In Part One of these three posts, I suggested that Christians should be disposed to affirm gay marriage—and then noted three arguments that tend to be used to override that positive initial disposition. Then, in Part Two, I focused on two of those three arguments that tend to be used as bases for withholding affirmation of gay marriage in Christian churches: that by the nature of it being between people of the same sex, gay marriage is harmful to the people involved and that gay marriage undermines the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. In this final post, I will look at the third argument: the teaching of the Bible.

The discussion of the Bible’s teaching is probably the most contentious of all three of our “debates.” Here are just a few thoughts.

The Bible, on the one hand, contains a great deal of teaching and many stories that indirectly speak to our general theme of affirming gay marriage (or not). Not least are the teachings and stories that speak about hospitality and God’s special concern for vulnerable people. As well, teachings and stories about human relationality (going clear back to the very beginning when God says of Adam that it is not good for this first human being to be alone). We also have teaching and stories about the importance of fidelity in relationships and the problems of socially harmful actions (such as violence, injustice, adultery, abuse in various forms).

On the other hand, the Bible does not say much directly about homosexuality (which is not surprising given that the term “homosexuality” itself is a modern term that seems to reflect a modern awareness of affectional orientation and sexual identity). What do we make, though, of the several texts that have typically been seen as providing a basis for generalizing about a biblical mandate to forbid same-sex intimate relationships (and, certainly, same-sex marriage)?

We should notice three things about these texts (the main ones that interpreters usually focus on are the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18–19, the teaching in Leviticus 18 and 20 against “men laying with men as with women,” and Paul’s references in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 to problems with same-sex sexual behaviors [we could also include 1 Timothy 1:10 which clearly is derivative from I Corinthians 6 and adds no new information to the issues raised in these texts]): (1) the Bible speaks only of male “homosexuality,” (2) the Bible is concerned with various behaviors, not just one “homosexual practice,” and (3) the New Testament contains no direct commands to Christians concerning homosexuality.

The Bible speaks only of male “homosexuality”

First, these texts all refer only to males (with the possible exception of Romans 1). The Genesis passage refers to males seeking to gang-rape male visitors. Leviticus speaks only of “males laying with with males.” The particular word used in 1 Corinthians (and 1 Timothy) that is generally seen to allude to homosexual activity literally means “males laying” and is quite likely an allusion to the Leviticus verses. In Romans 1, the mention that certainly refers to homosexual sexual activity refers to “males lusting after other males.” The one possible exception, also in Romans 1, that may refer to female/female sexual activity is irresolvably unclear. It speaks of women “exchanging natural intercourse for unnatural” (1:26). What is unclear is whether the “unnatural” refers to the women having intercourse with other women or the women being “consumed with lust” (1:27). If the latter, the issue for Paul is the “consumed with lust” not the same-sex aspect of the behavior.

The general point, then, is that the Bible does not actually seem to speak directly to, for example, Ilse and Jennifer’s relationship. It seems to be concerned with male/male sexual situations, not homosexuality as a general condition. If we are looking for clear teaching that would require churches to withhold affirmation for relationships such as Ilse and Jennifer’s, we would expect the teaching straightforwardly to speak of homosexual relations as a class, not simply one subset of possible relations. We would need then to look closer at the specific texts to see what they are concerned with if they aren’t making general claims about all possible same-sex situations.

The Bible is concerned with various behaviors, not just one “homosexual practice”

So, second, when we look at the specific texts we see that they focus on particular problematic practices (plural), not on “homosexual practice” as a general category. One of the problematic rhetorical moves that those who oppose affirming gay marriage make is to use this term “homosexual practice” in the singular, with the implication that all we need to find is a single negative reference to any possible same-sex “practice” in order than to conclude that all possible “practices” are forbidden.

We would not think of taking such an approach to “heterosexual practice.” The Bible contains many more stories and commands that speak against certain heterosexual sexual behaviors (rape, adultery, promiscuity, disrespect, etc.). No one I know of would generalize from these prohibitions (in command and story) to say that the Bible is against “heterosexual practice.”

What happens if we look at the specific texts asking why in each particular case the negative association is made with male/male sex? What we will find is that in each case the behavior that is in view is behavior that would also be seen as wrong for heterosexual people. That is, the references are not to the same-sexness itself being inherently wrong.

Recognizing that severals of these passages are quite cryptic in their references (another reason not to but much weight on them), we can see that in each case they do refer to behavior that would be equally problematic if it were male/female. In Genesis, it is gang-rape. In Leviticus, it is sex outside of marriage and, perhaps, sex that happened in the context of pagan religious rites. In Romans, it is promiscuous sex. And in 1 Corinthians, it is sex linked with economic exploitation (probably prostitution).

So, the Bible is not giving us any direct guidance that would determine the churches’ affirmation (or not) of Ilse and Jennifer’s relationship. If we put much weight on the two starting points I mentioned at the beginning (the goodness of marriage and the call to hospitality), we would be led to conclude that the Bible does not overcome the inclination toward affirmation.

The New Testament contains no direct commands for Christians concerning homosexuality

This conclusion is reinforced by my third point, that the New Testament (our most important source of ethical guidance as Christians) contains no direct command against same-sex sexual intimacy. When we look at the (quite) rare references to same-sex sexual activity, we will actually discover that neither of the two main references (Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6) are in the form of direct commands.

In fact, in both cases, Paul is describing the behavior of non-Christians in order to make points that have little or nothing to do with sexual ethics. In Romans, Paul describes the general descent toward violence and injustice that characterizes people who trust in idols rather than in God. He uses the orgies of the Roman elite as an obvious example of this descent. Ironically, in light of how this Romans 1 text is often used in relation to homosexuality, Paul then goes on to challenge his self-righteous Jewish Christian readers that they actually are guilty of the same kind of descent when they point fingers at others.

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul confronts wealthy members of the Corinthian church for their efforts to defraud poorer members of their congregation economically—and to rely on unjust pagan courts to enforce their exploitation. The pagan judges are unjust, in the same way the Corinthians Christians had been before they met Jesus. To make his point, Paul gives a list of sinful behaviors that the pagans are guilty of. This list includes economically exploitative male/male sex.

So, rather than clearly teaching to Christians that they must not be involved in relationships such as Ilse and Jennifer’s, the New Testament is actually totally silent in this regard. So, again, if we are influenced by the affirmation of the goodness of marriage and the call to hospitality, we would be led toward affirmation given the lack of clear biblical teaching to overturn such an inclination.

Conclusion

Christians should affirm gay marriage for precisely the same reasons and in the same ways that we affirm heterosexual marriage. We should not think of this as making a special exception that allows this “deviant” behavior as some kind of “concession.” Instead, we should think of it as refusing a double standard that affirms marriage for heterosexuals but refuses such affirmation for homosexuals.

Going back to the beginning of this post, we do this because we believe marriage is a good thing. We should want everyone possible to enjoy the benefits of healthy and life-affirming marriage relationships. And we also do this because we believe that as biblical people, our disposition should be to welcome vulnerable people (and we recognize how homosexual people have been and continue to be mistreated).

And, finally, we have no bases to overtune our disposition toward affirmation. Gay marriage is not inherently harmful. It does not undermine the sanctity of marriage. And it is not condemned by the teaching of the Bible.

In the first part of this post, I suggested that Christian churches should be disposed toward affirming gay marriage. Two key factors that support this disposition are (1) the sense we have that marriage is a good thing that should be encouraged and supported in the churches and (2) the emphasis the Bible places on hospitality, especially toward vulnerable people, as a central calling of faith communities.

Both of these points speak to a general disposition, that we should be inclined toward affirmation unless there are clear reasons to override this disposition. It would be possible to draw negative conclusions about gay marriage even if one affirms the disposition toward affirmation. We could do so if we were convinced that there is something inherently immoral about the same-sexness of the partnership.

The argument in favor of affirming gay marriage, though, is at its heart an argument in favor of rigorous moral expectations concerning intimate relationships. It is an argument that same-sex couples should be expected to adhere to the moral standards that govern heterosexual marriage. It is not an argument for relaxing those standards or applying different standards to same-sex couples than apply to heterosexual couples.

The challenge for those who would not affirm gay marriage, then, is to show that there is something inherently wrong simply in the partners being of the same sex. I identified three reasons that are often given by those who do withhold affirmation. The relationships are seen to be immoral: (1) if the relationship is harmful to the people involved; or (2) if the relationship undermines the sanctity of marriage; or (3) if the Bible tells us that, even so, this relationship violates God’s will for human beings.

I use the case of the relationship between “Ilse” and “Jennifer” (based on actual people I know) to present the most positive scenario possible on behalf of affirming gay marriage. To withhold such affirmation, one would need to show why this relationship is immoral (and overcome the benefit of the doubt in favor of affirmation based on the positive value we see in marriage and the biblical call for hospitality toward vulnerable people).

Is the relationship inherently harmful?

Many debates rage about this question. However, we should recognize that a persuasive argument concerning inherent harmfulness would need to apply to all same-sex partnerships. The argument would need to show that it is due to the same-sexness of the partnership that harm results. The argument is making claims about homosexuality per se, not just about specific examples. If some same-sex intimate partnerships are not harmful, then this argument does not work because the harm that may be part of some relationships is not due to the homosexuality itself.

We would acknowledge that there are many heterosexual intimate partnerships that are harmful—due to abuse, physical damage, disrespect, etc. But the existence of harmful heterosexual relationships does not render heterosexual relationships as a class harmful. Should we have examples of same-sex partnerships that are not harmful, we would have cause to suggest that we have to do with a parallel dynamic. That is, the existence of some harmful same-sex partnerships does not render homosexual relationships as a class harmful.

At this point, we could consider Ilse and Jennifer’s relationship. As it turns out, anyone who knows them very well would testify that their relationship is mutually beneficial for them and beneficial for all who are part of their lives. In their partnership (which as I mentioned in the previous post includes their own children), they are a blessing to each other in every way that a healthy and long-term heterosexual marriage is a blessing to all who are affected by it.

Ilse and Jennifer are not necessarily any more unusual within the set of same-sex married couples than a happily married heterosexual couple would be within the set of opposite-sex married couples. There are many other same-sex couples whose partnerships make it clear to any who would observe that there is nothing inherently harmful about such relationships.

Does the relationship undermine the sanctity of marriage?

This question also leads to intense debates. It is difficult to imagine how these debates can avoid being circular, though. Same-sex marriage undermines the sanctity of marriage if you define marriage as being limited to opposite-sex partners. Same-sex marriage does not undermine the sanctity of marriage if you don’t define marriage as being limited to opposite-sex partners.

Part of the issue, then, is what constitutes the core of our definition of marriage. Is it (1) the sexual identity of the two partners? Or is it (2) the commitment and quality of life that is shared by the two partners? Some would say that both of these are part of the definition. But do they have to be? Is #2 dependent upon #1?

What would make marriage sacred? Numerous writers (including Garry Wills) have commented recently that the Christian church did not consider marriage to be a sacrament until the twelfth century. The Bible itself surprisingly offers few actual accounts of examples of the “one man/one woman” “sacred” marriage many Christians today see as the norm (as a thought experiment, try to think of important male characters from throughout the Bible whose “one-woman-for-life” marriage is described).

The meaning of marriage seems to have been different in different times and places. Thus it is difficult to ascertain one particular model that may be seen as “sacred” for all times and places.

However, we could argue that the best way to support the institution of marriage is to focus on the virtues of fidelity, mutuality, faithfulness, commitment to God and the way of Jesus, and enhancing of the well-being of those affected by the relationship. Given the multitudinous failures of opposite-sex marriages to embody such virtues, might those committed to these virtues best make common cause?

Again, if we look at Ilse and Jennifer’s relationship, we see an impressive embodiment of these key “sacred” virtues that underlie the ideal of marriage. Their relationship seems to undergird the sanctity of marriage, not undermine it.

[In Part Three of this post, I will focus on the biblical case for opposition to gay marriage.]

Over the past fifteen years or so, I have given numerous talks and papers in various settings explaining why I believe that Christian churches should take a welcoming or inclusive stance in relation to homosexuality. These talks have evolved over time. The most recent presentation came when I was a guest speaker in a seminary sexual ethics class.

Because it does not seem that this discussion is going to end any time soon (witness the recent juxtaposition of North Carolina’s vote against gay marriage and President Obama’s statement of support for gay marriage), I find it necessary to keep thinking about how to articulate my views. Here, I will offer an expansion of the remarks I made in my seminary class presentation.

Point one: Marriage is a good thing

My first starting point is the belief that marriage is a good thing. Christians should work in their communities to offer support for married people—to help couples in their struggles, to celebrate the beauty of these relationships, to encourage people entering into healthy and life-enhancing covenant relationships. In our contemporary American society, marriage is a difficult undertaking; the odds are tragically high that couples will face major crises and have a strong likelihood of moving into divorce territory. Couples need the resources offered by supportive faith communities.

