Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships
*Starred Review* 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 matter—the 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. --Ray Olson