“I would treat [gay people] just like any other human sinner… They’re not weird. They’re just human beings.”
~ Jack Crabtree, 2003
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The earliest public recordings of Jack Crabtree on “biblical sexuality” are from Fall 2002. That Fall Gutenberg College’s McKenzie Study Center ran a series on “Understanding Love, Sex, and Marriage.” Notably absent in this series is a class dedicated to the issue of “homosexuality.” There are classes on the “Biblical Theory of Headship,” “Submission in Marriage,” and “A Theory of Infatuation.” But no class singled out homosexuality. Also, this series included a diversity of Gutenberg College teachers.
In 2003, Gutenberg’s MSC ran a series on “Sodom and Sexual Purity.” This series, like the 2002 one, included a diversity of Gutenberg College teachers. And this time Jack Crabtree presented — in addition to his well-known ideas on “Emotional Fornication” — a class entitled “Homosexuality.” You can view an outline of Jack’s arguments in 2003 here.
2 years later, in 2005, Gutenberg’s MSC once again ran a series on biblical sexuality, this time entitled, “Love, Sex, and Marriage.” Once again a diversity of Gutenberg College teachers were included. Jack Crabtree again presented a class entitled “Homosexuality.” You can view an outline of Jack’s arguments in 2005 here.
Now we fast-forward to last year, when Jack gave his scorched-earth conspiracy theory at the 2013 Summer Institute (where his voice was the specific focus). At the institute, Jack argued— among other things — that a Satanic American Beast was employing propaganda to brainwash us into embracing Christophobia and “accept[ing] certain homosexual pairings as ‘marriages.” (You can view Jack’s Summer Institute presentation here.) This moment marks a significant departure from Jack’s previous statements in 2003 and 2005. He has continued this departure in his current 2014 series, “Ethics of Sex in the Bible” (a series which, unlike the 2002, 2003, and 2005 series, does not include any voices other than Jack’s). You can view Jack’s own argument outline for the current series here.
In addition to Jack’s outline, I’d encourage you to read my live-tweeting from the first two parts of Jack’s series, as they give a fuller picture of Jack’s sentiments thus far. Part One is here; Part Two is here.
What I’d like to do right now is compare and contrast Jack Crabtree’s 2003, 2005, and 2014 presentations on the “homosexuality” issue. By doing so, you will see what exactly remains the same and what has changed. (Note: In a few cases below, when relevant, I also include parts from Jack’s 2013 Summer Institute paper.)
What has not changed
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Homosexuality is a sin:
2003:
“[Homosexuality is] just one more manifestation of our rebellion against God, our rebellion against truth, our rebellion against everything good. But it’s just one more manifestation. But, but so is my self-centeredness and so is my pride and so is my self-righteousness and so is all that other garbage in my life. So I’m no better off than they are. We’re all in need of the mercy of God.”
2005:
“There’s no way that we can look at the biblical perspective and come to any other conclusion other than that God intended sexuality for marriage and intended marriage to be between male and female. That’s the only picture that the Bible knows, as far as I’m concerned.”
2014:
“Some sexual behaviors (and sexual desires) are morally disgusting…. Homosexuality.”
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Jack’s obsession with bisexuality and the long-forsaken “gay gene” myth
2003:
The widespread practice of bisexuality, Jack says, “gives the lie to” the idea of a “gay gene.” “What is there, a third gene?” Jack talks about the book, “Exploding the Gene Myth” by Ruth Hubbard.
2005:
Jack again talks about “Exploding the Gene Myth,” saying that even a “radical lesbian” like Ruth Hubbard (who, FYI, is such a “radical lesbian” she’s married to a man and has not only children but grandchildren) says, “The bottom line is that genes don’t do nothing. They just make proteins.” Jack also again talks about bisexuality’s existence as a trump card against gay people.
