YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS?

Gays Help Reclaim Jesus' Words (Fenton Johnson, July 29, 2003, LA Times)

I began my return to Bible study with the notion that the liberal left had allowed the term "Christian" to be hijacked. I believed that the word ought properly to describe someone who was more like - well - me. Then I actually reread the Gospels, only to discover that they made me squirm. [...]

Regarding the issues that threaten Episcopalian schism, the presumed challenge to marriage is the more easily addressed. The convention is being asked only to ratify blessing of same-gender unions, a rite distinct from its official marriage ceremony. In addition, the Gospels refer only obliquely to marriage, which in Jesus' time was generally a private transaction arranged between families and individuals. Western Christianity did not institutionalize marriage until more than 1,000 years after Jesus' death, at which point it defined marriage as a sacrament consummated by the couple, with sex as its sine qua non. Technically, the Christian church does not marry anyone; rather it officiates at marriages that the couples themselves create. To do so, it employs rites that emerged for reasons that had as much to do with enhancing ecclesiastical power as encouraging stable households.

Homosexuality presents a greater challenge, since here the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are explicit in their prohibitions. Prominent Christians, notably Harvard Memorial Church minister Peter J. Gomes, have constructed elaborate arguments that these passages have been mistranslated or misinterpreted, but their arguments miss the point. Once the Bible passed from oral tradition into writing, religion faced the task of keeping its traditions alive, rather than treating them as preserved in stone at some date shortly before Jesus (for Jews) or in the late Roman era (for Christians).

The Jews developed the Talmud and, later, ongoing rabbinic commentaries that in effect keep the Hebrew Bible alive. Christians have no equivalent and must work instead to keep Jesus' teachings alive by seeking to recognize how each generation challenges their reinterpretation. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Christians struggled with and rejected the Bible's condoning of slavery. Now we are struggling to reinterpret pronouncements about sexual behavior.

The notion that each generation or each of us individually should get to re-interpret the Gospels so that we're more comfortable with them is obviously insipid. What is the point of religion and morality if the demands they place on you do not make you squirm? if they say you should do or think whatever you want? Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 4:58 PM