Anti-gays 'misread' Bible
2007-04-17 21:32
Paris - The spiritual leader of the
world's 77 million Anglicans has said conservative Christians
who cite the Bible to condemn homosexuality are misreading a key
passage written by Saint Paul almost 2 000 years ago.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, addressing theology
students in Toronto, said an oft-quoted passage in Paul's
Epistle to the Romans meant to warn Christians not to be
self-righteous when they see others fall into sin and depravity.
His comments were an unusually open rebuff to conservative
bishops - many of them from Africa - who have been citing the
Bible to demand that pro-gay Anglican majorities in the United
States and Canada be reined in or forced out of the Communion.
"Many current ways of reading miss the actual direction of
the passage," Williams said on Monday, according to a text of
his speech posted on the Anglican Church of Canada website.
'Delusions of the supposedly law-abiding'
"Paul is making a primary point not about homosexuality, but
about the delusions of the supposedly law-abiding."
The worldwide Anglican Communion is near breaking point over
homosexuality, with conservative clerics insisting the Bible
forbids gay bishops or blessings for same-sex unions.
Its US
branch, the Episcopal Church, named a gay bishop in 2003.
In Romans, Paul said people who forgot God's words fell into
sin. "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in
themselves the due penalty for their perversion," he wrote.
Williams said these lines were "for the majority of modern
readers the most important single text in Scripture on the
subject of homosexuality".
But right after that passage, Paul
warns readers not to condemn those who ignore God's word.
"At whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning
yourself," wrote Paul, the first-century apostle whose epistles,
or letters, to early Christian communities elaborated many
Church teachings.
Neither side favoured
Williams said reinterpreting Paul's epistle as a warning
against smug self-righteousness rather than homosexuality would
favour neither side over the other in the bitter struggle that
threatens to plunge the Anglican Communion into schism.
But he said a "strictly theological reading of Scripture"
would not allow a Christian to denounce others and not ask
whether he or she were also somehow at fault.