The Pilling Report offers disagreements about whether it is legitimate for Christians to fight in a war as an analogy for handling disagreements about appropriate sexual activity. This is discussed in the previous post.
David Runcorn's contribution “Evangelicals, Scripture and same sex relationships – an ‘Including Evangelical’ perspective” (Appendix 4 in the Report) refers to a few more possible analogies.
David Runcorn identifies himself as an "including evangelical" which refers to someone for whom "obedient submission to the Scriptures in personal discipleship and in the life and practice of the Church is primary and non-negotiable" and who has "come to believe that there is a place for faithful same sex relationships in the Church."[1] This he contrasts with "conserving evangelicals" who, affirming the same stance of obedient submission to the Scriptures, continue to uphold the traditional ethical teaching.
David Runcorn lists "slavery, apartheid, usury, divorce and remarriage, contraception and women in society and the Church" as "important social and ethical issues" which reveal that evangelicals have been able "to revise, reverse or adopt ‘including’ positions" having resisted to do so initially. (The use of ‘including’ with reference to the first two issues presumably relates to the effect of more inclusive communities; as far as actual practices, attitudes and behaviour patterns are concerned the move was towards exclusion which puts them in a different category from the following.)
He observes "that the unsettling process of reading, re-interpreting and revising even long unquestioned biblical convictions under the compelling of the Spirit is not a task this conserving tradition is unfamiliar with or unwilling to undertake." This much hardly needs stating. As David Runcorn himself adds, "its own understanding of Scripture requires it."
So what is it that "conserving evangelicals" may be overlooking to which David Runcorn wants to draw our attention? Maybe the nub of the issue is to be found in this statement:
Christian history warns of the hazards of using texts alone to establish the biblical teaching on any issue.This is a necessary warning against proof-texting. But it is potentially more than that. Observing that "the Christian Church today believes slavery to be evil and wrong on the basis of biblical teaching and ethics," David Runcorn adds the rhetorical question, "But on what scriptural basis?"
We would of course expect both Christian slave-holders and Christian abolitionists to appeal to biblical warrant. The fact that both sides on this or any number of issues appeal to Scripture is hardly surprising, given the place of the Bible in Christian faith and practice. What is unsettling is that this appeal to Scripture was not entirely superficial. The book I want to read on this is Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
When we look back to how the Bible was read during the civil war in the United States, or in apartheid South Africa, do we shudder at how easily sin can blind us to "what Scripture really says"? Do we need to go further, as David Runcorn seems to suggest, and acknowledge that the pro-slavery and pro-apartheid argument is exegetically as sound as the argument on the other side?
[1] The phrase "faithful same
sex relationships" apparently refers to sexually active partnerships analogous to
marriage, as committed friendships between members of the same sex are not controversial.
