Perhaps the closest I will ever come to the atmosphere of the first-century Greek Areopagus is the exhibit hall of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The booths, booksellers, and academic papers peddle everything from Catholic philosophy to Hindu hermeneutics to Wicca meditations. Like the Athenians at
Mars Hill, the religion scholars spend their time “in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing” (Acts 17:21).
And, this year, what’s new is all about sex.
One paper argues that Jezebel was a heroine who was “framed” by eunuchs. Jezebel, this scholar argues, was a courageous feminist whose worship of Baal and his goddess consort is a corrective to the Bible’s “focus on a single, decidedly male God.” Another paper argues for a “gestational paradigm” for reading Luke—from the “ecological feminist” perspective of the “pregnant body” of the Earth. But a feminist critique of the Father God is not really all that new. What’s innovative this year at the AAR is a theological critique of monogamy.
A series of papers offer a “theological” defense of what the older folks in my boyhood Mississippi Baptist church would delicately call “tomcatting around.” At the AAR it is much more sophisticated: “polyamory” or “polyfidelity”—sexual relationships with multiple partners. One “queer theorist” argues that advocates of gay marriage have for too long accepted “the unexamined assumption that monogamy is the sole and ideal pattern for Christian sexual relationships.” She proposes a “queer Christian” defense of a redefined marriage made up of multiple sexual partnerships. After all, she argues, monogamy is just one more “oppressive” notion of capitalist patriarchy.
This scholar has several cohorts. One paper argues for a “Trinitarian tango.” This is the idea that monogamous relationships can’t really reflect the Trinity since they are made up of two persons—not three. The answer is, you guessed it, a “Trinitarian” defense of sexual threesomes. Another scholar points to the harems of the Old Testament patriarchs as a defense of polyamory, so at least the patriarchs had one good idea, even if it was one that Jesus would condemn as contrary to creation.
Another scholar argues that Christians should “organize our sex lives” around the heavenly vision, which is not individual or “dyadic” but communal. Therefore, he argues, sex should aspire “to the intensity of the one-on-one, but the scope of the orgy.” And so, for him, a “Christian” view of heaven should look something like Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion—except with more gender diversity. This scholar concludes: “I would suggest that all sex be thought of as a form of meeting, so that sexual ‘introductions’ might be seen as ends in themselves, and sex within a relationship as meeting in depth.” The citizens of Sodom, you see, were just seeking to be friendly and “introduce” themselves to Lot’s guests. Yet another scholar based his defense of polyamory on the Christ/church relationship. For too long, he argues, Christians have based marriage on the “dyadic relationship” of Jesus to His Bride, the church. There’s a reason for this, of course. The apostle Paul tells the Ephesians that this is precisely the model for human marriage. But, this scholar argues, now we know that God is not just in relationship with the Christian church but with various world religions and spiritualities. “I will argue that Christian communities, with their erotic and polyamorous relationships, symbolize the breadth of God’s inclusive and promiscuous love.” It didn’t take long for religious pluralism to give us a defense of sexual freedom.
This is what passes for Christian scholarship these days in the guild. And, just like Athens, there are always “scholars” willing to stand agog at the newness of it all. But, of course, there’s nothing really new here. It’s just a return to Canaanite fertility religion—with a vengeance. It’s a sad demonstration that where biblical authority is discarded, we are left for our increasingly distorted passions to govern us instead (Rom 1:24-32).
The AAR is not a religious society, but a mission field. There’s nothing left to do but follow the example of the apostle Paul, and remind the “exceedingly religious” scholars that God “commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to al by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31 ESV).
But what remains so disturbing about the AAR is not its proximity to Mars Hill, but its proximity to Wheaton and Nashville. Evangelicals, after all, are notorious for picking up whatever blows through the AAR, only thirty or forty years behind the trend.
Indeed, at the Evangelical Theology Group at the AAR I sat on a panel with former Southern Seminary professor Molly Truman Marshall, who is celebrated by the leading lights of the evangelical left. On the panel, Dr. Marshall dismissed “Father” God language as “he-man-gelical”, rejected the necessity of conscious faith in Christ for salvation, and called for a “reconsideration” of evangelical views of human sexuality. When I protested, Dr. Marshall told me my library is not “up-to-date.” I suppose not.
Perhaps evangelical theology will recommit itself to biblical authority and confessional fidelity. But, the recent debates over open theism and the like, don’t give too much hope for that direction. In the meantime, confessional evangelicals need to seek to conserve the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
If not, we’d better brace ourselves for the day when our Vacation Bible School curricula celebrate “polyamory with a purpose” and The Prayer of Jezebel is atop the evangelical bestseller list.
