options before us.
Our first option is to continue to be a United Methodist Church. We would continue to abide by the Book of Discipline, pay our apportionments to our Annual Conference, and stay within the organizational structure of leadership and accountability. The following is just speculation, but here is what I foresee happening in the UMC over the next few decades.
The UMC in America will continue to lean progressive and push for the removal of the statement “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” However, there will continue to be contention, because while the American church will lean progressive, the rest of the world, particularly the UMC in Africa, will continue to lean traditional. The reason this makes such a difference is that, in broad terms, the total UMC membership in the USA is declining, while the UMC membership around the world is increasing. What this ultimately means for the UMC stance on human sexuality I can’t say. One of the major factors will be how many Traditional churches leave the UMC before the next General Conference. For every traditional church that leaves the UMC, the likelihood that the language is removed in the next few years increases. If that happens, I foresee a larger portion of our overseas churches disaffiliating leaving the change permanent. If the language isn’t changed and the overseas churches stay with us, I think it will progressively be harder and harder to change the language, meaning that our current statement would be the position of the church for a long time.
I’m assuming that most people’s concerns are what happens if we stay UMC and the language is changed. Of course, this is more speculation since the language hasn’t been changed and neither have the procedures surrounding it, but this is assuming that it will be similar to the One Church plan language. The first thing to note is that pastors, churches, and even conferences will not be forced to perform weddings, host weddings, or ordain homosexuals. The proposed language has been “allow, but not require”. Therefore, a local church would have the freedom to allow a homosexual couple to be married in their church or to deny them that opportunity. A pastor could choose to perform or abstain from performing any wedding they want. A Traditionalists biggest fear is probably that they will be assigned a homosexual pastor. All I can say about this is that I have faith that the Bishop and District Superintendents are smart enough and conscious enough to avoid situations where they would knowingly assign a pastor to a church that would immediately reject them.
I said last time that staying a UMC is the simplest choice. It may not seem like it after all of that, but we mostly know the challenges that lie before us if we choose this option. If we decide to disaffiliate, we have multiple options before us. The simplest to say is that we would join with another denomination. However, that decision is anything but simple.
For starters, there are currently over 200 Christian denominations in the United States. Obviously, the list of denominations we would likely consider is substantially smaller than that. As a thought experiment, I’ve selected 4 denominations that I think are likely to be at least briefly considered: the Global Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.
The Global Methodist Church (GMC) is newly formed as a result of the plan that I mentioned last time that was signed in December of 2019. The GMC officially launched May 1, 2022 and is working off a transitional book of doctrines and discipline. Here are a few things to note. There is no fee to join this denomination. They do not have a trust clause for church property, which means that the property “owned” by our church would continue to be owned by our church. (Under the UMC Book of Discipline, the church’s property is held in a trust by the denomination. So while our congregation has built and paid for the building and property, it is officially owned by the denomination, not our local church.)
In addition to the view on Human Sexuality, the GMC will differ from the UMC in educational requirements for clergy (less education is required in the GMC), the range of theological beliefs (UMC is “big Tent” in that there is a wide range of acceptable views from traditional to progressive. GMC has a stricter view of doctrines and will remove any clergy who stray from their congregational fidelity.) There are some other minor differences concerning retirement age, ordination process, and apportionments, but for the average church leader these things won’t make a difference in if they want to join the GMC or not. A particularly divisive change to its human sexuality statement is the addition of “gender is defined at birth”.
The Church of the Nazarene is included in this short list for a couple of reasons. The first is that I am very familiar with this denomination. It is also larger than the next two denominations and is more conservative than the UMC. Theologically, the COTN focuses more on holiness and entire sanctification. They do not believe in infant baptism (they will do baby dedications). The biggest issue I see is that the COTN has a statement against the consumption of alcohol. They completely abstain from alcohol, and I have even known COTN pastors who have lost their ordination because of alcohol. It is an extremely mission minded denomination. On the practical side, there is no itineracy system. Each church is free to hire or fire any pastor they want (who has a current minister license in the COTN). I am currently unsure of what requirements would be necessary to become a Nazarene church.
