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| Book cover for "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" |
Back when I was an evangelical college student, I heard about this book: Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis [affiliate link], by William J. Webb. People in evangelical circles were recommending it, mainly in the context of studying "what does the bible say about homosexuality?" I never ended up reading it back then, but I recently came across it and decided to read it. Since it had been so recommended, ya know.
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Here's what I expected
I had heard that the basic point of this book was that, as we interpret the bible and apply it to issues in our modern world, we should look at the overall trajectory of the bible. For example, even though in the bible, slavery is accepted, there is a pattern of biblical commands which give more and more rights to slaves, and in the New Testament there's stuff like the book of Philemon and the "there is no slave or free in Christ" verse. All of this points to the idea that ultimately, if we follow what the bible is telling us, slavery should be abolished. It's not about obeying the specific commands (following the "letter of the law"); it's about seeing which direction the bible was trying to move society toward, and continuing along in that direction. The book refers to this as a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic."
What I had heard about this book is that it applied this idea to three big issues: slavery, women, and homosexuality. And what I had heard is, the book's conclusions were as follows:
- Slavery: The bible points us in the direction of giving more and more rights to slaves, and ultimately this leads to abolishing slavery
- Women: The bible points us in the direction of giving more and more rights to women.
- Homosexuality: No, this issue is different. The bible is ALWAYS negative toward the idea of same-sex relationships. There's no "trajectory." We still can't accept same-sex relationships.
So, since I'm queer, I already knew I was going to disagree with the third point there. But anyway, I wanted to at least read this book and see what it said. Since it was so recommended back when I was a little evangelical college student. (It was published in 2001.)
And... when I heard about this book, back then, my own opinions were along these lines: "Yeah, obviously slavery is wrong even though the bible allows it- hmm, it would be really good to have a solid biblical argument to explain how that can be. Also, there are a lot of very sexist and bad biblical commands about women, which of course we don't follow today- very cool to have an explanation for that too. And homosexuality, well obviously we know that's wrong." (Like I said, I was evangelical. I had bad opinions on queer issues.)
So I expected the book to present this perspective on how to interpret the bible, and then apply it to the three issues: slavery, women's rights, and homosexuality. I expected it to spend an equal amount of time on each one.
(Spoiler: It did not spend an equal amount of time on each one!)
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Full disclosure: The bible is not in charge of me
The whole premise of this book is that it's very important for Christians to read the bible and carefully analyze its commands to determine how they should apply to us today. Some commands apply basically exactly the same as they did back when the bible was written- "love one another" for example- these are transcultural. And for other commands, we can't apply them directly because our cultural context is totally different than that of the original audience. We have to figure out what higher-level principle is behind the biblical command, and apply that (the book says we have to move up the "ladder of abstraction").
So, it's a very very big deal to figure out which biblical commands apply to us and which don't. And this book spends a lot of time going into a lot of details about what indicators might tell us that a command is "transcultural" or "culture-bound." Webb's logic makes a lot of sense, too. If you believe you have to obey the bible, and that you have to do the work of figuring out which commands apply to modern Christians and which don't, the criteria in this book are extremely helpful. When I was evangelical, of course there were things in the bible where we said "oh we don't have to follow that now, that was just related to their culture back then" but I didn't ever have a whole overarching framework like what's presented in this book. So, very useful, if you're coming from that mindset.
But anyway, I just want to say up front that, uh, none of this actually matters to me at all. I don't view the bible that way anymore. The bible is not an authority over me, that I need to obey. I love the bible and I think it's super-interesting to study, but I don't *obey* it. I don't view it like "here's what God said, and I need to follow it whether I like it or not, and I have to put a lot of work into understanding *exactly* what it means, in order to follow it correctly." Obviously when I was evangelical, I believed that, but now I don't.
So when I read this, it's just about my own curiosity. I'm not reading it to find out if, like, I'm allowed to have rights or not. But for evangelicals, that is very much what it's about. (And please note, the author of this book is a man, presumably a straight man. Evangelicals are always debating what the bible says on this or that "issue"- and it's a very different thing if you are the "issue.")
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What the book is actually about
So I started reading this book, and it starts out by explaining the "redemptive-movement hermeneutic." The culture of the bible's original audience is point X, the biblical command is point Y, and we draw a line from there toward the ultimate ethic, point Z. This "ultimate ethic" is what we should actually follow. Not the culturally-bound biblical commands themselves.
