Evangelicalism and Homosexuality

Here's an interesting article on CNN.com's Belief Blog.

There's no surprise about it: homosexuality is a hot-button topic.  I personally do not think Christians, liberal or conservative, can have any truly meaningful conversation on this subject because it has become extremely polarized.  Christians who maintain that homosexuality is sin refuse to discuss this issue in an honest and charitable way with Christians who argue that passages in homosexuality were a reflection of ancient values that no longer apply today.

First of all, I do have strong opinions on this issue in politics.  I did not particularly like President Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriages, not because they are wrong, but because such issues are not to be politicized.  It is the same reason I do not like the abortion issue to be publicized in a political way, because there is a wide segment of the population who do not see abortion as murder, but a personal choice.  So long as there is a wide segment of the population that find this issue to be personal, the Constitution protects their rights.  In my view, if we wish to ban abortion and same-sex marriages by way of politics, then we need to push for a constitutional amendment that restricts freedom of choice to certain contexts, because only then does a democratically-elected and republican form of government have the authority to enact laws defining the boundaries of that freedom.  Either that, or the form of government must be changed so that it is more in-line with a more authoritarian style, such as that in Singapore or mainland China, where the government is not required to be accountable to the citizens and, so, can argue with political authority that the citizens are wrong.  The problem, if we wish to ban abortion and same-sex marriages, is that it cannot happen in a republican polity such as that in the United States, South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan.  That conservative Christians want to ban social sins while simultaneously maintain a republican political arrangement is utterly befuddling to me.  If the church wishes to preserve a republican arrangement of the political system, however, it needs to learn how to persuade charitably in the public sphere.  In my opinion, only the Vatican has the most consistent view on this matter, particularly since their polity, which is a semi-elected absolute monarchy, meshes with their social positions.  That many Catholics worldwide do not necessarily follow every jot and tittle of the Vatican's theological positions, however, illustrates the difficulty the Vatican has in conveying their theological positions in a manner that is persuasive for people, particularly people who were not trained theologically.

But back to the article.  In my view, I find the article right in some areas, and lacking in others.  But what I'm going to do is to complicate the situation and show how the "homosexuality debate" is not just about personal ethics, but about something wider and much more complicated.

Let me first discuss what I disagree with in that article.  Helminiak doesn't seem to understand the role of purity in Western evangelical Christianity.  He writes, for example, that "...Jesus taught lucidly that Jewish requirements for purity - varied cultural traditions - do not matter before God.  What matters is purity of heart."  Yes, what matters is purity of heart, but this purity is being lived out in such a way that the intentions of the Jewish legal requirements are lived out on a daily basis.  Thus, Jesus did not do away with Jewish laws.  He simply made it such that only by the Holy Spirit can the intentions of the law be lived out.  Purity, simply put, still matters to Christians.  That's why the homosexuality issue remains an important issue to be discussed because at stake is sexual purity.  To say that Jewish law do not matter calls into question the purpose of the Old Testament in the Scriptures.  It does!  Very much so!

Having said that, I do appreciate Helminiak's understanding of the Greek.  Conservative evangelicals are known for being excellent cherry-pickers of Scripture.  That is why I find it absolutely bizarre that Christians can justify libertarian, small-government policies as somehow inherently "good" for the poor and it somehow rises up to Jesus' teachings on helping the poor!  Indeed,  as many have noted, if we applied Thomas Jefferson's technique and excised all references to helping the poor in the Scriptures, we'd be left with less than half of the Bible!  Yet, the fact that evangelicals are extremely poor at theologically responding against social injustices, particularly those pertaining to wealth and income inequalities, suggests that we are very much hypocritical in our use of Scripture.  If we are serious about the issue of homosexuality, let us also be just as serious about the issue of poverty, creation care, etc., instead of blithely accepting the economic theology of Milton Friedman and believing in pseudo-scientific efforts to discredit environmental degradation.

