The same faith? : comments [Matthew's Journal]

When I was a Christian, I thought gay sex was sinful, though I didn't have a particularly good justification for this other than that it was what the Bible said, so I'd better fall in line. I thought fellow believers who disagreed were mistaken but still Christians.

As both Rilstone and

robhu have said, in some sense this is a debate about the authority and interpretation of the Bible. But the choice of the straw that broke the church's back is interesting, too. The church has not had a schism over divorce and remarriage (lately), despite that having much clearer New Testament guidance (can't do it except because of desertion or sexual immorality, if you do you're committing adultery). If you're going to have a schism, it makes sense to do it over a sin to which few of your members are tempted, I suppose.

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Presumably the CofE in particular must at least have revised that one to "can't do it except in cases of desertion, sexual immorality, or Henry VIII"?

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I common historical fallacy.

Henry VIII did not divorce anyone. Two of his marriages were annulled. The first annulment was on the grounds that a marriage to one's brother's wife was not allowed and the second on grounds of non-consummation. The papacy at the time were quite happy to hand out annulments to the aristocracy but military conflicts at the time meant that the Pope couldn't in the case of Henry's first marriage.

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It's actually even more fun, since I believe that three of his marriages were anulled. His marriage to Anne Boleyn was annulled before she was executed, on the grounds that he'd had sex with her sister Mary before they married. Which is, I assume why it was possible to believe that *both* Mary I and Elizabeth I were illegitimate, rather than it being an either/or matter.

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To be pendantic, four marriages were annulled; the fact that two of these were overshadowed by the executions that followed means that this is often overlooked.

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Was Catherine Howard's as well? I hadn't gathered that. Do you know what the grounds were?

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The Wikipedia article on Henry VIII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII) mentions a previous (informal) engagement on the part of Catherine Howard. However the article is a bit confused - the way it's phrased, it's unclear whether there was an actual annulment or merely some people pointing out that the marriage wasn't proper, and, well, wikipedia, so maybe I'm confused. I definitely remember reading somewhere that there were four annulments, but alas I can't remember where.

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I believe the QI Book of General Ignorance states that Henry VIII only had 2 wives, because 4 of the marriages were annulled. It does give its reasoning; anyone visiting our house for Games Evening is welcome to look it up :)

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I think one of the reasons this is the big presenting issue that it is is because there is a drum being banged in the Episcopalian church where they are saying that it is not sinful to have homosexual relations, and therefore you can be a bishop. I am sure if someone wanted to be a Bishop but they were having an affair, or sex outside of marriage, or something like that -- then there would be an equal response.

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I was thinking of something like point 3 in

rustica's comment. It seems likely (though I'm not aware of any peer reviewed studies in this area) that in an evangelical church, a church member who was in a homosexual relationship would be subject to church discipline. It's odd that this does not also apply to members of the congregation who are onto their second marriage.

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I'm assuming that you're referring to someone who is on their second marriage for reasons that are not considered sinful (e.g. the death of their former spouse).

I think one of the complexities about remarriage is that if you believe that remarriage is a sin, you probably also consider divorce of your new marriage to be a sin. So you might consider it to be sinful that the person got remarried, but that it is also a sin for them to get divorced now. Obviously this is a complex area to discuss in a LJ comment (and I think is a bit out of scope of the original discussion), but Jesus seemed to consider new marriages as valid (see his comments to the Samarian woman at the well in John 4 for instance).

I would consider a person who had remarried (sinfully) who repented of that sin to be in much the same position as a person who was in a homosexual relationship in the past but now repented of that sin. I wouldn't see them as essentially different.

I don't doubt though that there is an element of Christians emphasising the sins that are not their own. I remember an interview with Rick Warren over Proposition 8 where the interviewer asked Warren why they weren't equally talking about a variety of other sins, he admitted that one of the reasons would be that people don't like to criticise sins that are not their own. This isn't an argument for homosexual activity being non-sinful of course, only that we ought to look to our own sinful behaviour as well.

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