This summer, it is highly likely that the UK Methodist Church will formally accept same-sex marriage at its annual conference. The 2019 conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of the proposal, made by their Marriage and Relationships Task Group via the report ‘God in Love Unites Us’.1 It has since been offered up to the wider membership for consultation, with a final decision due this July.
‘God in Love Unites Us’ emphasised the love of God and the need to love each other – a sentiment that no-one would disagree with. However, to love someone does not mean we have to love his/her practices – after all, we can love an alcoholic, but we do not go on a binge with him – we try and get him to change his ways. The report also gave a history of how the Church, over many years, has adapted its doctrine to accommodate secular thinking about sexuality. It devoted about two of its 67 pages to discussion of the various scriptures dealing with same-sex behaviour but implied that these are not relevant today and refer to specific, circumscribed situations.
Meanwhile, Dignity and Worth, a pro-LGBTQ+ Methodist campaign group, has produced a glossy pamphlet called ‘The Case for Change’. It correctly states that many LGBTQ+ people have been active church members for many years – some accepted for who they feel they are and some feeling rejected. Paul reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), so in that sense every church is full of sinners. But the hope of the gospel is that with God’s forgiveness and help, members will change their ways and live more in accordance with the scriptures.
The pamphlet points out that the Methodist Church is committed to the Bible, but then talks in an unspecified way about different ‘interpretations’ when it comes to passages about sexual practices and suggests that the thinking about such practices, when those passages were written, was perhaps different to thinking today. This is rather like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, saying “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less”!
To love someone does not mean we have to love his/her practices
Turning to Scripture
In the face of these ‘Christian’ publications, what does the Bible say? “All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). But Paul also warned that “the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 4:3-4).
Methodism founder John Wesley held to a biblical view of sexuality. See Photo CreditsSo, what does the Bible actually say? Starting at the beginning, with Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”. This would seem to put paid to sexism and transgenderism in one fell swoop.
Then, Genesis 2:24 states “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” This verse was also quoted by Jesus (Matt 19:4-5) and Paul (Eph 5:31). There is no suggestion here that same-sex marriage is an acceptable form of union. God also went on to say, “be fruitful and increase in number” – which is simply not feasible for a same-sex couple.
Did God Really Say…?
There is always a temptation to make the word of God fit our own arguments. Look in Genesis 3:1-5: “Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” When Eve replied that only the tree in the middle of the garden was forbidden under fear of death, the serpent directly contradicted God’s word and opened up the tantalising suggestion that eating the forbidden fruit would make humans like God. We all know how that episode ended.
If we move on in the scriptures to Leviticus, we find “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22, repeated in Leviticus 20:13). In how many ways can these passages be interpreted? Those who would suggest ‘alternative’ interpretations are really saying “Did God really say…?”
The Bible is full of stories about inappropriate sex and its disastrous consequences. Paul summed up the situation well in the second half of Romans 1, where he states that because men had rejected God (although he had revealed himself to them), he “gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (vv26-27). Paul suggested that same-sex relationships were the culmination of the degradation of society as it turned away from God to idols.
These scriptures seem to be difficult to interpret in any other way than that God’s plan for humankind is for sexual acts to be heterosexual and within the covenant bounds of marriage.
There is always a temptation to make the word of God fit our own arguments.
Renewing Our Minds
The Church should welcome everyone as they are, with love, but should also try to guide everyone to follow God’s word. Jesus says, in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my Father in Heaven.” The Methodist Church should not sacrifice scriptural truth in the cause of unity.
One of the objectives of the Gay Liberation Front’s manifesto2 states “We must aim at the abolition of the family so that the sexist male supremacist system can no longer be nurtured there.” Whilst one can accept that sexist, male supremacist behaviour is undesirable, the destruction of the family is not the way to deal with it. The LGBTQ+ agenda has moved on from the acceptance of homosexual relationships to the promotion of them, infiltrating propaganda into many areas of society, including our schools.
The Methodist Church should be opposing this movement and upholding the scriptural view of sexuality and marriage, not helping to drive nails into its coffin. Perhaps the more important question is not what the Methodist Church will decide to do with same-sex marriage in July, but what God will decide to do with the Methodist Church.
Let us conclude with Paul (Rom 12:2): “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Postscript: There are now moves in the USA to get polygamous relationships recognised in law! How would the Methodist Church react to that?
About the author: Jim Heber is a retired GP who currently worships at a Methodist Church in north Somerset.
Further resources: In response to the report 'God in Love Unites Us', Methodist Evangelicals Together have made available resources defending a biblical position on marriage and sexuality. These include a booklet by Rev Janet M Knowles-Berry entitled 'Bible Study and Concerns Regarding Same-sex 'Marriage' Taking Place on Methodist Premises' (click here to read the booklet in PDF form), which translates from the Hebrew and Greek those texts which 'God in Love Unites Us' misinterprets. Also available on the same link is a useful reflection from Rev Dr James Grayson. Our thanks to Rev Knowles-Berry for drawing these to our attention.
References
1 The task group was commissioned in 2016 to “revisit and consider the definition of marriage”. See here, p3/60.
2 1971, revised 1978. Read it here.
