Wrestling With the Bible

Column by Rev. Irene Monroe
October 25, 2018

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 will be to encourage more conservative Christians to read their Bibles with a brand new set of eyes and a compassionate heart. However, to read the Bible with a brand new set of eyes and a compassionate heart Bishop Spong suggests we ‘”find the meaning to which the word ‘God’ points [to].”’ I interpret Spong to mean where we find God in the Biblical text embracing all of humanity with its radical diversity.

The Bible is central to the lives of many Christians. Regrettably,  it has played a salient role in discrimination against all people at different times in this country. Both religious intolerance and fundamentalist Trump-vangelicaism have fostered a climate of spiritual abuse that might leave many people in spiritual exile for the rest of their lives. At present, LGBTQ people are still one of the demographic groups where the Bible is used to discriminate against us.

This past June, the Supreme Court ruled in “Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission” in favor of Jack Phillips, the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig on the grounds of religious freedom.

While the Justices did not grant a license to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans blatantly, I, like so many in our community, was hoping the case would render once and for all a cease-and-desist order; thus, resolving the God versus Gay rights dispute for those who want to codify discrimination against us under the guise of religious freedom. And, while the Justices also did not say the decision will not influence opponents of same-sex marriages, like photographers, florists, wedding planners, wedding venues, honeymoon resorts, to name a few,  the narrow ruling, no doubt, will keep this debate going.

The Bible, regrettably, is the immediate go-to place where many anti-LGBTQ opponents mount their opposition. In 1998, for example, right-wing Christian groups – the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality – ordered all its members to cease using the King James Version of the Bible because historians had proven that King James I of England, who was also known as James VI of Scotland, was indisputably gay.

Should the King James Version of the Bible, which has been around since 1611 and used worldwide, be discarded solely on the basis of King James’ sexual orientation?

Speaking at a press conference about this controversy, Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council said, “I feel uncomfortable that good Christians all over America, and indeed the world, are using a document commissioned by a homosexual. Anything that has been commissioned by a homosexual has obviously been tainted in some way.” Sadly, many have that sentiment in 2018.

The justification for queer bashing stems from the belief of doing God’s will as purported in the Bible, and many Christians -both blacks as well as whites – believe only heterosexuals are elected to do so.

For example, gospel singers Angie and Debbie Winans released a single in 1998 titled “Not Natural,” in which they self-righteously denounced LGBTQ people as children of God. When queried by then newscaster Travis Smiley on the cable show “ Black Entertainment Tonight (BET)“ about what compelled them to come forth and record this song, Debbie Winans stated, “ They don’t come as Angie and Debbie. We come as messengers of God doing His will.”

However, ”doing God’s will” is a prodigious task and unmistakably a human enterprise. As a human enterprise, “doing God’s will” is invariably subject to error because it is fraught with both humble intent and righteous indignation. Its anchor and its impetus are found in the human act of interpreting the Word of God.

Interpreting scripture as the “ ord of God” is always subjective and suspect in intent, whether it is being done in the ivy towers of seminaries or within the holy walls of sanctuaries. Interpreting scripture with menacing messages – and with litanies of dos and don’ts – is not about embracing and empowering all people, but about authority and power over certain groups of people. The authority of scripture does not lie in what God said. It lies in the hands of those in power who determine what God ought to say.

The Bible is replete with contradictory and damning messages to all people. Determining which of these “ texts of terror” are discarded and which are upheld is not a battle about biblical inerrancy or God’s will. It is an unmitigated battle of human will. For example, there are two creationist myths in the Bible (Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:22). The first myth says that God made woman and man simultaneously. The second creation myth is our “rib story” in which Eve is born from a rib of Adam.

Undoubtedly this story has ribbed and poked at Christian women throughout the centuries, since it is the authoritative text for substantiating gender inequity in society. The Curse of Ham (Genesis 9:18-27) and Apostle Paul’s edict to slaves (Ephesians 6:5-8) served as the scientific and Christian legitimization for the enslavement of people of African ancestry. The Sodom and Gomorrah narrative (Genesis 19:1-29) is one of the most quoted scriptures to argue for compulsory heterosexuality and queer bashing.

The invention of sodomy is rooted in Christian theology. The anti-sodomitic theological tradition derives from a homophobic and misogynist reading of the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative in Genesis 19. As one of the most quoted scriptures to argue for compulsory heterosexuality, the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative has become authoritatively damaging not only to LGBTQ people, but to women as well, because women are the real victims we read about in the text, and LGBTQ people are the scapegoats who are read into the text.

