‘You don’t speak for me’: Christian support for marriage equality is growing

Aug 7, 2017 by Jill

by Keith Mascord, Guardian:

As Australia’s politicians again teeter on the edge of deciding to decide about marriage equality, there are those who will want to give the impression that Christians are all (or mostly) singing from the same hymn sheet on this. We are not.

The hymn sheet itself has undergone major rewrites, and is still being rewritten. There was a time when Christians were singing in unison – to a script that was ancient. Christianity’s most highly esteemed theologians, from Augustine to Aquinas, through to Martin Luther and beyond, were unequivocal in their distaste for those we now identify as gay, describing their passions as disordered, abominable and responsible for the worst of all sins.

Mercifully, we now rarely hear Christians arguing in such terms. What I have noticed, even over the past few months, is that there is emerging a gentler, more respectful tone in conversations I am having with people of faith, along with a welcome willingness to listen and learn.

There has also been something of a renaissance of biblical scholarship on this issue, as theologians struggle to better understand the ancient biblical texts, and to sensibly and relevantly apply them. Older ways of approaching the bible, including Martin Luther’s plain sense literalism, are rightly being discarded.

Most heartening of all, I think, is that Christians are coming to recognise that our first and most urgent moral duty (regardless of what we think about marriage equality) is to apologise for the terrible mistreatment of LGBTIQ+ people, which still darkly reaches into the present. It is thrilling for me, as an Anglican Christian, to report that a motion of apology for this past and present harm will be debated and hopefully passed at this year’s triennial Anglican general synod in September.

In our slow learning process, Christians are increasingly asking, “Why shouldn’t our LGBTIQ+ sons and daughters, siblings and neighbours be included in one of our society’s most treasured institutions? What good reason is there to not do this?”

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