Now, I recognize that this is all quite complicated. Some marriages are not life-enhancing. People who do go through divorces also need the support of faith communities. And, absolutely, people who are single need support as well. Singleness should not be seen as an inferior state, and churches often have a lot of work to do to become redemptive places for single people. Nonetheless, we do recognize the potential for beauty and life in the context of marriage and believe that the churches should bless and encourage people who choose marriage.

The issue then becomes whether the churches have moral bases for withholding such blessing and support for people in same-sex covenanted partnerships (and now, in many places around the world, actual marriage).

Point two: The call to hospitality

The second point has to do with the general disposition of communities of faith. Churches have many different ideals and responsibilities. At the heart of their vocation, if they are to be true to the biblical model (both the model in the Old Testament based on Torah and the model in the New Testament based on the life and teaching of Jesus), is a call to be hospitable. The basic vocation of biblically-based communities of faith found expression at the very beginning when Abraham and Sarah were told that they would parent a “great nation” that would “bless all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3  and elsewhere).

Two stories that have ironically been misused to justify inhospitality toward homosexual people underscore the importance of hospitality. In Genesis 18–19 we read of Abraham modeling hospitality both in his welcome of two emissaries from God and in his pleading on behalf of the wayward cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In contrast, men in those two cities model some of the worst cases of inhospitality as they seek to gang rape these same two emissaries, thereby bringing terrible judgment upon themselves. The main lesson of this account is to underscore the centrality of hospitality in the biblical mindset, and to lift Abraham up as our model.

Echoing many of the elements of the Genesis 18–19 story, in Judges 19 we read again of terrible inhospitality characterized by an attempt to gang rape a vulnerable visitor. In this case, the visitor pushes his wife out the door and she is raped and killed. The terrible element of this story in its biblical context is that this happens in Israel, the cold-hearted visitor is a Levite priest, and the outcome of these awful events is a devastating civil war. This all illustrates the corruption at the heart of the community of faith—finding its most notable expression in a blatant violation of the laws of hospitality.

The call to hospitality in Torah has at its heart a special concern for vulnerable people in the community. Jesus captured something of the spirit of Torah hospitality when he challenged his listeners—everyone tends to be generous to people who can be generous back, but those who fulfill the heart of the Law will be generous to those who can’t be generous back. In Leviticus 19, the heart of what is often called “the Holiness Code” that outlines a distinctively Torah-based way of life that contrasts with surrounding cultures, the call to holy living finds its core expression in care for widows, orphans, and immigrants—that is, vulnerable people, people all too often exploited and marginalized in “the world.”

The failure to practice such generosity in Israel provides the focus of a great deal of prophetic critique throughout the story that follows. This concern is then made central in the message of Jesus. He made welcome to vulnerable people a central element of his attempt to recover the heart of Torah.

The importance of hospitality toward vulnerable people pushes present day Christian communities to be disposed toward welcoming gay people. When this is combined with placing positive value on marriage, we are pretty far along toward an affirmation of gay marriage in Christian churches.

However, many Christians would still argue against such an affirmation. These arguments seem to center on three main points: (1) There is something inherently harmful about same-sex marriage for those in such relationships. (2) To affirm same-sex marriage undermines the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. (3) The Bible gives us clear teaching about the sinfulness of all types of homosexual sexual intimacy.

A test case

To test these points, let’s imagine an actual relationship. This relationship is based on people I actually know. Some of the specific details are fictional, but are surely possible, even probable, in specific cases.

Two young women, “Ilse” and “Jennifer,” become friends as students in a Christian college. In time, each realizes that they have strongly romantic feelings toward the other. They work together and decide that they want to commit themselves to live as a couple. They seek out a pastor for pre-marriage counseling and, in time, formalize their commitment in a union ceremony and begin life as a married couple. Throughout this period they are active in a faith community that affirms their relationship and blesses their union.

After several years of married life, Ilse and Jennifer decide that they would like to expand their family. Through artificial insemination, one of them becomes pregnant. They welcome their baby into their family, and after awhile add a second child. They continue in their church involvement and are widely recognized as mature and spiritually fruitful Christians.

So, in every obvious way, this family parallels Christianity’s ideal for a heterosexual married couple and nuclear family. There are no differences in the details of their courtship and marriage except for the sex of the partners.

How, then, does Ilse and Jennifer’s relationship measure up in relation to the concerns typically raised by Christians who would argue that their relationship should not be blessed by their church—and, in fact, may even argue that they should not be allowed to be full participants in the church as long as they are in their relationship and, presumably, sexually active?

[In Part Two of this post, I look at the first two arguments in relation to Ilse and Jennifer's relationship. In Part Three I will focus on the biblical case for opposition to gay marriage.]

What kind of directives do Mennonites get from their main denominational doctrinal statement concerning homosexuality? A recent news article reports that several churches in the Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA will bring a resolution to their annual conference assembly that assumes clear directives. The resolution will require the conference to name the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (CofF) as stating the official position of the conference. If the resolution passes, the Conference will then expect that “those who cannot do so according to their conscience resign their positions of leadership and influence in the Western District Conference.”

Chances are that the resolution will not pass. However, I doubt that few if any people considering this resolution will question assumptions being made about the content of the CofF that underlie the resolution.

The context of the resolution makes it clear that its central concern is with the issue of homosexuality. The resolution, reflecting a common assumption throughout MC USA, clearly understands the CofF to provide a clear basis for a negative view of intimate same-sex relationships (the specific issue that triggered this resolution was a conference pastor officiating at a same-sex wedding). This assumption that the CofF provides clear opposition to same-sex marriage is problematic, to say the least (as is, of course, the notion that the CofF should be used as a basis for drawing clear in-or-out lines based on beliefs).

It’s not surprising that people would assume that the CofF provides a clear basis for rejecting an inclusive stance concerning homosexuality given that official denominational statements cite it as doing so. However, a careful reading of the CofF itself actually repudiates such an assumption.

The “Teaching Position” of the Mennonite Church USA

The term “teaching position” came into prominence with the publication of the “Membership Guidelines for the Formation of the Mennonite Church USA” in 2001. Section III of the Membership Guidelines focused on “issues related to homosexuality and membership,” and articulated several “teaching positions”—affirming the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (1995) and especially its statement, “We believe that God intends marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman for life” (Article 19); affirming the Saskatoon (1986) and Purdue Statements (1987) that describe “homosexual, extramarital, and premarital sexual activity as sin;” and affirming the call from those two statements “for the church to be in dialogue with those who hold differing views” (I will focus only the CofF aspect of this discussion in this post, drawing heavily on a longer article that addresses the other aspects as well).

These Membership Guidelines are treated as authoritative directives—certainly being the main basis for affirming that the Mennonite Church USA has an official “teaching position” on homosexuality. And, clearly, when many Mennonites use the term ‘teaching position,’ they are thinking of the assertion that “homosexual activity is sin.” They also seem to assume that this is a clear and settled conclusion. However, given that the discussion among Mennonites is scarcely over, we would do well to think more carefully about this “teaching position.”

The Confession of Faith on marriage

The first source that is cited in the Membership Guidelines is the 1995 CofF. That the CofF would be cited as the basis for the “teaching position” on homosexuality is interesting. This citation, without explanation, gives the impression that the CofF provides clear and direct teaching concerning homosexuality. However, the actual CofF does not in fact even mention homosexuality.

Article 19 addresses “Family, Singleness, and Marriage.” The first sentence in the third paragraph of this article, the sentence quoted in the Membership Guidelines, reads thus: “We believe that God intends marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman for life.” At the end of this sentence, a footnote reference is given to two biblical texts. The first text is Mark 10:9: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” This verse is part of Jesus’ teaching on divorce (which here in Mark is totally rejected) and remarriage (which Jesus names as adultery, i.e., “sin” [Mark 10:11-12]). Note that the CofF cites Mark’s version of Jesus’ teaching, which allows for no exceptions to the forbidding of divorce and characterizing of remarriage as sin; it does not cite the slightly more relaxed account in Matthew 19:9 that does allow for a divorce exception in the case of the infidelity of the partner.

The second text is 1 Corinthians 7:10-11: “To the married I give this command—not I but the Lord—that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.” Note that the CofF ends the citation at verse 11 and hence does not include the “exception” of an unbeliever leaving a believing spouse (1 Cor. 7:15).

Based on this footnote, then, it seems clear that the thrust of the CofF sentence that begins Article 19 is on the permanence of marriage and the sinfulness of divorce and remarriage (that is, emphasizing the “for life” conclusion to the first sentence). So, not only does Article 19 not speak directly of homosexuality, the one place that may be seen indirectly to allude to “homosexual practice” (the definition of marriage as “one man, one woman, for life) clearly has in mind a different issue—divorce and remarriage.

That divorce and remarriage are in mind in the first sentence of Article 19 is made even clearer by the commentary on this Article. The commentary (which is also part of the CofF as officially adopted by the Mennonite Church USA) speaks to the divorce issue and says nothing about homosexuality. “Today’s church needs to uphold the permanency of marriage and help couples in conflict move toward reconciliation. At the same time, the church, as a reconciling and forgiving community, offers healing and new beginnings. The church is to bring strength and healing to individuals and families” (emphasis added).

Pastoral concern in the CofF

While we need to note that the commentary and scripture citations make it clear that the sentence from Article 19 of the CofF that is quoted in the Membership Guidelines is being misused when it is construed as a basis for an official “teaching position” concerning homosexuality, we should also notice another point the CofF makes.

The commentary softens the strictness of the CofF article and the two New Testament texts cited. “At the same time,” the church is a place of welcome and forgiveness. This comment does not spell out a more nuanced approach to divorce and remarriage, but it does seem to open the door for such. One could easily draw from this commentary a basis for accepting divorced and remarried people as full members of Mennonite congregations (which, of course, is in fact increasingly the practice). The point, it would appear, is that the CofF makes a strong statement about the importance of Christian marriage, but implicitly allows for exceptions in the case of divorce and remarriage—exceptions that are not seen, in many contexts, to negate the theological affirmation of the marriage covenant as a life-long commitment. More important, we could say, than absolute fidelity to the ideal is that the church “brings strength and healing to individuals and families”—including even people who are divorced and remarried.

Could such an approach also be applied to people in same-sex covenanted partnerships? The CofF could be read in a way that would imply an affirmative answer to this question—if indeed the churches’ priorities should be on bringing “strength and healing.” Of course, such a reading and application would stand in tension with the Membership Guidelines’ use of the CofF.

How the CofF was meant to work

Another question we should ask about the Membership Guidelines’ use of the CofF arises when we look at the introduction to the CofF, remembering that the introduction was also affirmed by both the General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church in 1995 when the CofF was officially approved by the denominations. In the introduction, we read of six ways the CofF “serves the church.” That is, the CofF itself gives instruction concerning the role it is meant to serve in the Mennonite churches.

This is what it says: “How do Mennonite confessions of faith serve the church? First, they provide guidelines for the interpretation of Scripture. At the same time, the confession itself is subject to the authority of the Bible. Second, confessions of faith provide guidance for belief and practice. In this connection, a written statement should support but not replace the lived witness of faith. Third, confessions build a foundation for unity within and among churches. Fourth, confessions offer an outline for instructing new church members and for sharing information with inquirers. Fifth, confessions give an updated interpretation of belief and practice in the midst of changing times. And sixth, confessions help in discussing Mennonite belief and practice with other Christians and people of other faiths.”

What’s missing? Anything hinting that the CofF is meant to be used as an authoritative basis for a boundary marking “teaching position”—not to mention that the CofF should not be used as the basis for such a “teaching position” on a topic it doesn’t even address.

Affirming the CofF

Personally, as someone who takes a strongly inclusive stand on the “homosexuality issue,” I find little objectionable with Article 19 in the CofF. I wish the careful gentleness implied in the commentary section were more forceful, but the message remains clear. We affirm the sanctity and permanence of marriage, but recognize that the one man, one woman for life ideal does not always work out. Being that the church is for healing, not condemnation, we seek to find ways to be supportive “to individuals and families” who may live outside that ideal.

There is no reason, based on what the CofF actually says, to read it as expressing rejection of same-sex marriage—certainly less reason than reading it as expressing rejection of remarriage after divorce.

Given the actual content of the CofF, there is no reason for a person affirming full inclusion of homosexual believers in Mennonite congregations and even affirming same-sex marriage (even officiating in same-sex marriages!) to feel like they could not affirm the CofF.

