by Steve | Jan 8, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: Spurgeon Dunnam, 1943-91
The Rev. Spurgeon M. Dunnam III, editor and chief executive of the United Methodist Reporter, died November 25 from complications following surgery to remove blood clots from his lungs. He was 48.
Mr. Dunnam had led the Dallas-based Reporter since 1969. He had joined the staff four years earlier while a student at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology.
During his tenure as editor the newspaper grew from a regional publication reaching 80,000 subscribers to a national newsweekly with more than 500,000 subscribers.
UM Evangelist Ed Robb called Spurgeon Dunnam “an outstanding journalist who took a small regional church newspaper and turned it into the most widely-circulated church newspaper in the world. Personally, I appreciated that his newspaper’s coverage of my ministry was always balanced and fair.”
The Reporter’s Coverage wasn’t limited to the United Methodist Church. In 1983 Mr. Dunnam’s staff began investigating the National Council of Churches (NCC). The resulting coverage, including an editorial by Mr. Dunnam calling for structural reforms, was cited as a significant factor leading to reorganization of the ecumenical body the following year.
Roy Howard Beck, the Reporter’s journalist who broke the NCC stories, said, “Spurgeon’s unique and quirky personality, razor-edged mind and insatiable drive—that only death could stop—unleashed a force within American Protestantism rarely seen in history.
“For a quarter century, he boldly confronted virtually every institution and group within the church in matters of Christian integrity. Few escaped the sting of his pen. Opponents feared him. Friends were kept off guard. Yet his creation of the Reporter breathed life into the church and worked against schism by giving voice to so many otherwise muted concerns of leaders and members. During a period when group-think and timidity prevailed it is difficult to overestimate the courage and genius it took to stake out what Spurgeon called ‘the militant middle’ of the 1970s and 1980s.
“In my own quarter century in journalism I never worked for anyone so bold and so capable of hooking a person into passionate adventure. Ours were righteous crusades that nonetheless were full of the flaws and uncertainty of human existence.”
In 1987 and again in 1990 Mr. Dunnam went to South Africa as part of a World Methodist Council delegation to discuss the abandonment of apartheid with the South African head of state.
Mr. Dunnam was also an elected director of the Global Ministries board and represented that board in September as a member of the delegation which helped consecrate the first United Methodist congregation in Russia.
Dr. Paul Morrell, senior minister of the First UM Church in Carrollton, Texas, said, “Spurgeon had a genuine interest in missional concerns. There’s little question in my mind that he came back from his sabbatical in Africa with a renewed perspective of what the church ought to be.”
During the past decade Mr. Dunnam helped launch three additional religious newspapers: the nondenominational National Christian Reporter in 1981, the biweekly United Methodist Review in 1983 and the monthly United Methodist Record in 1991.
Since 1983 he also served as chairman of the board of Religious News Service, the nation’s only wire service specializing in news of religion.
He was ordained an elder in the North Texas Annual conference in 1969 and remained active in conference agencies.
Good News Media Service and United Methodist Media Services
by Steve | Jan 7, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: In Celebration of Faith & Freedom With the IRD
By George Weigel
In 1977, David and Linda Jessup joined the Marvin Memorial United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. As things turned out, that simple act of Christian re-connection would have repercussions throughout the United States, and indeed throughout the world.
In terms of their politics, the Jessups were, by any reasonable definition, liberals: indeed they were classic liberal internationalists of the Humphrey-(Scoop) Jackson variety. Which perhaps explains why the Jessups began to wonder just what was going on in the United Methodist Church when they examined the materials their children brought home from Sunday school. The children’s lessons took a benign view of the government of Vietnam, then at the height of its “re-education” efforts. And they waxed positively enthusiastic about the achievements of the Castro regime in Cuba. All of this struck the Jessups as a bit odd.
On investigation, David Jessup discovered that United Methodist funds were supporting a lavish menu of revolutionary causes around the world, all in the name of “prophetic justice.” Nor were his children’s Sunday school materials aberrations; rather, they defined the norm in what then passed for “religious education” in mainstream United Methodist circles. It seemed to David Jessup that something ought to be done about all this.
Being an organizer at heart (much of his professional life had been spent helping struggling Latin American trade unionists), Jessup began to look for allies in the United Methodist Church, and found them in the members of the Good News movement and in two prominent UM clergymen, the Rev. Edmund Robb, Jr., and the Rev. Ira Gallaway. When Jessup and his friends tried to raise the issue of gross politicization within the appropriate United Methodist circles they were dismissed, not always gently, as so many Neanderthals. And so David Jessup began to cast the net of his concern wider.
