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Christianity Today, October (Web-only), 2007

Theology in the News

Itchy Ears and Tongues of Fire

Gay-rights group employs Scripture. Also: Pentecostal success invites new challenges.

Collin Hansen | posted 10/12/2007 09:27AM

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Reading the weekly e-zine from Sojourners/Call to Renewal, I was surprised to see an advertisement for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Readers may recognize HRC as the leading gay-rights organization, so I wondered what this group would have to say to Christians. I dutifully clicked on the ad and landed on the home for Out In Scripture, a resource website promoting a pro-gay hermeneutic.

Most interesting was HRC's explanation of the project. "You don't have to leave your mind, heart, and body behind when you encounter the Bible," HRC explains. "This Human Rights Campaign resource places comments about the Bible alongside the real life experiences and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of faith and our allies."

Without reading too closely between the lines, HRC seems to imply that the Bible offers something less than a relevant historical account of real life. The website goes on to say, "Out In Scripture is a resource for you—anyone open to God's voice for today. … The Bible's not about beating you up, but lifting us all up."

By appealing to "anyone open to God's voice for today," HRC recalls the United Church of Christ's "God Is Still Speaking" ad campaign. Don't like what the Bible says? Lucky for you, God changed his mind, the UCC insinuates. HRC, on the other hand, purports to take Scripture seriously, if checked by an individual's experience. In one study, Out In Scripture tackles the lectionary reading from 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5. The HRC contributors explain the passage this way:

[I]n the course of our conversation together we realized that, in fact, Scripture is our Scripture. LGBT people are not excluded from affirming this Scripture's teaching that "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness" (verse 16). We are not excluded because this affirmation does not mean that we believe we should robotically "do" everything we might read about in Scripture.

The study's authors suppose that Christians who disapprove of homosexuality could be akin to the mythmakers Paul warns Timothy to "correct, rebuke, and encourage." HRC turns the tables on Christians who have used this same passage to defend orthodox teaching. The tactic may not be compelling to Christians familiar with the Bible's many plain teachings against homosexual behavior. But the approach has a certain appeal to those who respect Scripture but don't understand it. These people would not be so persuaded if HRC simply denounced Scripture as a relic of ancient culture. Misguided theologians of earlier eras sank venerable denominations with that strategy.

Still, the campaign looks like another example of Paul's prophetic warning: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

Surely Christians can agree with the HRC on at least one point: "The Bible's not about beating you up, but lifting us all up." But before they can be lifted up, Christians must recognize themselves in the crowd that cheered Jesus' beating, and repent of their sins.

Pentecostals: Past, Present, Future

Amos Yong recently assessed the contributions and future of Pentecostal scholarship in Theology Today, published quarterly by Princeton Theological Seminary. Yong, associate research professor of theology at the Regent University School of Divinity, first offers a brief account of Pentecostalism's ecumenical achievements. Namely, Pentecostals during the 20th century navigated a middle course between evangelicals who doubted the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit and liberal Protestants who doubted the miraculous altogether.

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October (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51

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CBob

October 24, 2007 6:29pm

I concur wholeheartedly with gay activists and sympathizers that there are other sins, that all sins be taken seriously; indeed, holiness demands it.

Patrick

October 16, 2007 7:32am

So I guess this is a place where we can beat up the UCC. Never mind that the writer misrepresented that denomination's new emphasis on the Holy Spirit, even though many evangelicals also believe that "God is still speaking" through the Holy Spirit. CT is starting to look more like an in-club thing--but let's at least be fair. There was no justification in taking that potshot at the UCC.

specks and beams

October 14, 2007 10:09pm

"Itching ears" is one of those handy polemical phrases that can be applied to anyone who believes something controversial that also aligns with her interests, like: Family-values Christians' ears itch for the gospel that tells them that the heterosexual nuclear family, preferably of the suburban variety, is ordained by God. These itchy ears are averse to dwelling too long on Jesus' clear suspicion of the family ("call no one father") and Paul's statement that marriage belongs to the order of the world that is passing away ("let even those who have wives be as though they had none"). These itchy ears prefer the pastoral epistles, whose author clearly is having to deal with people who took these sayings of Jesus and Paul all too seriously. Watch out! Gossipy widows! And so, unlike 1 Cor., where Paul advises celibacy to all who can (marriage is a prophylactic for the unable), the author of 1 Tim. advises that all young widows should get married, which evidently helps with the gossip.

Islwyn

October 14, 2007 4:22pm

Alan P. "In saying this Jesus declared all foods clean." Isn't this about the method of eating and not what is eaten? Mark 7:1-8,13. In Lev.20:24-26 it is God speaking in the context of moral instructions. It makes clear these are not temporary ceremonial laws as the NIV inserts (V.5). When "Jesus declared all foods clean," he would have referred to food, not to what God had prohibited unfit for human consumption. It is in the context of sanitary practices that we find Lev. 11. To take a view out from what the Lion Handbook to the Bible (1987, p. 175) says: This list of clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 . . . have a significance often ignored. Far from being a catalogue of food taboos based on fad and fancy, these lists emphasise a fact not discovered until late in the last century and still not generally known, that animals carry disease dangerous to man." Read the whole article then exegete Mark 7. Then exegete statements in the Bible on homosexuality.

cheif68@aol.com

October 13, 2007 7:36pm

you know i have went too several pentecostial churchs now maybe i miss understood what i read but i dont ever remember going to a pentecostial church are camp meeting that did not talk in tounges beleive in the Holy Ghost are the laying on of hands to heal the sick are to help pray though to God Jesue Christ and The Holy ghost by your self with others or the hole Church. if this is right i guess it is good that my Mother has past on I guess it has become like The Methodist church now Women Pastors I still havent found that in the Bible in Jesus Name Amen;;

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