The Wesleyan Church is a much smaller denomination (around 220,000 members in the US and Canada compared to UMC 7.5 million). It shares all of its roots with Methodism and was one of many splits that happened in the mid 1800’s due to slavery. It is a more conservative denomination than the UMC and theologically teaches a second work of grace (similar to entire sanctification in the COTN) and also that the Bible is inerrant in it’s original manuscripts (a more conservative view of scripture than the UMC). I have not seen an official process for becoming a WC but they have a very simple process for a new church listed here.
The final denomination that I assume we will consider is the Free Methodist church. Much like the Wesleyan church is was formed in the middle 1800’s over the issue of slavery (they were for freeing the slaves, hence the name). It is even smaller than the WC at 77,000 members in the US. Theologically, the FMC is more conservative that the UMC, also emphasizing entire sanctification/holiness, but it is less liturgical and ceremonial than traditional Methodism. There is a process for affiliation outlined here, which includes a statement about the choice for entering into a trust clause for church property.
The other possibility for joining an existing denomination is to join an already established non-denominational church. In our area, we have a few great examples of these churches in Liberty, Momentum, and Destiny Worship Center. Each of these churches have demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach our community for Christ. I won’t spend much time on them because each one has a unique set of beliefs (part of why they are non denom), varying reaches, and various structures. I also don’t know if any of these churches would accept us as one of their own, and if they did, what those requirements would be. Even if we found one of these churches to affiliate with, because of the nature of non-denoms, there is no guarantee that in ten years they would hold the same beliefs.
This leaves one last option, creating our own nondenominational church. This is by far the most complicated option and it deserves its own separate discussion.
3. Becoming a Non-Denominational Church
If we chose to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church, we could potentially join another denomination or create our own sets of beliefs and practices, also known as becoming non-denominational. None of them are easy or perfect solutions, and some of them have a cost or loss of freedom. This has led many to consider becoming a non-denominational church. This has some very attractive qualities to it, however it is also the most complicated option available to us.
We’ll start out with some of the good parts about being our own nondenominational church. The first is that we will no longer have apportionments to pay to a larger governing body. As a United Methodist church, we give a portion of our tithes and offerings to our annual conference. This money covers administrative costs, helps developing churches, and goes towards various missions and ministries that are not part of any single local church. After doing some calculations based on attendance, giving, etc. Navarre UMC pays roughly $45,000 in apportionments. Along similar lines, the property that is owned by the church would be completely owned by us, meaning we could buy, sell, or otherwise manage our property without having to get approval from a larger governing body.
There are a few marked negatives of not being part of a larger denomination. Most of these come in times of crisis or emergencies. There is a layer of protection from the conference when it comes to legal issues. They have lawyers and legal advisors who have created certain policies and will step in if needed. There are also organizations such as UMCOR that would help if our church was seriously damaged in a natural disaster. We also lose connections with other like-minded churches and it can create isolated clergy.
One of the first things we would have to do as a nondenom is create our own doctrines and discipline (to borrow the phrase from the GMC). This is going to be an enormous undertaking. We would either have to start from scratch on entire systems and beliefs or take an existing document (such as the Book of Discipline) and edit it for our own needs. Just for a reference on the scale of his task, the Book of Discipline is almost 1,000 pages and there’s a companion book called the Book of Resolutions that is another 900 pages.
This presents us with the first dilemma. How and when will we decide what goes into the first edition of this document? Do we create this document before we disaffiliate so that our congregation knows what they are getting into or do we disaffiliate first and create this document afterwards? There is no set process for how this is supposed to work, and whatever method we choose will have a major impact on the type of church we become. I’m assuming there would be a small group of people who would have to do the brute force work of going through the discipline and selecting which bits they would like to keep, which bits they would like to change, and which bits would no longer apply to an autonomous church. Even this initial sorting process will be heavily influenced by people’s current personal convictions. Furthermore, the selection process for who is in this group is influenced by personal opinions because they lean towards selecting people who they think will behave a certain way.