2014:
“MODERN MYTH: Homosexuality is an act of creation, just like left-handedness.. The ‘gene myth’ is the culturally-accepted myth that shapes most modern attitudes toward sexuality today… The history of modern attitudes toward sexuality makes a ‘lie’ out of the gene myth. The sudden popularity of bi-sexuality on the heels of the greater cultural acceptance of homosexuality had all the earmarks of a cultural phenomenon, not a biological phenomenon. (Or was there a sudden mutation in everyone’s genes?)”
What has changed:
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A humility about disagreement and the limits of knowledge:
2003:
Jack admits that if “It is no more significant to be oriented towards a member of the safe sex as it is to be left-handed” is true, it would be “cruel” and “bigoted” to discriminate against gay people. Jack also goes through common arguments in favor of LGBT*-friendly Christianity, taking care to point out which arguments he considers a challenge to his perspective. He discusses alternative understandings of biblical passages he believes supports his opinion. He gives reasons for why he does not find these understandings as convincing as his own. The conclusion of Jack’s presentation includes specific ways in which he believes the Christian church has been self-righteous and hypocritical towards gay people.
2005:
Jack begins his presentation with admitting the minimal nature of his source material: “The problem with trying to do a bible study on homosexuality is that there’s really not a whole lot to say.” Jack admits his case against gay people is not air-tight: “I may not be able to come up with an air-tight convincing case for why homosexuality is wrong, but that it is wrong seems completely clear to me from nature and the Bible.” Finally, Jack states that he believes his entire worldview would crumble if same-sex attraction were proven biologically caused:
“If homosexuality is indeed biologically determined (and I do mean determined, such that we have no choice in the matter), if homosexuality is indeed biologically determined — then I think that’s a challenge to the whole biblical worldview. I don’t think we can have it both ways. The Bible’s just flat out wrong if homosexuality is biologically determined. We’d have to rethink everything about our faith.”
2013 (Summer Institute):
Jack chalks up disagreement with him to propaganda and a Satanic American Beast. He claims only some species of a conservative Christian American mindset is the true “Biblical Worldview.”
2014:
Jack never interacts with alternative positions, opposing arguments, or calls out the Christian church’s treatment of gay people; he chalks up disagreement to propaganda. He once again claims a monolithic “Biblical Worldview” that he himself has grasped.
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Jack’s paranoia
2003:
No mention about biblical sexual ethics being “odd, old-fashioned, bizarre, out of touch, and uncool”; no obsession with a conspiracy theory.
2005:
No mention about biblical sexual ethics being “odd, old-fashioned, bizarre, out of touch, and uncool”; no obsession with a conspiracy theory.
2013 (Summer Institute):
“I know all too keenly how odd, how eccentric, how unsophisticated, how naïve, and how basically ‘uncool’ it is to take the Bible seriously. I can never articulate what I actually believe to be true about God, Jesus, and the Bible without hearing a voice of self-condemnation deep within my own psyche—’you sound like an unintelligent, uneducated, unpolished hick, and perhaps even a little wacky.’ …The state is becoming an enemy of everything we stand for… As a consequence, we must forge small, informal, unofficial, under-the-radar communities…Probably quite similar to what many Chinese Christians have had to do… We must] replace the existing institution of marriage with an entirely new institution…The current institution of marriage no longer does that…It has been compromised by the increasing insistence of the superior class that we accept certain homosexual pairings as ‘marriages.”
2014:
“From the perspective of modern culture, biblical sexual ethics will inevitably seem odd, old-fashioned, bizarre, out of touch, and uncool.”
This is explained via the 2013 conspiracy theory: “the newer values are the outcome of propaganda, prejudice, and acculturation.”
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Actual progress in seeing a difference between homosexual attraction and homosexual acts:
2003:
Jack says the fact that you’re attracted to a member of the same sex is itself a sign of perversion:
“Often homosexuals will anecdotally say, ‘I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not attracted to members of the same sex.’…I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove. It either proves that it’s natural for me to be a homosexual, or that you’ve been perverse for as long as you can remember.”
2005:
During the Q&A time, Jack argues that the predisposition towards same-sex attraction in itself is a sin, like the man who commits adultery “in his heart.”