Helminiak's article confirms, at least to me, the problem of using Scripture to attack/support homosexuality.  Everyone approaches Scriptures with their own worldview, even if we are not aware of it.  Consider the commandment to honor our parents.  In China, this is interpreted to mean strict obedience.  It has been so since the Bible first entered China in the 17th century.  The Chinese read it as such because the family, not the individual, is the basis of social existence.  The individual is not, per se, valuable; his or her value comes from his or her contribution to the prospering of the wider social politic.  In the West, however, the individual is valuable.  As such, the Chinese interpretation is not as appreciated.

All this to say is that to argue in favor or against homosexuality by picking passages of Scripture is not enough.  If we do so, we're going to be forever mired in proof-texting, biblical hermeneutical approaches, discussing issues of interpretation, etc.  There will be no end to the discussion!  The discussion needs to, rather, be theological and begin not with whether homosexuality is right or wrong, not whether homosexuality is a choice or an inborn condition.  We need to begin with a theology of eros.  What is the role of sexual love within the economy of God's creation?  Is it simply for procreation?  The Roman Catholic church takes that position by tradition and logically deduces that homosexuality is wrong since procreation cannot occur under same-sex marriages.  I have no issues with the Catholic position since tradition holds spiritual authority in their theological tradition.  But for Protestants who do not accept traditions as authoritative, our theological homework requires that we start thinking the metaphysical aspects of sex.  What does it mean for Christians to enjoy sex?  What does it mean for Christian men and women to be attracted to each other?  Where is the dividing line between attraction and lust?  Can a husband lust after his wife (and vice versa)?  And does all this change within a same-sex context?

Conservative evangelicals need to do this theological heavy-lifting.  But historically, this is troubling.  American evangelicalism is more influenced by the ideals of the Scottish enlightenment rather than by rigorous theological thinking (thankfully, evangelicals are slowly realizing its value, much of it thanks to Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind).  The Scottish enlightenment places an emphasis on individual autonomy.  When combined with the fundamentalist strain of Christianity which was common in the U.S. in the 1950s-1960s, the result was a suspicion of rigorous thinking, preferring a simplistic Christianity that refuses to address such theologically complex issues.  That is why during the Gulf War, instead of theological reflections on the ethics of war, evangelicals preferred reading dispensationalist garbage about how Saddam Hussein was the anti-Christ.  Although things are changing within evangelicalism, the fact remains that much work remains to be done.  Evangelicals are still largely suspicious of the creation care movement, and even those who aren't would certainly see abortion and homosexuality as more important moral issues than creation care.  Here at Princeton, I'm heartened to see evangelicals taking courses and learning much from traditionally liberal professors.  Evangelicals are taking courses in environmental theology, critical race theory, even liberation theology!  When I took liberation theology, my (liberal) professor actually had to defend an evangelical (!) for arguing against liberation theology!  What a great example he set for everybody in class!  Would evangelicals defend liberal theologians in the same way!  Hah!  The day that happens may be the day salmon fly.  Oh wait...

Furthermore, many of such discussion are done within the confines of the comfort of those who agree with us.  What if conservative evangelicals met with LGBT theologians and had a civil and charitable discussion on this matter?  To this day, I do not know of any such efforts.  We need it so that stereotypes of each other can be dispelled so we can find where we agree, and begin our theological work from those points of agreement!   And yes, there are points of agreement.  I leave it to you to find those out! (Because if I give it to you, you're going to argue with me from within the confines of your own theological comfort zone)

A topic that has drawn quite a bit of attention is the "decline of the family," which is something brought up by Rev. Billy Graham in a full-page advertisement in a North Carolina newspaper in support of the amendment banning same-sex marriages in NC.  But I think Stanley Hauerwas has addressed the root of the problem instead of Graham who merely makes broad statements without proposing real solutions.  For Hauerwas, in his book Working with Words, the problem behind the "decline of the family" is rooted in how society is ordered.  He disagrees with economist Deirdre N. McCloskey - who is a brilliant economist and able theologian in her own right - that a free-market economy is morally good.  After all, the benefits of competition is outweighed by the stress it puts on families.  Parents, in order to send their children to better schools and prepare them for college, take out loans to afford houses in Naperville.  They both work long hours to pay those loans.

