'Can We Talk' About Gay Marriage?

Richard Mouw is a highly respected evangelical Christian leader and President of one of the finest evangelical seminaries in the world. When he speaks I want to listen. And what he writes I like to read.

Recently, Newsweek magazine published a brief essay by Mouw whose purpose is to invite evangelicals and those who are angry with them to begin talking more respectfully to each other. He hopes to gain a better hearing for his more responsibly biblical perspective on social issues than the fundamentalism of which he and his colleages are often accused, and especially for his support of California's recent ban on same sex marriage.

Mouw offers his apologia in the form of reminders that heterosexual marriage is the biblical norm and that the Bible frowns on sexual intimacy outside of marriage, but that it also supports racial justice, gender equality, peacemaking, and care for the environment. The implication is that buying the whole package is not as bad a deal as non-evangelicals make it out to be. Mouw goes on to acknowledge that while the Bible cannot be the sole basis for public policy (contra the position of a lot of his fellow evangelicals), he seems to want to make an exception in the case of same sex marriage, in which the issues "go deep." The big issues for him are the impact on children of a culture that supports gay relationships as the norm, and the right of evangelical Christians to stand up for tradition on this issue without being denigrated as purveyors of hate speech.

I have long regarded Richard Mouw's evangelicalism as worthy of serious attention and appreciation. Most of the things that I myself want to find in the Bible, Mouw's writings assure me are already there. And some of the things I wish were not in the Bible these same writings put in a broader context than that of the proof-texting upon which fundamentalists still depend. Still and all, it really is a stretch to invoke the Bible as a foundation for seeking racial justice and gender equality; most of us who have worked for both have had to do so by relativizing too many biblical passages for comfort. And then there was Jesus, handing out swords rather than negotiating peace treaties. Not to mention the God who is still threatening the total destruction of the environment he once promised Noah he would not mess with again.

As for male-female cleaving, it's a good arrangement when fruitfulness and multiplication are the order of the day, but I know very few people who any longer hold that generating offspring is the sine qua non of the marriage relationship. And while I agree with Richard Mouw that people are better off confining their sexual activity to one partner, I cannot see the number of frowns toward the alternative that he apparently sees in the Bible. After all, Solomon got away with 700 concubines, give or take a few dozen. And where would Islam be today without Sarah's handing Hagar over to her aged but still potent and fertile husband? Neither do I see much support in the Good Book for the kind of deep, one-on-one sexual intimacy that Mouw and I also believe to be a huge positive for heterosexuals' quality of life. Jesus skipped it altogether, and Paul saw the need for it as at best embarrassing and at worst downright dangerous.

What I most respect about Mouw's evangelicalism is his seeking to distinguish the message of the whole Bible from the diverse messages that are embedded in its myriad passages. That is exactly the sort of thing that theologians like me have been trying to do for a professional lifetime and getting skewered by evangelicals as one of "those liberals" for trying to do it. It is good to see really competent evangelicals engaged in the same struggle that my kind is to present a holistic biblical message unsullied by the morally outrageous (e.g., Isaac's almost-sacrifice) and theologically stupid (e.g., paying off the Devil) passages that more than occasionally fill the Bible's books, chapters, and verses.

So: can we talk? Sure. But please, not about whether or not there are passages in the Bible that support this or that particular view on this or that particular social issue. Pick your perspective and your issue, and we can all line up biblical texts to support it. Let's talk instead about our respective visions of the whole of the Bible --- its overarching understanding, intent, and message, as the church at various times and in sundry ways has adapted it to its own situations --- and about how we are to adapt it to ours. Mouw's vision and mine differ somewhat. But we do not differ about the importance of listening to one another. I especially hope we non-evangelicals can resolve our differences with evangelicals over their imposing a particular biblical vision by misusing the constitutional gift of initiative and referendum. In both sexual and in legislative activity, there is a big difference between a proposal and a proposition.