He soon found colleagues among other dissidents from the predominant radicalisms then found in American mainline Protestantism and in certain sectors of American Catholicism. Richard John Neuhaus for one, a founder of the anti-war group Clergy and Laity Concerned; Neuhaus, then a Lutheran and for 17 years the pastor of a poor black-Hispanic parish in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had broken with “the movement” over the question of human rights violations in “liberated” Vietnam. Michael Novak, for another; Novak, a Roman Catholic, had written speeches for Sargent Shriver during the 1972 presidential campaign, but had made his own break with the left by suggesting that there might be a moral case to be made for market economies. Penn Kemble, an old friend of Jessup’s and one of the chieftains of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, James V. Schall, a Georgetown Jesuit dissenter from the received radical orthodoxies, and myself filled out the dramatis personae in these initial explorations of what was to be done.
It wasn’t all talk, though; for out of the conversations begun by David Jessup came a new ecumenical organization, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). And out of IRD came, in time, a veritable revolution in the discussion of the role of the churches in the foreign policy debate.
The initial reaction by the left-liberal and radical church establishment to the founding of IRD was little short of apoplectic—particularly when the IRD’s critique of the churches’ softness toward the communist persecution of Christians, and its analysis of the ways in which a radical political agenda was being supported by the unwitting contributions of mainstream church-goers, got aired in the Readers Digest and on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” IRD people were accused of all manner of clandestine conspiracies. The United Methodist Church even hired two “researchers” to sketch, in lurid detail, the web of political, denominational, and philanthropic connections that bound IRD’s ecumenically disparate leadership together: an exercise that was one part House Un-American Activities Committee, and one part Laurel and Hardy. Charges of “McCarthyism” were recklessly thrown about, as were baseless accusations that IRD leaders supported Afrikaner apartheid and Latin American oligarchy. In the more fevered religious and leftist press, IRD was portrayed as the centerpiece of a sinister Reaganite attack on the churches, the game plan for which could be found in the “Santa Fe Documents ” (which no IRD leader remembers ever having seen). In retrospect, it all seems passing strange. Yet such was the temper of the times.
IRD is now 10 years old, and there is little need here to rehearse the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the world during the past decade. Suffice it to say that, on the great issue of the contest between freedom and totalitarianism, between imperfect democracies and pluperfect tyrannies, IRD was right, and its detractors wrong. The men and women who benefitted from IRD’s advocacy on behalf of religious freedom—the martyr-confessors of the persecuted church throughout the world—know that IRD has made a difference for the good; even if those who work in the “Prophetic Justice Unit ” at the National Council of Churches don’t. (Yes, there is a “Prophetic Justice Unit ” at the NCC! Some things never change.)
What needs emphasizing now, though, is that IRD’s primary concern was never politics; it was, and is, the integrity of the Church. IRD opposed politicized Christianity, not just because it thought the politics of the NCC were disastrous—and they were. IRD opposed the politicization of the Church because radical activism demeaned the Church by making ultimate what was only penultimate—politics. IRD was, in short, a protest against the soft idolatry of the justice-and-peace bureaucracies, and a call for a new reformation in which Christian social witness would be more firmly tethered to orthodox Christian faith and practice.
That call has not gone forth without effect. One striking (indeed, mind-boggling) symbol of IRD’s success is that it begins its 11th program year with its executive director, Dr. Kent Hill, off campus. Hill will be teaching Christian apologetics in the former Department of Atheism at Moscow State University. This was not something that the founding fathers and mothers of IRD anticipated. But it has happened, and we thank God for it.
It is also important to note that IRD’s success—in defending the persecuted, in supporting Christian democrats in their nonviolent struggle for freedom, in calling the churches to a wiser social witness—would not have been possible without the people who have really made IRD—the staff which has worked long and hard at salaries beneath what they could command in other arenas. When the history of 20th-century American Christianity is written years from now, names like Diane Knippers, Alan Wisdom, Maria Thomas, Stan DeBoe, Walter Kansteiner, Larry Adams, and Kerry Ptacek may not be cited very frequently. But the Lord of history knows the story of history; and that, in the minds and hearts of these dedicated men and women, is what really counts.
