Churches & Sexuality
by Mike Mitchell, Juicy Ecumenism:
The recent announcement that the 14,000 member Woodlands United Methodist Church outside Houston, Texas has voted to leave the denomination in order stay true to the standards of sexual conduct in the United Methodist Book of Discipline (and to 2,000 years of Christian tradition) calls for the reiteration of a crucial point about sound Christian thinking.
Facing a fundamentally similar kind of controversy a hundred years ago in his native England, G.K. Chesterton held a clear-eyed Christian perspective that is applicable to the current debate on sexuality. Early in the twentieth century, there was a movement to relax the divorce laws which had made ending a marriage difficult by today’s standards. Chesterton rightfully opposed this movement with a keen appreciation for the holiness of the marriage vow and a sober vision of the socially corrosive effects of easy divorce. In his book, The Superstition of Divorce, he references the opposition to his view by fellow British writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was dismissive of the movement to preserve marriage and restrict divorce claiming it was “entirely founded on ‘certain texts’ in the Bible about marriages.”
Chesterton’s response is lucid: “[An abiding belief in the sanctity of marriage] means a whole view of life, held in the light of life, and defended, rightly or wrongly, by constant appeals to every aspect of life…anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred truths.”
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