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Bible, Gender, Sexuality

Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Grapples conscientiously with biblical texts at the heart of the church's debate over same-sex relationships
This thought-provoking book by James Brownson develops a broad, cross-cultural sexual ethic from Scripture, locates current debates over homosexuality in that wider context, and explores why the Bible speaks the way it does about same-sex relationships.
Fairly presenting both sides in this polarized debate — "traditional" and "revisionist" — Brownson conscientiously analyzes all of the pertinent biblical texts and helpfully identifies "stuck points" in the ongoing debate. In the process, he explores key concepts that inform our understanding of the biblical texts, including patriarchy, complementarity, purity and impurity, honor and shame. Central to his argument is the need to uncover the moral logic behind the text.
Written in order to serve and inform the ongoing debate in many denominations over the questions of homosexuality, Brownson's in-depth study will prove a useful resource for Christians who want to form a considered opinion on this important issue.
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    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2013

      In Brownson's (The Promise of Baptism) remarkably thorough, patient, and learned treatment of the knotty questions that surround Christian stances toward same-sex relationships, he reviews traditionalist and revisionist approaches, and addresses the issue through the categories of patriarchy, procreation, celibacy, lust, purity, honor and shame, and nature. He concludes that a careful understanding of the moral logic that underlies Biblical texts does not consistently support homophobic conclusions. VERDICT While Brownson's treatment may be too scholarly for some readers, his writing and thinking are deliberate and clear, and may supply a crucial tool for discussion based neither on impulse nor unexamined cultural tradition.

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from February 15, 2013
      In an outstanding presentation of academic scholarship to general readers, Brownson, a New Testament professor, does indeed, as the subtitle avers, reframe biblical debate about same-sex relationships. In the first of four parts, he states his intent to reinvigorate the imagination of the church . . . so that we discover the scriptures' wisdom in the presence of new questions and points out the shortcomings of both traditional and revisionist positions on the Bible and homosexuality. The second part educes the broad forms of moral logic patriarchy, the one flesh' bond of marriage, procreation, and celibacy with which the Bible addresses sexuality; the third assesses the boundaries scripture imposes on sexual practices. The last part summarily returns to the heart of the matterthe biblical passages concerned with same-sex relations (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah, Paul denouncing men who lie with other men)and analyzes what serious textual scholarship has revealed about those passages ever since gay civil rights activism emerged in the 1950s. Out of rigorous inspection, then, Brownson establishes that what the Bible condemns is same-sex abuse, and that the moral logic that applies to abuse doesn't speak to the committed, loving, consecrated same-sex relationships we see today. Demanding focused but not labored reading, this strikes to the heart of the Bible-versus-homosexuality fracas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

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