Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Skyline Church and Robert Gagnon

One of the speakers at the "Conversation on Marriage" at conservative Skyline Church on Sunday was theologian Robert Gagnon.  One person who attended said he had a very slick Powerpoint presentation about how Jesus would have hated Teh Gay,  and managed to wrap up homosexuality with incest, polygamy, and bestiality.  Some discredited "science" was thrown in for good measure,  probably from  the long-discredited Paul Cameron.

(A large group of Episcopalians attended the event, many from St Paul's Cathedral San Diego and some from as far away as Palm Springs.  Apparently the new Diocesan t-shirt with the "fearless love" slogan was also spotted in the audience. You can read more about it on the St Paul's Cathedral Blog, which is running a series all week with parishioner feedback.  Take home message is that Bishop Robinson rocks!)

Gagnon's gig is to show that the Bible is firmly against gays.  If you are interested in a critique of Robert Gagnon's parsing of ancient text, you can find one here by philologist Jean-Fabrice Nardelli (via BoxTurtleBulletin)

Gagnon doesn't like the criticism, so there has been some back and forth.  Here's an example of the Nardelli's recent riposte:
I focussed mostly on details, because if Gagnon did not deploy them with sufficiently scholarly standards  of competence, as I am convinced is the case, the main thesis of his monograph rests  on quicksand. 
Ouch!

(H/T reader andrewdb)

2 comments:

dr.primrose said...

The Prop. 8 proponents filed their petition for Supreme Court review today according to thisL.A. Times story.

This was expected. The court has complete discretion about whether it wants to take the case up. The 9th Circuit opinion striking Prop. 8 down was very narrow and has no application outside of California. That lessens the likelihood of its taking the case up. But who knows.

The court in on summer recess so it almost certainly will not indicate what it's going to do until the opening up the next term on October 1.

JCF said...

Gagnon is to the Bible as David Barton is to US history: they both suck beyond the telling of it. They only have credibility among those who don't know the meaning of the word "scholarship".