Since we're talking about personal ethics, there was another CNN.com story I read about young children now having easier access to free pornography online (and I mean, sexually-explicit, "hard" pornography, not Abercrombie and Fitch "soft" porn).  In that one story, the mother was distraught that her 12 year old son became a porn addict and it affected his social life and schoolwork.  "I didn't know that he was checking pornography," she said.  But if you're working from 9-5, and so was your husband, who was spending time with him?  Who's sitting with him, chatting, laughing, sharing our stories?  In my view, I'm not surprised he became a porn addict.  When you're alone, your parents aren't around, what's wrong with just a little?  Conservative evangelicals bring up that homosexuality is usually caused by broken families.  But they don't ask, "Why are families broken?"  Is it all a matter of "if they only chose the right person to marry..."  Really?  I think I agree with my mother completely when she says that, "Money is important.  Good marriages can easily be tested and broken when money becomes an issue."  But she follows that with a suggestion: have more money!  I don't think so - it's having a biblical view of money and having the moral courage to take Jesus' warnings about money seriously.

Evangelicals rarely have such moral courage.   That's why people like Ben Lowe are rare.  In fact, I had a discussion with my brother about this.  One of my questions about the evangelical fascination with leaders like Ben Lowe, Francis Chan, etc., is why they are fascinated with them.  Is it because of they inspire us to be more faithful in our walks with Christ (if so, awesome!), or is it because they're examples of people who do great things that we can't do?

Consider Francis Chan.  A father of five children, he gives away 90% of his incomes from his talks, books, etc. to a charity helping rescue children from sex slavery.  He is very combative against what he perceives as lukewarmedness in Christianity.  All that is fine and good.  I hope evangelicals are inspired to emulate him.  Either that, or say, "I can't do what he does.  I admit I have much spiritual growing to do."   But I fear that many are simply "impressed" with him.  Wow!  He's such a radical follower of God!  He has a crazy love for Jesus and cares about the "forgotten God" Holy Spirit!  Wow!  Well, good thing we have him, because I'm not gonna be like him.  Instead, I'm gonna go to engineering school and make six figures and live a suburban life.  The same goes for Ben Lowe.  Are we inspired to truly love God's natural creation intensely?  Or are we simply going, "Wow, I'm glad Ben Lowe's caring the environment. I'll just recycle my plastic bottles, and I'm good to go!"  Knowing Ben, I don't think that's what he's getting at when it comes to "creation care."

In other words, are we simply enamored by those evangelical heroes, or are we empowered by them?  Are we simply glad that they exist (so we don't have to do what they did), or are we empowered to do, to the best of the ability, what they do?  If it's the former, I wonder if the many issues we hold are the ones that we are the most comfortable with, the ones that affect us the least.  It's easy to be libertarian when you live in Naperville.  It's easy to be anti-union if you've never worked in a union job before.  It's easy to be against creation care if you live out in the boonies of Kansas.  And it's easy to be against homosexuality when everyone else is against homosexuality.  I think if we take evangelicalism seriously we need to be consistent in our positions.  We argue that Scripture sees homosexuality as a sin.  Fine, but we need to argue that Scripture sees labor exploitation, excessive wealth, and class inequalities within the church with just the same seriousness as homosexuality.  Why is it, then, that we take abortion so seriously, but conservative Christians don't rail against government-sponsored programs providing free healthcare to young children, school lunches to inner-city schools, medical care to the underprivileged?   Why is it that we argue homosexuality is a choice and is a result of broken families when our economic system is privileging the rich and compelling parents to work longer hours in order to keep their children in the Naperville Public Schools?  Such inconsistency is easily picked out by non-Christians, and in their vocabulary (which I agree with), they see it as hypocrisy.  And I agree.