I'm reading this, thinking... I have heard queer Christians using this exact argument to say that the bible supports same-sex marriage and other queer rights. So I was kind of confused... how is this book going to argue that it doesn't?
Well. Let me tell you how. It turns out the parts about "the homosexual issue" are extremely shallow.
Oh MY GOODNESS. So the book goes through a whole bunch of different "criteria" for determining if a command is "transcultural" or not (sorted from most persuasive to least persuasive). Criterion 1 "Preliminary movement" (how much the biblical command differed from the culture it was written in) spends 3 pages on slavery, 5 pages on women, and 2 pages on homosexuality. Actually less than 2. Like 1 and a half.
It spends all this time talking about how the bible was progressive on women's rights, and then it gets to homosexuality and it's like, eh not really anything to say here.
Really? Nothing? You couldn't think of anything?
I mean, I also don't have an example on same-sex relationships specifically, but I have A LOT of examples which generally apply to queerness. The first one off the top of my head is, Deuteronomy 23:1 says, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord." But then Isaiah 56:4-5 says, "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant— to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever." Doesn't that seem kind of like a trajectory? Doesn't that seem like it points in the direction of full acceptance for trans people in modern times?
(I will write a follow-up post with more details on how the "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" can apply to same-sex relationships and queerness in general.)
"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" just says the bible has an absolute prohibition on same-sex sexual relationships, and actually that's more restrictive than the ancient cultures at that time, so, that's that.
This book was published in 2001- maybe back then, we didn't have so much work from queer Christians developing these biblical arguments. (And I had a lot of bad opinions on queerness in 2001, so, I don't hold that against anyone.)
I was reading this, trying to figure out whether Webb was just ignoring the existence of these queer arguments, or if he really hadn't heard of them. The thing is, there are some parts of the book which do engage with queer arguments. For example, the book talks about the distinction between "casual homosexuality" and "covenant homosexuality"; probably the main queer Christian argument I've heard is that when the bible condemns same-sex relationships, it's always in the context of something that's immoral anyway, like rape, or an adult man having sex with a boy, and the bible doesn't really say anything about a consensual same-sex relationship where the two partners are equals. So, yes, the book does address this, and some other queer Christian arguments. So I don't think Webb is deliberately ignoring biblical arguments in support of queer acceptance; I think in 2001 most of those arguments weren't really well-known.
So I'm reading along, continuously surprised at how shallow the "homosexuality" sections of this book are, while the parts about women's rights go into a lot of very good solid detail. And- get this- the "slavery" parts are grouped under "neutral examples." Yeah, for every criterion the book presents, first the criterion is explained, then there are some "neutral examples" to show how to apply it, then it talks about how it applies to women, then how it applies to homosexuality. For some of these criteria, the book doesn't talk about slavery at all. It uses lots of other "neutral examples" instead.
At this point, I became SO FASCINATED by this book. It's totally different than I expected! I am OBSESSED with trying to figure out what this book is actually about! I really thought it was going to spend an equal amount of time on these 3 topics, and apply a really robust biblical argument to each one, but, no!
So here's my theory: I think the main point is that Webb wanted to write a book to support egalitarianism (equal rights for men and women). And, good for him! Yes, I totally support equal rights for all genders! And yes, this is definitely an issue that evangelicals need to talk about, because so many evangelicals are teaching complementarianism instead. (Complementarianism means that men and women are "equal" but have different roles, so in practical terms it means arguing about if women can be pastors or not, if women can be leaders or not, if women are allowed to teach men, if women are allowed to sing in front of the church or does that count as "teaching", how does an abused wife make sure she's "submitting" to her husband properly, etc, a lot of nasty patriarchy nonsense.) When I was evangelical, I had NO IDEA that egalitarianism was an option. I totally believed the bible taught that, to some extent, God doesn't want women to have leadership positions over men. And the husband has to be the "spiritual leader" of the marriage, and the wife has to "submit" to him.
So I'm glad to see that Webb is egalitarian and wrote a book with a very solid biblical argument to support that.
The book is not about 3 things. The book is about 1 thing. Equal rights for women.
That's nice, but I always heard this book recommended in the context of "learning what the bible says about homosexuality" and oh man, no, nobody should be recommending it on that basis.