IRD has been both an activist center and an intellectual catalyst. Its work deserves new attention as we enter the second decade of IRD—the decade in which issues of democratic consolidation will press hard on old and new democracies alike. IRD’s mission has been directly addressed to Christians. But its moral case for democracy should be of interest to those of other faiths who share the Christian conviction that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God.
Happy birthday, IRD!
George Weigel is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in. Washington, D.C. He is the editor of four books and author of seven others, most recently Just War and the Gulf War (Ethics and Public Policy Center). Reprinted by permission of American Purpose, October 1991.
by Steve | Jan 5, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: One Holy Passion
Restoring the Church’s Business of Soul Winning
by Sandy S. Kirk
“Remember,” said John Wesley to his young preachers, “above all else, you are to be about the business of winning souls.” But what has happened to this vital business of the Church? Are we still winning souls to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, or do we even care?
As issues of abortion, homosexuality, feminism, and changing the address of our mission agency rage hotly into the wee hours of the morning at General Conference, will delegates lose sleep over the lack of conversions, diminished professions of faith, and our need to restore the Wesleyan “business of soul winning?” Or will this most urgent business of the Church be swept under a carpet of distracting political issues?
A Bishop’s Searching Question
One crisp fall afternoon last year in Lubbock, Texas, a group of Methodist heard Bishop Richard Wilke ask this penetrating question: “How long has it been since you’ve seen a person converted to Christ in one of your services?”
A nervous, gaping silence filled the air.
Finally, an elderly gentleman spoke out sadly,” A lo-ng, lo-ng time.”
If souls are not being led to Christ in our services, what about the hundreds of thousands of good United Methodists who attend church every Sunday? How many of them have the absolute assurance of their own salvation? How many have the confidence that if they died tonight they would go to heaven? How many have the deep conviction they are truly born again? Isn’t this the most crucial business of the Church?
Those With Passion
Two young Moravians looked over a stone wall into a leper colony. Tears of compassion tumbled down their cheeks as they saw a man without legs on the back of a man without arms, reaching down to poke seeds in the ground to eke out a living. Their hearts ached as they realized that hundreds of lepers were dying without Christ. Against the pleas of their families, they left their homes to bring the message of salvation to these dying lepers. What caused them to give up everything, knowing they would eventually die of the dreaded disease themselves? They had a burning passion for souls.
What caused John Wesley to rise daily at 4:00 a.m. to pray and then go out in the fields to preach Christ to the dying multitudes? What caused him to preach the gospel even when churches barred their doors to him and crowds hurled rotten vegetables in his face? John Wesley had a passion for souls.
What caused David Brainard, though racked with tuberculosis, to weep in prayer for lost Indians in early America until the snowy ground was stained with his own blood? He had a passion for souls.
What caused John Knox, who led his whole nation to Christ, to rise in the middle of the night and cry, “Give me Scotland or I die!” John Knox had a passion for souls.
Where Is Passion Today?
But what has happened to our passion today?
Where are the altars filled with humble penitents, weeping their way to Christ? What has happened to the all night prayer vigils like Wesley and the early Methodists had? What has happened to the sermons that so lift up Jesus Christ crucified that people are broken at the foot of the Cross?
We are deeply burdened in the United Methodist Church over our loss of members, but what has happened to our burden for souls? Isn’t this the passion that flames the heart of the Church, fires the preachers, and spreads the gospel to bring real church growth?
How Can Passion be Rekindled?
In a beautiful, out-of-print little book entitled, The Passion for Souls, E.F. Hallenbeck asks, “Where shall we find this passion?” Then he answers, “The first kindlings of it are in the presence of the Passion of Christ.”
Indeed, we need to come again to Calvary, the place where our first love for Jesus began. We need to gaze upon our Savior’s dying love until our hearts are set on fire again. We need to look upon His lovely face, gouged with piercing thorns. We need to see the filthy spittle of Jews and Romans caked upon His face, the trembling tears of love rolling down His cheeks. We need to gaze upon His healing hands and precious feet, bored with massive iron nails.
We need to see Jesus spilling out His living blood, bearing our filthy sin, and drinking the horrible cup of God’s holy wrath against our sin. We need to hear Him cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” as He drinks the fiery cup to its bitter dregs. We need to see the grinding pain that filled His heart until it broke. We need to look at our bleeding Savior until our own cold, hard hearts begin to soften. We need to see His side plunged with a Roman spear as a crimson tide of love bursts forth—until our own souls are cleft with deep repentance.
