by Sandy » Sat Sep 20, 2014 3:33 pm
Actually, prior to the Protestant Reformation, the interpretation of scripture was up to the clergy, and the Pope's interpretation was considered infallible. It's hard to assert that the interpretation was "allegorical" since much of what was taught and preached wasn't even Biblical, it was what the priests wanted to teach to their own advantage. Anyone who held to the Biblical text found themselves in an awkward position, and most of them were burned at the stake.
It's pretty obvious that the early church fathers, in the first through third century, used a historical-contextual-literal interpretation, which is what most Evangelicals use today. "Literal" is simply a straw man argument. Theological education among conservative Evangelicals who believe in an inerrant Bible is as extensive and as high quality as any. And that's the foundation of Protestant theology both in the US, and around the world, now.
Inerrancy, or some expression of it, is a historic Baptist doctrine, and is found in some form or expression in the earliest of Baptist confessions. The identity of Baptists, their insistence on Baptism by immersion as symbolic of salvation and not administered as a sacrament to infants, is rooted in that belief. Anything else is revisionist.
I'll accept your rewrite, Ed, for the sake of discussion. My observations in this area are anecdotal. I had a friend in Houston who pastored an ELCA-UCC affiliated congregation that called itself "welcoming and affirming." Our of a congregation of about 70 people, perhaps 10 or 12 were gay and lesbian, but the church was in constant "dialogue" about the size and scope, and the allocation of its resources, to its ministry to GLBT persons. And over time, families with children drifted away. Ultimately, the gay and lesbian members formed a separate congregation, and eventually merged into a MCC nearby. The Baptist congregation in Houston, just a few blocks from the church my wife and I used to attend, that was W&A was ABC-USA. They had maybe 10 gay and lesbian members out of 80 or 90 active, and that's in the heart of the American city with the second largest gay and lesbian population in the country outside of New York.
I am no expert on this subject, but most of the gay and lesbian people I've met don't put themselves in a philosophical position to accept belief in the existence of God. Perhaps, in some cases, that's because of the rejection they've experienced in the church, but we live in both a post-denominational age, and in a religiously pluralistic society in which the majority of people don't practice any specific religion, and I think a lot of them are of a secular, humanist "worldview" or are predisposed to that. They've never really been part of a church, and it's difficult to reach past that.