Functioning in this culture as one of the paradigmatic biblical texts of terror, the narrative is used to police the sexual behaviors of LGBTQ people and women, but the text is not used to police the sexual behaviors and sexual violence of men. The preferential treatment given to men in this text ironically carries over into our real lives today; thus, setting up unequal gender and sexual dynamics that set the stage for unequal power dynamics in our bedrooms that is not only unsettling for women and LGBTQ people, but also unsafe for them. How often have we heard of women being raped not by strangers on the street, but instead by male members of their own families? And how often have we heard of “The Gay Panic Defense,” an anti-gay strategy employed by attorneys to win an acquittal for a homophobic client who claims that an LGBT person came on to him – providing his “justification” for killing the person.

Present-day feminist and queer biblical scholars who are in opposition to anti-sodomitic theological tradition contest that the narrative has nothing to do with homosexual sex, but instead the text is about inhospitality to male strangers and sexual violence toward women.

In reference to the two uninvited male strangers/angels who come to the city of Sodom to inform Lot of the city’s impending destruction, for example, Lot says to the crowd of riotous men outside of his door (verses 7-8), “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 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.”

Therefore, one would argue that the sin of Sodom is not about the sexual acts between consenting LGBT people, but instead that the sin of Sodom is about the cultural acceptance of sexual violence toward women, and in Lot’s days women were the property of their fathers and husbands. Also, all later biblical references to the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative do not associate the story to homosexuality, but instead to wickedness, idolatry, desolation, and destruction.

Religion has become a peculiar institution in the theater of human life. Although its Latin root “religio” means “to bind,” it has served as a legitimate power in binding people’s shared hatred. Regrettably, the Bible has been one tool used to do it.

Unfortunately, many Christians do not make the connection between the struggle LGBTQ people face today and their own.  If we Christians all knew our history, we would know that  LGBTQ people stand firmly on the shoulders of the early Christians. Until 4th Century A.D. when the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Christians were despised as much in those days as LGBTQ people are today. As a matter of fact, to be called a Christian was considered a religious epithet, and it subjected  Christians to ridicule, hate crimes and Christian-bashing in much of the same way as we LGBTQ people are today. Just as  Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old first year student   at the  University of Wyoming in October 1998 (twenty years ago this month) was bludgeoned and then nailed  to wooden fence, like a hunting trophy, because he was gay,  Stephen, a follower of Jesus was stoned to death in 35 A.D. because he was a Christian, becoming the first Christian martyr. And, Apostle Paul,  before he saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and stopped his Christian bashing, was one of the many approving bystanders at Stephen’s stoning.

As LGBTQ people, many of us allow the power of God’s will to be interpreted and executed by heterosexuals by not knowing the Bible ourselves. Our ignorance about the Bible, whether we are practicing atheists or recovering Christians, perpetuates our oppression and makes us participants in this religious climate of homophobia. As more and more LGBTQ people unabashedly take back the Bible, new theological and ethical questions must be raised.

As our society crawls toward diversity and inclusiveness, the moral imperative calls for the prophetic voices of LGBTQ people and our allies in the same manner that the civil rights movement in this country called for the prophetic voices of African Americans.

Is it the will of God to devalue and to dehumanize the lives of women, people of color, people of different religions and belief systems and LGBTQ people, to name a few? On the question of race, religion, and gender, most Americans-both Christians and non-Christians-clearly see the answer as no. But on the subject of sexual orientation, many of our heterosexual brothers and sisters are biblically challenged.

However, reading the Bible with a brand new set of eyes and a compassionate heart always points to where God is -embracing all of humanity with its radical diversity.

~ Rev. Irene Monroe

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About the Author
The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) – Detour

Monroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.

Monroe stated that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.

Question & Answer

Q: By A Reader

Is there some hidden reason why you treat the issue of homosexuality so frequently? Are you gay?

A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong

Dear Reader,

I am amazed that prejudice against homosexual persons is so deep that people like you think there must be some hidden agenda that would motivate a person to take up the battle for justice and full acceptance in both Church and society for gay and lesbian people. "He must have an angle," they say. "Perhaps he is a closeted homosexual." Actually, the surprising thing that we discover over and over is that some of the most vigorous religious opponents of homosexuality, including some who are bishops are in fact covering their own closeted homosexuality in their frequent attacks on homosexual persons.

No David, my sexual orientation is heterosexual and is not my agenda. My agenda comes out of my understanding of the Gospel. If we take seriously the words attributed to Jesus in the 4th Gospel, "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly," then the enhancement of life is at the center of Christian ministry. The reverse of that is true also. Anything that diminishes the life of any child of God is a violation of both the Gospel and its mission.

When the Church discriminated against people of color, defining them as less than fully human and deserving of something less than equal opportunity, the Gospel was violated. So I joined in the civil rights movement and worked in my church to put an end to every vestige of racism in my church. I rejoice that today the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, where I grew up in a segregated church, has as its elected Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, an African American.

