On Tuesday, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) authorized that the definition of marriage in the church constitution be altered to incorporate “a commitment between two people.” With this decision, which will take effect June 21, the Presbyterian Church has become the largest Protestant body to ceremoniously acknowledge same-sex marriage as legitimate in the eyes of the church itself.
Predictably, this redefinition of marriage has elicited many protests amongst Protestants. Forty-one Presbyterian congregations have outwardly rebuffed the church’s new policy on marriage, and several have voted in opposition to the change in policy. Despite the fact that the denomination’s constitution contains a stipulation that no ministry would be forced to officiate or accommodate a same-sex wedding, many members apparently feel that their church body has betrayed them.
Which begs the question, if churches may choose to reject their larger body of Christ—whom God is said to work through—what grounds do they have to levy the claim that the Lord does not accept homosexuality?
Protestants that reject gay marriage have often cheaply tried to avoid claims of bigotry by throwing up a Bible to deflect whatever dissonant statement is lobbed toward them. The Bible, one of the most—if not the most—fundamentally misused pieces of literature in history, has been utilized by many to bring about change. It has, as many religious texts have, been used to enforce good as well as to enforce evil. The prevalence of Catholicism both catalyzed the horrors of the Inquisition and allowed immense good to be spread through missionaries like Mother Teresa. Although we frequently observe the power religion has to effect change, we often object to religion as a force that can itself evolve.
Religion is not stagnant, and this is where myriad people go wrong in their internal acceptance of it. The Bible, whether you recognize it as a limiting manifestation of antiquated values, the Word of God, a collection of articles that often confuse the ultimately liberal message of Jesus or another thing entirely, contains standards that we cannot rightly (or morally) impose upon today’s society.
Some will say statements taken from the Old Testament such as, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ,” or, “If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her,” are taken out of context when criticized, or that they were seen as morally right at the time they were written, and so are immune to today’s analysis.
The Presbytery has rejected such harmful passages as, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination,” in favor of those that more accurately express the church’s emphasis on harmony amongst all, such as, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The Presbyterian Church has signified now that it refuses to accept that its Lord would deny the love between two people on the basis of something as arbitrary as gender. So as dissenting members of the church vehemently dispute and withdraw from the larger body, they do so more in order to defend their own misguided beliefs rather than to preserve the Word of God as they perceive it. For as their touted religion advances without them, they ignore the message, “There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?”