After these portions are identified, who will be responsible for the rewriting of these paragraphs? In the UMC, there’s typically a lawyer of some sort who crafts the initial language, and even then there are entire sessions spent on word-smithing individual words or sentences. We would be asking a dozen or so people to do all of that in a very short amount of time, none of whom have that type of training. Eventually, we would need to actually adopt this document. Would this be the sole decision of the pastor, of a church council type group, or would we take it to the entire congregation (which could also be restricted or not to the members of our church, depending on if we’ve already decided how membership would work). Furthermore, we would have to decide if it was an all or nothing adoption of the entire document or if individual clauses would be up for discussion (and if so what the revision process would be). Would we require a majority vote or a two-thirds vote? At this point, I’m bringing up a little too many issues intentionally, but it’s because each of these will actually need to be discussed and it’s just the surface of the scope this will entail. We also have to determine how often and who will have the authority to change the wording of this document. In the UMC, it’s every four years and by the majority vote of delegates sent to General Conference (some issues require a two thirds majority).
One issue that will immediately come to the forefront is how our church will fill the role of lead pastor. As a non-denom, there will be no itineracy. If Pastor Alan leaves the UMC, we would have to decide if we ask him to stay as our pastor (and if it requires a vote of some kind). He would then have to also decide if he wants to stay at our church, because at this point he has the ability to leave if he wants regardless of what a bishop or DS says. Even if he is the first pastor of our new church, eventually the position will need to be filled. Who offers the oversight of the pastor, do we attempt to do year contracts similar to the appointment system, and other issues are all things that have to be decided. Yet in the search for the eventual new pastor, non denominational churches have a big disadvantage. First, there is no pool of automatic candidates who are of the same denomination. There is no overseeing group who gives us a pastor or even recommends one. We’d have to find our own pastor. Not only would we not likely be able to pull from a known denomination (those pastors would have to give up their own pensions and benefits) but we would have to have extremely theologically competent people on the search committee who knew our beliefs in and out since there is no guarantee that there is another nondenominational pastor who would share our beliefs. (This is also the reason why we would have to have the procedure for changing doctrines and beliefs firmly established, because any new pastor with a different theology could potentially try to change them to match their own).
My largest concern with a nondenominational church is that it is far too common for these churches to develop dangerous and heretical believes, or to cover up scandals. Far too much is decided by a small group of people, and without proper oversight there is the ability to get “yes men” in all the right places to lead to a corrupt environment. Of course, the most ironic part of choosing a nondenominational church is that it takes far less to change doctrines and policies than it does in a larger denomination. So even though we have complete control over the creation of our denomination, a few bad nominations could completely derail the best laid plans.
4. A Biblical Exploration
Up until this point, I have only explored the consequences of staying with the UMC or disaffiliating. There is still much more to explore, but going too far down each of those rabbit trails before we address this issue will be time wasted. This blog is not an attempt to convince you of one particular stance or another. This is instead a blog about how hundreds of church leaders, many whom spent nearly a decade getting a doctorate in theology, with combined centuries of experience have come to completely different conclusions about what the Bible says about this issue. And trust me, both sides fully believe that they are interpreting scripture as best as they can.
I suppose the best place to start is by looking at what the Bible actually says about homosexuality. It sounds easy enough, and if you were expecting a long list of passages you might be surprised to know that there are only six verses that directly talk about homosexuality, three in the Old Testament and three in the New.
The first one we’ll talk about is found in Genesis 19 and is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Let’s read how this story starts off:
The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.” 3 But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.
I won’t go into detail with the rest of the story, but essentially because of the wickedness of these men, sulfur and fire rained down from heaven and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. I encourage you to read the rest of the story on your own so you’re not just taking my word for it, but you won’t find any other references to homosexuality in this narrative. It might surprise some of us to realize that this is actually one of the passages that people have been using to condemn homosexuality. You hopefully noticed that it never actually uses that word or even similar language. One of the strongest ties to this passage is the use of the word sodomite, which comes from the name of one of these cities and is used as a name for homosexuals in later passages.
