« Back to Issue 40

An Acceptable Sacrifice? Homosexuality & the Church

Author:	Duncan Dormor and Jeremy Morris (eds)
Published By:	SPCK (London)
Pages:	180
Price:	12.99
ISBN:	SPCK

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

The best description of this book is that given on the back cover by Professor David Ford: "Here is an oasis in the desert of the Anglican debate about homosexuality".

The oasis consists of a set of essays by a variety of authors, all of them to some degree or another sympathetic to the cause of treating homosexuals in the church with rather more integrity than patronising toleration. Archbishop Desmond Tutu leads the way in his foreword: "An acceptable sacrifice? The answer is simple: No. It is not acceptable for us to discriminate against our brothers and sisters on the basis of sexual orientation just as it was not acceptable for discrimination to exist on the basis of skin colour under Apartheid". Some readers of Ministry Today may not like the analogy, but it certainly made me, as a passionate objector to all forms of discrimination, want to read further.

The writers of these essays all want to argue that, given our present understanding of human biology, genetics, psychology, sociology and morality, it is time to address the issue of homosexual orientation and behaviour with a more open mind than we have done in the past. Certainly, this book argues, disagreement about the issue (which is inevitable, since Christians disagree about most things!) need not be, and indeed should not be, a fellowship- breaking disagreement.

The essays are grouped under four headings: The Use of Scripture; History and Tradition; Reason and Personhood; The Wider Horizon. They range from Maggi Dawn's excellent essay exploring the limits of our right and ability to interpret the text of Scripture, to John Hare's equally excellent, but scientifically technical, essay on intersexuality, addressing the question of what it means to be male and female. This latter essay will surprise readers as it asserts that perhaps as many as 2% of the population "do not fit easily into either category" (p.106), which raises some interesting questions for those brethren opposed to the ordination of women!

This is a brave and thoughtful book, with its authors nailing their colours firmly to the mast of open-mindedness. I commend it thoroughly to anyone who is genuinely interested in making their judgements about homosexuality and the Church with a mind and heart full of accurate information rather than prejudices.