Divorce, double standards and debates on same-sex marriage

One of the most helpful books I read while wrestling with the topic of same-sex marriage was a book on divorce.

As a gay Christian trying to discern whether Scripture might allow for the possibility of same-sex relationships, I wanted to understand how church leaders had approached a separate but similar topic related to marriage. That’s why I picked up Divorce and Remarriage, written by Rubel Shelly, a highly regarded author, pastor and former president of a Christian college. While reading the book, I was struck by the loving pastoral tone Shelly established. He had a deep concern for people.

Unfortunately, this is not the tone and approach many take when discussing same-sex marriage. In fact, Shelly’s latest books on that topic — the dense, academic book, Male and Female God Created Them, and the shorter version The Ink Is Dry — provide a stark contrast to what’s offered on the topic of divorce.

The blatant contrast in Shelly’s books is emblematic of the double standards many institutional leaders display when discussing these two topics. After comparing and contrasting Shelly’s books, I’ll explain how these double standards play out not just in books, but in institutional policies, programming and pastoral approaches.

Can you spot the difference?

Shelly’s Divorce and Remarriage is filled with more than 20 real-life anecdotes of people navigating divorce, many taken from Shelly’s time in ministry. There’s the tragic story of “Michelle” whose husband was sent to jail for 12 to 15 years on drug charges, but who was counseled against divorce even though it might be the most prudent thing to do.

Then there’s “Scot” whose marriage fell apart after his wife got an abortion, but he wonders if he could ever justifiably remarry.

These heart-wrenching stories are used to “illustrate how challenging it is to relate the biblical information to the complex life situations of people in a sinful world.”[1]

This is not the approach taken in Shelly’s Male and Female God Created Them. In what B.T. Irwin of The Christian Chronicle describes as, “a very academic book,” Shelly provides 400-plus pages of biblical exegesis, historical-critical analysis and point-by-point rebuttals of major arguments for same-sex marriage.

For Shelly, the topic of divorce is messy and complex, impacting real people with real lives. Same-sex marriage is academic.

There are only two stories of actual gay people in Male and Female — both used as object lessons. There are none in The Ink is Dry. There are more real-life stories in the introduction of Divorce and Remarriage (four) than in the more than 600 pages of Male and Female and The Ink is Dry combined.

Compassion is a slippery slope

Not only are the stories of gay people largely absent from Male and Female and nonexistent in The Ink is Dry, Shelly seems to take issue with the use of heart-wrenching stories of gay people written by authors affirming same-sex marriage. This can be seen in his alarm over the work of Karen Keen and her book Scripture, Ethics and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships:

Keen’s thesis and what are offered as arguments are given their credibility by her setting all that follows by opening her book with accounts of how gay and lesbian persons have been abused so frequently. … This rhetorical device makes a reader reluctant to acknowledge or hear a case that is negative to same-sex relationships for fear that one be deemed a bigoted homophobe. The compassion one feels for gay persons from the opening lines of the book inclines a reader to give their self-reported experience greater weight than the biblical text.[2]

This didn’t seem to be a concern for Shelly in Divorce and Remarriage when he included the story of “Ellen,” who was abused by her husband, a man who eventually hit their daughter. Or the story of “Hazel,” who left her husband after he descended into alcoholism. Or the story of “David,” who forced his wife to have sex with another man so he could get out of the marriage because of her “adultery.”

Was opening Divorce and Remarriage with accounts of mistreated divorced people a manipulative trick? Does the compassion one feels for divorced persons incline a reader “to give their self-reported experience greater weight than the biblical text”? Are these real-life stories “a rhetorical device” to undermine what Jesus said in Mark 10:6-12: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

Of course not. Shelly is reading dark agendas behind an approach he himself uses throughout Divorce and Remarriage.

We must forget we’re talking about ‘people’

Is paying attention to “human experience” wrong? Or is it wrong only when we’re talking about gay people? That is a common question I have when comparing the real-life-story-filled approach in Divorce and Remarriage to that of Male and Female. Consider another critique of Keen:

What, then, is Keen’s positive case for a “shift” to affirming same-sex relationships that “does not require compromising Scripture”? She announces her positive rationale in the opening sentence of her book: “When it comes to same-sex relationships, there’s one thing we cannot forget: people.” Even though I disagree with the landing site for her thesis (i.e., affirming same-sex coupling), I respect her for naming the launch site that justifies it: her appeal is not to the imitation of Christ, honoring our humanity by embracing the biblical standard for ethical behavior, or crucifying the flesh for the sake of the kingdom of God but to personal fulfillment and happiness. In summary, her argument is anthropocentric rather than theocentric or Christocentric.[3]

This is a deeply uncharitable description of Keen’s approach, especially considering her book includes chapters like “What is Ethical? Interpreting the Bible Like Jesus.” The words “personal fulfillment” and “happiness” do not appear in her book. Anywhere.

