The "Gaying" of the Evangelical Church: a Response to Kirsten Powers (Part 2 of 6)

Author: Andy Woods
Date Written: July 18, 2014
From the archive of thewordonpolitics.com

Ever since I can remember, TV political commentator and columnist Kirsten Powers can always be relied upon to provide the knee-jerk liberal point of view to virtually any issue under discussion. That is why when Powers went public with her conversion to Christianity in 2014 (accessed 6 June 2014), I remained hopeful that an alteration in her leftist worldview would soon follow. However, as explained in the previous post, my hopes soon began to fade the more I scrutinized Powers' new-found spirituality. Serious question marks exist in terms of whether she has truly been saved. Moreover, if she is an authentic child of God, more questions can be raised in terms of whether she has made sufficient progress in terms of spiritual growth or maturity (sometimes called "progressive sanctification") so as to be trusted to pontificate accurately on spiritual matters.   Nowhere is Powers' non-biblical point of view more apparent than in her recent USA Today column where she claims to “hold a ‘high view’ of Scripture, meaning it is the final authority on all matters of faith and life” and yet, she simultaneously endorses the homosexual relationships as long as they are committed and monogamous. You can read about that in her article here. (accessed 6 June 2014). Powers invites the church to reverse two thousand years of moral thinking on this issue when she writes, “The church has done this before on issues ranging from slavery to the solar system.”  

However, does the Bible really promote slavery and a geocentric solar system with the same clarity that it condemns homosexuality? This assertion, to my mind, is an apples and oranges comparison since no clear biblical teaching promotes slavery. In actuality, the opposite is true. At least this was the perspective of many of the Christian leaders mentioned in last week's post, such as Theodore Weld, William Wilberforce, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Because the Scripture teaches that all human beings regardless of ethnicity are image bearers of God (Gen. 1:26-27; 9:6-7; Jas. 3:9) and are descendants of Adam (Acts 17:26), it is thus morally wrong for one race to enslave another. In fact, in the Book of Exodus, God condemned the Egyptians for enslaving His chosen nation Israel (Exod. 2:23-25; 9:1, etc...).   Although Powers fails to cite any biblical proof for the proposition that Scripture endorses slavery, she might be referring to Paul's injunction for slaves to submit to their masters (Eph. 6:5). However, for many reasons, commentators of all stripes typically take this Pauline biblical language as descriptive language (merely describing a first-century reality) rather than prescriptive (placing a divine stamp of approval on slavery and contending for the institution's continued existence).

Here are just a few reasons why most take Paul's slavery injunction descriptively rather than prescriptively. First, had Paul openly condemned slavery, then Rome would have taken away his freedom thus inhibiting his ability to evangelize. Second, Paul’s ministry involved the salvation of souls rather than social reform and abolition of slavery. In other words, Paul "stayed in his own lane" rather than getting side tracked into something outside the sphere of his divine calling and ministry (Acts 9:15-16; Gal. 2:7-9). Third, perhaps Paul knew that the gospel, with emphasis upon human rights, would one day indirectly lead to the abolition of slavery. After all, how did Paul drive the idol makers in Ephesus out of business? Not through top down social reform or by calling for "regime change." Rather, he did so indirectly by evangelizing the masses in Asia Minor, which had the net effect of shrinking the demand for idols (Acts 19:10, 23-27). Fourth, Paul did speak out against masters mistreating their slaves (Col. 4:1; 1 Pet. 2:18-20).

Fifth, Paul supported emancipation whenever possible (1 Cor. 7:21; Phlm. 21). All of these points demonstrate that Paul's injunction for slaves to submit to their masters must be understood descriptively rather than prescriptively. In the fact, the Bible is so opposed to racial prejudice of any kind that it even portrays Moses' (one of God's premier servants) marriage to a Cushite woman (Num. 12:1). Because Moses was a Hebrew, his marriage to a Cushite constituted interracial marriage.   In addition to the Bible not clearly promoting the institution of slavery, neither does it clearly promote a geocentric solar system. If there is a verse in Scripture that clearly presents the earth as the center of the solar system and therefore the Sun revolves around the earth, then I would like to know where this verse is. The Bible simply remains silent upon this matter. Probably the closest one could come toward finding biblical justification for a geocentric solar system is scriptural language indicating that the sun rises and sets (Isa. 45:6; Eccl. 1:5). However, most do not understand such phraseology in denotative, literalistic, scientific terms but rather as a mere figure of speech narrated from man's perspective. The technical designation for such terminology is phenomenological language where an event is described from the anthropological or man-centered point of view. In the 21st century, we also frequently uses phrases such as the sun rises or the sun sets and nobody in the process of communication misunderstands this as contending for the geocentricity of our solar system.

All of this to say, the Bible employs the same connotative figure of speech. For the same reason, when either the Scripture or modern vernacular uses the expression "the four corners of the earth" (Rev. 7:1) nobody thinks that such language conveys a flat earth. The bottom line is that, contrary to Powers' insinuation, the Bible nowhere clearly advocates slavery or geocentricity.   Homosexuality, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Biblical prohibitions against homosexual relationships, even of the monogamous sort that Powers endorses, are crystal clear. As will be explained in subsequent posts, the Bible condemns homosexuality from beginning to end.  

(To Be Continued...)