2014:
“Finding other males sexually attractive is not the same as being a homosexual. Homosexuality is chosen, even if sexual attraction to males is (or seems to be) not… A male’s being sexually attracted to other males is never, in and of itself, considered evil and perverse by the Bible.”
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Attacking gay marriage and LGBT* rights as legal institutions:
2003:
Jack says he’s not interested in efforts to “deny homosexual people rights.” During the Q&A, an audience member asks, “Would it be ok to vote yes on these measures [to give rights to LGBT* people]? …I want to see them get their rights. Would that be ok?” Jack responds: “Well I think you could make a case for it… I really don’t have a problem if you mercifully want to grant health insurance to another person.”
2005:
No discussion about gay marriage or LGBT* rights as a legal institution.
2013 (Summer Institute):
“[We must] replace the existing institution of marriage with an entirely new institution… It has been compromised by the increasing insistence of the superior class that we accept certain homosexual pairings as ‘marriages.”
Jack also defends people who believe reparative therapy is legitimate.
2014:
“If it were the case that no ‘verse’ tells me it is wrong for ‘marriage’ to occur between two human beings of the same sex, would that fact entail that the Bible would consider same-sex marriage morally unobjectionable? The answer is ‘no.’ …When one’s views on gay marriage ‘evolve,’ it is because cultural forces have molded and shaped those views, not because one has ‘discovered’ the rational validity of a different moral judgment.”
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Heightened rhetoric:
2003:
Homosexuality is “perverse” in a “fairly ordinary, fairly mundane” sense; it is a “perversion of what the designer of human sexuality intended”; “homosexuality is an aberration that does not fit with nature”; however, “it’s not more heinous than any other sin”; “there’s a lot of pain in” the lives of LGBT* people; Jack does not advocate shunning but rather believes “it speaks more and better to go ahead and love them and be silent about their choice.”
2005:
Homosexuality is “an aberration,” but merely one “indication” or “evidence” of “the brokenness of human beings”; Jack specifically states homosexuality is “not the lowest” form of “degradation,” rather ”it’s simply wrong.”
2014:
Homosexuality is specific sort of sinful behavior that is “morally disgusting,” “viscerally repulsive,” and “an abomination” — in the same category of other behavior like cannibalism and child rape. It is a manifestation of “animal sexuality” — and “animal sexuality” is “evil, dirty, demeaning, and unclean.” It is “in violation of one’s rational moral judgment to an outrageously high degree.”
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What Jack compares homosexuality to:
2003:
Lying
“To me, to call homosexuality perverse is, ok, yeah, right. But I call lots of things perverse. Lying is perverse.”
Stealing
“I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t a liar and a thief. I mean, can you go back far enough when you wouldn’t be tempted to steal that which wasn’t yours? …Don’t both of those things come as naturally to us as anything else?”
“Any other sin”
“We need to get off our moral high horse and not look down on homosexuality as somehow a greater, graver, more heinous sin than the rest of them. The fact of the matter is, no, it’s not more heinous than any other sin.”
2005:
(No comparisons used.)
2014:
Cannibalism
“To the member of a tribe of cannibals, eating his enemies (though they are human beings) feels comfortably ‘right’ and ‘natural.’ Why wouldn’t it? That is all he has ever known.”
Child rape
“The Bible would seem to hold that there exists a category of behavior that it classifies as ‘morally disgusting’ behavior… Cannibalism… Pedophilia… Homosexuality…”
Automobile sex
“How does one explain ‘biologically’ the sexual obsession of certain men with their automobiles?”
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Gnosticism:
2003:
Jack makes no comments about the value (or lack thereof) of the body or sexuality in general.
2005:
Jack makes no comments about the value (or lack thereof) of the body or sexuality in general.