This indignation about a focus on people also begs the question of how Shelly would categorize the following statements made in Divorce and Remarriage:

• Whenever my reading of some biblical commandment drives me to a doctrinal posture that is oppressive to human beings whom God is trying to redeem, it is time for me to double-check my interpretation of Scripture.[4]
• As Jesus will demonstrate in the Sermon on the Mount, all of God’s desires for his human creatures must be read through the lens of love, grace and concern for the other.[5]
• So every law encountered in Scripture is to be seen for its loving purpose and not simply for the duty it imposes.[6]

I also highly doubt a statement like, “Suppose we were to think of Scripture more as a compass than a roadmap,” would sit well if it appeared in a book arguing for same-sex marriage instead of a book about divorce.[7]

In Male and Female and The Ink is Dry, Shelly also takes issue with the work of David Gushee, a biblical scholar and ethicist who switched sides in the same-sex marriage debate and is now affirming. His journey to affirmation was chronicled in a series of columns published in Associated Baptist Press, predecessor to Baptist News Global.

Here is just one of several critiques of Gushee and others in The Ink is Dry:

Revisionists such as Matthew Vines, David Gushee, Adam Hamilton, and others root what they offer as an ethical-biblical case for same-sex marriage in an appeal to emotion rather than logical argument. … The very fact that their reinterpretation of the biblical data is couched — by their own admission — in terms of personal (Vines), family (Gushee), and friendship (Hamilton) considerations is significant.[8]

Was Shelly making a logical argument in Divorce and Remarriage when he included the story of “Dottie,” whose husband falsely accused her of adultery and made her life miserable until she filed for divorce, after which her church disfellowshipped her? Is Shelly concerned the story of “Amy” — whose husband is prone to violent outbursts, leaving her with bruises — might come across as an emotional appeal?

Contrasted with his stern words for Gushee in The Ink is Dry, in Divorce and Remarriage, Shelly takes a different tone in approvingly quoting Gushee and his concerns about legalism:

They demonstrate little sensitivity to the human context in which all Christian ethics is done. What results is moral teaching torn asunder from contact with human experience, sometimes culminating in irrelevance or even cruelty.[9]

The above quote from Gushee sounds a lot like, “When it comes to same-sex relationships, there’s one thing we cannot forget: people.”

This is clearly a double standard — and one that’s far too common

The double standard on display is blatant but also common. It appears not only in books and pastoral approaches, but also in institutional policies.

In defending Abilene Christian University’s sexual stewardship policy, in which a student employee may be fired for entering a same-sex relationship, ACU journalism professor Kenneth Pybus stated, “The Bible is very clear — on many things, especially on something as fundamental as the nature of creation and the design of the sexes and of marriage.” But this rationale is belied by the lack of an equivalent policy for employees who are divorced.

In fact, when ACU’s board of trustees weighed whether the divorce of the university’s president would impact his employment, the board released a statement which read, in part: “We believe the covenant of marriage is created by God. We also believe strongly in the power of grace in a broken world and the call to be peacemakers.”

This is clearly a double standard. When staff, faculty and senior leaders are divorced, the response is grace and peacemaking. When students are in a same-sex relationship, the response is job termination.

“When staff, faculty and senior leaders are divorced, the response is grace and peacemaking. When students are in a same-sex relationship, the response is job termination.”

Why would gay students view an event like ACU’s “Holy Sexuality Week” — created to focus on “what the Bible teaches about human sexuality, marriage and relationships” — as legitimate when the opening speaker, who also spearheaded the event, is that same university president who is divorced?

Institutional leaders often state their non-affirming stance is a balance of “grace and truth.” But “grace and truth” is a meaningless phrase when grace is applied differently to those who are straight compared to those who are gay, and truth is urgently needed for the 5% to 7% of people who are LGBTQ but not for the nearly half of marriages that end in divorce.