I haven't had a chance to talk to homosexual Christians about how they wrestled with the Scriptures.  I know some who have found out that the link between homosexuality and broken families is unfounded, and that it indeed is an inborn trait.  I haven't had conversations with those people, and I hope I will have opportunities to do so in the future.  I am right now more concerned about issues of race and Asian-American theology, although I no doubt will come into contact with Asian-American LGBT theologies (largely the work of a Patrick Cheng from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA).  In a society where value judgments are made on people based on their positions, I have not taken a stand on homosexuality, and even if I do have one, I wouldn't disclose it.  As a Chinese-American, I want to contribute to a culture of harmony and unity in America, not to make it even more polarizing.  If people see that as unnerving and disingenuous, fine by me.  If people suspect my conservative/liberal theological orientations, that's fine too - I give them permission to play God and condemn me however they want.

But on the issue of homosexuality, this much I am sure - evangelicals have treated homosexuals like sub-humans, and this itself is as sinful as homosexuality.  We are uncharitable in our discussion with them, preferring acerbic condemnations to honest dialogue.  We ostracize them socially and marginalize them, somehow thinking they deserve it.  Because we live in a secular democracy with a republican polity, I do think that same-sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the Constitution on the premise of freedom of expression.  If we wish to remove that right, we need to rewrite the first amendment so that (1) the freedom of expression and speech is restricted to within legally-defined boundaries, and (2) the freedom of religion is restricted so that a conservative Judeo-Christian interpretation is the norm from which freedom of expression is permitted.  Until those Constitutional amendments are made, the US government has no legal authority to ban same-sex marriage.

But within the church those rights do not apply even with our current Constitution since the Constitution mandates the respect of all religions.  As a result, whether a church can bless same-sex marriages, and whether LGBT peoples can be ordained as ministers, is an important issue that must be discussed.  Churches and denominations have the right to prohibit the blessing of same-sex marriages, and they have the right to withhold ordination of LGBT peoples.   In fact, churches are free - and they often do - to discriminate in terms of gender, race, and even marital status, when it comes to matters of ordination.  However much I abhor churches that discriminate on those three bases, it is very much a legally-protected right.

One last discussion: I have heard the argument that even a little legitimization of same-sex marriage sets the nation on a "slippery slope" towards making homosexuality acceptable to all people.  First of all, that kind of argument was used in the past to justify institutionalized racism.  Secondly, if Christian families are scared, somehow, that their children would become more "liberal" due to the "slippery slope" then my suggestion is to (1) keep teaching your kids conservative values, (2) send them to conservative Christian private schools, (3) don't send them to secular universities, and (4) move to the far suburbs and away from more progressively-oriented metropolitan areas.  Instead of living in Naperville, move to Elburn or Aurora!  Instead of living in New York City, move to Nyack!  Instead of living in San Francisco, move to Napa!  Oh, and (5) find jobs that prevent you from being exposed to any liberal peoples.

The slippery slope argument is simply a non sequitur, but it is convenient in that it helps us justify our existing beliefs, whether they are theologically justified or not.  I could claim that Jesus was only a man, and not God, and then claim that those who argue for Jesus' divinity risk a "slippery slope" towards making humanity God!  I could also claim that Chinese Communism is bad and by welcoming immigrants from mainland China, we are risking a "slippery slope" towards Communism in America!  If someone were to context that claim, the "slippery slope" argument automatically is biased against him or her because he or she becomes typeset into being supportive of Communism in America, or the divinization of humanity.

All this to say that conservative evangelicals need to take theological reasoning seriously and not shy away from it.  It's easy to take biblical passages, quote it, and go, "therefore... blah blah."  But I can use that same approach to justify genocide against inferior races (cf. Joshua's conquest of the Promised Land), slavery (cf. laws in the Pentateuch about treatment of slaves), polygamy (many of Israel's kings had many wives, including David who was seen as righteous), youth in church leadership (1 Timothy), and singleness (cf. Paul).  Yet, many of our churches would be horrified of the first three, and don't permit youths to preach/hold pastoral positions, and one church I know had the gall to suggest that pastoral applicants preferably be married!  So, simply put, evangelical churches are more inconsistent than they appear to be on the outside.  Fortunately, people like Ben Lowe are seeking to move evangelicalism towards theological consistency and, in doing so, are playing important roles in making evangelicalism more faithful and more Scriptural.