2014:
Jack claims that, “My physical sexual nature is not an essential element of what I am as a human being.” Our bodies are “not an essential facet of what I am as a creature created in the image of God”; they are “not an essential element to what makes me ‘me.’” Our bodies are less than: they are “a less noble, less eternal, and less beautiful facet of who I am. Our “true” “person-ness” is immaterial, and that immaterial person-ness “constitutes the ultimate, eternal, noble, beautiful, and essential facet of who I will be.” Due being a part of our lesser material shell, sexuality is “not spiritual, transcendent, eternal, or even ennobling”; rather, it is “connected with an inferior animal-like facet of who I am” that is neither “beautiful” nor “inherently noble and good.”
A Brief Summary of an Evolving Taxonomy
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The final subject to consider is Jack Crabtree’s evolving taxonomy of sin. A taxonomy is a system of describing the way in which different things are related by putting them in groups. In this case, Jack has a history of distinguishing certain sins from other sins. This is important because it highlights most tangibly and dramatically how Jack’s rhetoric about homosexuality has evolved. To understand this evolution, I’m going to look at some statements beyond the ones compared above.
In September 1998, Jack wrote an essay entitled “Christianity,” which you can read on Gutenberg’s website here. The essay is primarily concerned with distinguishing Christianity from religion. In the course of defining what he means by “religion,” Jack says that, “According to the Bible, there are four types of sin or wrongdoing.” This is Jack’s first expression of a taxonomy of sin. He classifies sins into four groups: (1) “Violating the law of love or what is often called the golden rule,” or sins that hurt other people; (2) “Violating the created order, the structure of reality as God Himself made it,” or sins that are acts of rebellion against God’s intended designs; (3) “Violating trust in God,” which Jack simply defines as despair; and (4) “Violat[ing] divinely prescribed religion,” or “ignoring the rituals built into the prescribed religion that God gave Israel.”
In this taxonomy, where does homosexuality fit? Jack puts homosexuality under the second group, “Violating the created order.” Jack says, “Homosexuality is wrong because it violates the nature of human sexuality as God created it. Rebelling against God’s creation is a rebellion against God.” It is important to note here what this classification means: homosexuality is not a violation of love; it does not hurt other people. In this sense it is a “victimless” sin. One who “sins” in this way is in rebellion against God, but not posing any threat to other people.
In 2003, as we have seen, Jack stays consistent with this taxonomy of sin. While maintaining that homosexuality “is an aberration that does not fit with nature,” Jack points out that homosexuality is “fairly ordinary, fairly mundane” in its “perversion.” This makes sense of why Jack says he “would treat [gay people] just like any other human sinner… They’re not weird. They’re just human beings.” This also makes sense of Jack being disinterested in denying rights to gay people. If homosexuality does not pose a threat to anyone other than one who engages in it (and simply because it is “rebellion against nature”), why would you treat gay people differently? As opposed to “sins” that hurt other people — such as, say, murder and rape — homosexuality (in Jack’s model) is only wrong insofar as it is rebellion.
In 2005, as we have also seen, Jack also stays consistent with this taxonomy. Homosexuality poses no threat; rather, it is but one “evidence” of the general “brokenness” of the world. Jack also goes out of his way to stress that homosexuality is “not the lowest” form of “degradation.” Instead, ”it’s simply wrong.”
Jack begins to change his taxonomy of sin in 2009. In his “Notes on the New Testament Understanding of Sin,” published by Reformation Fellowship (the church run by Gutenberg College professors), Jack presents “a taxonomy of evil,” or, “some of the more important manifestations of sin.” Jack divides evil into two categories: (1) godlessness and (2) unrighteousness. Godlessness is “Overt expressions or manifestations of hostility toward and/or rejection of God himself,” such as “blasphemy” and “atheism.”
The second category of “unrighteousness” is what I am most interested in, because that category has five sub-categories – which are almost the same as the categories Jack used in 1998. But there are some significant differences this time. Unrighteousness, Jack argues, takes five forms of “rebellion against God”: (1) “in the way we treat others,” (2) “in the way we treat the created order of things,” (3) “in the way we treat ourselves,” (4) “in the way we treat God’s creation and providence,” and (5) “in our response to what is true.”
