Source: www.religionnews.com
USA, July 21, 2010 (Religion News Service): One group of Christians confidently proclaims that a plain reading of the Bible is a slam dunk in their favor. The other side appeals to Scripture’s grand narrative toward freedom and inclusive love. The argument boils over and ripples through the wider culture. The search for middle ground proves futile. Denominations break apart. Sound familiar? It could be 2010–or the mid-19th century.
As U.S. churches and denominations slog through divisive and long-running arguments over homosexuality, many Protestant progressives have sought to claim the historical and moral high ground by aligning their cause with abolitionism.
“I think almost everybody who makes the liberal argument about homosexuality makes the connection with abolition and slavery,” said the Rev. Jeffrey Krehbiel, a Washington, D.C., pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who supports gay rights. Abolitionists, he said, “were the first to make the argument that the plain reading of the text maybe isn’t the most fruitful way to read the Bible.”
In both eras, cultural trends forced Christians to question practices that had long been taken for granted, said Mark Noll, a professor of American religious history at the University of Notre Dame and author of “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.” Likewise, the Bible, and how to interpret it, has played a central role both then and now, Noll said.
In the 19th century, even some Northern abolitionists admitted that the Bible clearly condones slavery. Many, therefore, sought other sources of morality and methods of biblical interpretation; conservatives countered that such appeals undermine the power of the sacred text. As conflict heated up, Noll writes in his book, slavery’s defenders increasingly saw “doubts about biblical defense of slavery as doubts about the authority of the Bible itself.”