And I'm going to speculate some more about the author's motivations... The way it reads to me is, he wants to write a book to make a biblical argument supporting egalitarianism. And it helps if he also discusses what the bible says about slavery- because we all agree slavery is wrong, and yet the bible allows it- so this is a good example to demonstrate that it's valid to *not* agree with the "letter of the law" but to look for the "movement" behind it. Slavery is a "neutral example" which can prove to Christian patriarchists that hey, you guys don't literally follow everything in the bible either, so you can't just say "well the bible says" and automatically dismiss our arguments for women's equality. And, if any of those patriarchists want to bring the criticism "well if we allow women and men to be equal, it's a slippery slope to accepting homosexuality, and oh wouldn't that be terrible if Christians accepted homosexuality"- that's why the book also addresses "the homosexual issue", and if to say "don't worry, good evangelicals, equal rights for women DOESN'T mean we have to accept homosexuality." It gives the egalitarian arguments in the book a lot more credibility, from an evangelical perspective, if the author also shows why those same arguments do NOT support gay rights.
It's not about 3 things; it's about 1 thing.
And at the end of the book, there's a chapter titled "What If I Am Wrong?" which gives away the game. In this chapter, Webb discusses what he believes to be the weakest points of his argument for equality between men and women. He does NOT talk about the possibility of being wrong about slavery. He does NOT talk about the possibility of being wrong about homosexuality.
FASCINATING!
Wow!
This is amazing. I am like, SO INTERESTED in this book! Figuring out what it's actually about! It's not about "slaves, women, and homosexuals"; it's about how the bible can be used to support equality between men and women, and then to give it more evangelical cred, we throw in these 2 other issues which evangelicals all agree about. Like see, the slavery issue proves that sometimes the bible says something, but we don't follow it in modern times, and that's valid. And the homosexuality issue proves that this way of reading the bible doesn't lead to just throwing away the whole "authority of Scripture"; see, don't worry, we still read the bible as condemning same-sex relationships, of course.
I'm just so surprised by this, because when I was evangelical I heard this book recommended as a good resource for "what the bible says about homosexuality" and wowwww it is NOT.
The parts on homosexuality are extremely shallow, oh my GOODNESS.
There's a criterion called "Purpose/ Intent Statements" which says that if the purpose the bible gives for a command would no longer be fulfilled by following the command in modern times, that's a sign the command is culturally-bound and we shouldn't follow it today. (For example, the bible says women should "be busy at home... and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God." If Christians teach that nowadays, non-Christians will point out how obviously sexist it is, and malign the word of God, doncha think? So we shouldn't force this command on women.) For the "homosexuality" section under this criteria, it's simply about how the purpose of the biblical commands against same-sex relationships was to "affirm the distinctiveness of the male-and-female sexual union" and that purpose still applies now. Uh... that's all you have to say on that? You couldn't think of anything else? You couldn't think of Genesis 2:18, where God says "It is not good for the man to be alone" and then creates the first woman? And that maybe when modern Christians force gay people to remain single, they're going against the purpose of that verse?
And there's another criterion called "Scientific and Social-Scientific Evidence" which goes into a lot of detail about how nowadays we know there's no scientific evidence that women are worse leaders than men, or that women are more easily deceived than men. Then it gets to the "homosexuality issue" and it's just 2 and a half pages discussing "born this way"- like, oh now there's some scientific evidence that there may be genetic or hormonal causes for homosexuality, but even if that's true, that doesn't mean the behavior is acceptable- there are plenty of bad behaviors that people may be genetically more susceptible to (alcoholism, etc). And that's it, that's all the book has to say on the scientific evidence we have now, which the writers of the bible didn't have. Really? That's it? You don't have anything to say about rates of depression and suicide in the queer community, and how those things are directly caused by society's lack of acceptance, and if queer people are allowed to accept ourselves, life is SO MUCH BETTER? Really? Nothing about that? Only a rehash of "born this way"? Really?
I mean, maybe in 2001 no one was talking about that? But anyway, even when I was a college student around 2010ish, I don't think people should have been recommending this book as a resource about the bible and same-sex relationships.
I don't know... Matthew Vines's video arguing a biblical case for same-sex relationships went viral in 2012 (according to this link), and before that, I really hadn't heard most of the arguments he made in the video. (I had heard some from Justin Lee; that was basically around the same time.) Maybe nobody really was talking about these things before that. I don't know. (I know there were queer Christians doing this work, way before that, but I personally don't know what their specific arguments were, and if they're similar to the arguments that queer Christians use now.)
