The Church and the Homosexual by John McNeill (Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976, 211 pp.)
Who Walk Alone: A Consideration of the Single Life by Margaret Evening (Inter-Varsity Press, 1974, 222 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
After years of pre-publication difficulties, Jesuit scholar John McNeill has had his book published. He sees it as a moral and pastoral study and it is that and more. He is most adept with tradition vis a vis homosexuality and human nature. His scriptural analysis is sometimes weak but he brings out truth that has been neglected. For example, in his comments on the Ethiopian eunuch, he points out that the Holy Spirit formed the new Christian community, in part, from people who were excluded from the Old Testament community because of genital problems and cites Isaiah’s prophecy that in Messiah’s coming, such former outcasts would indeed be included in the Lord’s house. Perhaps one of his keenest insights is his comment on Jesus’ discussion of marriage and divorce where McNeill interprets those who have been eunuchs from birth to be “the closest description we have in the Bible of what we understand today as a homosexual”. With reference to the “homosexual” interpretation of the sin of Sodom and the failure to see the real sin as that of inhospitality, he is perceptive in writing that we are “dealing here with one of the supremely ironic paradoxes of history.” He states: “For thousands of years in the Christian West the homosexual has been the victim of inhospitable treatment. … In the name of a mistaken understanding of the crime of Sodom and Gomorrah the true crime of Sodom and Gomorrah has been and continues to be repeated every day.” McNeill underscores the point made by even an anti-homosexual theologian when he quotes van de Spijker: “ ‘Nowhere is there a specific text which explicitly rejects all homosexual activities as such independent of the circumstances’.” Although McNeill seems a bit naïve and superficial in his section on pastoral counseling, over all the book is an extremely valuable addition to the continuing discussion on homosexuality within the Christian community. I recommend it very highly.
While McNeill had trouble getting his book published in the first edition, Margaret Evening had trouble getting her book printed intact in the second edition. Good parts were deleted after what reliable sources identify as the pressures of Christian booksellers were brought against the publisher. Her book deals only incidentally with homosexuality but that part, of course, was what caused the ruckus. Inter-Varsity Press is a major evangelical publisher. Evening is in college campus ministry in England.
Looking at Romans 1, Evening notes that Paul condemned the unnatural vice of those who deliberately added homosexuality to their heterosexuality. In the second edition, it is revised to say: “Some commentators interpret Romans 1” in this way. Reasoning that, “their natural instincts were heterosexual and for them homosexuality was a perversion of natural instincts”, Evening observes: “This cannot be said of the true homosexual” and she goes on in only the first edition to define such a “true homosexual” empathically, as “the man or woman who cannot love in any other way”. She suggests several questions for self-reflection on the maturity, emotional growth, possible self-indulgence, effect on relationship with God, and potential for becoming more fully human in the loving relationship which she sees as “a centre of healing and comfort,, open and available to all amid the wounds and sores of society”. Her compassionate conclusion, torn out of the second edition by her publisher: “If homosexual friends can, with real honesty, answer these questions to their entire satisfaction and peace of mind, then they have nothing to fear.”
The first edition is such a courageously pastoral service by the author and such a positive milestone for the evangelical community, it would be picky to focus on the book’s weaknesses. The publisher’s regression in the second edition, however, is a sad note reminding us of how far we yet have to go.