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Welcome back to Part 11 of A History of Incompatibility. In this series, we explore the development of Christian beliefs around human sexuality, particularly as it relates to present church schisms over LGBTQ inclusion. If you are just now joining the story, I recommend going back and starting at Part 1.
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This week was meant to wrap up the second section of the story but my trusty computer died! So you’re only getting the one page (out of three) that I was able to complete before the fated death of my precious MacBook Air. I won’t spoil the next two pages, which I hope to have for you next Tuesday, so we’ll just look briefly at this one page together.
LGBTQ inclusion in the church today comes down to biblical interpretation. By and large, churches that emphasize a non-affirming stance do so under the assumption that God himself has absolutely forbidden same-sex intercourse based on a few certain verses of scripture. Not everyone who believes this is also a literalist, but this argument is rooted in biblical literalism, which by the 1970s, began to be called biblical inerrancy, a key word that let fundamentalists know who was with them and who wasn’t. The claim of biblical “inerrancy” assumes God’s full control over the writing of the scripture, and directly opposes biblical criticism, which places an emphasis on the humanity of the biblical text. In 1979, the fundamentalist groups within the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest evangelical denomination in America) completely removed all moderates and liberals from power and moved the denomination solidly to the right of bible reading and politics.
The United Methodist Church, as well as many other mainline denominations, represented a variety of biblical interpretations, including those who assume inerrancy and those who accept higher criticism. While inerrancy readers tends to question how modern discoveries fit into the biblical narrative (i.e., rejecting evolution for a 7-day literal creation), higher criticism tends to accept modern discoveries and then ask how scripture can help us make meaning of them (i.e., accepting evolution as God’s design for the cosmos). Some who accept higher criticism take a contextual approach to verses used to forbid homosexuality. In other words, they explore the original ancient Near Eastern context that may have shaped the authors to make those statements. Others take an approach of critique, arguing that the original text is problematic and must be challenged in light of other more important texts.
In the first panel of this week’s comic, John is holding a Yin Yang symbol with the words purity and inclusion representing core values of opposing sides within religion (not just Christianity). I chose these terms because I see this dynamic ALL over scripture, so I don’t think we should be too surprised that these ideas have so polarized us today. Over and over in scripture, Israel is called to purity, to be set apart, holy, exclusively God’s chosen people. AND over and over in scripture, Israel is called to inclusion, to widen the circle, to radically make space for the for the stranger, the foreigner, the sinner.
Over and over in the New Testament, the church is called to the same. If you want purity, look no further than the Sermon on the Mount, or Paul’s endless rants on rules for the churches to live holy lives. And if you want inclusion, just take one minute thinking about the incarnation, the people Jesus ate with, the religious leaders he berated, the inclusion of the Gentiles (by violating two key purity laws for the Jewish people), the people Paul associated with, the extreme grace Paul preached. Purity and inclusion are all there, all over the place, and for the life of us, we’re constantly pulled to one or the other, and we struggle to stay in the middle and make space for both.
Well, wish me luck with my computer woes. Hoping I’ll get you the last two pages of this section of the larger story, where we’ll wrap up our journey through history and focus in on a robust Wesleyan theology big enough to make space for a welcoming AND affirming church.