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Paperback
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
In a powerful new book, evangelical theologian and former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Jack Rogers argues unequivocally for equal rights in the church and in society for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Throughout history, he observes, Christianity has moved towards ever greater openness and inclusiveness. Today's church is led by many of those who were once cast out: people of color, women, and divorced and remarried people. He argues that when we interpret the Bible through the lens of Jesus' redemptive life and ministry, we see that the church is called to grant equal rights to all people. Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality describes Rogers' own change of mind and heart on the issue; charts the church's well-documented history of using biblical passages to oppress marginalized groups; argues for a Christ-centered reading of Scripture; debunks oft-repeated stereotypes about gays and lesbians; and concludes with ideas for how the church can heal itself and move forward again. A fascinating combination of personal narrative, theology, and church history, this book is essential reading for all concerned with the future of the church and the health of the nation. "This is an extraordinary book, arguably the best to appear in the long, drawn-out debates within churches over homosexuality," says J. Philip Wogaman, former senior minister at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. "Rogers book will be useful to people of ALL mainline denomination..." says the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. "For those who truly wish to know what the Bible does and does not say, this is a real find."
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| eye opening |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I really enjoyed this book, finding out different things about the Bible as well as homosexuality. What I noticed other people say about this book (particularly the ones who disliked it), is that they think homosexuality=behavior. Yes, everyone carries out their attractions but I believe the "attraction" is not wrong, and that this book helps prove that the Bible is not against the attraction to other men. I do believe that sexual immorality is wrong and perhaps now, with gay marriages on the way, it will be possible for gay-Christians to unify, while staying within the lines of sexual purity.
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| But do you love God? |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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There is no debate about whether God loves all people, but rather do all people love God (the Word made flesh). It seems they do not, who say that the Word (God) does not mean what he says, but just the opposite instead. Woe.... better in the end to let God be true (Rom 3:4).
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| Careful analysis of the church and homosexuality |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Noteworthy for its history of Christian attitudes and the biblical basis for beliefs about homosexuality, but I would have preferred it be less closely tied to the church as an institution and more focused on the church's mission as the body of Christ and His message of inclusion and compassion.
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| Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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GREAT BOOK. I consider it a MUST READ for anyone who is searching for true understanding of what the Bible is saying regarding homosexuality. It is necessary to consider the history, the culture of the time and the people to whom the Bible refers. This book superbly details the cultural mores in biblical history that puts a differenct light on the understanding of homosexuality as opposed to what many people today choose to believe. To deny the importance of cultural factors is like leaving out the flour in a cake recipe.
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| Author gets Barth wrong |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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This book has much to commend it, but the author's summary of Barth on male-female relationships (and his subsequent rejection of same-gender love) disregards Barth scholarship of the past 10 years, and is a superficial reading of Church Dogmatics in any case. A brief conversation with George Hunsinger at Princeton--one of the leading Barth scholars in North America--would have cleared this up and resulted, I think, in a very different argument. Eberhard Busch, Barth's longtime secretary and a respected theologian in his own right, would also have been helpful.
Barth, in the last months of his life, dictated a letter to a pastor struggling with the issue of homosexuality, in which he said that while he was too old to give the issue the attention it deserved, he suspected that if he were to rewrite the offending paragraphs in Church Dogmatics III.4, he would have said that homosexual relationships, too, shared in "freedom for community." That comment is brief, but striking, since "freedom for community" is precisely the divine gift in which heterosexual married partners participate, according to Barth.
To argue that Barth believed that the male or female is incomplete without the other does not mean that Barth concluded heterosexual marriage was normative for everyone. In fact, in the context of Protestant theology in the early 50s when Barth wrote III.4, he rather boldly praised vocational celibacy and reminded the reader that Jesus had no wife. Therefore, if Rogers is right, Barth believed that Jesus was "incomplete" or "not fully human" because he was unmarried.
On the contrary, if you dig deep enough, you can see a trajectory leading from III.4 to the comment near the end of his life that same-gender relationships might also be seen as a divine gift that leads to "freedom for community." So Rogers missed an opportunity to approach the issue constructively in a Barthian context: instead, he merely concedes Barth to those Barthians whose reading, like his, of Church Dogmatics is one-sided. Thus, Barth has to be rejected as a theologian of "male superiority" who has nothing to contribute to the debate. The sad thing is that up-to-date Barth scholarship--which would have called this view into question--was available to the author in his own church.
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