Current conflict among Anglicans about issues of sexual orientation arises from a variety of causes, cultural and political as well as theological, but the theological aspect of the conflict often centers on the authority and interpretation of scripture. Here, there are two principal questions to be asked. One is the question of what the Bible in fact says about sexually-based relationships between people of the same sex. The other question is how we, as Anglicans, go about understanding and determining the authority of the passages, aspects, or themes of scripture we deem relevant. This essay will begin with the latter question.

How do Anglicans understand the authority of scripture? The Articles of Religion speak of the "sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation" and list the books to be considered canonical, allotting secondary status to the Old Testament apocrypha (Art. VI).They assert the unity of Old Testament and New, but also limit the applicability of the Torah (Art. VII). They describe the Bible's authority as a matter of setting limits to what anyone can be required to believe rather than as constituting a complete outline of belief (Art. VI). This reflects the persistent refusal of Anglicanism, unlike most other churches in the sixteenth century, to define itself narrowly in theological terms.

This is not to say that Reformation Anglicans had no principles. Quite the contrary, they had beliefs they were willing to die for. They were, however, less optimistic than most of their Protestant co-religionists that one could find in the Bible a detailed system of Christian faith. The English Puritans, like the Reformed churches of the continent, wanted to strip away everything that they did not find specifically commanded in the Bible. Anglicans like George Herbert criticized the results as naked ("The British Church," ll. 19-24).The mainstream Anglican response was to take the Bible not as a blueprint but as a factor limiting church claims.

This minimalist understanding of scriptural authority left room in Anglicanism for tradition to play a role in determining our common life. The Bible sets limits on what is required, but does not give a complete account of the life or worship of the church. Much has to be filled in, and for that purpose godly tradition continues to be important.

Anglicanism has also had a role for reason, but it functions somewhat differently from tradition. As Richard Hooker pointed out, we have no access to the Bible at all without the use of reason (Laws ii, c.7, s. 3). Every Biblical text becomes useful to us only insofar as someone uses reason to read, translate, and interpret it. All these processes introduce elements from outside the text itself—elements that relate the passage to knowledge of ancient languages, to history, culture, and systems of Christian theology, and to the larger world in which we are endeavoring to live as faithful people.

Scripture cannot settle questions for Anglicans in isolation from reason; rather, it comes to life for us in an ongoing dialogue with reason and faith. This reality has to be borne in mind when we turn to the texts often proposed as pertinent to the present conflicts Older writers on the subject tended to appeal to the story of Sodom and Gomorra (Gen. 19) as evidence that the Bible condemns same-sex sexual activity. Over the last few decades, however, this argument has generally been discarded, since other Biblical references to the story never make such a connection.

There are also two verses in Leviticus (18:22; 20:13) that forbid some type of sexual activity between men (possibly anal intercourse). A question arises here as to the basis for the prohibition. Some hold it was to prevent cruel abuse of prisoners of war, others to prevent non-procreative use of semen, others to exclude non-Israelite religious rites. The text itself, insofar as it species a reason, treats the matter as a violation of ancient Israel's purity code—a code that New Testament writers treat as no longer binding on gentile (and perhaps even Jewish) Christians (cf. Acts 15; Rom. 14-15).

Some have argued that the second creation narrative contains a positive command (Gen. 2:24) that all human beings are to marry heterosexually. The passage, however, can equally well be read simply as an etiological story, telling how the institution of marriage came into being.

There are three passages in the New Testament that are sometimes considered relevant. Two are occurrences, in what are technically called "vice lists" of the Greek term arsenokoites, sometimes loosely translated "homosexual" (1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10). Some connect this term with the verses from Leviticus mentioned above and see it as reconfirming their validity for later Christians. The term is rare, however, and there is no evidence to show what it actually meant to speakers of Greek in the first century.

Finally, Paul, in Rom 1:18-32, describes same-sex sexual intercourse between men (and possibly between women) as unclean and disgraceful. According to the most careful reading of the Greek text, Paul does not specifically identify it as sinful; and nowhere is there evidence to show what it actually meant to speakers of Greek in the first century.

Do these biblical passages help us in evaluating the claim, made by modern Christians of same-gender sexual orientation, that God can and does bless their lives in and thought their life partnerships? Do the biblical passages in question even speak to such a claim? It is not clear that they do; at best, they are open to varying interpretations. In any case, how do we as Anglicans, with our relatively minimalist tradition about biblical authority, deal with them? Our tradition reminds us that "whatsoever is not read (in scripture) nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or to be thought requisite or necessary to salvation" (Art. VI). It would seem that the Bible, taken as a whole, is not definitive enough to demand a negative judgment on the present subject.

—From the Report of the Standing Commission on Music and Liturgy to the 73rd General Convention held in Denver Colorado in the Summer of 2000.

Read a Response to this essay by The Rev. Donald D. Binder, PhD