"Jesus Might Have Been Gay"

That made me blink!

The context was a book promotion, by its three Dutch authors, of a new book called Re-imagining The Bible For Today. It was advertised as being about engaging people from around the fringes of faith with the Bible, which was enough to drag me across to Salisbury on my scooter one slightly chilly Friday afternoon.

One of the areas they talked about in their presentation was times they had encouraged special-interest groups to question and interact with the text: feminists, environmentalists and gay groups included. I must admit my 'political correctness' alarm was ringing at this point, but the discussions actually seem to have been carefully structured and focused to genuinely provoke a different way of looking at well-known texts.

One example Bert Dicou spoke about was a time he led a discussion on the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, with a gay activist group. It seems they related easily to ideas about travelling and eating together and so growing a relationship, but one of the young men had a question: might Jesus have been gay? It seems Dicou (or maybe someone else involved) told him that he might have been. The young man found himself freed to start attending his local church, for the first time since childhood.

That has to be a good thing, surely, but I must admit the answer given brought me up short - it was, for me, such an unexpected idea. Which I guess is the idea of such discussions, they help us think the unthinkable. I find it raises two main extra questions of its own.

The first is the obvious one: might Jesus have been gay ... really?

I am not aware of anything in the Gospels which so much as hints that Jesus was sexually active: contextually it seems plausible to assume that he was not. Which leaves his sexuality - in the sense of any romantic or sexual attractions - a completely blank page. Within the constraints of what we are told, the rest we tentatively assume for ourselves. So it is genuinely reasonable to say that Jesus might have been gay - although also reasonable to say that he probably wasn't.

The other question I find myself wondering is why that 'might' made such a difference to the young man?

I suspect it could be to do with being part of a community which has long been discriminated against: an 'us and them' with Jesus assumed to be part of the excluding majority. A session engaging with Jesus as a companion and  a traveller helps to break down religious preconceptions, then even just the possibility that Jesus might have been part of the young man's community helps him to see that Jesus can accept and love him as he is. The rigid boundary just isn't there with Jesus.

That simple might leaves the understanding that, for him, Jesus really was 'one of us', therefore he can be one of Jesus' followers. He is free because he understands that Jesus is free, is another way to look at it.

Either way, a good excuse for an excellent song from Joan Osborne:

Fathomless Riches by Richard Coles

Richard Coles' account of his journey from pop stardom with the Communards, and left-wing gay activism, to priesthood is fascinating and highly readable, although it ends rather abruptly, I feel.

One of the fascinations of the book is Coles' sideways take on religion and what is important. At one stage he says:

"I realised, too, that I was one of very few people in the Church of England to have gone to a Solemn High Mass at St Alban's Holborn and there experienced a classic Protestant conversion."

In many ways the book is like the classic Protestant conversion story: "I was the wickedest of sinners but now I'm saved!" Except that the standard Evangelical tale is of salvation from drink, drugs, women, crime, whatever. Coles tells of plenty of drugs and sex (gay), but that isn't his repentance story. His story is about being saved from self-centredness and hardness of heart. It's about treating people in an appalling way and coming to regret it. That is the sin from which he has been saved by Jesus:

"And then it was as if iron bands, constricting my chest, broke and fell away and I could breathe; and a shutter was flung open, and light flooded in and I could see. And I wept and wept."

For Coles it is people and how you treat them which matters, not issues of sexual morality.

A few months ago Richard Coles and Tim Minchin wrote a pair of articles for The Big Issue about faith and Christianity. Coles' article was about people and read as a simple and heartfelt call for care and respect, which he saw religion, at its best, as being able to provide. Minchin's article, on the other hand, was about ideas and read as bright and shiny and clever ... and ultimately shallow.

The other fascinating element of the book, for me, was his insider's view of the gay, left-wing activism of the late seventies and eighties. This overlaps with a film recently out on DVD, Pride, which tells of the unlikely alliance between miners and gay activists during the Thatcher-provoked miners' strike of 1984-5. I haven't seen that film yet, although I plan to, but Coles references it as he talks about LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - and the unlikely cross-cultural bonds they formed with the South Wales mining communities.

There is also a lot in the book about The Communards, of course, Coles' and Jimmy Somerville's highly successful, but short-lived, pop partnership. Interesting, because well told, but not really my preferred style of music, to say the least.

There is also a fair amount about the process of actually becoming a priest, then the book suddenly halts directly after his ordination. Nothing about being a priest, nor about how his calling and his sexuality work together. Maybe he is thinking about a volume 2, or maybe he just wanted the book to do what it says on the cover: How I Went From Pop To Pulpit.

Either way his penultimate paragraph is wonderfully evocative of what the Church of England is and how it works:

"I looked into people's faces, faces that had seen me at my best and my worst, at my most vulnerable and my most triumphant, at my sleaziest and my finest, and we went to the church hall for tea and cakes and speeches and presents and I ducked out for a moment and went into church, the new curate on his new patch, for the first time."

Love Wins By Rob Bell

When the religious movers and shakers, the guys with the power and the influence, are vigorously driving people away from God with messages about how hateful and judgemental He is, what can you do about it? If you're Jesus, you walk around Galilee and Judea, teaching and healing in the name of God. If you're Rob Bell you write a book. Either way, the intent is to show that God really is a God of love and faithfulness. But in doing so, they also show up the haters as being far, far from God, and they will want their revenge.

The religious right in the US were out even before Love Wins was published - they didn't care what it said, they just wanted to attack Rob Bell. Here in the UK they're not so blatant, but I was interested to read in this month's Christianity magazine an article arguing that without Hell in the message churchgoers wouldn't be able to witness to Jesus. Curiously Greg Downes, the article's author, goes on to say that universalism - the idea that everybody will eventually be saved - only works if certain sections of Scripture are distorted or disregarded. The irony of this line is that Love Wins gives a lot of examples of Bible passages which Downes has to ignore or distort to dismiss the universalist position. Actually, I think Love Wins is probably the most overtly Scripture-based book that Bell has written.

Once you read the book, it is clear that Rob Bell is not proposing universalism anyway. What he is doing is pointing out that the Christian faith, the historical sweep of mainstream orthodox Christian thinking, is much broader than the bigots would have you think. Variants of universalism have been around a long time and are not necessarily anti-Biblical. The tension between salvation of a remnant and salvation of the whole world is a Scriptural tension: the range of passages is there and we have to accept that we are not God and we don't know everything. In the meantime we are called to be grace-full and loving in our differing interpretations.

For Bell it is God's love which has the last word, yet God's love allows the freedom to say 'no'. So he is not a universalist, but he does believe that God will give every chance He can for every person to respond by choosing life.

Bell's genius is that he writes very well and very clearly, in a modern open style which avoids the jargon and religious nonsense. He writes for anyone interested in living life better, free-er, deeper; for anyone who recognises a spiritual side to life, but needs more than the Pharisees with their blaring megaphones can offer.

This is very readable and interesting book: I don't agree with everything Bell says, but I do suggest you read it for yourself. I strongly recommend it.