In my Introduction to Theology class the past several years, I have asked students to read a book that contains interactive essays that address questions related to Christian faith and religious pluralism (Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World). We then have several vigorous discussions about how we think of these different approaches. We focus on three from the book: “pluralist” (Christianity is not any more truthful than other religions; salvation is possible separate from Christianity); “inclusivist” (Christianity is the one true faith, but others may gain saving faith outside of Christianity in ways that ultimate do lead them to Jesus), and “particularist” (Christianity is the one truth faith; one finds salvation only by explicitly trusting in Jesus).

These discussions have stimulated me to reflect on my own understandings of these issues.

Religious pluralism as a fact of life

This issue of Christian faith in relation to other religions grows ever more challenging for Christians in our globalized world.  Here in the United States, we can no longer avoid asking about different religions.  Many of us travel around the world, doing business with people from many cultures and religious traditions, and, if nothing else, rub shoulders in grocery stores and ethnic restaurants with other-than-Christian religious folks.

I teach at a tiny Christian college in small, pretty isolated city in Virginia’s Shenandoah valley.  I have had students who are Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist.  Our favorite places to eat include restaurants operated by recent immigrants from Nepal, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Mexico, and Ethiopia.  Our local public high school, in 2006, had students from 64 different countries who spoke 44 different languages—and surely represented numerous different faiths.  Religious pluralism has become part of our everyday life, like it or not.

So, what do we think of the various religions of the world?  How do we relate our own Christian faith to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and so on?  How does our understanding of the religions fit with our broader theological convictions?

Jesus and religion

Does it matter if we think self-consciously about the religions as if Jesus matters?  If we keep Jesus’ hierarchy of values central, will doing so influence our approach to the issue of religious pluralism? I suggest that, following Jesus, we should place at the center of this discussion the call to love God and to love our neighbors.  We should orient our reflections more in terms of serving Jesus’ love command than of devoting our best energy to dividing lines between different religions.

In this light, one of my first thoughts is that we should recognize that the category “religion” is a human category.  We seem to think that religions exist as fundamentally real things, rather than as labels we have created to try to place some kind of ordering framework on to our experiences.  We do need such labels, but they are artificial, they exist only in our minds.

The universe does not explode when my friend Sallie identifies herself simultaneously as a Quaker and a Buddhist.  The universe does not explode when my friend Dan has membership in a Jewish synagogue and in a Mennonite church—both at the same time.

Jesus did reportedly say, so famously, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  But I don’t think he meant to say that Christianity is the one true religion.  I don’t think he meant to say that a person must pass some kind of doctrinal test that clearly identifies one as a Christian and gives one a token to use for exclusive access to heaven after one dies.  I don’t think these words from Jesus were ever meant to negate his call to love our neighbors.

Perhaps a key point is to reflect on what it means to think of Jesus as “the way.”  What is the “way” Jesus tells us about?  He gives us a very important criterion for discernment in the story from Mark 2:23-28 about the Sabbath.  Jesus states that the Sabbath (a religious practice par excellence) is meant for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath.

Let me apply this thought to our thinking about religions.  Viewed in light of Jesus’ words, we could say that religious identity, religious practice, religious faith—these are meant to serve human well-being.  The “way” of Jesus as a religious leader, as the object of religious devotion, focuses on the question: Does our religiosity serve human well-being or not?

I would say that our religion has to do with the practices, rituals, and such that reflect and sustain our theology.  I want to use Jesus’ life and teaching as our criterion for discerning how “Christian” (or how befitting of Christ-followers) our religious practices are.

“Christian theology” is not an exercise in buttressing the human religion we call Christianity.  Theology with Jesus as its center does not focus on religious structures, institutions, doctrines, and ideologies of exclusion.  Rather, “Christian theology” has to do with reflection that empowers us to follow Jesus and his way of love of God and neighbor.  Good theology empowers us by clarifying God’s mercy for us and guiding our response embodied in our faith faithful living.

The Old Testament and Jesus’ hierarchy of values

The Bible gives us a wide-angle look at Jesus’ hierarchy of values.  His core message was not esoteric or out of the blue or an absolute departure from what went before.  Jesus anchored his message directly in the broad message of the Bible, the message God had given to Israel through God’s prophets.  The Bible teaches that God desires peace (health and wholeness) for the whole world, that God has formed a people to know this peace and to share it with the rest of the world.  The religion that God endorses embodies this teaching.

We see this basic message at the beginning of the story in Genesis 12:1-3.  Just before these verses, we are introduced to Abram and Sarah, and told that Sarah was barren.  God would change that condition.

God shows mercy to the barren couple, gifting them with offspring.  In doing so, God calls Abraham and Sarah to establish a community.  Their descendants will carry the promise of God.  God promises, through these people who know God, to bless all the families of the earth.  We could understand this calling of Abraham as the beginning of a religion.  However, these verses make clear that the purpose of this religious vocation had to do with “blessing all the families of the earth” not simply the edification of the chosen people.  The religion here is centered on service toward others regardless of their religious affiliation.

The story continues with another founding moment.  Following the journey of Abraham’s descendents into slavery in Egypt, God liberates the people under the leadership of Moses.  God then gives Moses an extended set of commands (Torah) to guide the people in their common life and to order their religious practices.  These practices in some sense did have exclusive elements—setting the Hebrews over against the surrounding nations.  However, at the beginning of the revelation of the commands, God reiterates the calling to Abraham and his descendents that includes the task of mediating God’s love to the rest of the world (Exodus 19:5-6).

The priest’s task includes serving as a channel of God’s message to the wider world.  God calls this “holy nation” to know God and to share that knowledge with, and thereby bless, all the families of the earth.  The exclusiveness serves to protect the Hebrews from reverting to the unjust ways of the Egyptian empire.  And, this distinctiveness should enable God’s people to witness to God’s way of peace in order ultimately to bless the nations.

Abraham’s descendants do form a people who hear again, from the prophet Isaiah, about their vocation (2:2-4), in an echo of God’s words to Abraham and Sarah.  The faithful religious practices of God’s people will bring men and women from all the nations of the earth to learn the ways of peace.  God’s will for God’s people is that they will lead the way in the conversion of swords into plowshares, of spears into pruning hooks.  God’s people are to help all the families of the earth break their addiction to violence and to study war no more.

This vision in Isaiah, which the prophet Micah also repeats word for word (4:1-4), does not speak of the “many peoples” converting to a different religion (though that possibility is not precluded).  The emphasis is on the ways of peace, the transformation of weapons of war into tools for peace.

Isaiah’s “the word of the Lord,” as mediated to the nations through Israel, has potency.  This potency may be seen in the word’s ability to bring social and political healing in a world all too often at war.  The locus of the prophet’s concern lay not with religion as an exclusive, closed community, but with changes in how people live—people from all the world (and, presumably, from all the faiths of the world).

Jesus’ affirmation of the prophetic message

Jesus gives a similar message.  Near the end of his ministry, he addresses themes of salvation and condemnation in his parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46.  Like with Isaiah, he focuses not on religious beliefs and membership, but on practical living.

Jesus presents his message here in almost shocking terms.  Those who practice the kind of religion that unites them with God, those who inherit the kingdom, are the ones who give food to the hungry, who give drink to the thirsty, who welcome the stranger, who clothe the naked, who care for the sick, who visit the prisoner.

The kicker here is that the faithful people don’t even recognize the significance of their actions.  It’s not the overt acts of religiosity that matter here, it’s the simple acts of caring.  “Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).  In this parable, Jesus clearly subordinates explicit confessional religious practices to concrete ministry.  Jesus does not picture an ethics-less religious universalism where everyone finds God no matter what.  However, he likewise does not picture an ethics-less religious exclusivism where only those with the correct doctrine find God.

Jesus, instead, does differentiate between those who will be welcomed by God and those who won’t.  If we deduce a kind of religious pluralism from this passage, it should not be a religious pluralism that makes no distinctions between faith and un-faith.  The distinction that matters for Jesus is not a distinction that separates different religious traditions from each other.  The separation Jesus speaks of follows from faithfulness in how we live.  Those who bless others with water and food when needed go with God.  And those who do not….

At the very end of the Bible, Revelation provides a concluding vision of the New Jerusalem, the fulfillment of God’s healing promise, and finds the nations being healed—also clearly an echo of the original calling given Abraham and Sarah.

The kings of the earth, who are God’s enemies throughout the Bible, find healing (Rev 22:1-2).  These former enemies bring their “glory” into the circle of God’s community.  The witness made by those who followed the Lamb’s path of persevering love contributes mightily to this final healing.

In these various passages, representative of numerous others that could also be cited, we have a clear message that the religiosity that matters to the God of the Bible finds expression in works of service and social transformation.  This religiosity, we could say in our context today, has very little to do with formal membership in any particular religious institution.  Such membership has authenticity before God only insofar as it serves the practices that truly matter: beating swords into plowshares, giving water to the thirsty and food to the hungry.

From these several passages, we see bases for understanding biblical faith to center more on acts of love and healing justice than on formal institutional confession and membership.  So, we may say that what matters most, biblically, about religion is that it serve human wellbeing.  This service is our core criterion—and provides the positive calling of all people of faith.  Understanding religion in this way does provide great potential for mutuality among different organized religions.

Once consequence of this understanding of the Bible for Christians is to perceive a challenge toward faithfulness—that our religious practices conform to God’s will.  We run a high risk of profoundly violating God’s intentions for our faith communities when we center on excluding access to God.  Our task, instead, is to center on the love and healing justice that our religious practices should serve.  When we do so, we will thereby bless all the families of the earth.

Religiosity and injustice

We may also see a shadow side to the Bible’s call for our religiosity to serve love and healing justice.  This shadow side is that all too often God’s people have failed to let their religion serve do so.  To the contrary, all too often God’s people have allowed their religion to co-exist with, even, reinforce, injustice.  We see this concern clearly in the prophets.  Isaiah 1:2-20 begins a book with a litany of critiques of injustice mixed with religiosity.  Similar passages in Amos, Micah, Hosea, and Jeremiah, among others, also emphasize the blasphemy of religiosity that disregards practical love and justice.  Perhaps the most famous example comes in the book of Amos.  Amos sharply critiques Israel for its blasphemous combination of social injustice and active religiosity.  Because of the injustices, when Israel goes to worship, they actually reinforce their alienation from God.

Amos provides sarcastic directives to the people.  Go to the religious services at Bethel and Gilgal—and sin, and multiply your sins (4:4).  Simply the act of public worship is itself blasphemous and sinful when injustice prevails so blatantly in the wider society.  Because of their injustices, God says, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” (5:21).

According to the prophets, the kind of religious practices that matter to God are caring for the needy and resisting injustice.

Jesus reiterates this emphasis, also voicing words of sharp critique toward exclusivist religiosity (see Matthew 23:23-24).

These critiques demand that we recognize how dangerous religion can be.  Religion may actually push us into rebellion against God.  So we should be very careful about setting our religion over against others as the “only true faith.”  Religion, to be acceptable to God, must serve mercy (not seek to monopolize it).

The heart of Torah (and the gospel)

The heart of Torah, according to the prophets and Jesus, may be found in the concern for serving others and opposing oppression and injustice.  These are the commitments that religious faith and religious practices are to serve.  Consequently, Jesus and the prophets surely provide a basis for Christians making common cause with people of other faiths who also are committed to caring for others and opposing oppression and injustice.

The Bible places the highest priority on such commitments—much more so than on fostering religiously sanctioned boundary lines that imply that formal religious affiliation matters more to God than works of love.  The prophets at times do emphasize the need for boundary lines—but these are for the sake of protecting faithfulness to Torah’s message of justice, mercy, and shalom over against the injustices of surrounding empires.

We see the emphasis on works of love when we return to the well-known passage from the Gospel of Luke we have seen throughout this book as central to theology done as if Jesus matters.  This story of the “Good Samaritan” captures the general message of all these other texts.

Jesus was asked about eternal life.  How is this found?  The gospels tell on only one other occasion of Jesus being asked this same question.  On this other occasion, Jesus’ answer first summarizes the commandments then zeroes in on an ethical demand: “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor” (Luke 18:18-25).  Here in Luke 10, Jesus’ answer also summarizes the law and the prophets.  Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.  That’s it, in a nutshell.  “Eternal life” is not about membership in an exclusive religion nor about correct creeds.  It’s about being loved and loving others in return.

The story does not end there.  Jesus needs to spell out in a more pointed way what he means by love of God and neighbor.  Jesus’ questioner presses him.  So who is my neighbor?  That is, “isn’t this what we all do, love our neighbors who share our same religious practices and practice formal worship of God?”  Jesus answer could not be more radical.  He tells the story of the Jewish man traveling to Jericho who is mugged, robbed, and left for dead.  Several people pass him by, including leaders of his own religion.  It seems quite likely that these religious leaders placed a higher priority on the avoidance of impurity than on compassion.

Then, unexpectedly, the beaten man is helped, his life is saved, by the extraordinary generosity of a traveling merchant.  Jesus’ story makes it clear: the neighbor is the person who especially needs your help.

