Choosing Your Scholarship

To follow up on yesterday's post . . .

Last year, Candace Chellew-Hodge published her book, Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians. In it, she recounts a story which ends up with her stating that the religious argument against GLBT folk is not the other side of the argument.

In other words, we can no longer make this argument a religious argument. It is not GLBT folk on one side, religious folk on the other.

So the question becomes reframed as: What scholarship are you going to accept, because the scholarship has been done. If there is a faithful, sane, responsible reading of the Bible that supports the condemnation of GLBT folk, so be it. But there is also a host of scholarship done by faithful, sane, responsbile people who do not believe the Bible condemns GLBT folk.

I suppose the question goes one step further, then. What scholarship are we going to accept, that most fully and tangibly proclaims the Gospel? What scholarship is most likely to bring in the Reign of God for the poor and oppressed?

Is it now an argument between people who chose scholarship that supports being exclusive, divisive and mean and people who chose scholarship that supports being inclusive, diverse, and open?

Other recommended reading: Thou Shalt Not Love: What Evangelicals Really Say to Gays by Patrick M Chapman. The title is misleading. It's really a compendium of cross-disciplinary studies on GLBT issues, from biblical studies to anthropology. Chapman is a PhD in Anthropology and he brings a wealth of scholarship to this one book.