The first category includes sins that hurt other people, such as murder, adultery, and theft. The second category includes sins that simply reject the order and purpose of God’s creation, such as “homosexuality” and “any sexual perversion or impurity.” The third category includes sins that hurt one’s self, such as self-hatred or self-importance. The fourth category includes bad stewardship of the world, such as “anti-Semitism,” “cruelty towards animals,” and hurting the environment. Finally, the fifth category includes not believing the truth and believing lies instead.
There are lot of problems with this new taxonomy and where Jack places certain sins (or does not place them). For example, many of the sins in the fourth category (anti-Semitism would be the most glaring example) should be in the first category. The sins of the fifth category are identical to Jack’s meta-category of “godlessness,” so I am not sure why they are now included under the meta-category “unrighteousness.” Some of the sins in the first and second category are duplicates: adultery, for example, appears in both because it not only violates nature, it also hurts other people and thus is not victim-less.
Notably, however, how Jack classifies homosexuality has remained the same as 1998. Unlike adultery, homosexuality remains no more or no less than a violation of nature. Consider what this means, putting homosexuality under the second category and only the second category. This means that, to Jack, homosexuality does not hurt other people, does not hurt one’s self, does not imply bad stewardship of nature, and does not involve loving untruth. Rather, the only thing “wrong” with homosexuality is its unnaturalness.
From 1998 through 2009 Jack’s taxonomy of sin remained consistent on homosexuality.
This history should automatically put into stark contrast exactly how Jack’s 2013 and 2014 statements on homosexuality involve a radically altered taxonomy of sin. We learned in 2013 that gay people suddenly pose a direct and violent threat to not only Jack’s faith, but his freedom and safety. Gay people have destroyed “the existing institution of marriage” to the point that Jack argues it needs to be “replaced” — and gay people have done this, remember, because they are the sworn foot soldiers of a Satanic American Beast that will soon make Christians “suffer some kind of harm from the government.” This is a dramatic change from the 1998-2009 descriptions.
This dramatic change is also seen in Jack’s new “morally disgusting” category of sins. In his 2014 series, Jack argued that, “Some sexual behaviors (and sexual desires) are morally disgusting,” which means they are “viscerally repulsive.” Under this category Jack included a wide variety of sins — cannibalism, pedophilia, “excessive greed,” “excessive cruelty,” “complete lack of empathy or compassion,” and homosexuality.
Notice that this category — the “morally disgusting” category – appears nowhere in Jack’s 1998-2009 taxonomy of sins. It is itself a collapsing of disparate types of sins. Most disturbingly, it is including as “morally disgusting” something previously described as victim-less and nothing more than a violation of natural order — along with sins that are shockingly and gut-wrenchingly victimizing. Every single sin in this category — apart from homosexuality — is an extreme. Greed isn’t “morally disgusting” to Jack; rather, it’s excessive greed. Cruelty isn’t “morally disgusting” to Jack; rather, it’s excessive cruelty. Lack of empathy or compassion isn’t “morally disgusting” to Jack; rather, it’s complete lack of empathy or compassion.
And you know what doesn’t make the list? Rape.
Rather, Jack specifies child rape.
Murder also doesn’t make the list.
Instead, Jack specifies a specific form of murder where you kill a person by eating that person.
And right smack dab in this intentionally heightened and extreme list are gay people — the same people that Jack, a decade prior, said were “just human beings” who are “not weird.”
Final Thoughts
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While I categorically reject any and every sentiment that gay people are sinners on account of being gay, I am particularly grieved because of Jack Crabtree’s evolution in how he expresses such sentiments. His rhetoric has changed for the worse. His empathy and compassion have also changed for the worse.
There a vast and profound distance between arguing gay people are “not weird” and “just human beings” and comparing them to people with decidedly weird sexual fetishes for automobiles. There is great chasm between arguing gay people are no more or less sinful than a kid who lies and putting gay people in the category of uniquely “morally disgusting” sinners as child rapists and cannibals.
If you neither see this evolution in Jack Crabtree nor understand its significance, you need to pay closer attention. The writing’s on the wall — and on iTunes.