There’s more to it, though.  The exemplary neighbor, the one who shows what Jesus has in mind (that is, the one who finds salvation!) is not even a Jew.  He’s not a part of the religion of Jesus and his listeners.  Jesus makes clear here that saving faith that finds expression in works of mercy is available to all people of good will.  It does not follow from formal membership in any particular religion.  In fact, the people who are “members” of the correct religion in this story fail to help the person in need.  That is, they are not neighbors; they disobey Torah’s most important commandment.

Jesus takes it yet further.  The person who models neighborliness in this story not only is not a member of the correct religion, he is a member of the most incorrect religion imaginable to Jesus’ listeners.  He’s a Samaritan, their sworn enemy.  The saved person in Jesus’ story is the one who does genuine justice, the one who loves his neighbor—not the one who is a card-carrying member of the correct religion.

Christianity’s exclusive truthfulness?

Now, let’s think back to the core text for those arguing for Christianity’s exclusive truthfulness, John 14:6.  In light of this story of the Good Samaritan, would we be willing to go so far as to see this story as an explanation of Jesus’ famous saying about being the way, truth, and life?  Is the “one way” to God that he proclaims in fact the way of the Samaritan in this story?

When Jesus asserts that he is the way, the only way to God, could he be actually asserting that this “way” is precisely the way followed by the “good Samaritan”?  Is the Samaritan giving evidence of his own love of God by his actions?  Are any who practice that kind of costly, risky love for others in need in fact following this one way to God?

Jesus’ attitude toward religion seems to center on its danger.  Religious practices can (and should) serve human wellbeing.  However, often they do not.  Too often and too easily, religious people (including Christians) imitate the Levite in the Good Samaritan story and simply pass by people in need.

Jesus, in the context of the entire message of the Bible, challenges his followers to find inspiration in texts such as Isaiah 2:2-4; Matthew 25:31-40; and Revelation 22:1-2.  Our task is not to focus on boundary lines that separate us from other religions.  Rather, our task is to witness to the ways of peace in order to bring healing to the nations.

How do we understand this inextricable link between “loving God” and “loving neighbor”?  Let me suggest, on the basis of the biblical emphases I’ve summarized in this essay, that we should see in people loving their neighbors evidence that they are also genuinely loving God.  Such love, when unaccompanied by overt trust in Jesus, does not make a person a Christian.  We have good reasons to believe, though, that such love does reflect harmony with God.  We may wonder whether this harmony might not ultimately be more important than formal religious affiliation.

The Jesus-oriented view of religion I have tried to articulate here does not necessarily fit neatly within the three-part typology I mention at the beginning of the essay (pluralism, inclusivist, or particularist). Each of these options seems to understand “religion” is a more rigid and easily-identified way than I do with obvious boundary-lines. Probably the conclusion my discussion points to is actually to see the debate about pluralism as potentially a distraction from the core focus Jesus and the prophets had—on living out shalom and drawing common cause with others who do likewise.

[An earlier version of this essay was published in Theology As If Jesus Matters: An Introduction to Christianity's Main Convictions (Living Issues Discussion).]

I appreciate the several thoughtful responses to my post, “Jesus and homosexuality: What did he do?” They have encouraged me to do some more thinking.

The direct relevance of Jesus’ message for homosexuality

My cyber-friend Bill Samuel suggests that the essay “had no final conclusion” and “seemed to sort of wander away from the original topic.” While I may want to challenge his assessment a bit, I do take this as a challenge to try to complete the circle a bit more forcefully and suggest direct application of the account of Jesus’ “politics of compassion” for how churches today might negotiate the “homosexuality issue” (I have felt uneasy about using the word “homosexuality” for some years, but I have the sense that the word has somewhat less of a negative feel about it more recently—and we still don’t seem to have an alternative single-word term).

I ended the post with four somewhat general points about Jesus’ relevance for our day: his practice of welcome to all kinds of people, his direct challenge to those practicing a boundary-marker-centered faith, his willingness to suffer for the practices of welcome and challenge and call upon his followers to do likewise, and his foundational priority upon healing mercy as the locus of his ministry.

The final, seemingly obvious but admittedly unstated, point would be simply to say that Jesus’ message would seem clearly to require communities of his followers to embody his way of welcome in relation to homosexual people in their midst. Such communities should also make a special point of welcoming into their midst homosexual people who are currently outside their doors. In fact, this issue might well be one of the clearest test cases for how serious Christian communities are about embodying the way of Jesus.

On a certain level, this point about overtly affirming a welcoming approach toward homosexual people seems so obvious as not to need explicit mention. But, of course, many Christians (as hinted in Bill Samuel’s comment) find it clear that Jesus gives a message of welcome. However, they are not so clear that this message serves as an imperative for churches to abolish all limits to the welcome to homosexual people that are based on criteria that apply to such people that don’t apply to heterosexual people. This kind of discrimination, of course, is the fundamental issue. Is there something about the homosexuality per se that requires limits on the churches’ inclusion once we factor out behaviors that are also considered immoral for heterosexual people?

Jesus’ own practices would seem clearly to challenge Christians to answer this question about discrimination very carefully. He tells us, in effect, that his followers should be extraordinarily gracious, compassionate, and welcoming—making special efforts to include vulnerable people, people who society tends to discriminate against, people who are falsely labeled “sinners” and typically excluded from “respectable” society.

If the churches were to affirm, nonetheless, that there is still something inherently sinful about homosexuality that renders all same-sex intimate relationships unacceptable (including types of intimate relationships that are affirmed for heterosexual people), they have a large burden of proof in favor of inclusiveness to overcome.

And, in fact, it becomes increasingly clear that such a burden of proof has in fact not been met. The main bases for making the blanket claim for the sinfulness of all possible same-sex intimate relationships are (1) alleged biblical teachings, (2) the threat to the institution of marriage, and (3) evidence for the intrinsic harmfulness of any such relationship. None of these bases withstands scrutiny (I develop this argument further here). A huge recent development in our society at large and in many churches has been the mainstreaming of same-sex intimate relationships, providing evidence that the quality of these relationships matches opposite-sex relationships—decisively undermining arguments in support of both points #2 and #3.

Jesus and holiness

Another cyber-friend, Philip Bender, asked for my response to the “yes…but” question. This question affirms my critique of the “politics of holiness” (i.e., that it too easily leads to harsh exclusion of people labeled as “sinners”) but still is concerned that in this critique I might be taking Jesus’ call to rigorous discipleship too lightly.

I agree that this is a challenging theme to address in a balanced way. We often seem to tend to be in a cycle of pendulum swings: first being too legalistic then having reactions the legalism that lead to denying the call to holiness altogether (affirming that anything goes) and then back the other way and so on.

I think the use of the “politics of holiness” vs. “politics of compassion” framework is helpful—though only to a degree. It’s a heuristic device, admittedly used to set up a contrast that is somewhat artificial in order to make a point. Clearly, Jesus did get in serious trouble in his ministry. We must ask why, and when we do we are led to see that he was in profound conflict with religious leaders precisely on these issues of inclusion, welcome, challenging discrimination, et al. So, this heuristic device helps us see what the issues were.

However, as Philip implies in his comment, we must recognize the dangers of using our typology in ways that distort. Certainly, Jesus did care, deeply, about holiness and rigorous obedience to Torah and the importance his followers practicing moral faithfulness in ways that set them in contrast with their surrounding world. And this concern surely included placing a high value on sexual purity (this seems like a central issue for him in forbidding divorce).

I would make two points in relation to this point about Jesus’ ethical rigor, though. (1) I think there is no hint in his teaching and no logical reason that I can see to think that homosexual people cannot live as consistently within Jesus’ ethical framework as heterosexual people. The only way one could argue otherwise is to assume that we should have a double standard in relation to sexual behavior: heterosexual intimacy is affirmed in some contexts (i.e., marriage) and not in others whereas homosexual intimacy is condemned in all contexts. Again, now that homosexual intimate relationships have been mainstreamed, we have much more evidence that there is little inherent difference between same- and opposite-sex intimate relationships.

(2) For Jesus, holiness (important as it is) is to be understood under the rubric of mercy, compassion, and love. The kind of holiness that Jesus embodied and called for is a holiness that enters into our sinful world and sought to bring healing (to “clean up” that which is “dirty/impure”). Jesus’ approach was very different from the stereotypical holiness that “can’t be in the presence of sin” and must destroy impurity. This was not an innovation by Jesus, though. He echoes the understandings of holiness reflected in such Old Testament passages as Hosea 11 (where God responds to Israel’s sin as a “holy God” who forgives rather than punishes) and Leviticus 19 (the heart of the “Holiness Code” where holiness is most centrally portrayed as offering care to the vulnerable people in Israel such as widows, orphans, and immigrants).

Jesus and sin

Another aspect of the “yes…but” question is the issue of how Jesus dealt with sin. The proof-text that invariably comes up (and Philip mentions) is the ending of the story of Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery: “Go and sin no more.”

Like most proof-texts, this one does not stand up well to scrutiny. First of all, and probably most importantly, using this verse in relation to the homosexuality issue assumes that there is some kind of parallel between the woman caught in adultery (admittedly guilty of a major sin) and the homosexual person (again, with the assumption that the issue here is the homosexuality per se, not that the homosexual person may have violated some standard that would also be seen as sinful for a heterosexual person).

But this is precisely the issue in contention. Is there something inherently sinful about every same-sex intimate relationship? The validity of the assumption that there is needs to be established. As I stated above, this simply has not happened.

Secondly, we have the general assumption that Jesus “always” told people toward whom he showed mercy to “go sin no more.” This assumption often seems to have the effect of trying to minimize just how radical (and controversial) Jesus was in his compassion. In fact, the examples of Jesus offering forgiveness and then making a strict ethical demand are pretty rare. And we can easily find many examples where he did not do this.

Perhaps the most direct example, that stands somewhat in contrast with the story of the woman caught in adultery, is the story of the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears (Luke 7). She is labeled “a sinner.” She weeps and shows love toward Jesus. He forgives with nary a word of critique or with nary an exhortation to “go sin no more” as he sends her on her way. This story seems more typical to the dynamics of the gospels than that of the woman caught in adultery.

The point, of course, is not that Jesus offered a “cheap grace” that simply forgave without concern for the on-going healing and faithfulness of the person forgiven. His entire ministry was about empowering transformation of people’s lives. It’s just that he consistently offered this empowerment through healing love, not through threatened punishment.

A third point of critique of the standard use of the “go and sin no more” statement is that this use seems to undermine the point of the story of the woman caught in adultery itself. Jesus does not in any sense qualify his act of mercy. He simply forgives unconditionally, thereby making sharp the contrast between his politics of compassion and his opponents’ politics of holiness. Only after his unconditional mercy does he then give his famous exhortation—not as a condition for the mercy but simply as encouragement toward wholeness.

In doing so, he parallels the prologue to the giving of Torah. In Exodus 20, the first word is God’s deliverance, clearly provided without conditions. But then, the people are given guidance for how to live as delivered people—not in order to thereby gain their deliverance but simply because that is how they become the most human, the freest, the healthiest people they can be.

In understanding Jesus’ response to sin, we need to recognize that he responded in different ways to different kinds of people. First, and most directly applicable to the issues around homosexuality and the churches, Jesus responded with unconditional welcome toward people (mostly falsely) labeled “sinners” by the religious leaders and structures. Lepers, women who were bleeding, poor people who could not afford temple sacrifices, and various other people who were excluded not because of anything they were doing was wrong. “Sin” clearly was (and is) a social construct, at least in part. Jesus challenged the way “sin” was constructed and applied and offered welcome without any demands beyond the general (rigorous!) demands he had for any person of faith.

The second kind of response to “sin” may be seen in the (somewhat rare) cases of Jesus relating to people who were doing sinful things—as in violating Torah. Here is where we would place the woman caught in adultery. She was offered mercy, but there is, after the mercy, also the pointed exhortation not to repeat the violation. In this type of response, Jesus does challenge those violating Torah to return to the path of faithfulness (in this sense he would differ little from others of his day). What is notable, though, is that we don’t have very many examples of these cases. And, as I emphasized above, Jesus main focus in these cases was still focused on forgiveness; he empowered mostly through mercy.

There is a third kind of response, though, that was more confrontive. Jesus did call out one general kind of sin. Significantly, this was a kind of sin not necessarily challenged in the organized religion of the time (or in our time!). Jesus challenged leaders who misused their power—either by lording it over others or by failing to emphasize the core message of Torah (e.g., focusing on legalistic details rather than justice and mercy, see Matthew 23).

That is, when Jesus does “confront sin,” the typical example is not the woman caught in adultery, but the religious leaders who abused their authority in relation to vulnerable people (such as the woman caught in adultery; that kind of confrontation is the actual point of this story). So, if we were to apply Jesus’ approach to confronting sin to the churches’ current discussions concerning homosexuality, it seems likely that the most important challenge would be to those who want to discrimination against homosexual people.