When the Church discriminated against women, defining them as lesser creatures, unworthy to serve the Church except in secondary roles, which specifically excluded being bishops, priests and deacons, I joined the crusade to rid the Church of its sexist and patriarchal sin. I rejoice today that my church now has 12 female bishops and, in the diocese I served for 24 years, women constitute more than 40% of its clergy. Some other parts of the Christian Church, including Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox traditions and various branches of conservative Protestantism like the Southern Baptist Convention still wallow in this prejudice of the ages, but increasingly these bodies look like apparitions from another century.

When the Church, out of its own lack of understanding of sexual orientation, expresses a profound ignorance about homosexuality, it is, in my opinion, not worthy of serious attention. When church leaders violate what we now know about the Bible to employ proof texts to bolster their prejudices, they violate what it means to be "the Body of Christ." Discrimination on the part of the Christian Church against any child of God on the basis of any external difference is not a matter of a simple disagreement about which we ought to be tolerant, it is rather a dagger aimed at the very heart of the Gospel. The Church tolerates that prejudice at the peril of its own soul.

The battle that goes on today in the churches of the world over this enormous moral issue regarding justice and the full acceptance for homosexual persons in both the Church and the society is a battle for the future of Christianity. I would be derelict in response to my baptismal vows "to seek Christ in every person" if I did not engage this battle until the last vestiges of homophobia have been rooted out of the Christian faith. I intend to do just that. I commend this same course of action to you.

~ Bishop John Shelby Spong
July 2, 2003

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Free to Believe: A Voice from the United
Reformed Church of England

Recently, while on a lecture tour of England, I was the keynote speaker at a national conference of the United Reformed Church of England. This body, the result of a merger within Protestantism during the last century between English Presbyterians and English Congregationalists, serves as leaven in the lump of English religious life. It has always been a small church, as the Free Churches are in the land of the established Church of England, claiming at its highest point, no more than 200,000 members. Today it is probably half that size. Yet it has produced great leaders like Donald Hylton, Roberta Rominger and David Grosch-Miller, to say nothing of Fred Kaan, who is probably the premier Christian hymn writer in the 20th century.

This church has also spawned a vigorous movement within its liberal wing that is a sign of renewed vitality. Four years ago about twenty members of this church gathered together to form a group of seekers who were willing to explore the edges of the Christian faith. Today, this group numbers just under 500. They, like their counterparts in every branch of Christianity, are identified as the frontier walkers inside their part of the Christian faith. They are eager to engage their congregations in a study of contemporary biblical scholarship and its impact on traditional faith symbols. They are willing to debate the creeds, the core doctrines of their church and the various movements within the contemporary theological landscape. Yet they are still quite self-consciously Christian, demonstrating that the things they seek to do can be done with integrity inside a living religious system. These people are demanding of their Church the freedom to confront these ideas without fear. They are not concerned when traditional church voices accuse them of being faithless. Their commitment to Christ is so secure, they are willing to roam outside traditional boxes, take on the issues of public debate with the secular society and even to learn about the other faith traditions of the world. Generally speaking, these are the very things that most churches that are more interested in security than in truth have not been willing to do.

This group, who adopted “Free to Believe” as their title, has now sponsored four national conferences. I have been privileged to be the keynote speaker at both the first and the fourth of these gatherings. Meeting this year at the large Hayes Conference Centre in Swanick, Derbyshire, near the literal center of England, the “Free to Believe” conference attracted the largest audience in its history. Because progressive Christians always tend to transcend denominational structures, this conference also had registrations from the Methodists, the Anglicans, the Baptists and the Roman Catholics in addition to the majority from the sponsoring United Reform Church. Many of these delegates were ordained clergy, the balance were active laypersons. All of them also tended to be involved in England’s Progressive Christian Network, chaired by the gifted Anglican priest, Hugh Dawes, and his equally able wife, Jill Sandham. The “Free to Believe” movement is part of a worldwide grass roots revolt against the narrow theological and political interests that so deeply shape the current religious scene, from the religious right in America through the fundamentalists of Africa to the Vatican itself. At this conference there was enormous energy as well as the sense of hope and encouragement for those who sometimes feel isolated, alone and occasionally even battered by “defenders of the faith” who come in both a Protestant and a Catholic form.

The content of my lectures was drawn from my forthcoming book, Jesus for the Non-Religious scheduled for publication in March of 2007. Among the issues we discussed were: How can one separate the eternal and real God experience from the traditional and warped explanations of that experience that were shaped by a world view vastly different from our own? What is the place of the Bible in the contemporary church once one has been freed from thinking that this book is in any sense the literal, dictated words of God? What has happened to Christianity in our day that it is consumed with issues of human sexuality about which the Christian Church has no track record of either competence or expertise? When Christianity surrenders its claims to be the only doorway into God or heaven, what keeps it from sinking into a sea of total relativity? How can one be deeply committed to his or her own faith path and still be open to the insights of the other great religions of the world? I cannot imagine any of those topics taking up much time among church people just a generation ago. It was a packed three days with the people so deeply engaged that every meal around the tables of eight in the great dining hall turned into a seminar, and every tea break (an inevitable part of an English conference) into a time for animated conversation. Even the daily evening gathering in the Conference Center’s pub for the traditional English “pint” proved to be a time for continued discussion. The fact that this very evangelical conference center had its own fully stocked bar made me know that there are differences between English evangelicals and America’s neo-fundamentalists.

