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The family in the Bible
Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 2002 by James A. Sanders
Protestant America in the nineteenth century viewed this as a "Christian nation," even "God's true Zion." Public education in the nineteenth century was designed in part to propagate that doctrine to generations of immigrants through the widespread assignment of MCGUFFEY'S READER (Lynn). This was the origin of the idea of America being "God's True Zion," or of America as a true utopia. The Catholic Church, whose allegiance to Rome as well as to America, strongly disagreed and countered by establishing parochial schools wherever there were enough Catholics in this country to support them. Interestingly, the majority of American Jews in the nineteenth century, mostly of the Reform Jewish movement, supported the idea that this was indeed God's True Zion (Jewett), but the Jewish Conservative movement, founded at the beginning of the twentieth century, opposed it by embracing Theodor Hertzl's view that Palestine, on the contrary, was the true Zion.
The cultural battle cry of conservatives through the centuries is that one has to draw the line somewhere to save the culture, the Church, and the Bible. They realize that they are usually 40 to 50 years behind "liberals" in social change (slavery, segregation, women's rights, human rights--distributive justice) and exhibit the frustration of needing to "draw the line" somewhere. It is the same cry one hears about drawing the line at homosexuality, the final assault in their mind on the family. I fail to understand how denouncing homosexuality is going to save the family. The 2000 census has shown that the conventional understanding of the family is most in retreat in the so-called Bible Belt states where there has been a dramatic increase (72%) in the failure of conventional marriages, and in partnerships without marriage. Do those marriages fail because of homosexuality? Of course not, but that is the cheap and easy way to address the issue. The tough way to restore the meaning of marriage and family in the Western world would be to quit making young people think that they are righteous just because they are "straight" and lust after the opposite sex. Bashing gays in their view is not really all that bad because their church teaches that homosexuality is a "sin" and heterosexuality, even trashing and debasing women, is blessed of God. This is dragging locker room ethics into the sanctity of the church, and that is the true sin in my opinion, not homosexuality. The church has been ordaining closet homosexuals for 2000 years, but it seems to have problems ordaining honest ones.
Hiding homophobia behind five scattered biblical verses is devious in the extreme, but so-called conservatives do so by claiming that the Bible is totally harmonious and all of it supports their interpretation of those five verses. Constantly denouncing homosexuality is simply a way of avoiding the many indictments leveled by the prophets and Jesus against the kinds of greed, selfishness and bigotry some so-called evangelicals espouse in the name of Christ. I personally think it extremely important for the church to help restore the sanctity of marriage, monogamy, and the family, but I am convinced that woman trashing and gay bashing will not do it but are themselves the real sins, not the sexual orientation God has given a precious few. Strict and full pre-marital counseling about the importance of marriage and the family to society, and to the couples who want to give themselves to each other sexually for their lives, straight and gay, is far more effective than making them think they're sexually OK because they're not gay. That is evil.
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