What about Paul?

Philip Bender also alludes to the writings of Paul and that Paul does not have any positive comments about homosexuality. Is Paul in harmony with or in tension with Jesus’ message of welcome? Does Paul’s rigor challenge my interpretation of Jesus—or does Paul correct the impression that gospels do give of Jesus?

First of all, as Philip acknowledges, precisely what Paul (or those writing in Paul’s name) has in mind in his scattered (three: Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6; 1 Timothy 1) references to same-sex activities is not nearly as clear as the traditional view seems to assume. In fact, I have argued (as have many others) that what Paul has in mind is something entirely different than our current expressions of same-sex intimacy. I’ll leave that debate aside for here.

What about the lack of positive references to homosexuality? I think this is totally a contextual issue. I’m not taking the time to verify this, but I can’t think of anyplace where Paul gives a clear affirmation of our modern Christian understanding of heterosexual marriage either. He seems to treat marriage as mainly a concession to uncontrollable human sexual passions. We tend to see marriage quite a bit differently now (as we should!). And, if we do accept Paul’s point about sexual passions (even if we want to say a lot more about the value of marriage), that would seem to support the legitimacy of same-sex marriage (Paul seems to grant that imposed celibacy is a bad idea).

In other words, our present-day understandings of intimate relationships are things we have come to since biblical times. They are based on some important general biblical ideals but not on an explicit affirmation of them in the writings of Paul. This lack of positive comments about sexual intimacy in the context of marriage does not inhibit our affirmation of it as a crucial part of heterosexual marriage. Nor need Paul’s lack of positive comments about the joys of healthy same-sex marriage inhibit our affirmation of that.

Moral imperatives

Another of Philip Bender’s questions is about the place of “moral imperatives” with a “politics of compassion.” Of course, the calls to “love the neighbor” and to “forgive 70 times 7 times,” among similar commands, are moral imperatives. And these kind of moral imperatives are actually more risky and more demanding that the more “holiness-oriented” kinds of commands that focus on specific problematic behaviors.

In terms of the more holiness-oriented expectations, it strikes me that it would work best along the lines Philip suggests (a bit facetiously, it seems): “Do we first radically include everyone, then give moral instruction?” I really like the picture that Sarah Miles gives in her book, Take This Bread, where she writes about an Episcopalian congregation that practices open communion as a form of outreach. The first word seekers here is welcome. Then, as they hang around and get more involved they begin to see in people’s (as much as hear about) the moral expectations in the Christian life.

In relation to homosexuality, though, I would again repeat that the “lifestyle” issues are no different than in relation to heterosexual people. A married couple should expect the same kind of reception and moral encouragement regardless of whether they are heterosexual or homosexual—likewise with single people.

Philip then suggests, “Somehow I doubt that you’d say we first preach the good news love God’s love and then–later–talk about peacemaking to new converts.”  I admit that if one were to listen to my preaching, one would certainly hear a lot more about peacemaking than about sexual behavior. I think this is simply echoing the biblical emphases. However, I would like to think that if a seeker were to attend my congregation, hear my preaching (and the other sermons), and want to get more involved, we would not say, first you have to get your position of peace right, then you can keep attending. I envision more that this issue is embedded in the life of the congregation in such a way that a people who actually had serious disagreements with our views of peace would themselves either begin to change their minds or find themselves unattracted to being in that environment—not that we would tell them they were not welcome.

I actually don’t think the churches should be hostile toward people who are in the military. I would not exclude such a person from church membership simply for that reason. But I would want our congregation to be clear enough about its understanding of the gospel that a military person would not be able to avoid coming to terms with his or her own convictions about peace. And then I would want to know how they felt their convictions fit with those of the congregation.

To be honest, though, I have a hard time imagining such an event. And I am not sure what this might say in relation to my understanding of homosexuality.

Membership

Finally, another cyber-friend, Chuck Warnock, raised  a similar kind of question: “I have no doubt that homosexual persons would be welcomed in our church services, but would they be welcomed into membership? leadership? And if so, how do we deal with the Pauline passages correcting sexual problems in the early churches, Corinth especially?”

I see two different kinds of issues being raised here. One is a kind of political issue, how are people already in the churches going to respond to “institutional incorporation”? Will they protest, even leave, if they are faced with membership being open to homosexual persons in intimate relationships? Or leadership? Would they remove leaders from office who advocated such openness?

The second issue is simply how best to interpret the New Testament texts, specifically Paul’s writing to Corinth?

To speak to the second question first, I would simply reiterate that I don’t believe Paul’s exhortations to the Corinthians have anything specifically to do with homosexual people per se. The issues of sexual purity that Paul raises are applicable today in exactly the same way to heterosexual people as to homosexual people. In the much-analyzed verse where Paul, according to many translations, speaks specifically about “men laying with men” (1 Cor. 6:9), he refers to non-Christian sexual injustices (along with many other kinds of injustices), not what we may today call homosexual partnerships. (I discuss this at much more length here.)

I agree with Chuck’s summary of Hauerwas and Gushee: “We need to start with promiscuity versus fidelity, and…to affirm that fidelity in relationship (some might call it covenant) is sufficient regardless of gender combinations.”

The “political” issue is much more complicated. As a Mennonite, I am much more inclined toward a bottom-up process of inclusion. So much then depends on the particular congregation; rather than on directives from the top down. Congregations should welcome homosexual people into membership and leadership on the same bases they welcome heterosexual people. But this can only happen in a healthy way, it seems, when there is a critical mass of support from the pews.

In two of my classes during this just-ending semester (both classes mainly made up of first-year college students—Introduction to Theology and Ethics in the Way of Jesus), we had lengthy and helpful discussions about homosexuality. Preceding these discussions, in both classes we looked closely at Jesus as our source for theology and ethics. So, as would be expected, a good part of our discussion about homosexuality focused on how Jesus’ message might relate. What follows are some reflections, first put down on paper a number of years ago, in response to the “what about Jesus?” question.

Jesus as our model

Over the years, a popular Christian saying has been, “What Would Jesus Do (WWJD)?” This question, seemingly, serves as a personal reminder to keep the Savior in mind as one goes through life. In the end, a cynic could suggest, the Jesus of this slogan bears a strong resemblance to the young George Washington, who said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie”; he is a person with a strong focus on personal ethics.

“WWJD” does not seem to have much direct relevance to social ethics. What would Jesus do in the face of current church and societal struggles regarding homosexuality? Are we simply left with our individual preferences that we speculatively project onto a symbolic icon?

On one level, we are pretty much in the dark. We cannot speak with authority about how Jesus would respond to our debates because he said nothing about them. However, as followers of Jesus, we cannot simply ignore these questions. As I reflect on the relevance of Jesus for our social morality, I want to rephrase our slogan. Rather than speculate on “what would Jesus do?” I want to focus on something more concrete: what did Jesus do? I am hoping not so much to find a definitive resolution for today’s issues, as to find more clarity about the social ramifications of Jesus’ way—ramifications that do provide guidance for communities of Jesus-followers today.

Even though Christian creedal theology gives short shrift to what Jesus did during his life (e.g., the ancient Apostles’ Creed skips from “born of the Virgin Mary” to “crucified under Pontius Pilate” in its christological confession), historian Jaroslav Pelikan is surely accurate when he writes in Jesus Through the Centuries, “As respect for the organized church has declined, reverence for Jesus has grown. . . . There is more in him than is dreamt of in the philosophy and Christology of the theologians. Within the church, but also far beyond its walls, his person and message are, in the phrase of Augustine, a ‘beauty ever ancient, ever new’ ” (pp. 232-3).

Human beings throughout the world and across religions sense that Jesus’ life holds something special—a model of human life as God intends for it to be lived. Jesus’ life and teaching manifest a profound awareness of truth, holiness, and what matters most. Tragically, Christianity, the religion that explicitly professes its allegiance to Jesus, has not always practiced faithful stewardship of the gifts of awareness that Jesus gave the world.

In his book The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder outlines several reasons for Christianity’s failure. He mentions, among others: (1) Many Christians believe that “the nature of Jesus’ message was ahistorical by definition. He dealt with spiritual and not social matters, with the existential and not the concrete. . . . Whatever he said and did of a social and ethical character must be understood not for its own sake but as the symbolic or mythical clothing of his spiritual message.” (2) That “Jesus came, after all, to give his life for the sins of humankind” is the conviction of many Christians. The crucial aspects of his time on earth were his sacrificial death and resurrection-his life before that is basically irrelevant (pp. 5-8). In what follows in his book, Yoder attempts to construct a careful, systematic refutation of these reasons for minimizing the relevance of Jesus’ life for social ethics. He persuasively argues that Jesus’ life is of “direct significance for social ethics” and is “normative for a contemporary Christian social ethic.”

I believe it is fully appropriate for us to turn to Jesus and his way of life for guidance on an issue such as the inclusion in or restriction from full fellowship in the churches of homosexuals. Of course, as is well-known, Jesus did not directly address such issues. This silence does not mean, however, that we should turn elsewhere for our ethical guidance. Jesus serves as our model, not our specific blueprint for contemporary issues.

In other words, Jesus’ relevance for any aspect of our ethics does not lie so much in the arena of explicit directive; rather, Jesus’ relevance most directly follows from his general way of life. How might Jesus’ way of life provide guidance for today’s church in the area of inclusion versus restriction of homosexuals?

Jesus loved particular people

Almost everyone affirms that Jesus taught and practiced love. Certainly, Jesus’ portrayal of love stands at the center of his relevance. However, in order to appropriate what he teaches us about love, we need to look at what Jesus actually did. We might discover that Jesus’ love is more distinctive than we have thought.

In his famous novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky gives a powerful portrayal of the distinctiveness of Jesus’ way of loving. In an extended parable of the “Grand Inquisitor” in the novel, Dostoyevsky tells of Jesus’ appearance in Spain in the late Middle Ages at the height of the Great Inquisition, when the church was cracking down on “heretical” Christians and Jews, putting hundreds of the unorthodox to death.

Jesus circulates among the poor, fearful, suffering masses, offering compassion, healing, unconditional mercy, and acceptance. He does not say much, but people recognize him, and soon crowds follow him and marvel at his kindness. The Cardinal, who is the Grand Inquisitor, observes Jesus and immediately has him arrested and taken away.

The Grand Inquisitor then challenges Jesus, accusing him of not having genuinely loved humankind. The Inquisitor bases his accusation on Jesus’ resisting the three temptations of the devil in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. According to the Inquisitor, if Jesus had genuinely loved humankind, he would have taken that opportunity to make the largest possible number of people happy. He would have turned the stones into bread to feed the hungry. He would have come down from the cross in order to captivate humankind’s conscience. He would have organized humankind into a single, harmonious ant colony in order to relieve our loneliness.

The Grand Inquisitor, of course, is not truly concerned with humankind’s well-being. In actuality, he harbors a secret contempt for human nature and human possibilities. He loves humankind in general because he hates his concrete neighbor—the actual individuals he has to deal with face-to-face.

In Dostoyevsky’s parable, Jesus does not defend himself against the Inquisitor’s accusations. The silence of Jesus indicates that he represents something quite different from love for humankind in general. Jesus does not argue with the Inquisitor over what is best for all humankind. He simply acts in love in concrete ways toward actual people. He displays love for the particular neighbor.

Much of The Brothers Karamazov is a meditation on this theme of love for particular people-and how difficult such love is. One of the main characters, Ivan Karamazov, confesses, “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one cannot love, though one might love those at a distance.” A good illustration of this fact, perhaps, is the way we can so generously give money, time, and energy to support relief and development and evangelism throughout the world and yet find it so difficult to respond lovingly to the actual gay and lesbian neighbors among us.

As Dostoyevsky’s parable illustrates, one of the more radical and profound characteristics of Jesus was his openness. Jesus consistently showed deep-seated and at times costly kindness and respect to particular men, women, and children. Jesus was not so much a “general humanitarian.” He did not have big plans for large-scale projects. He was not so concerned with winning the whole world. Mostly, Jesus cared for specific people. He cared for Matthew the tax-collector. He cared for the woman at the well. Jesus modeled for us the practice of simply accepting other specific people. He treated individuals with respect. He listened to others, was interested in them, shared food with them.

The “politics of compassion”

Jesus’ love for particular people, however, most certainly had social consequences. He loved particular people in all their real-life, social aspects as a political strategy. We could call Jesus’ approach to life and his social ethics a “politics of compassion” in contrast to a “politics of holiness.” “Politics,” used in this sense, may be defined as the structuring of social relationships.

