Some years ago, the congregation of believers to which I belong, the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina, became a "welcoming and affirming" congregation with regard to homosexual, trans-gender, and bi-sexual persons of faith. As such, we positively approved the ordination of such persons to ministry and began blessing the unions of same-gender persons as families within our congregation. We now have such members as church staff members and as leaders and church school teachers within our congregation, and their faith has enriched and broadened the faith of the rest of us as well.
But back in 1991 that was a controversial stand, in response to which our congregation was removed from fellowship and participation in the Southern Baptist Convention and its North Carolina and Raleigh affiliates. We do remain members of the American Baptist Churches, USA, the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, the International Community of the Cross of Nails, and the North Carolina Council of Churches. Many of our members are also active in the Triangle Interfaith Alliance and support the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and Baptist seminaries and colleges in North Carolina and the Southern region. Many people in 1991 predicted that our stand would marginalize our congregation, but instead, we have prospered and broadened our associations with Christians and other people of faith around the world.
I had my own doubts back in 1991 that this would be the case. I also did not know much about the Bible's take on the question of homosexuality. So I began to “examine the Scriptures every day to see whether these things were so,” as the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (17:11) describes the activity of the Berean Christians. This essay, and the one following, summarize the conclusions at which I arrived. Those conclusions convinced me that in all good conscience I could continue to be a member of this congregation at that difficult time. I did so, and my leap of faith has been amply justified through the years.
I. The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Genesis 19 and Judges 19
Genesis 19:1 . . . The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2a He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” 2b They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.” 3 But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” 9 But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near the door to break it down. 10 But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. 11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door. . . . (NRSV).
Judges 19:1 . . . In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite, residing in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. . . . 14 So they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin. 15 They turned aside there, to go in and spend the night at Gibeah. He went in and sat down in the open square of the city, but no one took them in to spend the night. 16 Then at evening there was an old man coming from his work in the field. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was residing in Gibeah. (The people of the place were Benjaminites.) 17 When the old man looked up and saw the wayfarer in the open square of the city, he said, “Where are you going and where do you come from?” 18 He answered him, “We are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem in Judah; and I am going to my home. Nobody has offered to take me in. 19 We your servants have straw and fodder for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me and the woman and the young man along with us. We need nothing more.” 20 The old man said, “Peace be to you. I will care for all your wants; only do not spend the night in the square.” 21 So he brought him into his house, and fed the donkeys; they washed their feet, and ate and drank. 22 While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house, and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may know him.” 23 And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. 24 Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. 26 As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light. 27 In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. . . . (NRSV).
Genesis 19 tells the story about Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the men of Sodom come to Lot’s door, demanding that he present to them for their sexual use (literally, "to know") the two men who are guests in his home. In an astonishing display of moral compromise, according to our modern standards, Lot offers his virgin daughters as substitutes. But Sodom’s men will not have them. They want to rape the two male visitors. For their evil intent, the two angelic visitors strike the men of Sodom blind.
A similar story occurs in Judges 19. It may well be a variant version of the first. Certainly the language and the order of events in both stories are similar. Here a traveling Levite priest comes to a man’s home, and this host, like Lot, offers his own virgin daughter along with his guest’s concubine to the townsmen of Gibeah to prevent his male guest from being raped. In this case the host’s daughter is spared, but the concubine becomes the victim.
The Judges story, like that of Genesis 19, is difficult for many reasons. Who cannot be horrified at the Levite’s blatant disregard of his concubine? All his actions seem heartless and self-serving. He callously leaves her to the mercy of the corrupt men of the city, and after allowing her to be abused all night he shows no concern for her while she is being abused and as she lies dead at the entrance of the house.
Both Genesis 19 and Judges 19 are critical texts that reflect the ancient morality of their time. But are they really told for the purpose of condemning homosexuality? Traditional interpretation has identified the sin of the men of Sodom and the men of Gibeah as the attempt to perform a homosexual act with the guests. That sin has been given the name, “Sodomy.”
But there is more in these texts than meets the eye. The sin of Sodom and of the men of Gibeah in these texts centers on the evil action of some of the men of these cities, who wish to subjugate the guests by forcibly raping them—this is hardly what we know today as homosexuality. There is nothing in either story to suggest that the attackers were homosexual in life orientation, and there is much in the Judges story to suggest that the attackers there were, in fact, heterosexual.
Furthermore, although in each story the conduct of the townspeople toward the visitors was condemned, strangely enough, no condemnation toward Lot or toward the Levite and his host in Gibeah for offering the women to be raped is even implied in the texts. And certainly through centuries of Christian and Jewish interpretation it appears that few interpreters spend any space condemning them either! Certainly the actual rape of the concubine by the men of Gibeah in the Judges story is condemned. (Or is it merely the murder of the concubine, which thus destroys the Levite’s “property”?). But it appears to the Biblical writers (and indeed, to perhaps the majority of later interpreters to be perfectly all right for the hosts in the two stories to offer the women, who, after all, in that ancient culture, were considered the men’s “possessions”) for the disposal of the townspeople!
