ALL in

A look back at the key Bible verses that talk about homosexuality and why they don't apply to loving LGBTQI relationships today, with a positive reading of the book of Romans. This ends season 1 of the ALLin Pod. Season 2 will focus on what the Bible says about marriage, and whether LGBTQI people can get married.

For many Christians, Romans 1 is the key passage against same gender sexual activity, so we need to cover it thoroughly. In this episode of the ALLin Podcast, we look at seven additional interpretative options for Romans 1. TAKE NOTE: This is a dense episode, with lots of detailed arguments and references. You probably can't listen to this one in the background. It needs your focus.

We are spending a lot of time in Romans 1, because this is the passage that most people point to when they want to exclude LGBTQI people from the church and Christian faith. This is the fourth part of our mini-series in Romans, and looks in even more detail at the original text and specifically at Romans 1:26-27, "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." What were the women, and men, actually doing? And what did Paul condemn in these verses? We will discover that Paul's issue is temple prostitution and pederistic relationships. And that he is not actually condemning same gender sexual activity in these verses. That's right: the verses don't say what you've been told they say. And once you see what they do say, you won't be able to unsee it.

In Romans 1, Paul says that women and men were "given over by God" to their "shameful lusts" and did what is "against nature". What did he mean by this? And does that apply to LGBTQI people today who want to get married to their lifelong, loving partner? In this episode of the ALLin Pod we do detailed word studies of what it means for something to be shameful and unnatural. Neither of them are what you might expect: they're related to things that are socially unacceptable, rather than something that is morally wrong or evil.  This changes completely how we should understand this passage.

This is part 2 of the mini-series in the book of Romans, Paul's letter to the church at Rome. In the first chapter of this letter, Paul appears to list a whole lot of sins, including same gender sexual activity. But if you read on into Romans 2, and in fact the rest of the letter, the tone and purpose of the first chapter seems to change. So, what was the purpose of the letter, and what light does that shine on how we should understand chapter 1. Graeme Codrington explores these questions, and comes once again to the same conclusion: that Romans 1 is not addressing loving, consensual LGBTQI relationships at all. This is a long episode, and we highly recommend that you have a Bible handy to follow along the readings. In fact, we recommend you read the whole letter to the Romans before listening to this episode.