The politics of holiness had emerged in Judaism in the generations following the destruction of the ancient Jewish state in the sixth-century BCE and the exile of many Jews in Babylon. Following their return to Palestine, Jewish religious leaders sought to lead the people in a much more rigorous adherence to the holiness code in hopes of sustaining their community in a hostile world.

At the core of holiness in this context lay the principle of separation. To be holy meant to be separate from everything that would defile holiness. Polarities emerged to mark holiness: clean and unclean, purity and defilement, sacred and profane, Jew and Gentile, righteous and sinner.

Over time, the politics of holiness engendered the development of a large group of “sinners” and “outcasts.” These were people who for various reasons were unwilling—or more often, unable—strictly to adhere to the holiness code. Included among the “unclean” were shepherds, tax collectors, impoverished landless people, menstruating women—and, of course, all Samaritans and Gentiles.

Jesus challenged this politics of holiness with his politics of compassion. Jesus and his followers formed a social organization that stood in sharp contrast to the relatively rigid social boundaries of their culture. They rejected boundaries between righteous and outcast, men and women, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile.Jesus’ politics of compassion was founded on a profound understanding of God’s mercy. God, as represented in Jesus’ teaching (e.g., the parable of the prodigal son, Luke 15:11-32), does not discriminate but loves all people. Jesus’ God is our model-”be merciful, as God is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

Jesus proposed a social life ordered around openness and inclusion rather than purity and exclusion.

(1) Jesus ate with outcasts. He practiced “table fellowship” with all kinds of different people—including those considered unclean (e.g., tax collectors, women, Gentiles, poor people). In so doing, Jesus showed that God’s kingdom is an inclusive community. Table fellowship carried tremendous symbolic weight in Jesus’ day, as it still does in ours. In contrast to the politics of holiness, which required eating only with those who are “clean,” Jesus welcomed “unclean outsiders” to his table.

(2) Jesus associated closely with women. Jesus encouraged women to be part of his movement (a powerful example is the story of the woman at the well in John 4). In doing so, he directly contradicted conventional wisdom’s relegation of women to a subordinate position.

(3) Jesus brought good news to the poor (Luke 4:18). He specifically stated that his message was intended to provide a blessing to “you who are poor” (Luke 6:20). He challenged rich people to change-the fruit of conversion to Jesus’ way included redistribution of unjustly-gained wealth (cf. the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19).

(4) Jesus spoke of peace—not as a vague, general ideal but as concrete love for neighbors (who included even long-entrenched adversaries such as Samaritans), even for enemies (Matt. 5:43-48).

(5) Jesus offered a message of hope to all kinds of people. Since true spirituality stems from the heart, anyone who wants to is capable of living a faithful, God-oriented life. That is, even those who had been labeled unclean and placed beyond the pale by official religious institutions could know God and practice authentic discipleship in following God’s will for their lives.

(6) Jesus proclaimed the presence of a new social and spiritual community, the “realm (or kingdom) of God.” Participation in this community was open to all who chose to be part of it; all they had to do was “repent” (turn toward God) and “believe the good news” (trust that God’s mercy is for them). This was Jesus’ fundamental message (Mark 1:15). In the ministry that embodied his proclamation, Jesus made unmistakably clear the openness of his community.

One clear expression of this openness may be found in Matthew’s gospel. A repeated verse in both 4:23 and 9:35 sets off a discrete section: “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” This section of Matthew shows that the “good news of the kingdom” includes both Jesus’ teaching (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount, 5:1-7:29) and his healing.

A partial list of the recipients of healing shows the incredible openness of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed: demoniacs, epileptics, a leper, a centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, two Gentile demoniacs, tax collectors, sinners, and the daughter of a synagogue leader. Most of these were outsiders-people considered “unclean” or “contaminants” by the established religion. Jesus offered them mercy just as they were. He was not simply a knee-jerk radical, however. He was willing to bring healing to anyone who turned to him, including even a leader of a synagogue. Jesus’ politics of compassion included all who responded.

The Christian church in the past two thousand years has continued to be plagued by the politics of holiness. For the sake of the “distinctiveness” and “security” of the church, sharp lines of exclusion have often been drawn. Our recent controversies over sexuality, in part at least, reflect those types of concern. Jesus’ model clearly challenges us to place compassion over holiness as the core ordering principle for our social lives.

The case of table fellowship

Of these aspects of Jesus’ politics of compassion, the practice of open table fellowship perhaps most powerfully speaks across times and cultures. The metaphor of table fellowship resonates deeply in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, as it does in the story of Jesus. Sharing table fellowship has always been a powerful, concrete expression of fellowship, inclusion, and communal connection. Because of its deep symbolic significance, Jesus’ practice of table fellowship reflects perhaps most profoundly his philosophy of life.

The important role that table fellowship served in all the cultures of Jesus’ world cannot be overestimated. Meals were not simply about people meeting their physical needs. The sharing of meals had become a ceremony symbolizing friendship and close social connections. Joining for meals expressed one’s acceptance of another as an integral part of one’s community.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ time who focused the most on the politics of holiness, the Pharisees, especially considered table fellowship to be central. In their longing for Israel’s salvation, they sought a pure society unmarred by ritual uncleanness. This quest for purity began in the home. Their food was totally prepared according to the purity laws. They expected everyone who ate in their homes to be ritually pure.

Jesus’ approach stood in sharp contrast. He delighted in breaking bread with an enormous variety of people, regardless of their ritual cleanliness. He directly challenged the social and religious exclusiveness associated with table fellowship with his radical openness. In Luke 5:27-39, Jesus eats with a tax collector, Levi, and his friends. To the upholders of strict purity, tax collectors were considered intrinsically unclean, in large part due to their close collaboration with the hated Roman occupation forces. The Pharisees and their scribes strongly criticize Jesus for this breach of table fellowship purity. “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” they asked. That is, why do you defile yourself? Why do you share this deeply meaningful time of fellowship with low-lifers and scum bags?

Jesus speaks of his love for these outcasts—and of the current “at-handness” of God’s kingdom. He shows the presence of God’s kingdom by his openness, even to those whom his culture considered to be unclean.

Luke 7 contains another story of table fellowship that breaks taboos. A woman named Mary, labeled a sinner, imposes herself on Jesus while he is having dinner with a Pharisee. She comes to him crying and anoints his feet with ointment. Jesus is criticized for allowing this, but he responds by asserting that this woman had received mercy (and tellingly, though she is named a “sinner” by Luke, Jesus never tells her to “sin no more;” he simply forgives).

In a third example from the gospel of Luke, Jesus again faces criticism due to his openness and lack of concern with purity and separation: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). Jesus replies to this attack by telling three parables of lost things being found. The third of these parables is the most well known-the story of the prodigal son who, significantly, is welcomed to his father’s love-feast without having confessed his sins (he had, among other things, worked with unclean animals), and without undergoing any ritual purification acts. The picture of God in this parable is one characterized by welcome, mercy, and radical openness.

Another example of Jesus’ radical openness and its connection with table fellowship is the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand. This is one of the few stories that appears in all four of the Gospels. In this meal, there are no questions asked about purity or if any of the people are sinners or unclean. The meal is for everyone.

Thus, Jesus chose an extraordinarily evocative and concrete way to make clear the openness, inclusiveness, and unconditionality of God’s realm. He shared food with all sorts of outsiders and did so publicly-at great cost to his reputation and, ultimately, at the cost of his life.

Consequences of Jesus’ openness

Jesus’ practice of openness fostered conflict with the religious leaders most concerned with Israel’s purity, the Pharisees. A passage from Matthew’s gospel helps to illumine this conflict. Two stories in Matthew 12:1-14 show that Jesus, in contrast to the Pharisees, stressed human well-being over Sabbath observance. On the Sabbath, Jesus’ disciples are hungry and, we are told, they pluck heads of grain with which to feed themselves. Some Pharisees notice this and criticize Jesus for his followers’ violation of the Sabbath.

Jesus replies to his critics, giving two Old Testament examples. David and his companions ate the “bread of the Presence” (see 1 Sam. 21:1-6; Lev. 24:5-9 tells of this consecrated bread), even though it was the Sabbath. The second example is that priests “work” on the Sabbath (Num. 28:9-10). This implies that the sacrificial system (and hence, the temple) is greater than the Sabbath. Sabbath regulations are subordinate to the sacrificial system. Now, Jesus has stated, something greater even than the temple is here-that is, the kingdom of God, present in Jesus (Matt. 12:6). If Jesus is greater than the temple, then of course Jesus is greater than the Sabbath.

At this point, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 for support: mercy is more important than sacrifice and Sabbath regulations. In other words, as the central characteristic of the realm of God, mercy is the highest priority. Mark’s version of this story contains Jesus’ telling words: “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

The scene then shifts in Matthew 12, and Jesus goes to a synagogue and heals a man with a withered hand, still on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are trying to set Jesus up. By using the example of rescuing a sheep on the Sabbath and inferring that humans are more valuable than sheep, Jesus asserts that “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:12). That is, doing good, healing human beings, is within what the law allows. Jesus is not rejecting Sabbath law out of hand. Rather, he is setting Sabbath in the context of the wider meaning of the law: mercy comes first. For Jesus, the issue is not law versus no law; the issue is how the law is interpreted. The story concludes with the ominous words: “The Pharisees went out and conspired against Jesus, how to destroy him” (Matt. 12:14).

God meant the Sabbath to enhance human life, not to shackle it. Jesus insisted that one who takes an action on the Sabbath that helps other people is within the law. Mercy supersedes the sacrificial system and Sabbath regulations, and purity has to do with the heart. What comes from the inside defiles, not what comes from the outside. Defilement has to do most of all with hurting other people.

The Gospels tell us that the Pharisees’ hostility toward Jesus continued to escalate and that others also came to oppose Jesus’ message. The Sadducees, who were the leaders charged with running the temple in Jerusalem, recognized that Jesus’ inclusiveness and provision of direct access to God directly threatened their institutionalized religion. Ultimately, the Sadducees joined with the occupational Roman political leadership (i.e., Pontius Pilate) to put an end to Jesus’ life.

The conflict with the Pharisees, though, continued even after Jesus was killed, as the early Christians continued on Jesus’ inclusive path. The Apostle Paul, writing in the second and third decades following Jesus’ death, provides helpful analysis on why this conflict over the application of the law was so volatile.

As Paul portrays it, many people no longer understood the law as Moses had presented it-as practical guidance for how to live faithfully in light of God’s mercy and saving work for Israel (cf. Exodus 20). Rather, the law had become Israel’s badge of exclusiveness. This was how the Jews knew they were uniquely special-doing “works of the law,” rituals that marked them as different from non-Jews. Three key expressions of this boundary-marking function were: (1) food laws (kosher law, ritual cleansing); (2) Sabbath observance; and (3) circumcision of males. Religious leaders had come to insist that faithfulness to these practices was absolutely necessary to Israel’s identity. They were signs of God’s special connection with the faithful people. For Jesus to challenge reliance on these practices as the center of religious life posed a huge threat to the entire system.

Jesus did not reject the law itself. Rather, he radically challenged the Pharisees’ interpretation. Jesus tried to reorient the law to its original intent: guidelines for faithful living in light of God’s mercy. Most of the Pharisees were not open to this challenge. They saw Jesus as an enormous threat to their entire culture. He undercut the culture’s identity with his openness and emphasis on direct access to God apart from strict ritualism.

In the years immediately following Jesus’ death, Pharisees led the violent opposition to Jesus’ followers. Their opposition came to be spear-headed by the zealous anti-Christian attitude of a brilliant young Pharisee known as Saul of Tarsus. A central issue was that of the law-access to God and salvation, and openness to Gentiles. But this Saul met Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus and had his life transformed. He was renamed Paul and became Jesus’ apostle.

The Apostle Paul came to see that by using “defense of the law” as the rationale for violence against the Christians, he had actually been an idolater. He had placed works of the law above God’s mercy. Jesus called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles and to welcome them into the community of his followers without requiring strict food and Sabbath laws. That is, Jesus called Paul to imitate Jesus’ own radical openness and rejection of boundary-marker-oriented religion.

Jesus’ insistence that external works of the law did not connect people with God led to his being killed. He showed that God’s mercy is for everyone. The structures people build to show others that they are “insiders” have nothing to do with God’s favor. God’s favor is, instead, for those who know God’s unconditional mercy and share that mercy with others.

Paul does not argue that Jesus abolished all human differences; rather, Paul makes the point that Jesus abolishes the need to make these differences signs of righteousness and unrighteousness. Jesus abolishes our need to protect our own security as people who are “okay” with God. We do not need to exclude others from God’s favor on the basis of external boundary markers because the law of the Spirit is not about boundary markers. External distinctives are not bases for elevating ourselves over others. What matters is simply trusting in God’s mercy, which we all need equally.