The significant sin being cited in these two texts is not the modern concept of homosexual orientation, of which the culture of that time knew nothing, nor even consenting homosexual practices at all. (In fact, the English words “homosexual” and “homosexuality” did not exist in our language until the mid-nineteenth century!) The sin being cited was the attempted male rape of guests, in a culture in which hospitality was an important matter, and violation of hospitality was an even more serious matter.
Male rape was a common occurrence in the ancient world, a way of humiliating one’s enemies. In that world, it was the practice of conquering soldiers to humiliate their male prisoners by raping them. In such practice the attacker need not be, and probably was not, a person of homosexual orientation at all. This practice was a way of breaking the spirits of a people’s enemies and a way of impressing their defeat. It is reported, for example, that the Egyptian Pharaoh’s footstool bore the motto, “Pharaoh has [anally] ‘penetrated’ his enemies.” It was a way of treating men like women, who were mere “property” in the eyes of men.
Unfortunately this practice is one that is especially common today in American prisons, and in that context the attackers are usually heterosexual persons. Like rape of a female by a male, there is generally little of sexual lust involved in such activity. It is an act of violence in which the attacker desires to demonstrate power over another person. The violent abuse of another person sexually is the sin in question in these two texts, not a homosexual orientation or a homosexual relationship between consenting adults. These two passages say nothing at all about those matters.
There are three other possible references in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament to male homosexuality—and absolutely none (!) to female homosexuality. Each of these references suffers a bit from translation into English, since no one word exists in the Hebrew language (or Greek in the New Testament, for that matter) for our English concept, “homosexuality,” a term that, as noted above, first came into use in the nineteenth century.
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (NRSV).
Leviticus 18:22 Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence. (Tanakh, New Jewish Publication Society Translation, 1985).
In Leviticus 18:22 the description of an apparent homosexual act is translated into the heterosexual terminology of the time and somewhat euphemistically. It is addressed only to males (as the entire Torah was—since females were not often seen as objects of God’s attention, being mere “possessions” of their fathers or of their husbands). No explanation is given as to just why this action is such an “abomination” or “abhorrence.” (Incidentally, the various Hebrew terms translated as “abomination” simply mean, “ritually unclean”). And, strangely, lesbian sexual activity is not mentioned at all here, nor anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
Leviticus 20:13
Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. (NRSV).
Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death—their bloodguilt is upon them. (Tanakh. The New Jewish Publication Society Translation).
Leviticus 20:13 expands chapter 18’s prohibition by applying the death penalty for the act condemned in 18:22. In this same list the death penalty is prescribed for incest, adultery, lack of virginity in a woman on her wedding night, and for anyone who curses his father or mother!
In both the Leviticus passages the prohibition of an apparent male homosexual act (if that is what it is) simply appears in the middle of a list of other sexual acts that the priestly writers of Leviticus considered ritually “unclean.” The list includes forbidden degrees of relationship (incest), and having sexual relations during a woman’s monthly period of menstruation (Leviticus 18:19), a practice that people in modern society do not generally consider sinful. The act of “lying with a male as with a woman” is not singled out as any more abhorrent than those other condemned practices.
It is interesting how selective modern people can be in the enforcement of scriptural “mandates,” when all of those activities are treated on the same level, as they are in the Biblical passages that have been quoted. And of course, in our modern society, while some states may have laws against homosexual acts, or against sexual abuse, or against marriage within certain forbidden degrees of relationship, none of them prescribes, or would prescribe the death penalty for such “crimes.”
In light of the Genesis and Judges passages already discussed, one may wonder whether the two passages in Leviticus may be referring to male rape. Leviticus 20:13 does indicate that both partners should be put to death. Ordinarily this might imply mutual consent. But Leviticus 20:16 says that even in the case of sexual intercourse between a human and an animal, both the human and the animal shall be put to death—a clear situation in which the animal had no opportunity to consent! And in light of the Deuteronomy passage discussed below, these passages may simply be a condemnation of typical Canaanite worship of Ba’al by means ritual prostitution.
We are given absolutely no reason in these ancient texts just why the act of a male “lying with a male as with a woman” is condemned. And homosexual activity between females is never mentioned at all in these texts. In the absence of a concrete reason clearly stated, we are left to speculate.
Perhaps the prohibition does have something to do with forcible male rape of an un-consenting partner. Or perhaps it does relate to acts of prostitution in the temple of an alien religion. But many interpreters suggest that the real reason may be found in a passage like Genesis, chapter 38. The subject of that chapter is the ancient Israelite practice of “Levirate marriage” (cf. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Ruth 4:1-12). That was the practice, in which, if a man died childless, it was considered the duty of a brother-in-law or other next of kin to marry and to engage in sexual relations with the widow to perpetuate the brother’s name and inheritance.