One of the key things we will have to deal with as we explore these passages is the difference between a surface reading and deep dives. What I mean by surface reading is that when we read it in English, whichever translation we might be using, we take it basically as it’s written. I understand that this description doesn’t really give this the merit it deserves. Believe it or not, there is a whole lot to be said for a plain surface reading of scripture. The first thing is that dozens of people have worked extremely hard to translate the Bible so that we can read it in English. Depending on which translation you use depends on if they do word for word translations or thought for thought, but either one is extremely accurate. They have also been the result of centuries of tradition for why it’s been translated that way. So in full fairness, the Bible we see in English is really the result of very smart people doing deep dives of their own to present us with an easy way to read scripture.
Deep dives will include word studies and cross references. In the Wesleyan tradition that means we use something called a quadrilateral to look at scripture through the lens of tradition, experience, and reason. It’s looking at it from many different perspectives including the culture and context of the original author, the context within the larger collection of scriptures, how people throughout the centuries have interpreted that passage, and so on. We don’t have enough time to do true deep dives on each of these passages, but we’ll hit some of the more important points, although I have to admit these are more the conclusions of deep dives than the act of exploring them.
Let’s look back at Genesis 19 at a surface level. Does it mention homosexuality? By name, no. Does it mention an act of attempted homosexuality? Yes, it does. But I also have to ask, would this event have been any less wicked if the attempted rape had been on women? Would we be completely comfortable with the men’s actions if the two angels had been female instead of male? I shouldn’t have to say this, but rape is wrong regardless of which genders the parties are. There are two Biblical clues that suggest the real wickedness here wasn’t homosexuality. The first one is the very next verse which says
Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”
Lot’s main concern seems to be the shelter he is providing for the angels. He didn’t say do nothing to these men because they are men. He says do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof. This makes sense when you look at the hospitality laws and customs. One of the repeated phrases and themes in the Old Testament is to look after the foreigner in your midst, and while those laws weren’t written down in the Torah yet, it appears Lot was still concerned about how foreigners were treated.
The second clue comes much later in the Book of Ezekiel. In chapter 16 he says: This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. This seems to confirm that Lot wasn’t really concerned about the gender issue. If you take the Ezekiel passage into account, it would leave you wondering why the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is the default story for opposing same sex relationships. Nothing in the surrounding verses points back to same sex being the issue, but rather points to not helping the poor and needy and the foreigners in their midst. I think that the reason this passage is continually brought up is because of the use of the word sodomite. But no matter how we read it, the most we can say about Genesis 19 is that same sex relations wasn’t the primary cause for the destruction.
The next two passages I’m going to put together because they come from the same book and have similar readings.
Leviticus 18:22 says You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
And later on in Chapter 20:13 it says If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
As with any passage of scripture, here we have the two different levels of interpretation. We have the surface reading, which is probably pretty clear that the Bible says this is an abomination, or something that is vile, shameful, or detestable. The deep dive level though is where this seemingly clear reading can take on a different meaning. First, looking at the larger context of Leviticus, which is basically a book of laws for the Israelites, we find several verses that we obviously don’t follow. Not only are there the laws about the clean and unclean animals which bacon lovers are happy we don’t abide by, but there are commands against messy hair, shellfish, going to church too soon after giving birth, reaping to the very edges of your fields, wearing mixed fabrics, trimming your beard, tattoos, doing any kind of work on Saturday, and even charging interest on loans.
A plain reading of all of these verses would suggest that all of us have done things against the levitical code. Some of the penalties for these things include death. And so we run into a bit of a catch 22 here. If we say that due to a plain reading that homosexuality is wrong, we would also have to say that all of these other things that we regularly do are also wrong. But if we say that bacon cheeseburgers are ok, how do we justify saying homosexuality is still wrong? If we still think these verses point to homosexuality as an abomination, do we as strongly agree that homosexuals should have rocks thrown at them until they die?
