The biggest thing to happen in the last couple of days at Baylor has been a visit by Soulforce, a group dedicated to “freedom for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from religious & political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance.” The group has two buses which are making stops at Christian universities around the nation in an attempt to encourage discussion and address the religious beliefs that are the most prominent source of social and political opposition to gays in America and “to confront and eventually replace these tragic untruths with the truth that we are God’s children, too, created, loved, and accepted by God exactly as we are.”
About fifty people, many of them students of various universities who are taking the semester off, visited on the Soulforce Eastbound bus on Monday and Tuesday. All Baylor students were notified of the visit by a Monday morning email from Dub Oliver, Dean of Student Development, which said that the group’s request for a “university-approved dialogue” (i.e., scheduled activities and presentations in Baylor buildings) had been denied but that the group would be allowed on campus: “We are committed to treating the riders with Christian grace and love, and I encourage you to pray for all individuals involved, both the riders and the colleges and universities they visit. This is an opportunity for us to demonstrate Baylor’s compassionate spirit.”
The group’s visit made the front page of Tuesday’s Lariat, and the members were allowed to attend Chapel on Monday morning (something some other schools have not allowed them to do). The front page of Wednesday’s issue discusses the Tuesday arrest of six members for chalking statements and Bible verses on the sidewalk after being told by officers to quit. If their goal has been to spark a discussion by visiting campus (”to say ‘We’re Christian fags’”, as I overheard a classmate say in Spanish class), they certainly have, with or without Baylor approval. And whether or not the chalking was a good idea — and I think it was — their presence has raised some important issues.
Regarding these issues, a thread on the Baylor Information Network (one of two online hubs of student life, the other being Facebook) was started in response to Dub Oliver’s letter and has accumulated 73 posts since Monday morning, most of which have been centered around the issue of how Baylor, as a Baptist and Christian university, should see homosexuality. Two of those 73 posts are mine; the first argued that the example of Sodom in Genesis 19 is a bad example of a biblical condemnation of same-sex sex (in short, it’s about rape, not consensual sex, and the person to whom I addressed the comment conceded the point), and the second, edited slightly to remove comments that aren’t relevant here, is below. The post lacks some context, but it’s about as good as summary as I can manage of my views on Christian views of homosexuality, so here it is:
First, I hope all of us would agree there are parts of the Old Testament which are approved of by God, according to the authors, but which should deeply trouble any ethical person, Christian or otherwise, and which are not resolved by OT and NT differences on the issues of law and grace. The genocide detailed in the book of Joshua (cf. 10:40) is just one example, and other passages say women and slaves are property — heck, the 10th Commandment is to not covet “anything that is thy neighbor’s”, including his house, wife, slaves (”servants” in the KJV, but slaves as we understand them) and animals. I don’t want to steer this thread off-topic into a discussion of exegesis. But I do want to say that any Christian should be willing to reject the moral implications of at least some parts of the Bible and to see them as the views of their respective authors, not of God — and this, as I think a study of exegesis will show, does not necessarily require that one believes that the author was not inspired by God, but only that the “fingerprints” of the author and his culture can be seen in the finished product. Fortunately, most Christians are willing to do just that, though significant disagreements have arisen from time to time over slavery, women’s suffrage, race relations, and, most recently, homosexuality.
Second, if there are clearly passages in the Bible with moral implications we shouldn’t accept, Christians have to be at least a little careful in deriving moral implications from any particular passage (though the words of Jesus may be exceptions). As we’ve seen, an author may write something with moral implications which we should flat-out deny. Romans 1 has to be considered in this light; the simple fact that the author mentions “degrading passions” does not necessarily mean that Christians should consider those passions, whatever they were, to be degrading and sinful in God’s eyes. Is it possible that those words were expressions of the author’s visceral feelings and not indicative of the point God was trying to get across to him? Is it possible that the “point” of the passage is to condemn idolatry and temple prostitution and not to condemn same-sex sex in general? I think the answer to both questions is clearly “yes”.
No matter how important or unimportant this issue may be in comparison to past movements for civil rights, women’s suffrage and abolition, I hope and believe I’ll live to see the day when everyone will look back on this movement as we now look back on those: “Wow. Some of us were dead wrong, some of us took a while to catch on, and some of us didn’t even care — but we made it.”
