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Captive Virgins, Polygamy, Sex Slaves: What Marriage Would Look Like if We Actually Fol... - 3 views

www.alternet.org/...we_actually_followed_the_bible

bible marriage polygamy relationships

shared by anonymous on 29 Mar 12 - Cached
  • “Bible-believing” Christians, also called “biblical literalists,” believe the Bible is the literally perfect word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. Thanks to the determined work of historical revisionists like David Barton, many of them also believe (very, very wrongly) that America’s Constitution and legal system also were founded on principles and laws drawn from the Bible. 
  • Not all Christians share this view. Biblical literalists are at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from modernist Christians, who see the Bible as the record of our imperfect spiritual ancestors who struggled to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 29 Mar 12
       
      Reasonably minded Christians everywhere thank the author for pointing this very fucking important fact out.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      "Modernist Christians"? I'd say Modernist theology is a big part of the problem. (This is a semantic quibble.)
  • Even though divorce and teen pregnancy rates are lower in more secular parts of the country, Bible believers see both as problems caused primarily by America’s loss of faith.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Let me tell you a secret about Bible believers that I know because I was one. Most of them don’t read their Bibles. If they did, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with the one they so loudly defend.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      That's the easy explanation, but not necessarily the right one. I've sat in Bible-study groups of fairly wealthy Christians as they spent an hour convincing themselves that Jesus doesn't really want them to sell their stuff and give the proceeds to the church and the poor, even if there are multiple instances of what I take to be fairly clear language saying that Christians should do precisely that. It's that "Modernist" stuff again-our brains aren't that rational.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 30 Mar 12
       
      That's a fair point. Whether you read the Bible or not, that lack-of-rationality thing is surely in play. As you implicitly note, though, this is not the fault of religion - it's our damned species.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      Theologically speaking, it's almost as if God didn't set us up to be able to have Godlike understanding of everything. Like we're limited and mortal or something.
  • Stories depicted in the Bible include rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations, captive virgins, and more. Now, just because a story is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it is intended as a model for devout behavior. Other factors have to be considered, like whether God commands or forbids the behavior, if the behavior is punished, and if Jesus subsequently indicates the rules have changed, come the New Testament. 
  • Through this lens, you find that the God of the Bible still endorses polygamy and sexual slavery and coerced marriage of young virgins along with monogamy. In fact, he endorses all three to the point of providing detailed regulations.
  • Polygamy is a norm in the Old Testament and accepted in the New Testament.
  • Concubines are sex slaves, and the Bible gives instructions on acquisition of several types of sex slaves, although the line between biblical marriage and sexual slavery is blurry.
  • In the book of Numbers (31:18) God’s servant commands the Israelites to kill all of the used Midianite women who have been captured in war, and all of the boy children, but to keep all of the virgin girls for themselves.
  • These stories might be irrelevant to the question of biblical marriage were it not that Bible believers keep telling us that God punishes people when he dislikes their sexual behavior.
  • The nuclear family model so prized by America’s fundamentalist Christians emerged from the interplay between Christianity and European cultures including the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire.
  • Bible believers, even those who think themselves “nondenominational,” almost all follow some theological tradition that tells them which parts of the Bible to follow and how.
  • But many who call themselves Bible believers are simply, congenitally conservative – meaning change-resistant. It is not the Bible they worship so much as the status quo, which they justify by invoking ancient texts. Gay marriage will come, as will reproductive rights, and these Bible believers will adapt to the change as they have others: reluctantly, slowly and with angry protests, but in the end accepting it, and perhaps even insisting that it was God’s will all along.  
  • anonymous on 29 Mar 12
     
    There's no way to understand politics anywhere without understanding religion, but to an outsider American Christianity -- and so American politics -- can seem almost incomprehensible. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have quarreled themselves into 30,000 different denominations. On top of that, American Christianity, like American culture more broadly, tends to flout hierarchy and authority, which means that a sizeable number of American Christians consider themselves "nondenominational."
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