A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [92]
Welcome in the waters of baptism, welcome at the table, we come as tax collectors and sinners, impure Samaritans, uncircumcised Gentiles, desexed eunuchs, children of the third wife, but surely not gay, lesbian, or transgendered men and women, right? Right? And surely not people who suffer from birth defects, Down syndrome, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, right? And surely not Communists, Marxists, liberals, libertarians, or convicted felons, right? Right?
Scripture tells us that the Ethiopian eunuch was accepted and baptized that day by Philip, but tradition tells us more—that this “sexually other” person brought the gospel of the kingdom of God back to Ethiopia. Think of that: a nonheterosexual in missional leadership from the very beginning of the Jesus movement.12
Having spent many pages talking about homosexuality, I need to add that I actually think we have many other significant sexual issues on our front doorstep—issues that may in the long run be no less important and even more difficult to address. In particular, what we have called traditional marriage—one virgin man and one virgin woman coming together and remaining sole sexual partners for life—isn’t working as it’s supposed to for heterosexuals. In fact, it’s surprisingly rare, nearly an endangered species here in the United States and in many other places as well. Premarital sex is the norm, not the exception, for Christians as well as non-Christians and for Evangelicals as well as other brands. And it is the norm not by a few percentage points, either—the average “sexual debut” for an American Evangelical is just after his or her sixteenth birthday.13 Even teens who make abstinence pledges, the research shows, only forestall premarital sex about eighteen months on average. As might be expected, the pledgers are less likely to use contraceptives when they have sex, increasing the likelihood of pregnancy and STDs. So, although American Evangelical teenagers uphold abstinence as their ideal by a strong majority—74 percent—most of them end up living with varying degrees of cognitive dissonance and guilt.14
But the problems aren’t only before marriage; divorce rates are startlingly high for Christians as well. It’s hard to square the frequently heard argument that tolerance of homosexuality weakens the institution of marriage when heterosexual churchgoers are having divorces at rates not very different from (and sometimes higher than) their less religious neighbors. And ironically—or predictably, depending on your assumptions—some subgroups with the highest divorce rates can be the most strongly vocal against homosexuality.15
I share these observations not to load more guilt on already guilty people. It’s not easy being a red-blooded human being who is simultaneously blessed with hormone-producing gonads and fidelity-inspiring spiritual commitments. And being a human being at this time in history makes it all the more difficult to navigate our sexual lives. The opportunities for promiscuity may never have been greater, and the supports for chastity and fidelity have seldom if ever been weaker. Consider these realities:
We’ve moved from villages where “everyone knows your name” and where nearly everyone is committed to the same moral standards to cities where we’re all virtually anonymous and where anything goes. So sex and community are less connected than ever before.16
We’re the first humans to have low-cost, readily available birth control, making sex and pregnancy less connected than ever before.
We’re the first humans to have condoms and antibiotics readily available, making sex and disease less connected than ever before.
We’ve created an economic system that increasingly requires both men and women to work outside the home, in company with members of the opposite sex, thus increasing the possibilities for extramarital attractions to develop and become sexual.
We’ve created an economic system that rewards