The sections in the book about equality for women are good. Lots of detail, lots of bible verses. But the sections on slavery and homosexuality aren't really about learning what the bible says on those things- they're about proving to evangelicals that it's acceptable to talk about the women's issue in these terms.
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A few more comments I have
Let me just quickly run through a few other things that I want to say about this book:
- The book says that sometimes Christians take the "slavery" bible verses and try to apply them to our lives by saying they apply to employee/employer relationships- and the book points out how COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS this is. Slavery is a totally different thing than being an employee with a job. For example, the bible says it's fine to beat your slaves as long as they recover after a day or so- you really want to apply that to employers now? Really? THANK YOU, I am SO GLAD to see someone pointing out how ABSURD that is.
- Even though Webb believes in the abolition of slavery, and believes in egalitarianism (full equality between men and women, no restrictions on the roles that women are allowed to have), he says that the "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" doesn't necessarily have to go that far. It would also be logically consistent to say that the "ultimate ethic" is "ultra-soft slavery" rather than abolition, or "ultra-soft patriarchy" rather than egalitarianism. He explains that "ultra-soft patriarchy" would mean in all practical aspects, men and women are equal, but in some situations men are given a little bit more symbolic honor. (He says this is similar to how parents often write wills which divide up their money equally among all their children- even though the bible says the firstborn should get a greater share- but the firstborn has a place of honor by being the executioner of the will or something.)
To be clear, Webb says he doesn't know of anybody actually promoting "ultra-soft patriarchy"- he calls out complementarians like John Piper and Wayne Grudem, and says their brand of patriarchy is NOT following the trajectory of Scripture. Webb says that Christian patriarchists/ complementarians should promote "ultra-soft patriarchy" instead of whatever it is they're doing. If they really can't accept egalitarianism.
I would say... I understand how theoretically, "ultra-soft slavery" or "ultra-soft patriarchy" could make sense. To still have something of a hierarchy, but have a lot of rules to protect the rights of the lower-status people, so they're not exploited. But in actual reality, I don't think this works. A power dynamic like that will inevitably lead to abuse.
It reads like something you would say if you're just thinking about it in theoretical terms, and it doesn't actually affect you. - Some of the "neutral examples" were very insightful! The book gave lots of detail about why the firstborn son would get so many more benefits than the other siblings, in ancient times. Why it made sense back then to do it that way. So even though the bible says this, it doesn't apply to us now because our situation is totally different. (Also, in the bible there are plenty of examples of choosing a younger sibling over the firstborn, and this being portrayed as a good thing.) Also, being right-handed was a "neutral example" that the book looked at. Bible verses about God doing things with God's "right hand"- does this mean that being left-handed is bad? No. So just because God is described with certain characteristics doesn't mean that it's good when people have those characteristics, and bad when we don't.
- Years ago, I had heard a Christian say that the bible's "vice lists" transcend culture and apply for all time. "Vice lists" are the bible passages that have a whole list of sins. And oh, look at that, some "vice lists" include homosexuality. So, there's the answer, same-sex relationships are always wrong.
I remember hearing this line of reasoning and thinking... why do the vice lists apply for all time? Like did you just make that up? Where is this premise coming from? Well perhaps it comes from this book. There is a section in here on vice lists, and it says for the most part, they are transcultural. The book gives it much more nuance than what this person at my church was saying though!
(So yeah I think it's ridiculous to claim that the vice lists apply for all time, as if that's just a tautologically true principle of bible interpretation.)
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Conclusion
I read this book recently because I never read it back when I was evangelical, but I heard a lot of people recommend it. They were recommending it as a book about "what the bible says about homosexuality" but oh goodness, no, don't recommend it for that. The parts on homosexuality are extremely shallow. It reads like the author wanted to write a book about how the bible supports equality for women, and then also added a few other issues that weren't going to be "controversial" to evangelicals, to prove that his approach to bible interpretation is legit. Good for him, writing a book about equality for women. But it's not a useful book for studying what the bible says about queerness.
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Follow-up posts:
The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance
Why would it be bad news if ancient Romans had loving gay relationships?
Related:
I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible
The Bible, Trans People, and Names
Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches
Queer Theology (is not about being right)
What do we do with Christians who are never going to accept queer people?
Update: The Slacktivist (Fred Clark) featured this post on his blog- The ‘Progressive Evangelical’ Two-Step. Very cool!
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