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Paperback
Publisher: Leyland Publications
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| Surprised by what's inside |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I bought this book because the topic of homosexuality and faith has been a focal point for about a year now. I had read briefly some of the thoughts put forth by the Gay Christian community but it seemed outlandish. It was time to take a closer look. I will admit I anticipated laughing or snearing at what I expected to find in this book. Instead what I found were some well thought out and substantiated arguments. To then read some materials by other non-homosexual Christians that arrive at the same conclusions gives the material even more credence.
I think it would be important for one to read this book with an open mind. Not all will agree with the conclusions, but based upon the information in the book, it will be harder to just toss those conclusions aside as ridiculous.
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| Eye opening |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Openly Gay, Openly Christian: How the Bible Really Is Gay Friendly
The seven verses of the bible that are used to condemn gays and lesbians are looked at closely from their Hebrew and Greek origins. Rev. Samuel Kader takes a closer look at how the bible really is gay friendly. This book was eye opening and encouraging. I consider this book a must read for any Christian that wants a better understanding of what the bible really says about homosexuality.
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| Christians, All Gays & Gay Christians Must Be Honest Enough to Confront All of the Biblical Evidence about Homosexuality |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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This reader has encountered and pondered quite a number of books which discuss Christianity in regard to what the Bible says about sexuality and gays, even some works that are by gay "Bible-believing" Christians. Most books on the subject either take, on the one hand, a "liberal" view, i.e. modernist and revisionist, somewhat Bible-doubting approach to the Scriptures in favour a "feel-good" approach that negates the importance of what the Bible states (or seems to say) about divergent sexuality, or, on the other hand, a Bible-believing view that nonetheless asserts that the interpretation of the Bible by those who find it to be anti-gay is misguided, an approach which proffers new, "gay-friendly" interpretations of passages (often defectively translated into English and other languages) which "gay-bashers" long have used to chastise gay men and women, but, in the end, without necessarily convincing many readers that the new interpretations, for all their good and orthodox intentions, really are sound rather than a bit too arbitrary.
This book is different. It tackes head-on the passages in the Bible that have been deemed to condemn homosexuality, but it offers a depth of examination, especially in regard to linguistic analysis and the historical practices, sexual and social, of ancient times with which the Old and New Testament writers were dealing. Other passages find a sexual meaning, a gay and positive one at that, very convincingly in accounts (e.g., the love of Jonathan and David, which, incidentally, the Bible does not condemn as adulturous on the part of these men, both of whom already were married to women) that some writers have defended as affirming homosexual love but that others, disagreeing, have dismissed as not really dealing with that matter at all; again, Samuel Kader's analysis of the vocabulary of Semitic languages and of Greek in such cases seems to vindicate, better than any writer to my knowledge has done previously, the pro-gay (or, in some cases, gay-neutral) meaning in these biblical passages.
I find the whole of Kader's exegetical analysis mostly very convincing. He demonstrates that all of the verses, passages, and accounts with which he deals either have nothing to do with homosexuality apart from idolatrous abuses, or that they actually, in some instaces, extol love between two males or, at the very least, show great and compassionate toleration of gay men's sexuality. Alas, there is one passage in the New Testament that resists fully definitive absorption into a pro-gay analysis, that being St. Paul's words about "natural" heterosexual and "unnatural" gay sex between members of the same gender in Romans 1:26-28. However, even here, Kader goes beyond the shaky arguments that others usually have adduced to neutralise this seeming condemnation of putatively "unnatural" gay sex by citing Jesus' words which indicate that He revealed, in St. Matthew 19:12, that gay persons (whom He referred to as "eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb", in one of the many senses in which the Bible, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, uses the word "eunuch") have a natural, non-heterosexual destiny in life, one that God blesses. (Certainly such "eunuchs" are not born castrated, something that requires a knife at the loins at some point in life after birth, but, rather, they are born unsuitable to "straight" sexual activity.) Although I feel still a bit uneasy about the meaning that Kader states about Rom. 1:26-28, not finding his analysis beyond doubt or above reproach, his comments that link born inclination to gay sexuality, as Jesus Himself mentions in St. Matt. 19:12, do go a long way to justify the view that some men are born gay and that their sexual relations with other men are not "unnatural". It is also pertinent to consider the context of the condemnation of idolatry just preceding these famous verses in Rom. 1, the same sort of context that, when taken into consideration for exegesis, so undermines any widely-aimed, anti-homosexual intended meaning in various O.T. passages.