Matthew 19, a passage with the subhead “Teaching on Divorce” in many Bible translations, has become a prooftext on same-sex marriage. But Christian leaders need to explain what they think Jesus says about divorce in three of the four Gospels. If Jesus is “clear” on the topic of same-sex marriage, how is he not clear on the topic of divorce?

Concerns about caving to culture would be more compelling if churches hadn’t shifted their teaching on divorce right alongside its broader cultural acceptance. As lawyer and columnist David French notes:

When a church full of divorcees argues marriage is sacred … I can understand why same-sex marriage activists were puzzled at the idea that “we can’t mess with marriage.” It had already been messed with. It had already been changed.

French is no supporter of same-sex marriage. He signed the controversial Nashville Statement condemning same-sex marriage. But, unlike many, he acknowledges many straight Christians have granted themselves lots of leeway they are unwilling to extend to their gay brothers and sisters.

“He acknowledges many straight Christians have granted themselves lots of leeway they are unwilling to extend to their gay brothers and sisters.”

To be clear, having a more gracious, less rigid approach to divorce is better aligned with the character of Jesus. As Shelly demonstrates, divorce is a messy and complex topic impacting real people with real lives. But so is the topic of same-sex marriage. Gay people have stories, too.

My ‘self-reported experience’

One Sunday morning at a non-affirming church I was attending at the time, a discussion question was raised about how Christians are called to be different from secular culture. The first response was from a person alarmed about the increasing acceptance of homosexuality (it was not clear if she was talking about same-sex marriage specifically or just homosexuality in general). The person went into a rant about how “homosexuals” don’t want to listen to the Bible. It was not a nuanced discussion.

The person making these comments was divorced.

Weeks later, I was stunned when two divorced people (including the one who had gone on a rant about “homosexuals”) got into a discussion about legalism. They argued matter-of-factly that we have to accept “human reality” when it comes to the topic of divorce. Neither of these people had divorced for reasons of adultery.

“Experiences like the above are a big reason why I left.”

I don’t attend that church anymore. I loved the preaching there. I loved the community. I considered many of the ministry staff friends. But experiences like the above are a big reason why I left. I suspect it’s a big reason why many gay Christians and their allies also leave non-affirming churches or leave church altogether.

If you think “human reality” is just something discussed within church small groups, consider this quote from Divorce and Remarriage: “While divorce was not part of the divine ideal, it was acknowledged as a reality among the people of Israel and was not presumed to revoke one’s standing as a member of the covenant people of God.”[10]

Or consider this quote about legalism from Divorce and Remarriage: Jesus “said things that have been taken with wooden literalism to formulate teachings that are contrary to the fundamental tone of the gospel of God’s grace.”[11]

Gay Christians and their allies see this double standard. Non-Christians, too. They can see the Bible is interpreted differently depending on the sexual orientation of those impacted. They can see institutional leaders have one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for gay people. They are not blind to the fact that 5% to 7% of the population gets intense scrutiny, including events like “Holy Sexuality Week,” while divorce is just accepted as a “human reality.”

If Christian institutions hope to retain any credibility “on what the Bible teaches about human sexuality, marriage and relationships,” these double standards must end.

 

Read the original letter from Wildcats for Inclusion, signed by nearly 2,700 ACU alumni, donors, students, faculty and staff, in response to “Holy Sexuality Week.”

 

Ryan Self is a 2011 graduate of Abilene Christian University. Find more of his writing on his Substack, “Ryan’s Boring Book Club,” where an earlier version of this essay first appeared.

 

[1] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 33). Leafwood Publishers.

[2] Shelly, R. (2023). Male and Female God Created Them (p. 35). College Press.

[3] Shelly, R. (2023). Male and Female God Created Them (p. 33). College Press.

[4] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 40). Leafwood Publishers.

[5] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 46). Leafwood Publishers.

[6] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 44). Leafwood Publishers.

[7] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 54). Leafwood Publishers.

[8] Shelly, R. (2023). Male and Female God Created Them (p. 11). College Press.

[9] Stassen, G. and Gushee, D. (2003). Kingdom Ethics (p 272-273). InterVarsity. quoted in Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 169). Leafwood Publishers.

[10] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 358). Leafwood Publishers.

[11] Shelly, R. (2007). Divorce and Remarriage (p. 31). Leafwood Publishers.