Former PCUSA moderator Jack Rogers' pro-LGBT book released

Sunday, April 02 2006 @ 04:19 PM

Jack Rogers, Professor of Theology Emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary and a former moderator of the PCUSA, has written a new book titled Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. While a variety of books analyzing and refuting the use of a small number of anti-LGBT "clobber texts" have been published over the years, the new book is somewhat more unique in that Rogers self-identifies as an evangelical, and quite publicly notes that he's changed his opinion from anti-equality to pro-equality over the years. Below is an extract from Presbyterian Publishing Corporation's blurb about the book.

(Another good text is Walter Wink's edited collection, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches)

In this sure-to-be controversial book, former seminary professor and church official Jack Rogers argues unequivocally for the ordination of gays and lesbians and for the extension of full and equal rights in society to all people who are homosexual. Christianity, he observes, has moved through history in the direction of ever-greater openness and inclusiveness. Today's church is led by many of those who were once cast out: people of color, women, and divorced and remarried people. It is inevitable, he believes, that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people will one day walk in the same steps as other Christian leaders.

Rogers, an evangelical, begins by discussing his own personal change of heart and mind on the issue, a change that has moved him into the middle of this controversy in his own church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He examines how the church misused the Bible to justify slavery and the denial of rights to women, and he links these efforts to efforts today to use biblical texts to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He shows how neither the Bible nor the confessions are opposed to homosexuality and debunks frequently used fundamentalist stereotypes and myths about gays and lesbians. Rogers concludes with his thoughts on how the church can heal itself and move forward.

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