Beyond just the context of other Levitical laws, some people will point to New Testament passages such as Hebrews 8:13 (In speaking of “a new covenant,” he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.) as a proof that we aren’t bound by the Old Testament laws anymore and therefore are free to eat all the bacon our arteries can handle. Context within the larger collection of scripture is just one of the aspects of a deep dive. Word studies are on a whole other level of depth. A word study is just taking a look at an individual Greek or Hebrew word and analyzing it’s uses in other parts of scripture, in historical and cultural extra-biblical works, and determining the best translation and interpretation of that word. Let’s take a look at one word in particular that appears in both passages, what does the word abomination even mean? I’m not talking about the English meaning of the word, but the original Hebrew word. If you read these Leviticus passages in Hebrew, you’ll see the word we’ve translated as abomination is “toevah”, which when cross referenced with all the other times that word is used you find it is usually connected to idolatry. There is an argument that within the larger context of Old Testament holiness laws which set Israel apart from the surrounding religions, the use of this word that is generally used in reference to idolatry means that what is being described is actually homosexual relationships through Canaanite religious prostitution. In other words, what Leviticus is describing is an act of worship to a Canaanite fertility God.
I know what some of you are thinking right now. How in the world can you get that out of what we just read? Like I said at the beginning, we don’t have the time to do true deep dives on all of these passages, and this one takes quite a bit of time to understand. But you can follow the process how people have come to this conclusion. It’s taking into context historical and cultural views, it’s taking into account the larger context of the verses within Leviticus, and it is connecting ancient Hebrew words with their other uses. Even if you don’t agree with the conclusion, it’s hard to say that people who hold that view are disregarding the Bible.
And that creates the tension. A surface reading, which I said at the beginning isn’t necessarily a bad reading and contains within it a lot of research to get there to begin with, may lead you in one direction, and a deep dive might lead you in another. And then when you throw in the New Covenant versus old Covenant issue it might not matter either way.
So for now, we’ll leave the Old Testament passages alone and shift our focus to the three New Testament passages. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”
And 1 Timothy 1:9-10 says This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, 10 fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching.
Traditionally, the key word has been translated as sodomites. Sometimes when you translate a word from one language to the next there just isn’t a direct correlation. The word we translate into sodomite is one of those words. There is no equivalent in Greek and some scholars say that the original Greek word means something like softy or one who likes sex too much. Another possible interpretation is that this word is referring more to an adult male and young boy relationship, a term known as pederasty. Those are possible alternate meanings in addition to the translation we usually see as sodomite. There are strong arguments for each of these very different interpretations of a word. It’s a debate that hasn’t been resolved by much smarter people, so I will not attempt to persuade you one way or another here on which translation and true meaning is the best. I will however point to the other things included in those lists. Greed, drunkenness, profanity, liars, and the godless. While we attempt to ensure that our clergy don’t fall into these categories, we have no policy in place that prohibits our clergy from marrying atheists who drink and curse, or preventing those couples from using our buildings for their wedding.
The last verse addressing homosexuality is Romans 1:26-27. 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.
By now you can probably guess what I would say. A surface reading calls homosexual behavior unnatural. Even word studies won’t lead you to a different conclusion. But far from being a nail in the coffin for a definitive stance on today’s same sex issues, there is a slightly different perspective. If you start reading a few verses before, say starting at verse 18 and read through the end of the chapter, you realize that while Paul calls this unnatural, his bigger concern is about people who know God and yet exchanged the Glory of God for images resembling humans, birds, reptiles, and animals. It’s almost as if the mention of same sex relations is a passing phrase in condemnation of a larger issue rather than being it’s own thing.
And that’s it. That is the entirety of what the Bible says about homosexual relationships. There are some other passages that get thrown around sometimes, but it can become an endless cycle of points and counter points. What about the story of Adam and Eve? What about Paul saying everything is permissible? And it could go on and on and on. I told you at the beginning that this isn’t a blog about whether or not this is a sin. The truth is some very smart, devoted followers of Jesus have come down on either side of this issue. None of them are trying to subvert the gospel or lead people astray. They are all doing their best to determine the will of God.
But what I want you to take away from this isn’t necessarily a particular interpretation of scripture, but rather the notion that those who disagree with you are not the enemy. If the church down the road interprets scripture differently than you do, they are not the enemy, they are not ignoring what the Bible says. They are part of the body of Christ. Their mission is the same as ours, of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.