Marriage and the Church: A Mainline Response

This post is part of Groupthink’s conversation on the questions Obergefell v. Hodges. The first essay in this series was written by Logann Merritt. The second, a moderate evangelical response by Marshall Johns, may be found here. Christoph’s essay below responds from a mainline Protestant point of view.

As a life-long resident of rural Missouri, last week was not a good week to be on Facebook. For days on end, I found my newsfeed flooded with links to vitriolic conservative articles with titles like “The Roots of Marriage’s Redefinition,” “The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty: Reason for Concern,” and “Why Homosexuality is Not a Sin Like Any Other.” These responses from my conservative coreligionists were disheartening, but predictable.

Equally predictable were the debates that followed in the comment threads for these posts. The conservative line usually boiled down to some variation of the old bumper sticker cliche: “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” The progressive response was essentially, “Yes, but isn’t religion supposed to be about acceptance and love and not judging others?”

Groupthink’s own Logann Merritt used one variation of the latter argument in his own response, “Same Sex Marriage and the Christian Church.” Merritt quite correctly points out the hypocrisy of those who insist we must toe the line on Scripture’s statements on homosexuality, but not on other matters of marriage and sexuality addressed in sacred writ.** He points to the need for a hermeneutic that reads Scripture through Jesus-lenses, Jesus “the embodiment of the God of love.”

While I find myself in substantial agreement with Merritt’s main principles, I believe he is mistaken to assume that biblical interpretation is the only pertinent factor informing conservative Christians’ view of gay marriage and same-sex sexual activity in general. The same assumption is present in Matthew Vines’ best-seller, God and the Gay Christian. In spite of Vines’ excellent treatment of the six biblical passages referencing same-sex sexual behavior, he still fails to move beyond the questions of hermeneutics to a thoroughgoing examination of the history, culture, and socialization process which informs American Christians’ views of sex and sexuality.

Merritt takes an important step in the right direction, though, when he states that he doesn’t believe same-sex relationships are sinful “unless these relationships bring harm and destruction to the people in them, which could just as easily be said of heterosexual relationships.”

In most moderate to progressive evangelical discourse, examination of Scripture gives way to the conclusion that gay and lesbian relationships are acceptable to God provided they are committed, monogamous relationships based on Christian love and mutuality. This is a step in the right direction, but, in my view, does not go far enough in developing a coherent and authentically Christ-like sexual ethics.

The most important step for Christians right now is to move beyond a monogamy-promiscuity model of thinking about sexuality (with all the debates about “sexual purity” that come with it) and toward a model which prioritizes the health and wellbeing of individuals and relationships. I believe that monogamous marriage and celibacy (for those who are called to it and accept it willingly) are beautiful expressions of sexuality in the Church, but I am not willing to label all sexual acts or sexualities outside those contexts as sinful a priori. I would also stress that wedding bands do not in themselves give all sexual acts between those who wear them God’s stamp of approval. Charity, consent, and reverence for the image of God in the other person are all essential elements of authentically Christian sexual acts. The sacrament of marriage affirms, but does not magically confer those elements.

If Christianity hopes to survive in a culture that is growing increasingly aware of humanity’s amazing diversity of sexual expressions and gender identities, then the first step for Christians is to reexamine not simply the “rules” governing sex to which we have historically held, but the very principles at the heart of our ethics, principles I am sure Logann alludes to when he urges a hermeneutic with Jesus at the center.

So what does Obergefell v. Hodges mean for progressive Christians? Perhaps that our culture is heading in the right direction, but still falls far short of full-bodied Christian charity.

**As an aside, I found myself a bit irritated that Merritt repeatedly uses the inclusive abbreviation "LGBTQ*" when he really only discusses matters addressing the "LG" part of the equation.