For we have neglected His great calling. We have lost our concern for the lost. Apathy and political concerns have spread over the Church like blinding scales. We have lost our passion for souls. We need to gaze upon Christ lifted up on the Cross until the scales are removed and the same passion that drove Him to Calvary begins to fill our hearts.
Jesus came all the way from heaven’s peace to Calvary’s pain and punishment because His heart was filled with an all-consuming desire to save our souls and bring us back to God. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19: 10), He said; and He wants to fill us with the same burning desire. He wants to touch our cold hearts with His fire and fan the flame into a burning passion for souls.
The Cross Restored My Burden
Does this sound too simplistic? Too idealistic?
I can only tell you, this is what restored my own burden for souls. I had come to a place where I no longer even cared about leading people to Jesus. Spiritual pride had filled my heart, and I had drifted away from the Cross. The embers of my heart had grown dull and cold like a person who gradually freezes to death but doesn’t know it is happening.
One day I was sitting in a Sunday school class at the First United Methodist Church in Abilene, Texas, when a man spoke up, “I just don’t see what is the big deal about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Lots of people have died on crosses.”
I opened my heart and began sharing with the class about the pain of the scourging, the agony of the nails, the burden of sin, but most of all about the blazing cup of eternal wrath which our Savior drank for us as He was punished in our place. As I talked, to my total amazement, I could feel life flooding through my whole being.
I sat in church that day with tears rushing down my cheeks. My body trembled under the power of God. I could hardly believe what I felt. It was just Like Charles Spurgeon had said, “There is Life in a look at the Lamb.” I had experienced the life of God flooding down upon me as I spoke of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
As I sat there in church, I promised God that for the rest of my life I would study the Cross, teach on the Cross, write about the Cross, and anchor my whole life into the Cross of Jesus Christ.
To my utter joy, I found that as I began to teach and write about the Cross, my heart flamed with a burning new burden for souls. I was so excited about what Jesus did at Calvary, I couldn’t keep from telling others. And I began to find that leading people to Christ is the most thrilling experience on earth. As Charles Spurgeon said, “To be a soul winner is the happiest thing in the world. And with every soul you bring to Jesus Christ, you seem to get a new heaven here upon earth.”
But it was gazing at the Cross of Jesus Christ that truly rekindled the fires of my heart.
Soul Winning Restored in the Church
A black woman stood by the railroad tracks as the flag-draped coffin of Abraham Lincoln passed by on a train. Lifting up her little girl, she said, “Take a long look, honey, at the man who died to set you free.”
We too need to take a long, steady look at the man who died to set us free—until His passion becomes ours. Until our hearts begin to ache and burn to see lost souls set free by the power of the Cross. We need to drink deeply of His compassion until our hearts are filled with an unquenchable passion for souls.
After all, isn’t this really the most crucial business of the Church?
John Wesley thought so.
Sandy S. Kirk is a frequent contributor to Good News. She is a freelance writer, Bible teacher, and the wife of R.L. Kirk, pastor of St. Luke’s UM Church in Lubbock, Texas.
by Steve | Jan 3, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: Gaining Insight From the Blind
Bob Brunson holds a chain filled with hexagon nuts which he gives to friends as a reminder of how faith holds a Christian together under stress.
by Boyce A. Bowdon
Blindness doesn’t keep Bob Brunson from helping his church bring comfort and hope to people around the world every week.
The 71-year-old retired school teacher is founder and coordinator of the sound ministry team at Ridgecrest United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City.
Every Sunday his team tapes the worship service which Bob takes to the studio at his home. With professional equipment, he edits it, then makes 200 copies on high-speed duplicators. By Monday afternoon, he has the tapes ready for other members of the team to mail to homebound members of the congregation, to visually impaired persons across the United States and 60 other countries, and to a dozen radio stations “including some overseas” that air the program as a public service.
Recording and distributing the worship service is only one component of Ridgecrest’s comprehensive tape ministry. Bob also produces an audio tape for every visitor. The tape, highlighting ministries the church offers, includes a greeting from the pastor, specials from the choir, descriptions of Sunday school classes and various groups, interviews with members, and testimonials by person who have experienced God’s transforming power.
Each month Bob also produces a tape for every member of the church who has a birthday during that month. The tape contains a greeting from the pastor and specials from the church quartet.
Not long ago I sat in Bob’s studio and watched with amazement as he operated his sophisticated recording equipment. I wondered, how does he do this? And why? I found the answers as he shared with me his journey of faith.
