What? You say I’m being unfair to her? You say that there’s a better, more reasonable, more nuanced explanation for her disagreeing with me (and most of the universal Church) on the question of human sexuality than believing that she hates the Bible?
Ah, who cares? I’ll just frame her dissent from Christian orthodoxy in the worst possible light.
In doing so, I’m simply borrowing a page from the RHE Playbook.
Take, for instance, this very popular blog post from late last month, “Everyone’s a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony.” (I know it was popular because many of my liberal clergy colleagues on Facebook linked to it approvingly.) If you read her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood, as I did (and blogged and preached about it), or have read her blog, as I have for the past four years, you’ll know what she’s up to.
She’s a gifted and funny writer who risks squandering her talent making the same argument over and over. Not that her many readers (if only I had her audience!) seem to mind.
And what’s her argument? In the form of a syllogism, it is the following (which I’m borrowing from Glenn Peoples, who isn’t speaking about Evans, but may as well be):
- If you interpret a biblical passage in a way that means that its instruction does apply to us today, then you are logically committed to thinking that all instructions that were ever given in the Bible apply to us today with equal force.
- Most evangelical Christians (not to mention most of the universal Church) interpret biblical passages that speak about sexual acts between members of the same sex apply to us today.
- Therefore most evangelical Christians are logically committed to thinking that all instructions that were ever given in the Bible apply to us today with equal force.
What’s wrong with this argument? The first premise.
Just because you think that a biblical instruction applies to us today doesn’t commit you to thinking that all instructions should apply today. You may instead have a principled reason for thinking that one instruction applies while another doesn’t. And your reason comes down to that 50-cent seminary word hermeneutics—the science of interpretation.
Now, to be clear: Rachel Held Evans knows this. She knows that everyone isn’t a biblical literalist—not even close! (Or is she willing to argue, say, that Pope Francis is also a biblical literalist?) By the end of Biblical Womanhood, she offers intelligible hermeneutical reasons why, for instance, Christians don’t think that Paul’s prohibition against women speaking in church applies today. And even in the “Gluttony” post, after ranting about shellfish, head coverings, and divorce, she says, “While there are certainly important hermeneutical and cultural issues at play, I can’t help but wonder if something more nefarious is also at work…”
Please tell us, Ms. Evans: what exactly are those “important hermeneutical and cultural issues”?
Cue crickets chirping.
In one blog post after another, she plays dumb on the issue of hermeneutics. And she’s not dumb.
Yet she continues to imply (even in her post yesterday) that people like me and the United Methodist Church who support the orthodox Christian position on homosexuality must be hypocritical Bible-thumping literalists. It drives me crazy.
(By the way, I’m using “literalist” the way Evans uses it. I believe in interpreting scripture literally, if and when the author intends to be taken that way. For example, I can interpret Paul’s words about women covering their heads literally, even while arguing against its universal application.)
I agree completely with Glenn Peoples that the classic (and misguided) arguments about slavery and shellfish don’t apply to the issue of homosexuality. I highly recommend that you read this post.