Anglican Mainstream

By John Nolland

It is clear that Marin has not given up his own conservative Christian views on sexual ethics. It is also clear that he has caught something important about following a Jesus who had a reputation of being a friend of tax-collectors and sinners. A book like Marin’s has much to offer, but one can only hope that those who become excited by the vistas he opens up are also able to see the limits of this contribution to the ongoing discussion.

In many ways this is a marvellous book. It is full of compassion, human sensitivity and down to earth wisdom. It comes from somebody who is clearly passionate about the gospel, with a deep desire to see people coming into a living relationship with God in Christ. It models powerfully an other-centred way of relating to people, that has its roots in the example of Jesus. And Moran writes with a disarming transparency and vulnerability.

In a very salutary manner Marin holds up a mirror for North American conservative Christianity, to help it face up to the lack of love and the un-Christlikeness of quite a bit of its stand against the sexual ethics of the gay community. He does a good job of helping heterosexual Christians begin to understand what this might look and feel like to gays.

A point that Marin makes compellingly is that some forceful Christian advocacy of traditional Christian views on same-sex relations can lead our gay dialogue partner to a forced single moment of crisis. God is able to take the long view and so should we. Instead of forcing the issue, Marin suggests, we should be prepared for ‘the productive tension of just “being” with that idea [he is thinking of a situation in which our gay friend knows what we believe the Bible teaches] in support and love’. Marin likens some of our forceful advocacy to the approach of some sports coaches who think that their role is to totally tear down their players in order to make of them the players the coach wants. He is certainly right that there is a failure to respect the integrity of the person here.

Marin is also likely to be right when he suggests that there is little future in a slugging match about interpreting disputed Biblical texts between conservative Christians and gay and lesbian Christians. Each side has too much to lose if their side of the argument fails. His suggestion is that a better place to focus discussion on is how to have an intimate, real, conversational relationship with the one who is both Father and Judge. 

There are also, however, some disturbing features in Marin’s book. He writes against a background of very conservative North American Christianity. To some degree he is reacting against this, wanting to flee its excesses. In such a situation it is very easy to over-say what one wants to say, in trying to redress the balance. The conservative Christians he seems to intend to write for have a clear and confident commitment to a traditional set of sexual values. Some of his points will land rather differently when received by those in churches where there is major uncertainty about traditional Christian sexual ethics.

Marin has a great confidence that ‘God will tell each what he feels is best for their lives’. At the ultimate personal level this must be true. For it to strike home and change behaviour, there has to be an inner answer from the heart of a person to the challenge of a particular dimension of what it means to live as Christ would have us live. But this inner hearing does not take place without connection to all the normal means of external communication: study of the Bible; Christian fellowship; etc. Marin can, to some degree, bracket out everything but loving acceptance because within the large frame the conservative Christian view of sexual ethics is already writ large. I am not so sure it is writ as large even in his circles as he seems to suppose, and it is certainly not writ large in the life of other kinds of churches or in many churches in other parts of the world. In the UK for example I think that most people who hold to a conservative Christian sexual ethic have been browbeaten into silence by what is happening in the culture around them; this has become the view that is not permitted to have a public voice.

I might be misunderstanding him, but Marin seems to think that debate about the meaning of the Biblical passages related to homosexuality is sterile. Debating scriptural interpretation comes out badly in his eyes. He seems to implicitly identify it with the critical references in Scripture to unfruitful debating about opinions. His hermeneutical chapter in which he takes up the key scriptural texts is interesting in the way that at times, while helpfully placing the specific texts into the context of the larger agenda of the texts within which they come, we end up with a shape rather than a content. E.g. Lev 18 and 20 becomes ‘live distinctly in all facets of daily life’. Surely the content of that living distinctly requires biblical discernment.

One of the challenges raised by Marin’s book is that of to what degree his vision of authentic Christianity is the proper goal. Marin expresses it like this: ‘my heart yearned for authentic Christianity – one where people from both communities lived together in a shared belief in Christ amidst the struggle’. This sounds a bit like what is offered by Richard Burridge in his recent Imitating Jesus: giving each other space in a community of love to find our own way forward in response to Jesus. The church is certainly to be a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners. But being totally open-ended in relation to every person’s individual take and practice in relation to what constitutes Christian belief and behaviour does not fit well with important strands of New Testament teaching and example. It is interesting that Marin can use 1 Cor 6:9-11 to suggest that LGBT Christians should, having come to faith, be allowed to stand on their own faith with God and have a right to be their own person in Christ, whether other Christians agree with what they do or not. Actually 1 Cor 6:9-11 is part of the framing discussion that explains Paul’s insistence in 5:1-8 that the man living with his father’s wife should be handed over to Satan! (We can see this when we notice the way that 1 Cor 6:9-11 echoes the language of 5:9-11.)

Because of the polarity that Marin has set up (conservative Christians vs the GLTB community) there is no place within his frame for considering fundamental disagreement within the Christian community. There is, therefore, no attention to scriptural materials that might throw light on the homosexuality debate from that quarter. Unconditional love is certainly called for as the fundamental Christian stance, but one might sense that at times more might be needed than what tends to come across as a version of ‘all you need is love’.

Marin has a rather Anabaptist view of engagement with culture: ‘It is not the Christian community’s responsibility to govern a world that we do not belong to’. He catches here an important truth, but for those of us who hope for Christ to be a transformer of culture, this view, standing alone, represents an certain abdication of responsibility for the larger shape of our culture which is discomforting. Christendom has long gone, but all people benefit from the influence of Christian values on wider society. And the shape of the wider culture makes quite a difference to the freedom that Christians have to live out their faith.

It is clear that Marin has not given up his own conservative Christian views on sexual ethics. It is also clear that he has caught something important about following a Jesus who had a reputation of being a friend of tax-collectors and sinners. A book like Marin’s has much to offer, but one can only hope that those who become excited by the vistas he opens up are also able to see the limits of this contribution to the ongoing discussion.
 

The Revd Dr John Nolland is Academic Dean of Trinity College, Bristol

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.