Christianity and Homosexuality

A Diversity of Christian Perspectives

Some Christian institutions regard the mere fact of being homosexual as antithetical to authentic Christian life because acknowledging one's homosexual identity is misunderstood as a conscious choice against a presumed “natural” heterosexual orientation. Thus, more often than not, the conservative Christian debate on homosexuality is limited to questions of morals and ethics focused on homosexual “acts,” rather than evaluating the broader context of interpersonal relationships. By contrast, more intellectually astute Christian denominations broaden the discussion beyond mere “acts” to include the nature and quality of the relationships in which sexual intimacy takes place. These more theologically progressive churches advocate for a contextually nuanced understanding of homosexuality, one that recognizes, first, that sexual orientation is not chosen, but “discovered” in an individual and, second, that there can be no meaningful discussion of moral culpability apart from the mitigating relational context in which such sexual activity takes place.

Not surprisingly, the spectrum of positions argued among Christians on homosexual relations is rooted in varying interpretive approaches to the Bible. [Page 138]Primarily, two major distinctions can be observed: those churches that take a more literalist approach and those that have embraced historical-critical methods of interpretation. Literalist approaches have the benefit of appealing to the masses. A given passage is taken to mean precisely what it says, without questioning the historical context in which it was said, the original language in which it was written, the original audience to whom it was addressed, or the limitations of the author who originally wrote it. From this perspective, any biblical verse can be dislocated from its literary and historical context and used as a proof text to argue virtually any given ethical position. By contrast, the historical-critical approach to interpreting the Bible employs interpretive methods that necessarily take into account the historical development of each book within the Bible and do so in an analytical (i.e., “critical”) manner. Questions about oral tradition, authorship, audience, history, linguistics, literary genre, translation, and transmission, among others, are systematically addressed in order to accurately determine the meaning of a biblical text. This approach is therefore far less accessible to the masses and has the disadvantage of requiring highly specialized historical, linguistic, and theological skills.

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