Instead, it is men and women, according to Kader's interpretation of St. Paul's words in Rom. 1, who innately and as born have a "natural" inclination to heterosexual orientation and sexual activity, but who turn with stubborn and wanton willfulness against their usual (innate, inborn, "natural") "straight" sexual orientation to seek out same-sex copulation for the sake of the "kinky kicks" in which they can indulge with those who are of their own sex with the divergent excitement that such activity can offer, merely for the additional "thrill" that it supplies as variety in copulatory activity, as being those whom St. Paul really condemns. Linking the meaning of "natural" gay sexuality in St. Matt. 19:12 with the deviant and (for an heterosexual) "unnatural" thrills that Rom. 1:26-28 describes, thus gives more solid grounds for regarding same-sex activity to which thrill-seeking heterosexuals turn in their depravity as "spice" to spruce up and to enliven their jaded sex lives and carnal appetites, as being what St. Paul condemns, not gay men or women who act responsably on their innate (and thus inborn, "natural") homosexual impulses and affections. Bringing Jesus' words in St. Matt. 19 into account in interpreting Rom. 1 is a great contribution to understanding what the Bible really means in "natural law" contexts, something that Kader furthers with analysis of other passages (e.g., Daniel 1:3-9, where the O.T. describes without condemnation the genuine and ardent homosexual love that Daniel's keeper had for him and which Daniel accepted (though it is not clear that the prophet Daniel fully reciprocated the man's affections or went so far as to have sex with him).
There is only one of the passages that Samuel Kader discusses, even if Kader surely succeeds in making his pro-gay case for interpreting it, which nonetheless irritates me. This is his handling of a passage in one of St. Paul's pastoral epistles, 1 Tim. 6:9-10. Kader did not need to "load the dice" by resorting to an insistance to render the Greek word romanised as "arsenokoites" as "lift-chair" (or, perhaps, "lift-bed", one would supppose), which, indeed, is quite a peculiar word or phrase, but which others, e.g. Joe Dallas, more pertinently insist should be rendering St. Paul's word combining the LXX's "arsenos" (or "arsenes") and "koite" as something like "men-bedders" (that is, men who "bed down" to have sex with other men, my choice of the transation possibilities that conform with Dallas' explanation) for 1 Tim. 6:10. Dallas' kind of construction is based on the use of the base words that form "arsenokoites as the two words occur in the Septuagint ("LXX", the pre-Christian Greek Old Testament, mostly translated from Hebrew and Aramaic, partly compiled from Greek originals for the deutero-canonical books). Kader still could make his point, even if with less crushing force, by being more reasonable about the meaning of "arsenokoites". Read what Kader says, on p. 60-68, and what Joe Dallas explains in his book, "The Gay Gospel?" (Harvest House Publishers, 2007), p. 208-213, and reconcile for yourself Dallas' linguisitcs with Kader's logic, which most gay (or other) men should not have too much difficulty in doing. For Joe Dallas' part, he should be censured for not even acknowledging that Kader's book exists! This kind of "two solitudes" in which determined anti-homosexuality advocates like Joe Dallas (who, at least, is a compassionate and temperate one) and pro-gay advocates (Kader, his predecessors, and successors) still tend not adequately to account for each other's scholarship; this is an intellectual scandal and sign of bias-in-action that should not continue any longer. Joe Dallas, for example, from not having read such a defense of David and Jonathan's homosexual love so masterly as that of Samuel Kader, merely dismisses off-handedly any claim that these two bisexual married men had a sexual relationship; Dallas could not have been so cavalier about the claims for David's and Jonathan's deep and faithful identity as male lovers if he had bothered to read more widely and thus to have discovered Kader's book. Gay readers can do their part by reading, for example, both Samuel Kader's and Joe Dallas' books, to end this kind of self-defeating isolation of one side from the other!
It is a pity that Kader did not adduce and analyse passages in the deutero-canonical books of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon, or which Anglicans, Lutherans, and some other Protestants include in the "Apocrypha", for there is valuable ammunition for his interpretations in some of those books, especially regarding the proper way to interpret God's condemnation of Sodom and Gamorrah, not for homosexuality per se but for several other sins.
