« Back to Issue 29

Theology - Systematic or Selective

By Hedgehog.

So Canon Jeffrey John has been 'persuaded' to refuse his appointment as the next Bishop of Reading. Some are crying 'foul', while others are cheering a 'victory' for 'biblical' Christianity. Most of us are doing what Archbishop Rowan Williams has wisely advised us to do - keep our heads down and wait for tempers to cool before starting a sensible, adult debate about the issue of homosexuality and the Church.

A long time ago, when Hedgehog was at theological college, we were taught something called 'systematic theology'. Being of a simple turn of mind, Hedgehog assumed that this meant that we were to take ALL of Scripture seriously, even when it didn't fit into our nice, tidy categories of thought. Sadly, Hedgehog has since realized that most so-called 'systematic theology' is in fact 'selective theology': we are all prone to read Scripture through the spectacles of our own prejudices.

So, by some Christians, biblical references condemning homosexual practice are taken very seriously, while references to stoning adulterers to death and burning the crops of farmers who grow two crops in the same field are explained away as being unique to the culture of that time and place. Some Christians become very rigid in their application of laws about sexual behaviour, while cheerfully ignoring the equally strong statements about how wrong it is to lend money in order to gain interest (usury). They underline in red the single passage in Romans where Paul appears to condemn homosexual behaviour (not everyone would agree that he does), while somehow failing to notice that Jesus doesn't mention the issue at all and seemed much more concerned with the way we handle our financial and material resources.

It isn't Hedgehog's role to pass judgement about the rightness and wrongness of homosexual activity, but he does get prickly when his Christian brothers and sisters give the impression that God is more concerned with our sexuality than he is about almost anything else. Is God really more concerned with who is sharing whose bed than he is with alleviating the suffering of the poor, the sick, the abused, the dying, the exploited, the enslaved? Should we not get our priorities refocused here? Hedgehog can't help feeling that, when the books of judgement are opened, those who ignored the needs of the needy will receive a harsher judgement than those who were part of an adult, loving, homosexual relationship.

Book Reviews