Gene Robinson article

Tricia directed me to this article in GQ about the first openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson.

I posted yesterday about the group of bishops who wish to leave the Anglican Communion over several issues, primarily homosexual bishops and female clergy. In reading the GQ article--which does a great job of showing us Gene Robinson the Man (as opposed to Gene Robinson the Lightening Rod for Controversy)--I had several thoughts about the whole homosexual controversy embroiling not just the Anglican Communion, but our country as well (thanks, California, for bravely trying to equalize the civil right of marriage). In speaking a while ago to a friend of mine who just happens to be homosexual, we hoped that in forty years we would look back on this time in our country much the same way we look back on the era of segregation in America.

There are several things that that era and our own have in common, especially in terms of religious arguments. For centuries, people made the case that slavery, and then segregation and discrimination had Biblical precedents (e.g., the mark God made on Cain when he banished him to the wilderness for killing his brother Abel), as did laws against inter-racial marriages.

Now, the group of conservative Anglican bishops led by Peter Akinola of Nigeria claim that the Episcopal Church in America has lost its connection with "true" Christian theology because confirming openly gay bishops goes against the Bible's precepts against homosexuality. I heard one conservative Christian commentator (I forget who or where) claim that Episcopalians merely cherry pick the parts of the Bible that they want to believe in. But isn't that what every religion does these days? We don't stone people who plant a field with two different crops (Leviticus 24:10-16), nor do we sell our children into slavery (Exodus 21:7), both expressly allowed near the verses conservatives cite as justifying their discrimination. (The book of Leviticus is filled with many wonderful examples like these; see also this famous Internet phenomenon from which my examples come.)

So if we don't follow all the laws in the Bible, aren't we all cherry picking our religion, or rather are we making our religion a little more relevant to the modern world we live in?