Bob said he has been troubled with diabetes since he was 11 years old. The disease caused his vision problems. It was in 1950 that doctors discovered he was losing his sight. At that time he was teaching chemistry in high school and was engaged to marry a third-grade teacher.
“I told Lorene that the doctors said I was going blind, and I suggested that we reconsider our plans to marry,” Bob told me. “She didn’t hesitate a minute. She said that she loved me, that she knew I loved her, and that she wanted us to spend the rest of our lives together, whatever happened. And so we went ahead and married.”
Within six years, Bob was totally blind. He went to a rehabilitation center in Little Rock, Arkansas, for several months of training. After returning to Oklahoma City, Bob received counseling from Travis Harris, a fellow United Methodist who lost his sight when he was nine years old in a school explosion.
“Travis helped me to stop thinking about what I had lost and to start thinking about what I had left,” Bob explained. “He was teaching Sunday school, working with amateur radio, helping develop an eye bank, and doing all kinds of things. He convinced me that I could too, with God’s help.”
Bob returned to work with Oklahoma City Public Schools. “Fortunately, the school board was looking for abilities, not disabilities, and it gave me a chance to use my skills,” he told me. He served as an elementary school counselor until he retired at age 65.
One of Bob’s most discouraging moments came in 1966, when he was critically ill with pneumonia. Doctors were baffled because he was not responding to medication. Bob knew he might not recover. As he lay in the hospital bed, he committed his life into God’s hands.
“Lord,” he prayed, “from this day forward, whether I live or die, I want to be your man.”
He became less anxious, more relaxed, and dropped off to sleep. A few hours later he awoke.
“I sensed that somebody was in the room with me, standing beside my bed,” he told me. “Even though I had been totally blind for 10 years, I saw this face that I perceived to be the face of Jesus. He was smiling, as if to say He had heard my commitment and was accepting it.”
Bob paused for a moment. “Some people might say I was having a hallucination or that I was dreaming. I don’t understand it. I never had an experience like that before, nor have I since. All I know is that I sensed the presence of Jesus Christ standing beside me just as vividly as I sense your presence right now here in this room.”
Bob said he had believed in God ever since he was a child, but his life was turned around that night.
“I was no longer just a believer. I was a committed believer. And since then I have been able to cope far more effectively with tough times that have come my way. I have known that I am not alone.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large hexagon nut. “You know what this is?” he asked.
“Sure, it’s a nut that fits on a bolt,” I replied.
“It’s a little smaller, but it makes me trunk of the nut that holds a propeller on a helicopter shaft,” Bob said. “By holding the propeller on the shaft, it enables the helicopter to rise and fly. That’s what my faith in Jesus Christ does for me. It enables me to rise above obstacles, blindness, and everything else!”
He handed me the nut and said, “I’d like for you to keep this. I’ve given away hundreds of them over the years to people, just as a reminder of how faith in God holds us together come what may.”
Since 1969, Bob and Lorene have led more than 75 Lay Witness Missions across the country, sharing with thousands what faith in God means to them.
Lorene says her husband doesn’t feel sorry for himself and doesn’t want her or anyone else to feel sorry for him. She says his faith helps him to be cheerful and to have a sense of humor, because it helps him see beyond himself and his obstacles with hope.
“Bob kids a lot,” she said chuckling. “Sometimes he refers to me as his seeing-eye wife. I’d rather be married to a blind man who has faith in God than to a man who has perfect sight but no faith.”
Friends, knowing Bob has a good sense of humor, often play tricks on him, but he usually gets the last laugh. Recently a fellow church member tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Do you know who I am?” Bob replied, “No, but I have a psychiatrist friend who can help you figure out who you are.”
Bob knows who he is because he knows Whose he is. He belongs to the One who’s presence he felt so vividly that night in the hospital room. He knows that in God’s sight his worth as a human being was not lessened when he lost his sight. With this assurance, he continues to be happy and hopeful.
Bob Brunson is a committed believer in Jesus Christ. That’s why blindness doesn’t keep him from helping his church bring comfort and hope to people around the world every week.
Boyce A. Bowdon is the director of communications for the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.
by Steve | Jan 3, 1992 | Archive - 1992
Archive: God Made Them Male & Female
Scripture’s Consistent Heterosexual Track
By David A. Seamands
For over nineteen hundred years the Church has refused to condone the practice of homosexuality and considered it incompatible with Christian teaching for two important reasons.
