Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Homosexual Hermeneutics

It feels particularly appropriate that I should be writing this article during Holy Week, because coming out of the closet has been a resurrection experience. Every time the stone of fear is rolled away, and I can step out of the shadows of invisibility and silence into the light of daring to be seen and known and heard as a lesbian, I know once again in my bones that resurrection is real…No amount of teaching, preaching, or theologizing will convince me of the reality of the resurrection unless I have walked into the valley of the shadow of death and experienced a presence that did not let me go…I studied every Pauline passage in depth, wanting to believe that Paul was being misinterpreted by these students. While I believe there was some misinterpretation, I also concluded that I could not make Paul say everything I wanted him to say…Having come to this conclusion, I lost neither my fervor for biblical study nor my love of scripture. I was, however, both forced and freed to adopt a new hermeneutic. With a feminist hermeneutic, I did not stop with the question, “What does the Bible say about women?” but moved on to ask, “What do women have to tell us about the Bible?” I came to similar conclusions with regard to homosexuality and the Bible.

Melanie Morrison, “A Love that Won’t Let Go,” Sojourners, July 1991.

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