Reverend really wants Christian homophobes to know that Jesus doesn’t care about people’s sex lives
Reverend Michael Coren wants you to know that Jesus really doesn’t care about your sex life. (Envato)
An Anglican deacon has written a column to remind everyone that Jesus said literally nothing about homosexuality.
Reverend Michael Coren was born into a secular family and converted to Roman Catholicism in his twenties, after which he became a vocal opponent of homosexuality.
But in 2014, he converted to Anglicism and said in a 2015 interview that one of the main reasons for his conversion was the Catholic church’s treatment of gay people.
A year later, he published his book, Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart & Mind over Same-Sex Marriage, in which he explores how it wasn’t his own sexuality or a family member’s that changed his mind, but studying the Bible.
He wrote a column for The Spectator in which he said that the current “mess over LGBTQ2 acceptance and equal marriage” in both the Church of England and the Catholic church was when the Bible says little, and Jesus says absolutely nothing, about homosexuality.
“The so-called ‘gotcha’ verses from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, are invariably quoted, but with very little understanding of what they mean.
“The Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a particular favourite, with Sodom being destroyed allegedly because of its insatiably homosexual population.
“Yet the story is not really about sodomy at all, and it can hardly stand as a sexual morality tale when Lot, one of its heroes, offers the mob his two virgin daughters in place of his male guest.”
He explains that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were only interpreted to have included “same-sex naughtiness” by the Pope in the 11th century.
Coren continued: “When the Hebrew Scriptures do mention homosexuality — it’s only men, and lesbianism is always ignored — it generally concerns the need for procreation in order to preserve the tribe, and has no relevance to what we now know as committed and loving same-sex relationships.
“It’s also worth remembering that if we are to embrace without critique all of the Old Testament teachings, we have to justify genocide, slavery and selling one’s children into bondage.
“As a Christian and an ordained cleric I believe that we can take the Bible seriously or literally, but we can’t do both.”
Jesus himself does not mention homosexuality even once, in either the old or new testaments, and according to Coren is “actually extraordinarily indifferent to the sex lives of those around him”.
He added: “The quintessence of the Gospels is grace and compassion, the triumph of love over law, and if one group does provoke Jesus to anger it’s those who insist on judging others… Jesus the rebel would surely be interested not in whom we love, but that we love.
“As for biblical cherry-picking, it may be tempting but it can be extremely dangerous, especially when the old ladder is on very shaky ground.”