There is a sense of urgency about the future of the Christian Church across the world, particularly among those who are not evangelicals, fundamentalists or traditionalists. It is created by the fact that these people see the conservative tide of religion rising and they know that they can never be part of that. If that is what Christianity is turning into being then they wonder if there will be a place for them in the Christianity of tomorrow. They shudder at the pronouncements by well-known evangelical spokespersons as well as by Benedict XVI, none of whom appear to inhabit the same world in which they live. They see the rise of what might be called ‘secular’ biblical scholars and theologians who, like so many in the Jesus Seminar, are academicians with little concern for what happens to institutional religion by which they feel both marginalized and/or rejected. They watch as churches become mere enclaves of a previous world that no longer exists in our increasingly secular society. Above all a conference like this one gives those attending a chance to embrace the fact that they are part of a new movement within the church that says no to yesterday’s understanding of Christianity but not to Christianity itself.

Only time will tell whether we are witnessing in this movement the birth of a new reformation or just the bounce of the dead cat of organized religion.

At the closing worship service of this conference, The Reverend Martin Camroux, current president of “Free to Believe” and a pastor in the United Reformed Church of England was the preacher. His words were so insightful and penetrating and summed up so well the experience of the conference that I conclude this column by quoting him:

“The simple fact is that the churches today are falling apart. Harry Emerson Fosdick predicted in the 1920’s that we would lose generation after generation of the brightest and best young people if we could not preach a Christianity that was intellectually credible.

Yet religion is not dying out. In the opinion polls 65% of English people still say they believe in God; 40% say they have had moments in which this God has been real. The large bookstores have spirituality sections that are filled with books on prayer, self-help and healing. Institutional religion might well be in trouble, but the spiritual search is real.

Second, scholars know a great deal about the debates that raged in the early years of Christian history and the time at which they were solved. They also know how and when complex ecclesiastical structures were formed. So when a book of the Bible reveals a calmness where once there was a raging debate or when scholars see structures that were not present in early church history, these things become factors in the dating process.

It is almost as if there is something about us that yearns for God, as if we are “wired” for religion and as if the empty space inside each of us can only be filled by God. St. Augustine was right, it seems, when he wrote 1,600 years ago, “You have made us for yourself alone and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Paul’s death is also a factor in defining which of the letters attributed to Paul, were actually written by him. The genuine letters have to have been composed between the years 50-64. I Thessalonians and Galatians are thought to be first and second in the Pauline corpus, along with I and II Corinthians which seem to be a compilation of at least four letters to the Corinthian church. Romans, dated in the late 50’s, is Paul’s most systematic letter, but even here there is a debate about the authenticity of Chapter 16. II Thessalonians, Philemon and Philippians also appear to be Pauline.

However, none of this translates into healthy church life. A great many people are very suspicious of the Church. They find a significant number of our beliefs incredible or immoral. Twenty years ago, it was widely assumed that Christianity held the moral high ground. Today this is no longer the case and a significant number of spiritual people find the Christianity they have encountered to be wanting. They say: “religion keeps people immature,” or “God is a male despot,” or “Religion is divisive.” “Douglas John Hall, Canada’s foremost theologian, writes, “What happens to the churches when they are abandoned is hardly news.”

They become collectors of a nebulous fellowship, random activism, undifferentiated spirituality, or simply become a group of “nice people” who don’t quite know why they are there but think they ought to be.”

Christendom is over. Churches are going to be much more marginal to society. My own guess is that there will always be some who yearn for the safeties of fundamentalism, some for whom Tarot cards will seem irresistible, but many more will respond to an open liberal faith.

If theologically open churches are going to grow, they need to produce a new kind of ‘liberal Christian.’ It’s not enough for liberalism to be a kind of fallback position for evangelicals who have lost their faith. We need a liberalism that offers spirituality, worship, a way into the numinous and the holy. Too often liberalism is lukewarm, lackluster, laid back, without the capacity to stand up and make its voice heard. They live in a liberal comfort zone often failing to say what they really believe. For liberal churches to thrive, revitalization and resurrection of genuine progressive religion must occur. There must be prophetic voices, prophetic witness and, yes, progressive politics. It’s time to raise up our voices again.”

Well said, Martin! Well said!

~  John Shelby Spong

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