For all of the clarifications that Kader and some other astute scholars have brought to the passages that gay-bashers usually adduce as anti-homosexual, one is left, nevertheless, on accepting Kader's analysis and evaluation, with a curious void in the Bible explicity regarding the ethics of what would constitute a good and godly homosexual life. It would seem surprising, if homosexuality indeed is acceptable to God, that there would be so little guidance in the pages of the Bible for a devout homosexual's way of living out his sexuality. Kader really should have addressed this matter. On the other hand, it is clear, when one accepts that Jonathan and David and some other same-sex couplings loved each other with sexual yearning and even surely with sexual gratification, in such pure, self-sacrificing devotion, that God accepts sexual love and affection between two men. It is also clear from the example of Jonathan and David that their homosexual love does not entail adultury, even though both had been wedded to women before their pact of love and sexual union one man with another. Probably the Bible condemns "straigt" heterosexual copulation as fornication (for the unmarried) or adultery (for married men and women) from the God-approved patriarchal concern for legitimacy of off-spring and geneologies free of doubt about the true paternity of children; gay sexual activity by single or married men or women does not pose a threat to the patriarchal order and or cause grounds for doubts about the identity of children's paternity and maternity. For that reason, such homosexuals or bisexuals as David and Jonathan, Daniel's keeper, Ruth and Naomi, and other such figures in the Bible are exemplars of devout and virtuous lives. By contrast, promiscuity and sexually frivolous activity, "straight" or "gay", does not conform to the high standards of love and fidelity that the Bible upholds for all men and women, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. One must note, after all, there are other areas of doctrine and morals to which the Bible refers only in few words and in few passages, so perhaps one should learn the maximum from the example of positive gay figures in the Bible more than from any explicit counsel and advice that the Bible provides for other issues but not for homosexuality. The accounts of noble homosexual and lesbian figures in the Bible may be rather few in number, but they are among the most inspiring and deeply worthy of emulation in all of Holy Scripture.
One of the negative sides of this book is Kader's atrocious English style, something that may cause mild difficulty at times for German or other non-native readers of English; for one thing, Kader constantly uses plural pronouns rather than singular ones to refer to individuals, a grammatical misusage that has, alas, become common, but which to which Kader makes resort far more endlessly and irritatingly than most other educated writers who make that error but less frequently. His prose style in some other regards is inappropraitely "low-brow" for such a book. The other negative aspect of Kader's book is his uncritical acceptance and espousal of Pentecostal-Charismatic theology. Lutheran, most Anglican, and Reformed/Presbyterian Protestant Christians, as well, of course, as Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and even many other Christians, will feel ill at ease with his enthusiastic acceptance of Pentecostalism as being somehow normative. Kader would have done well, given the main thrust of his book (sexuality) to have down-pedalled this kind of charismatic quasi-denominational distinctiveness.
Overall, despite poor English style and Pentecostal-Charistmatic excesses (but which do not detract from the value of Kader's biblical arguments and exegesis), this book is warmly recommended to Christians struggling with their homosexual orientation and to those who, in distaste or from in despair of attaining acceptance, have abandoned Christian allegiance, despairing that Christianity (and Judaism, to some degree, though the Talmud equivocates quite a lot about these matters) cannot embrace them in its teachings or in its communal life as true and redeemed yet gay believers. Biblical, fully-believing Christianity is, indeed, an option for a responsably gay person, and, at that, without compromising aspects either of his sexuality or of his acceptance of all that the Bible, in its plenary and infallible inspiration, reveals.
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| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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(...) I say Openly Gay, Openly Christian is a must read for anyone who has not yet reconciled their faith in Christ with their sexual orientation.
I was born as a missionary kid in Kenya. The greatest challenge of my life was to accept myself as a gay man when I had been brought up to believe that being gay is unnatural, among other things. Although my family remains completely unsupportive after 11 years of knowing my sexual orientation, the dignity and strength that I've gained from self-acceptance has been invaluable.
This book and several others have a great help to me as I learned that the mainstream church is so mislead by mistranslation and misinterpretation, leaving thousands of people cut off from the church.
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| 1 Star Comparison above is flawed !! |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Unfortunately the comparison above shows you modern day translations and does not go into the fact that language changes over time and words that mean one thing today meant something completely different 2000 years ago. Take the time to read this book. From a theological perspective it is very thought provoking and something the churche would not like the masses to know. If it were revealed on a greater level, one would have to admit that untruths have invaded the church and the bible. But, then again there was the inquisition and many poeple have died in history in the name of a religious cause. Enjoy the cerebral effect. It can bring about a feeling of frustration with many theologians and the church. But, it will remind you to think and not follow like sheep to the slaughter (you can reads more about that in Revelations).
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