Not Easily Reached

First Baptist Church, 2012 (Seattle Times photo)

[Note: this post is about church, not civil, recognition of same-sex marriage.]

Why same-sex marriage is a wrenching issue to Evangelical Christians (no, it's not because they're afraid of, or hate gays):

For many Evangelicals, the marriage debate isn’t really about marriage or families or sex–it is about the Bible itself. And that makes many evangelicals all the more uncompromising. The roots of the conflict are deeply theological. Evangelical faith prizes the Bible’s authority, and that has meant a core commitment to biblical inerrancy–the belief that the words of the Bible are without error.

In my own denomination, the Episcopal Church, the Bible has long been superseded by the promotion of social justice, anti-isms (except for environmentalism), and the expansion of the secular state. Hence, it was easy for the Episcopal clerisy to override traditionalists' Scriptural reservations and fully embrace same-sex marriage, as well as the ordination of practicing gay priests and bishops.

But such a 180-degree shift in theology is not so easy for Christians who take the Bible seriously. (BTW, they have an easy answer to critics' quotation of Old Testament dicta, e.g., stoning of adulterers and animal sacrifice, that modern Westerners find ridiculous or repugnant: Jesus himself, through words and actions, did not follow many of these laws.*)

Such Christians first look for guidance to the New Testament, where St. Paul declares:

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. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

If Paul was wrong about homosexual behavior, then what else is he wrong about? The Episcopal Church by implication has told drunks, slanderers, and swindlers that they don't have to repent, the Episcopal Church will still welcome them. For Evangelicals, that's a conclusion not easily reached.

(*Jesus did not say that the Old Testament was N/A. Matthew 5:17: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.")