First of all, because of the positive biblical teaching on human sexuality in general. In some ethical issues, such as slavery or the place of women, specific moral directives vary according to the sociological and cultural context of the times. But in matters of sexual morality there is one common thread running throughout all Scripture which never varies—a clear, consistent heterosexual track. It begins with the two creation accounts in Genesis. These tell us that humans were made “in the image of God,” created as “male and female” (1:27), the complementarity of the sexes is part of what God pronounced “very good” (1:31), and sexual intercourse (becoming “one flesh”) is for reproduction (1:28), companionship (2:18), and relational fulfillment (2:18-24). One cannot say these are only beautiful stories which explain the attraction between the sexes but are without ethical implications—descriptive but not prescriptive. For they are immediately followed by a moral directive: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,[1] and they become one flesh” (2:24).
The “therefore,” translated in the New Testament “for this reason,” indicates that because God created them as they are, “male and female,” this is the way they ought to be.
However, in accordance with the Reformation principle, “Scripture should be interpreted by Scripture,” it is the New Testament use of this passage which holds the most significance. The teachings of Jesus on divorce and marriage are found in Matthew 19:4-8 and Mark 10:6-8. The passage in Mark begins with the words, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female,’” and then quotes Genesis 2:24. Whatever the Genesis writers may have had in mind it is unmistakably clear that Jesus interprets the passage to mean there is a sacred order of the sexes which is grounded in creation itself, expresses God’s will for humankind—heterosexual, monogamous marriage—and provides the only context for sexual intercourse. Thus, marriage is the union of one man—male—with one woman—female. It:
- implies a public declaration—the leaving of the parents;
- involves a covenant—cleaving or being joined to his wife; and
- is consummated by sexual intercourse—becoming one flesh.
In I Corinthians 6:13-20 Paul quotes only, “The two shall be one” (v. 16), but in Ephesians 5:25-33 he repeats the entire verse of Genesis 2:24. In both instances he spiritualizes the one-fleshness of heterosexual intercourse to describe the believer’s union with Christ as being “members of Christ” (I Corinthians 6:15) and joined to His body. In Corinthians, Paul uses it negatively to condemn fornication as a misuse of the body which is “not your own” (v. 19). In Ephesians he uses it positively as a symbolic analogy of Christ’s love for the church. In both instances the sacred heterosexual order of creation is made the basis for moral imperatives.
Therefore, the church’s historic stance against the practice of homosexuality is not based on the story of Sodom or on the proof-texting of certain Bible verses. It is based on the consistent heterosexual track running through all Scripture, which is grounded in God’s will expressed in creation.
Secondly, we reject homosexual behavior because Scripture consistently condemns all other forms of sexual intercourse. From this it follows that the practice of fornication, adultery, incest, bestiality, and homosexuality is always condemned as being outside the divine intention and incompatible with it. That is why every Scripture addressing same-sex intercourse is clear, unambiguous, unequivocal, and unanimously negative. There are no exception clauses as in the case of divorce. And in spite of its central emphasis on compassion, grace, and acceptance, nowhere does the New Testament soften this stance.
This consistent Biblical perspective continued in the writings of the early Church fathers. In their comments on the relevant Scriptures, same-sex intercourse is always considered a form of immorality, incompatible with Christian behavior.[2] This same tradition continued throughout the Church until very recently. Revisionists now attempt to nullify these biblical references so as to make same-sex intercourse acceptable and commendable.
The Scripture clearly states: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. … If a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13).
We are told since this occurs in the Holiness Code its cultural context makes it irrelevant to our times. That to be consistent, we would also have to condemn the other things forbidden by it—eating shrimp, making garments from different cloth, having intercourse with a menstruating woman etc. Fortunately, Jesus did not follow this all-or-nothing principle. He carefully separated the temporary from the eternal, rejecting ceremonial and dietary “laws” but maintaining permanent ethical principles. In fact, Jesus took what may be the earliest occurrence of the command, “love your neighbor as yourself,” from this very code (Leviticus 19:18) and made it part of His “greatest commandment” teaching (Matthew 22:34-40). When one follows the “common thread of Scripture” principle, sorting out time-bound, cultural edicts from universal moral precepts it is not nearly as difficult as the critics suggest. There is an unchanging common thread of opposition to same-sex intercourse throughout all Scripture. But there is no such unvarying theme with regard to eating shrimp, mixing cloths in garments, or scores of other ceremonial and cultural matters. To repeal the former by equating it with the latter is questionable biblical scholarship.
