Opinion: Ontario Mennonite Brethren Conference finally names the big issue at the heart of the LGBTQ+ discussion: The role and authority of the Bible

Finally—someone said it. 

To date, when provincial Mennonite Brethren conferences resolve to expel churches that welcome and affirm LGBTQ+ people, and support same-sex marriage, they do so because those churches have stepped outside the Confession of Faith. 

But the Ontario Mennonite Brethren Conference (ONMB) has finally named the bigger issue at the heart of this dispute: The role and authority of the Bible. 

In its report to delegates for the ONMB’s annual convention, to be held February 24-25, the Provincial Faith and Life Team explains to delegates why it is proposing to revoke the membership of Southridge Community Church and Toronto FreeChurch. 

This topic, ONMB states, “really matters” because it has “larger implications for how we understand the nature of Christian discipleship, the authority of Scripture, the nature of the gospel, and so on.” 

“We do not see sexual ethics as a standalone issue, but one integral to the overall framework of how we use Scripture,” it goes on to say. 

In other words, it's not just a matter of deviating from Article 11 of the Confession of Faith, which states marriage is only between a man and a women—which they name. It's also about the role, place and authority of the Bible. 

Of course, this is what many have known all along. 

Anyone who has met LGBTQ+ Christian knows they are fine people who love Jesus as much as any straight person—maybe even more because of the challenges and wounds they have endured to keep their faith. 

It’s not about whether LGBTQ+ people can love Jesus and be faithful disciples. They can. It’s about whether the Bible, as some interpret it, is true and can be trusted. That’s the big issue in play. 

I have often likened this to the game of Jenga, where players have to pull out pieces of wood from a tower. Lots of pieces can come out before the final one is pulled and the whole edifice falls down. 

For many Christians today, including many Mennonite Brethren Christians, welcoming and affirming LGBTQ+ people and supporting same-sex marriage is the final Jenga piece. 

They have seen other things pulled out, things the Bible was once believed to be certain about. This includes slavery, divorce and remarriage and the role of women in leadership. These were once seen by some as fundamental to the authority of the scriptures. Those views have changed, yet their faith has continued. 

Somehow, though, this one is different. Perhaps it's because it is about sex, which has always been a volatile subject for churches. But that’s not the only reason. 

According to the late Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence, the topic of LGBTQ+ welcome and affirmation is attracting so much attention, anger and recrimination because it is the last piece to be pulled before Christians today find themselves with a new perspective on the Bible, one that challenges hundreds of years of biblical tradition. 

As she put it in that book: 

To approach any of the arguments and questions surrounding homosexuality in the closing years of the twentieth century and the opening ones of the twenty-first is to approach a battle to the death. 

When it is all resolved—and it most surely will be—the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead. 

That is not to say that Scripture as the base of authority is dead. Rather it is to say that what the Protestant tradition has taught about the nature of that authority will be either dead or in mortal need of reconfiguration. And that kind of summation is agonizing for the surrounding culture in general. 

In particular, it is agonizing for the individual lives that have been built upon it. Such and ending is being staved off with every means available and resisted with every bit of energy that can be mustered. Of all the fights, the gay one must be—has to be—the bitterest, because once it is lost, there are no more fights to be had. It is finished. Where now is the authority? 

It's a battle for the Bible for some, in other words. The stakes are high.  

Christians whose faith is dependent on a literal, “plain reading” and inerrant view of the Bible sense the danger in this topic of LGBTQ+ welcome and affirmation. Everything they have believed in is in jeopardy if this piece is pulled. Their whole system of faith could fall apart.

For that reason, churches like Artisan, Cedar Park, Southridge, FreeChurch and Jubilee have to go from the Mennonite Brethren conference. 

Not just because they have made decisions contrary to the Confession of Faith, although that is the reason normally given for justifying their expulsion. 

It's because this time the topic of LGBTQ+ threatens the way many view the Bible, and by extension the very nature of Christian faith as taught by the Mennonite Brethren conference in Canada. 

So good on ONMB for naming the big issue at stake here. Putting it on the table might mean Mennonite Brethren in Canada can now have an honest discussion about the topic of LGBTQ+ and same-sex marriage, and understand why it generates so much bitterness and division.