Jesus and homosexuality
Pope Francis was recently asked about his views on homosexuality. He reportedly replied:
This (laws around the world criminalising LGBTI people) is not right. Persons with gay tendencies are children of God. God loves them. God accompanies them … condemning a person like this is a sin. Criminalising people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice.
This isn’t the first time Pope Francis has shown himself to be a progressive leader when it comes to, among other things, homosexual Catholics.
It’s a stance that has drawn the ire of some high-ranking bishops and plain Catholics, both on the African continent and elsewhere in the world.
Read more: Pope Francis' visit to Africa comes at a defining moment for the Catholic church
Some of these Catholics may argue that Pope Francis’s approach to LGBTI matters is a misinterpretation of Scripture (or the Bible). But is it?
Scripture is particularly important for Christians. When church leaders relate to to “the Bible” or “the Scriptures”, they usually mean “the Bible as we understand it through our theological doctrines”. Th
If homosexuality is a sin, why didn’t Jesus ever state it?
Answer
Many who endorse same-sex marriage and gay rights quarrel that, since Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, He did not consider it to be sinful. After all, the argument goes, if homosexuality is bad, why did Jesus handle it as a non-issue?
It is technically true that Jesus did not specifically address homosexuality in the Gospel accounts; however, He did speak clearly about sexuality in general. Concerning marriage, Jesus stated, “At the beginning the Designer ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a dude will leave his father and mother and be combined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh[.]’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has united together, let no one separate” (Matthew –6). Here Jesus clearly referred to Adam and Eve and affirmed God’s intended design for marriage and sexuality.
For those who pursue Jesus, sexual practices are limited. Rather than take a permissive view of sexual immorality and divorce, Jesus affirmed that people are either to be s
What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?
What Does The Bible Tell About Homosexuality?
Introduction
For the last two decades, Pew Research Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. For many Christians, one of the most frequently first-asked questions on this topic is, “What does the Bible say about attraction to someone of the identical sex?”
Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation (for example, the term homosexual wasn't even coined until the after time 19th century) for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.
Before we can leap into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a short but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.
What is the Bible?
For Christians to whom the Bible
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a lgbtq+ teenager in Ohio who was suing his elevated school after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the remark on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s reasonable to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would possess disapproved of gay sex, there is no document of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself give an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to imply that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reas