The practice of levirate marriage is another practice found in the Old Testament Torah, which, though commanded by God, is no longer practiced, even by modern Fundamentalist Christians, even though they believe in an infallible or inerrant Bible. But the point of the story in Genesis 38 is that Judah’s son Onan did not complete his “duty” toward his brother’s widow, because, he “spilled his semen on the ground” rather than impregnate her (Genesis 38:9). The story tells us that, for his sin, Yahweh put Onan to death. We again may speculate that, since the male semen bears the potential life of a Jewish male’s future descendants, to “waste” it was sinful because it would negate God’s promise of descendants for Abraham (Genesis 12:2, 7; 13:15-16; 15:5; 17:4-9; etc.) as well as God’s command to the first couple to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
In light of this possibility, we may take this speculation further and suggest a reason for the condemnation of a male “lying with a man as with a woman” in the Book of Leviticus. In that kind of activity, once again, the male semen was being “wasted.” Furthermore, since females do not produce semen, there was no reason in such a context for a condemnation of female homosexual activity, and thus it is not mentioned in the Leviticus passages.
Deuteronomy 23:17-18
Deuteronomy 23:17 None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute. 18 You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute into the house of the Yahweh your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Yahweh your God. (NRSV) adapted).
Deuteronomy 23:18 No Israelite woman shall be a cult prostitute, nor shall any Israelite man be a cult prostitute. 19 You shall not bring the fee of a whore or the pay of a dog [i.e., a male prostitute] into the house of Yahweh your God in fulfillment of any vow, for both are abhorrent to Yahweh your God.” [Vv. 18-19, following the verse numbering of the Hebrew Bible, in Tanakh, the New Jewish Publication Society Translation).
In Deuteronomy 23:17 both the males and the females of Israel are prohibited from serving as cult prostitutes for pagan religions, but it is not clear whether their services were heterosexual or homosexual. The worship of Ba’al in the Canaanite culture involved regular visits to various religious centers by the worshippers. In the visits the worshippers were expected to engage in ritual prostitution to guarantee the fertility of the crops during the coming year. To be exact, prostitution, especially for the purpose of worship in a heathen religion, is prohibited in this particular text. Although some traditional interpreters have assumed that this text refers to homosexual acts, this is uncertain. Presumably only heterosexual intercourse would serve the purpose of fertility religion to mimic the planting of seeds in the ground. But that may not necessarily be the case here.
The sin condemned in this text is not so much a sexual one at all. The real sin lies in the fact that, by engaging in the practice of fertility worship the worshipper has chosen to serve Ba’al rather than Yahweh as the true God. To worship and serve any deity but Yahweh is to violate the basic commandment for God’s people, found in Deuteronomy 6:4.
That is it—that is all that is stated in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament with any possible reference to condemnation of homosexuality. But note again what is condemned. Prostitution in service of pagan religions (whether heterosexual or homosexual); rape of males by males (regardless of the sexual orientation of the attackers); and the rather obscure action described as “lying with a male as with a woman,” a reference that says nothing about female homosexual activity at all.
At best we can say that none of the passages in the Old Testament are anything like as clear-cut in their meaning as we would like them to be. The best we can do is interpret them in light of what we know about the cultural assumptions of people living in that particular time and place, and not assume that they are necessarily speaking about situations in our modern culture. The Old Testament culture apparently knew nothing of committed and monogamous sexual relationships between persons of the same sex. Thus, these Old Testament passages may have nothing to say about that issue, and even, perhaps, nothing to say about contemporary homosexual relationships at all.
Thus, the person who attempts to be dogmatic in interpretation at this point is left to make such judgments on some other basis than these Old Testament passages. That is so because these passages that traditionally have been cited cannot be said with any degree of certainty to mean what he thinks they mean.
Before leaving the Old Testament we should consider one more factor. Just what is the “Christian” view of the relevance of the Old Testament legal ordinances? Obviously, different Christian denominations and their interpreters disagree. Mainline Protestant Christianity has usually given priority to the New Testament, and has not held that the Jewish Law in its totality is applicable to Christian practice.
If Christians (especially “Fundamentalist” Christians, who certainly hold that the Bible is infallible and inerrant) did accept the Law in its totality then all Christians would worship on Saturday, as do Jews and Seventh Day Adventists, and certain other Christian groups. There is no way to avoid the clear teaching of the Old Testament that the day of rest is the seventh day, not the first, and there is no direct Old or New Testament commandment for Christians or others to make that change. Again, if modern Christians did hold that the Jewish Law in its totality were to be observed, Christians would not be eating pork or shrimp, which are among many forbidden foods in Jewish Law.
It is obvious that, for a majority of Christians, the legal prescriptions in the Old Testament do not all have the same value. Christians usually refer to the words of Paul in Romans 6:15 that “We are not under the Torah, but under grace,” when defending their failure to observe the Jewish Sabbath or the Jewish dietary laws. But then with a wonderful inconsistency, they come to some specific legal precept that they choose (on cultural or other grounds) to believe is still valid. And at that point they quote Jesus,
Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Torah or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until Heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the Torah until all is accomplished.”
In Romans and Galatians Paul reminded his readers that they could not have it both ways. Either a person must observe all of the Torah in all of its details or else he must be free from the legal prescriptions in the Bible and live under God’s grace instead. Some in Christianity have not heard him on this point.
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