Skip to main content

Issues Facing Missions Today: 45. The Misnomer ‘Homophobia’ and its Theological Implications

Issues Facing Missions Today: 45. The Misnomer ‘Homophobia’ and its Theological Implications

In his opening speech at the Lambeth gathering of Anglican Archbishops this week (11-15 January, 2016), the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, allegedly stated,[1]

We can also paint a gloomy picture of the moral and spiritual state of Anglicanism. In all Provinces there are forms of corruption, none of us is without sin. There is litigation, the use of civil courts for church matters in some places. Sexual morality divides us over same sex issues, where we are seen as either compromising or homophobic. 

Indeed, the newly invented term, ‘homophobia,’ has become a standard term in Western society in reference to persons opposed, for whatever reason, to homosexuality.  It is a profoundly inappropriate term, behind which lie numerous errors with serious consequences.  The term is not only a linguistic game played by those wishing to put their own viewpoints forward by shaming others, it is also an intellectual error of the first order.  It disrupts the halls of rational discourse and entertains a number of theological errors.  Christian witness, therefore, needs to confront this language and its erroneous, theological implications.

1. A phobia is a fear.  A sin is the opposite of what is holy, and to call a phobia what someone understands to be a sin is to deny that this is a matter of holiness.  Neither the call to holiness nor an understanding of a holy God whose commands must be followed are brought into view.

2. A phobia is an irrational fear.  It does not submit to reasonable discourse.  It lacks intelligible argument as it is, after all, a matter of psychology, not philosophy, theology, or science.

3. A phobia is not held in relation to a moral issue.  It is not a sin, and the object it fears is equally not a sin.  To call something a phobia is to deny the legitimacy of any discussion of sin to the matter.  Open spaces are not a sin, and fear of them is not a sin.

4. One cannot repent of the thing that a phobic fears.  One can repent of sinful desires and acts.

5. When one is diagnosed as having a phobia, it is the phobic, not the object of a phobic’s fear, who needs to be transformed.

6. Any notion of transformation, when speaking of phobias, is relegated to psychology and not to God’s transforming power.

7. A phobia is personal, a matter for someone to sort out without allowing his or her fears to settle upon others as well.  It is, therefore, not about a person’s serious and real concern for a community but about a private matter that needs to be kept separate from a community.

8. A phobia is about things and places, such as spiders and mice and open or closed spaces.  It is not about behaviour.

9. A phobia is acquired.  Some treat religion as an acquired taste, a matter of aesthetic pleasure, or a sentiment, or a nostalgia, or a cultural expression.  For such persons, the Church’s ethics easily falls into the same category of something acquired, adopted, or embraced for reasons of taste.  It is a short step to suggest that someone’s tastes are, in fact, phobias.

10. A phobia is dismissible from the high and deep matters of religion.  It is a person’s own, closeted quirk.  It should not and cannot touch the rafters of religion, reaching to the heights of God.  Someone trying to drop his or her phobia on all society is like a poor painter turning from the canvas and trying to use the paintbrush to change the world, to paint the sky a different colour.  But if the alleged phobia is really a sin against the good creation God has made, then the world as God made it is the critic of the painter’s poor painting.

11. A phobia is something friends and family tolerate, not a matter for divorce or ostracism.  As irritating as the phobia is for a family, the family shows its love by including the weaker member.  If the phobia reaches psychotic proportions, the family may, regrettably, have to hospitalize the individual.  The psychotic level is reached when the family can no longer conduct its life tolerably or when the psychotic person becomes dangerous.  Imagine, however, a society that turns everything upside down, labelling the normal as phobic, even psychotic—well, we needn’t have to use our imaginations anymore.

Given the significant errors wrapped into the language of ‘homophobia,’ any serious and intelligent dialogue needs to avoid the misnomer altogether.  More significantly, any lingering inclination to see the historic, Christian teaching about homosexuality and the pastoral care given to persons internally disordered in their sexuality as a matter of phobia in any sense of the term implies heretical perspectives.  It betrays not only confused thinking but also theological error.  Such errors include misunderstandings about holiness, sin, repentance, transformation, pastoral care—indeed, about the Christian faith.



[1] As reported in the Vanguard.  ‘Primates 2016: Archbishop of Canterbury’s Address,’ Vanguard (January 11, 2016).  Accessed online 14 January, 2016: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/01/primates-2016-archbishop-of-canterburys-address/. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more