Paul writes that God set people free from this law of sin and death. God set people free from needing to judge others and to exclude outsiders. When the law or any other cultural system is used as a basis for identity before God, then it is the law of sin and death. Then it is keeping people from understanding God as unconditionally merciful.

Jesus’ relevance

Jesus’ relevance for the discussion of inclusion of homosexual people in the church does not lie in direct comments he made on this issue; he made none. This does not mean that Jesus’ life and teaching are unimportant, however. The several themes in Jesus’ life that we have examined provide the needed foundation for a faithful, inclusive response.

(1) Jesus practiced a radical openness that ran contrary to the purity-oriented exclusionary practices of religious people of his time (and ours). The symbol of open table fellowship with outsiders, “sinners,” excluded ones, reveals Jesus’ approach with stark clarity. Table fellowship for Jesus meant a welcome into the kingdom of God. The love feast that Jesus welcomed people to join had no prerequisites, no initiation rites, no insistence on purification as a prerequisite. All it took was open hands-the prodigal son’s return, the five thousand accepting the bread and fish, Mary’s tears.

The lesson of Jesus’ approach for today’s church can be summarized as simply one word-welcome. The church has difficulty being unconditional in its love and in embodying the way of abundance to replace scarcity. But Jesus asks nothing less of us. For the church to truly know God as merciful, the church must live God’s mercy.

(2) Once Jesus perceived that not all the religious leaders were going to join in his radical openness, he did not hesitate to offer critiques of a boundary-marker-oriented approach to faith. His modeling of such a critique remains potent today, as do his specific critiques and alternatives.

When the Pharisees restricted access to God’s mercy to those who were ritually pure, thereby excluding most people, Jesus spoke sharply in opposition. Jesus certainly offered a message of love and compassion, but this positive message carried with it a direct confrontation to those not willing to respond to it with love and compassion of their own.

Present-day followers of Jesus are challenged to find a similar kind of balance-fostering love and compassion in our lives but also standing against forces that resist Jesus’ mercy. When churches restrict access to God’s mercy, followers of Jesus are challenged by Jesus’ example to speak out in opposition to such exclusiveness.

(3) The direct consequence of Jesus’ speaking (and living) such a critique was that he suffered, ultimately to the point of death. Significantly, Jesus taught at length and with uncomfortable clarity that his followers will also follow him on the path of the cross.

To imitate Jesus, in New Testament terms, has most of all to do with imitating his faithfulness to God’s mercy and love even to the point of suffering for such faithfulness. Those who advocate a Jesus-style openness and inclusion can expect to find similar responses to what Jesus found to his openness-anger, hostility, even violence.

Jesus himself unequivocally opposed the use of violence by his followers—under all circumstances. Yet he was utterly realistic about the likelihood of violence in his followers’ lives. Jesus’ followers are never to resort to violence, even though their acts of love and inclusion in the face of the politics of holiness will invariably elicit hostility from the protectors of the status quo.

(4) The underlying priority of Jesus’ life and teaching was mercy. Whatever conflict Jesus took part in was conflict for the sake of communicating God’s mercy intended for all people. “Be merciful as God is merciful”: the unpopularity of this message in some contexts, the violence such a message may elicit, the difficulty in living such a message out-none of these minimize the centrality of mercy as the core value of Jesus and his followers.

The Book of Revelation is full of visions of the costly consequences for those who would make merciful living central in a world all too often dominated by the power politics, large-scale and small-scale, of the Beast. Interspersed with terrible visions of persecution and conflict, however, we find consistent words of exhortation (to be victors, Christians must “follow the Lamb wherever he goes”) and visions of worship and celebration. The worship is portrayed also as a present reality, amidst the tribulation.

This juxtaposition of visions of suffering and celebration is a promise for disciples today of moments of hope, joy, and communal solidarity. That is, as we seek to follow Jesus, we can have confidence that God will provide us with sustenance along the way-in large part, the sustenance that we offer one another as co-pilgrims on this path.

More writings on homosexuality.

As I have been working on my research and writing project that I am now calling, “The ‘Good War’ That Wasn’t—And Why It Matters,” I have drawn a great deal of inspiration from a book from several years ago that also expresses deep skepticism about the moral legitimacy of this war. I posted the following reflections on this book almost four years ago when I first started my PeaceTheology.net site. I think it’s worth a revisit as I put the finishing touches on my book.

As could be expected, Nicholson Baker’s  Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (Simon & Schuster, 2008) has received mostly hostile reviews both in the mainstream media and among academic historians. I think it is a terrific book, though. It was one of the most absorbing 400+ page books I have ever read.

Describing the lead up to World War II

The book is made up of hundreds, probably close to 1,000, short vignettes that trace the events leading up to World War II and its prosecution until the end of 1941 (which, for the U.S., marked our country’s entry into the War).

These vignettes are mostly simple, descriptive statements; only rarely is Baker’s voice apparent. An example of an editorial comment, though, may be found on page 452: A December 10, 1941, Gallup poll had shown that two-thirds of the American population would support the U.S. firebombing Japanese cities in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. “Ten percent—representing twelve million citizens—were wholly opposed. Twelve million people still held to Franklin Roosevelt’s basic principle of civilization: that no man should be punished for the deeds of another. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not one of them.”

As should be obvious (and reviewers have all taken pains to note), the reader should not mistake the objective tone of Baker’s reportage for a merely descriptive intent on his part. Baker clearly has an agenda—though precisely what that agenda is remains for us to discern from the book’s contents. It has no introduction or commentary beyond a very brief “Afterword.” However, by what he includes and excludes, Baker tells a story filtered through his own lenses and reflecting his own concerns.

The final paragraph of the afterword is telling: “I dedicate this book to the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They’ve never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right.” (474)

Opposition to the Nazis could still be morally problematic

These two quotes I have cited do, I think, give us a sense of what Baker is up to. Though he is far from a Nazi apologist (some of his vignettes about Nazi actions evoke visceral outrage), Baker makes clear that opposition to Nazism in itself did not settle the question of what the best response to their actions would be.

The response of British and American leaders horrify Baker. He makes it clear that neither country did even close to what could have been done to save Jewish and other refugees nor to provide aid to starving children and others in Europe (he has a number of telling quotes from former President Herbert Hoover who was deeply frustrated in his efforts to take aid to needy people in Europe). That is, to allude to Baker’s subtitle, he presents this war as anything but a war to save civilization and support humane values.

As a pacifist myself, I exulted as I read this book. I did this not because Baker provides anything close to a set of clear answers to the big questions pacifists face in response to World War II—he does nothing of the kind. However, he uncovers a voice, a perspective, a record of action that is completely ignored in most discussions of World War II.

Baker makes a strong case for acknowledging two crucial points. (1) There were pacifists, such as Quaker leaders Clarence Pickett and Rufus Jones, who faced head on the unspeakable evils and sought to bring healing to the brokenness. Theirs was far from an ethic of withdrawal, passivity, or parasitism. (2) And, the responses of the leaders of the “Free World” only compounded the evils set loose by the Nazis and Japanese militarists.

Only adding to the “criminal spirit”

This is what I especially drew from the book: When faced with extraordinary crimes against humanity, the defenders of Western civilization with little resistance succumbed to the same criminal spirit. We learn just how bloodthirsty Winston Churchill and other British war leaders were—insisting on horrific violence against German civilians in face of clear evidence that such violence was ineffective, even counter-productive. Churchill had the asinine belief that if the British starved and traumatized the German people enough, they would rebel. Of course, the opposite happened—the Allied actions only strengthened the Nazis hold on the people’s loyalty (which, of course is precisely what happened in Britain in face of German air strikes). This reality is clear already by the end of 1941—Baker’s book stops long before Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

By taking Pickett and similar pacifists seriously, Baker shows that there were alternative approaches. This is not to say that he is even hinting that “Hitler could have been stopped” by the pacifists (he makes this clear with a number of somewhat jarring quotes from Gandhi that convey a pretty strong sense of naiveté). I think his point (or at least my point) would be rather that simply responding to evil with evil not only is profoundly immoral and destructive of the core values that the Nazis’ opponents sought to defend, it also does not work very well. Surely a more humane and moral approach by the Allies to resisting the Nazis would have saved untold lives on all sides and greatly heightened possibilities of internal resistance to Nazi governance.

The enormous challenge humanity faces if it is to have a future is how we might, to quote Walter Wink, “oppose evil without becoming evil ourselves” (the opening words to his wonderful book Engaging the Powers).

The issue that arises from the book for me is its challenge to the easy (and extraordinarily corrupting) assumptions that World War II in some sense was a “good war” that in some sense successfully defended the core values of western humanism. In fact, it seems clear that the true winner of the War was the spirit of violence. A good book for confirming this point for the United States is James Carroll’s House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.

A response to Baker from the political “left”

I have found it quite instructive to read a few responses to Baker’s book from supposedly politically progressive reviewers. The one I will focus on is a column by The Nation’s Katha Pollitt [April 21, 2008]. Pollitt states that she finished the book feeling, for the first time in her life, “fury at pacifists.” As a pacifist, when I read this comment at the beginning of the column, I naturally perked up, looking for reasons for this fury. Strangely, though, she never really explains why she is mad at pacifists—except, I guess because she thinks they are naïve. But “fury”?

Pollitt’s only reference to actual pacifists is to quote “the good kind Rufus Jones” (Clarence Pickett’s close colleague) when he sought to convince some Nazi leaders to allow the Quakers to aid needy people in Germany: “We noted a softening effect on their faces” (108-09)

She gives a very misleading impression with this quote, however. First, the “softening effect” on the Gestapo agents’ faces followed Jones’ recital of the work Quakers had done during and following World War I in Germany, feeding more than one million children a day at the program’s peak. That is, they were not simply making naïve appeals to the goodness of the hearts of the Nazis (Jones himself characterized these agents as “hard-faced, iron-natured men”), but seeking to remind the Germans of the work the Quakers had already done. More importantly, the appeal in this case actually was successful. After deliberating, the Gestapo agent gave this response: “I shall telegraph tonight to every police station in Germany that the Quakers are given full permission to investigate the sufferings of Jews and to bring such relief as they see necessary.”

Now, this was November 1938, many months yet before the war in Europe began. Jones concluded from this encounter, “It is the settled purpose of the German government to drive out Jews….Until a plan of rapid emigration…is established, the authorities consider the problem unsolved, and further outrages are likely to occur, bringing greater suffering and injustice.”

Pollitt concludes, Jones “didn’t grasp what he was up against. Say what you will about Churchill and Roosevelt, at least they got that right.” This seems to me to be extraordinary unfair—and inaccurate. It depends on what one especially cares about, I guess. Jones seems clearly to have known what he was up against, which is why he and his colleagues sought to move heaven and earth to help the threatened people in Nazi-dominated territories to escape. Roosevelt refused to support even extraordinarily small-scale efforts to provide refuge for Jews in the U.S (59, 101, 103, 125). And six million were killed. If the goal was to save lives, Jones seemed much more prescient and realistic than Churchill or Roosevelt.

These seem to be Pollitt’s assumptions: War can be good. Violence can be necessary. Violence can be redemptive. World War II proves this. It was the only way Hitler could be stopped. Pacifism is utterly irrelevant. She surely shares these assumptions with a large majority of liberals and progressives in this country—not to mention, of course, those further to the right.

The power of Nicholson Baker’s book is that it puts the possibility that these assumptions might be mistaken on the table. Maybe that is why Pollitt is furious. For myself, I am very grateful for Baker’s challenge.

P.S.  While most of the reviews I have read of Human Smoke have been pretty negative, here is a positive one from theL.A. Times.

One of my classes recently discussed the issue of human nature and violence—a perennial vexing discussion. Are we genetically determined to be violent as expressed in much contemporary writing by biologists, et al, as well as political thinkers? If so, is pacifism simply unrealistic, terribly naive, even problematically romantic?

Of course, we did not resolve the issue. It’s something I keep thinking about. I think it is important to state the case for human beings as not inherently violent.

Three viewpoints

We may speak of three general viewpoints concerning human nature, what I will categorize as the “hard-wired view,” the “blank-slate view,” and the “flexible view.”

(1) The “hard-wired view” asserts that human behavior is largely determined by a quite thick reality of human nature. One main focus of many with this view is on our genetic make-up, asserting that our behavior is profoundly shaped by our genes.

As concerns violence, the “hard-wired view” tends to see human beings as naturally violent. We are born violent, we tend toward violence, our work of minimizing violence should focus on finding relatively non-harmful outlets for these natural violent tendencies. At best, we may redirect violent tendencies, but we cannot hope to live without violence.

(2) At the opposite end of the spectrum from the “hard-wired view,” we may speak of the “blank slate view.” This view asserts that it is meaningless to posit a “human nature;” we are all born with “blank slates,” and human behavior is totally shaped by our environments and is variable and non-determined.

