by Keith Bassham
Nothing, actually, according to Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Newness for us is more like using the phrase, “We have a new car. It is used, but I mean it is new to us.” So in that sense, 2009 is a new year because we have yet to experience all that will occur the next 12 months. As the various authors in this issue of the Tribune write, we will experience new challenges, new joys, new heartbreaks … well, you get the picture. And that whole package of newness is illustrated on the cover of this magazine, for our proper response to that 2009 version of time is captured in the lyric, “Be still, my soul.”
We do have something new for the reader in this issue, though (with the caveat I referenced in the first paragraph). Global Partners is here as well, along with the usual columns and news articles.
Meanwhile, Newsweek magazine has decided to enter the same-sex marriage debate with a large noise. The cover title for the December 15 issue is “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” and the feature essay, “Our Mutual Joy,” is written by religion editor Lisa Miller. According to Miller, there is no serious argument for a traditional oneman/ one-woman marriage to be taken from the Bible (she uses Old Testament examples of polygamy for examples), celibacy is the ideal (“family stability is the best alternative”), and arguments against same-sex marriage are not rooted in the Bible but in tradition.
For the record, most of what Ms. Miller writes is not new. The arguments she makes are easily refuted. For instance, she says in one place that neither the Bible nor Jesus explicitly define marriage “as between one man and one woman,” when it is obvious that Jesus does just this in Matthew 19, and he quotes Genesis 2:24-25 to make the point. Another of Ms. Miller’s assertions is that the Bible does not refer to sexual acts between women, when women are explicitly mentioned in Romans 1:26: ” … for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature …”
Other arguments previously encountered (and adequately answered) include her qualifying the Levitical phrases about homosexuality as “throwaway lines,” and intimating that David and Jonathan shared a homosexual relationship. But, I am accustomed to major news magazines’ religion editors taking the side of the most progressive (they don’t like to be called liberal) wing of Christendom (I don’t like them being called Christianity), but editor Jon Meacham (some of whose religious essays I have found very well-informed) has decided to put some oomph behind Ms. Miller. According to Mr. Meacham, “No matter what one thinks about gay rights — for, against or somewhere in between — this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism … to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt — it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.”
To which Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says “It doesn’t surprise me. Newsf r o m t h e e d i t o r week has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus. I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”
So there is the rub. Newsweek says taking the Bible seriously is, in actuality, “unserious, and unworthy.” The question for Mr. Meacham and Ms. Miller and their peers is this: if you take the Bible seriously on the questions of the existence of one and only one God, other moral issues, or the teachings of Jesus, or the universality of the application of those teachings (the two essays by Mr. Meacham and Ms. Miller assert they do take these things seriously, and Ms. Miller writes at one point, “We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future.”) on the premise that they are rooted in both the Bible and “the great Judeo-Christian tradition,” how do you explain your rejection of the historic teaching of Christianity regarding homosexuality? And further, if the “unserious” and “unworthy” fundamentalism is embraced by such a narrow sliver of the American population, how do you explain such a large majority of that same population agreeing with “the worst kind of fundamentalism” that same-sex marriage should be rejected? Surely the fundamentalists have not been able to pull that much wool over that many eyes.
One thing is certain from this bit of news. Newsweek and other allies of the homosexual activist movement clearly expect that Bible-believing Christianity will be the largest (and perhaps the only serious) roadblock in their way toward a fully accepted and socially legitimated homosexual lifestyle. Let us not lower their expectations.