The Bond that Breaks: Will Homosexuality Split the Church? By Don Williams (BIM, 1978, 170 pp.) The Homosexual Crisis in the Mainline Church by Jerry Kirk (Thomas Nelson, 1978, 192 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Both Kirk and Williams are Mainline Presbyterian ministers opposed to the ordination of homosexuals. From title to appendix in each book, including a quarter part special strategy section in Kirk’s, it is clear that these two rushed into print to tackle what Kirk calls a “time bomb” facing “the Mainline Church” and brought too close to home in the recommendation of the Presbyterian Task Force Report to the General assembly that a ministerial candidate’s self-affirmation of homosexual practice not be a bar to ordination. Each book is an uninspired rerun of two basic errors: the failure to understand psychosexual orientation and behavior in terms of sound evidence from behavioral sciences (under Common Grace) and the failure to understand the Bible and Christian theology in terms of sound hermeneutical, exegetical and contextual principles. At best their reductionism fails to appreciate the plural nature of the Church. At worst their homophobic church politics propels them to try to have their own way no matter who gets hurt in the process.
Fundamentally, Williams’ big point is that in order to be truly fulfilled as God intends, a person must get married. He not only overlooks the checkered history of marriage and the idea of marriage in the Bible and Christian theology, but ignores the fact that, so far as we know, Jesus and most of his disciples were not married, Jesus taught that not all were able to marry and that, in the resurrection, nobody would marry. And Paul was not only single but urged everyone else to be single, too. Williams’ lack of any sense of proportion in all of this and his deeply rooted homophobia are illustrated by his explaining Lot’s offer of his daughters for heterosexual rape as merely “one of the less commendable parts of the seamy narrative” while seeing it as at least preferable to the “horrendous desires of the men of Sodom” for homosexual rape. In this, he has company throughout much of church history.
Kirk frequently resorts to doubletalk and non sequitur (e.g., “The issue … is not the ordination of homosexuals – gay rights, [but] God’s rights”, followed quickly by: “What if your wife were paralyzed …. Are you still called to be faithful to her?”). Kirk sets up numerous straw man arguments and then, not so brilliantly, destroys them. Bordering on fiction, he reports that there is “evidence” for this or that point he tries to make but not only does he not reference such “evidence”, he fails to refer to any of the overwhelming evidence for the contrary. Curiously, the only “ex-gay” stories he tells are those of women with dubious homosexual histories. He drags out the old saw that “gay” is really sad and documents his claim with pages of examples of fear of detection, rejection and alienation in church, failure to find a suitable gay partner, loss of job, etc., as though these agonies were unrelated to the very homophobia he promotes, no matter how unintentionally. He admits: “If I see my brother in need and say to him, ‘go and be warm and be fed’ without recognizing that the church must help feed and clothe him, then I am not loving”. But he thinks he is loving when all he offers is: “Go and don’t be a homosexual anymore. Go and be celibate. Go and be a heterosexual from now on.”
About the only redeeming feature of either book is Kirk’s admirable inclusion of a part of a letter by an anonymous homosexual in his congregation. The man writes: “I have seen hatred among you that I have never seen before. Hatred that is heaped upon sin and sinner alike. It frightens me and it is ugly and it grieves me to see you like this. I know that the reports and resolutions all state that the homosexual should be loved and to be made to turn away from his sin, but this is such a shallow statement … .”
There is a “bond that breaks” – the unrealistic obligation these preachers impose on others, thereby breaking their spirits and cutting them off from Christian fellowship.