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Christianity should accept gay marriage, prof. says

Traditional notions of Christian marriage should be rethought to include acceptance of same-sex marriage, a Harvard University divinity professor said Thursday night.

Harvard Divinity School professor Mark Jordan gave a lecture called “Same-Sex Marriage and the Prospects for Christian Ethics” at Harvard’s Memorial Church. It was the last lecture in the Lenten 2010 Speaker Series, “What’s Sex Got to Do With It?” and was attended by about 50 people.

“The important question is not, “should churches marry same-sex couples?’The important question is, “should churches marry anyone before they have learned why God created and then redeemed erotic desire?'” Jordan said.

One issue with the idea of traditional Christian weddings is that they lack religious significance, Jordan said.

“Most of the elements of the “traditional church wedding’ are only accidentally Christian,” he said. “At best, they are ethnic forms of people who once adopted Christianity. At worst, they are recent inventions tacked on to Christian weddings by social convention or clever marketing.”

Furthermore, there is limited textual basis for marriage in the Bible and few models of Christian marriage in the New Testament, Jordan said. This lack of clarity about the history of Christian marriage heightens the intensity of the same-sex marriage debate.

“[Same-sex unions] expose, they reactivate, all the old tensions in Christian’s teachings on human sexuality,” he said.

However, he also added that many same-sex couplesthat ask the church for a blessing of a union do so without receiving any legal benefits and often without family recognition.

“They remind churches of what Christian blessing of a union might have been, might still be&-a religious rite conducted not by deputies of the local government, not to change legal status, not on account of ethnic custom, but just in order to be blessed.”

Jordan also said that in order to form a new image of Christian marriage, followers need new models of erotic love in Christianity.

“For too much of Christian history, sexual characters have been characters of sin or suspicion. But other characters are possible&-other characters are urgently needed.”

Jordan said he thought the lecture was especially important for undergraduate students.

“Sex is the place where students feel the most distance between their lives and the church,” he said.

Paul Harold, a first-year graduate student at the Harvard Divinity School, said he liked Jordan’s engagement with the scripture.

“It was brilliant, the most passionate, thoughtful defense of same-sex marriage I have ever heard,” he said.

Kerry Sonia, who graduated with a master’s degree in theology from Harvard in 2009, said she liked Jordan’s idea of looking for new models of erotic love.

Emilieanne Koehnlein, a 58-year-old seamstress and tailor, said she came to the lecture because she was a surprised by the subject being presented.

“It’s nice that these topics are being discussed. It’s a good thing,” said Koehnlein, who has been a member of Memorial Church for four years. “I don’t have a problem with same-sex couples at all. A lot of people have problems rectifying these same-sex couples, but they have lives just like everyone else does.”

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