(3) A second alternative to the “hard-wired view” we may call the “flexible view.” This view, which I hold, agrees that “human nature” is a meaningful term, but would differ from the “hard-wired view” by denying that human behavior is in any meaningful sense determined by genetics or, really, by any other unchanging element of human nature.

Empirical bases for the “flexible” view

There are scientists who argue for the flexible view. The hard-wired view, while held by many, is not the only conclusion that empirically oriented people might take.

I define violence as the willful use of injurious force against another human being (which could be emotional “force” and, in some sense under some circumstances, could also include the failure to prevent injury). I also add another dimension, and that is that the violence that has causing harm as its main purpose (which is what I would call war, punishment, fighting, torture, etc) is morally the central issue for human beings.

I agree that as long as carnivores have existed, violence in the sense of one animal willfully hurting another animal also has existed. Human beings from the time they became hunters and not just gatherers have been violent toward other animals for the purpose of getting food to eat or for self-protection. So it is not as if human beings had a “golden age” where all were Tolstoyan total pacifists.

However, to me the violence that matters in our discussions is the violence that emerged at some point in history that I would call purely destructive violence. There is a kind of violence in nature that by and large sustains the larger web of life. What is new with human beings, and I believe human beings at a stage in our development after our evolving biologically to be fully human, is the practice of destructive violence that actually injures the larger web of life.

Our physiology and psychology clearly indicate that we did not evolve by being (or to be) violent predators; it is very difficult for a human being to kill another human being (or any sizeable animal) with our bare hands (and it is also very difficult emotionally to kill another human being). However, it did not take a huge change to turn us toward destructive violence. But it did take a change, because we are not naturally inclined to be violent in the sense of destructive violence. It does not seem that we possibly could have been and still evolved. Our evolution required a tremendous amount of cooperation, more than destructive violence.

Because the changes that turned us toward destructive violence were not recorded, we have to speculate as to when and how they happened. It makes sense to me that at some point humans came to the place of developing culture beyond simply our biological needs. Once the ball started rolling, then cultural evolution broke from our biology and pushed us inexorably toward social dynamics that (in the short run) have rewarded destructive violence (in a way that is actually unnatural for human beings).

So, one big issue here is recognizing that we are shaped by two distinct kinds of evolution – biological and cultural. Certainly, biology provides necessary data for understanding ourselves, but it, as it were, gives insights only into the raw potential we have, not into what we actually do. Our actual behavior is a combination of biology and culture, with the latter playing by far the major role.

I can understand my limits by understanding my biology/genetics. We are all born with different aptitudes and potentials. But what we do with our raw material is mostly due to environmental influences (though some of the most profound of these influences shape us in our early months, even in the womb, in decisive ways; hence, our choices later in life may well be fairly constrained depending on our environment early in life).

We do have a very crucial element of human nature that plays a major role in destructive violence. This is that we are born with a strong drive to be loved; we are “pack animals” who require a great deal of nurture. When this nurture is not forthcoming, the result is profound damage to our psyches, frustration, and most likely a proclivity to destructive violence.

The basic argument: We are by nature not violent

The basic argument I would like to make concerning violence and human nature is that we biologically evolved to be cooperative more than competitive, affiliating more than antagonistic, peaceable more than violent. To foster cooperation and affiliation, we are born with human natures that expect nurture and love. And during the many, many years of our biological evolution, this human nature was selected for – and it remains our nature today. This also coheres with how the Bible portrays human beings.

However, when human beings reached a certain level of intelligence, we were able to exercise more freedom in relation to our natures than other animals. Ironically, as we developed socially, our choices (the original ones hidden back in our pre-history) fostered social dynamics that ended up evolving in ways that put human society in tension with human nature. Human culture (“civilization”) has evolved in ways that frustrate our innate need for nurture and love. So, the terrible dance begins. Human beings often are born into environments that frustrate them, treating them without love and nurture, and pushing them toward violence.

All this is to say, violence is an element of human life extrinsic to our innate human nature. When we are exposed to violence, we tend to respond with violence. Our cultures tend to reward violent behavior. So we are in a spiral pushing ever more away from our natural ways of being.

Our best strategy for resisting the death-dealing dynamics of coercive power and selfish, environmentally wasting economics is to turn toward our basic human nature, not against it. I disagree with Freud, who posited that human nature pushes us toward violence and civilization is a bastion against the consequences of this nature (setting up an almost certainly hopeless project of forcibly fighting against what we most naturally are driven towards). I would say, to the contrary, that civilization is the problem.

The most fundamental instinct of genuine humanness is the quest for life. This quest provides our core criterion for evaluating our human systems. Do they serve life or not? And if we recognize that our most distinctively human characteristic is our ability to make choices, we then will be able to realize that we do not have to simply accept fatalistically that our social structures that do not actually serve life must remain in place. We will be freed to resist and to construct alternative systems that do serve life.

The challenge for Christians (and everyone else, of course) to think morally about warfare and the preparation for warfare remains as important, if not more important, than ever. Fortunately, Christian moral theologians have brought forth a bit of a revival of such moral reflection with a number of recent books after many years of relative quiet in this area.

These are a few of the books that I am aware of: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War as Christian Discipleship (Brazos, 2009); Mark Allman, Who Would Jesus Kill? (Anselm, 2008); W. Michael Slatterly, Jesus the Warrior? (Marquette University, 2007); A. James Reimer, Christians and War (Fortress, 2010); J. Daryl Charles and Timothy J. Demy, War, Peace, and Christianity (Crossway, 2010); and Andrew Fiala, The Just War Myth (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).

In general, though, writing about moral reflection on war and peace from Christian perspectives tends to repeat the general typology that was introduced by historian Roland Bainton over half a century ago in his Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace. Bainton sees three categories: pacifism, the just war, and the crusade.

In a short discussion in a textbook I use in my introductory ethics course, Robert Stivers reiterates Bainton’s typology, though he somewhat confusingly uses the term “Christian realism” for the just war type (Robert Stivers, et al, Christian Ethics: A Case Method Approach, 3rd edition [Orbis, 2005]). Like Bainton does, Stivers presents the “crusade” type as essentially being a thing of the past for Christians, meaning that what we have to do with mainly is pacifism and just war.

The more I think about it, though, the more problematic I see this typology to be—at least in the sense that it leaves too much out and over-simplifies what is left. One of the main problems is that only a tiny minority of Christians would hold to either pacifism or the just war (as usually defined).

So I have been working on a revised typology that has two main types: (1) Negatively disposed and (2) Positively disposed. Each of these two types has three subtypes, as I will explain below. [After putting this together, I  discovered a recent article by Matt Stone that addresses this same topic in ways that are parallel with what I do here—though different in interesting ways. Most notably, Matt agrees that the number of carefully considered adherents to the "just war" position is tiny. He calls the the characteristic of most people "total war."]

I. Negatively disposed

What unites the three “negatively disposed” approaches is the conviction that, morally, the benefit of the doubt is always against war. They do differ on whether that benefit of the doubt can ever be overcome.

1. Principled pacifism. This view would be against war based on starting principles. One example would be how many Mennonites have said that they can not fight due to their understanding of Jesus’ commands such as “love your enemies.” Hence, the relative justice of particular wars is irrelevant. Others might say their starting point is the sacredness of all life,understood in a way that precludes using lethal violence against anyone.

Most World War II conscientious objectors would be in this category. They refused military service, in the most part, simply because they believed any possible war was wrong due to their moral principles. Even if that may have been a “just war,” they would still have refused to fight. In this view someone could even affirm that at times warfare has served the overall human welfare while still refusing to fight.

2. Pragmatic pacifism. This view would be against war due to conclusions based on the evidence of how warfare works in the world. Perhaps even due to using just war criteria, this view concludes that all actual wars are certain to be unjust. Based on history, we can say that each war has and certainly will violate some if not all the that standard just war criteria, such as: not the last resort, not fought for the purpose of serving peace, the harm outweighs the good, noncombatants are severely harmed, et al.

These two forms of pacifism often can reinforce each other. One could start with a principled pacifism view based on, say, church teaching or a kind of moral conversion. However, with sensitized moral perceptions, one could conclude that wars in actuality do not meet the just war criteria—that war does not work for human well-being in practice. Or, one could start with an evidence-oriented analysis and after one concludes no known wars have ever been just, one begins to start with that assumption when reflecting on the morality of warfare.

3. Skeptical just war. This view would differ from “pragmatic pacifism” in large part due to more openness about the possibility of the just war criteria being met. In the United States, this view would not qualify for legal conscientious objector status because of not being opposed to war in all its forms. This view would fit in the “selective conscientious objector” category (a category not given legal standing) by saying that particular wars are unjust, but not every possible war.

However, this view starts with the assumption that any particular war is not just unless proved otherwise. The logical conclusion for those holding this view is that wars that to not overcome that burden of proof should be opposed. Something like this was, in fact, a common view in the U.S. during the Vietnam War for some who went to Canada or prison. This view could also lead to “nuclear pacifism”—the conviction that based on just war grounds, any possible nuclear war is unjust.

Though the description I’ve just given is close to how many people describe the “just war” position with the assumption that this is the main alternative to pacifism in the Christian tradition, it is actually a very unusual view in terms of actual adherents. Notice that this view has no legal standing in the United States; those opposed to particular wars are still required to enter the military in the case of a draft or stay in the military if they are already there. You would think if this view actually were common, there would have been more effort to make it legally viable in this country.

II. Positively disposed

What unites the three “positively disposed” approaches is the conviction that, morally, war is inevitable, even necessary, at times and that therefore we should not imagine a world without war—which in practice means that we should not assume the wars need to overcome a benefit of the doubt against war before being supported or even accepted.

4. Favorable just war. This view accepts the inevitability of war. It believe that it is counter-productive, even dangerous, to seek to do away with war. Partly this is so because such a negative attitude toward war hinders preparedness efforts centered on maintaining a strong military for deterrence purposes and in order to serve national interests that might be jeopardized by an inability to respond appropriately with military force when necessary.

Partly, as well, the idealism that would imagine doing away with war may ironically reinforce the interests of those who believe in total war. This view applies just war reasoning to try to make wars more moral (or, at least, less immoral). It focuses on seeking to limit the damage damage done by war (“restraint” is a common “favorable just war” term). In practice, in the United States, advocates of this position have almost always supported the specific wars their country engaged in (for example, the wars in Vietnam and Iraq).

5. Blank check. This is by far the most common view held by Christians, probably since the time of Augustine, certainly in the modern United States. The core conviction here, perhaps overtly voiced or perhaps simply assumed, is that citizens have the responsibility to go to war when their nation calls upon them to.

Though the influential fourth century bishop, Augustine, has been called the “founder” of Christian just war thought, his influence in undergirding the “blank check” approach has probably his most important legacy. Augustine argued that citizens should leave the reasoning concerning a war’s justness to the government. A soldier’s responsibility is simply to obey orders, to treat their task as a job to be done (and not to ask moral questions). Likewise, non-military citizens also are expected to support their national government during wartime.

So there is a hint of “just war” reasoning in this view in that one hopes that one’s leaders make sure that their cause is just before taking their nation into war and one believes there could be some vague kind of accountability should leaders enter into an unjust war. However, on the practical level, Christian citizens do not undertake just war reasoning prior to deciding to go to war nor do they do just war reasoning in the course of the conflict as to whether the tactics are too unrestrained. They simply obey orders.

6. Crusade. This view differs from the blank check by having a more positive view of the goodness of some wars. If one’s nation is God’s agent for good in the world, if there are transcendental values at stake, when one has a clear sense of calling from God to fight, then one must do so.

Since for a crusade, the war is serving an absolute good, one need not be concerned with the just war theory and its concerns for proper procedures, limited tactics, and win-ability. In a crusade, the calling is to fight, all-out, and leave the outcome to God.

III. Reflections

My purpose in this short essay is simply to propose a revised typology for thinking about war and peace in a Christian perspective. This typology will need to be tested with historical data to see how elegant it actually is.

One way it seems better than other typologies by separating two general approaches to pacifism. In practice, most pacifists probably combine the principled and pragmatic approaches. However, the distinction helps us see how pacifism and certain approaches to just war philosophy actually have a great deal in common and are part of one continuum that includes all those who are disposed against war.

A second element of this typology that seems new is to actually draw a dividing line between two distinct just war approaches. The “skeptical just war” view has much more in common with pacifism than with the “favorable just war” view (and likewise the “favorable just war” view could be seen to link more closely with the blank check and crusade).

But probably the main contribution this typology can make is to lift up the “blank check” as not only a distinctive view rarely noticed in most discussions on this topic—but actually as by far the dominant view among Christians (and other citizens as well).

In other words, most discussions of Christina attitudes toward war are blind to the predominant “attitude.” Hence, most of these discussions more or less mislead and provide little clarity to this most important moral concern.