Or take Paul’s well-known passage in Romans 1:18-32:
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men.
This is the most important biblical reference because it places the issue in an explicitly theological context. Same-sex intercourse, both male and female, is clearly condemned. Paul does not say it is a greater sin than the others listed in vv. 29-31. But it is his major illustration of sin committed by human beings in rebellion against their Creator and the divine intention of creation. Homosexual practices are not the cause of the “wrath of God” but the consequence of it. “God gave them up” (vv. 24, 26, 28) to “a debased mind ” and to follow their own desires. As a result they “exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural” (vv. 26-27) and indulged in same-sex intercourse.
Once again we are taken back to the heterosexual order of creation. “Natural” here refers to the objective nature of what God intended for the sexes in creation. It does not describe something subjective which feels natural to an individual.[3] To engage in the “unnatural” is to go against the “natural” design and purpose of what God created.
Some say the biblical prohibitions do not apply because the writers knew nothing of homosexual “orientation,” or of same-sex intercourse practiced within the context of loving, caring, and committed relationships. The Scriptures, therefore, do not apply to these situations and such homosexual relationships are acceptable.
All of these are unsuccessful attempts to evade the unremitting opposition toward homosexual practices which runs unchanged throughout all Scripture. In those days homosexual practices were widespread, so the New Testament writers certainly knew about same-sex masturbation, and oral and anal intercourse. It is these practices they clearly condemn as a violation of God’s intention for the sexes. This is why Paul includes them in his lists of sinful behaviors unfit for the kingdom of God:
Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites,4 … none of these will inherit the kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:9-10).
The law is laid down not for the innocent, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, … for murderers, fornicators, sodomites[4], … and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching … (1 Timothy 1:9-11).
However, the most serious result of the revisionist attempt is to remove the objective biblical basis for sexual union—heterosexual, monogamous marriage—and replace it with a subjective basis such as “orientation ” or “quality of relationships.” When this is done then any sexual relations which meet those standards can be approved—sex between unmarried singles, pre-marital or extra-marital sex, as well as same-sex intercourse. A careful survey of theologians and authors who take such a position confirms this fact. The list includes Roman Catholics, Protestants, and even the officially published sexuality study documents of several mainline denominations (United Church of Christ, United Church of Canada, Presbyterian, etc.) A recent example is the United Methodist group, Affirmation, which officially changed its stated purpose in early 1991 to include “the concerns of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals. ” It appears that bisexuality is now to be considered another “orientation,” as an alternative Christian lifestyle. This is what happens when the Church departs from clear, consistent Biblical norms.
David Seamands is a professor of pastoral ministries and the dean of the chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He has served as a United Methodist missionary and pastor. He is author of numerous books, most notably Healing for Damaged Emotions. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture in this article is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible.
Reprinted by permission of the Circuit Rider, December 1991/January 1992.
Endnotes
[1] Some have attempted to weaken this by pointing out the Hebrew word here does not mean “wife” but “adult woman.” Actually there is no special Hebrew word for “wife,” as there is, for example, for “bride.” The meaning “wife,” in Genesis 2:24 is made unmistakably clear by speaking of “his woman.”
[2] It is significant that the pro-gay scholar, J. Boswell, is not able to cite a single early text which approves homosexual activity in his book, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980). See J. Robert Wright, “Boswell on Homosexuality: A Case Undemonstrated,” in the Anglican. Theological Review, Vol. 66:1, pp. 79-84.
[3] J. Boswell claims Paul condemns “unnatural” homosexual acts only when they are committed by persons who are “naturally” heterosexual, and not when they are committed by someone of “natural” homosexual orientation. Fellow Yale Scholar, Richard Hayes, now of Duke Divinity School, in his widely acclaimed response to Boswell in The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 14, No 1, Spring 1986, pp. 184-215, has brilliantly shown the fallacy of this argument. Unfortunately, the erroneous idea has been widely and uncritically accepted, and we now hear it propounded again and again as if it is a proven fact.
[4] The Greek word translated as “sodomites” is arsenokoitai, literally, male bed-males, or males who sleep with males. The word is obviously based on the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Leviticus phrase, “man (who) lies with a male.” See David F. Wright, “Homosexuals or Prostitutes? The Meaning of ARSENOKOITAI,” in Vigilae Christianae Vol. 38, pp. 125-153.
