So, for example, the passage about telling the women not to talk in church gets regularly interpreted as applying to a particular situation in the unruly Corinthian congregation, where women were interrupting a service (and given that the same darn epistle says that women can prophesy publically, I think the “specific context” interpretation has the better case here). While those people who *want* women to shut up and never, never teach men have to explain away the passage where women prophesy, and the fact that Paul (both in his letters and in the historical accounts in Acts) acknowledges the leadership of certain women, who sometimes (e.g. Priscilla) teach men. Some interpretation of things as specific to a context is inherent to the process.

Whether it’s legit to interpret the prohibition on divorce that way is trickier - it’s repeated in two gospels and one early epistle, in terms that don’t suggest a lot of wiggle room. And at the same time the cultural context of marriage, and the likely consequences of divorce, have changed a lot over the centuries.

Reason, Experience, Scripture, Tradition. (REST). We use all four to inform an understanding of God’s call to us; Scripture is one post in that quad, but reason and experience are vital as well.

Assuming that you ask the latter, most Christians interpret Paul’s letters as speaking on multiple levels — some of what he writes is specific to his audience, some of it is eternally applicable. We send people to seminary to learn the hermeneutic techniques for distinguishing the two. And then we argue about it, and have regualr schisms.

Paul condemns long hair on men, and we take it as a cultural statement that no longer applies

Why?

It is clear to me that the divorce improved my mother’s life, and probably my life, but may have harmed my brother. Of course, even at 7 I remember seeing my father shove my mother into a wall, and at 13 my brother remembers that life was perfect before my mother betrayed my father by divorcing him. I’ve never been able to figure out how my brother missed the anger and the violence that I could clearly see. My dad never slapped or punched my mother, but he did shove on occasion, and he yelled a lot. All the time. He’s 6′4″ tall, and big and loud. He scared the crap out of me on occasion.

Having met gay people, gotten to know some, and call some friends, I’ve never found a way that gay marriage has negatively impacted me, or ultimately my marriage. Well, except for the guilt I feel that my committed relationship passes muster to be called marriage, and theirs does not. I am an atheist, who prays to the universe that someday a charismatic political figure will rise up on a platform that says, ” I do not have ‘family values’. I value families in every form. That two or more people unite in a loving, supportive relationship to care for each other is an amazing thing, and worthy of the highest respect.”

That’s actually a pretty easy argument to understand, so long as you accept the caveat that homosexuals are inherently evil because they consciously choose to debase themselves in unholy practices. Of course, that caveat is kind of a big jagged pill…

…unless you assiduously maintain what I like to call the “fundie bubble.” Basically, you sequester yourself from anyone who could challenge your worldview*, whether by argument or simple existence. This, obviously, is why religious conservatives have such a hard-on for homeschooling and religious private schools/universities; it’s much easier to keep kids’ thoughts in line if you never let them outside, so to speak, to see what they’re missing and what their peers are lying about.

*One of the great ironies in life is in some of the most outspoken (or at least visible) evangelicals in the country utterly refusing to be anywhere near people who allegedly need witnessing, preferring to remain in the happy social homogeneity of their megachurches (or what have they). Odd, to say the least.

(And, of course, whatever the reasoning, I’m glad churches apply it, since I think that the no-divorce rule causes a lot of hardship and harm… for that matter, my impression is that a lot of Catholics get around it with annulments that serve as de facto divorces.)

Somewhat parallel arguments about homosexuality are made by Rabbi Steve Greenberg in his book Wrestling with God and Man, i.e. that the prohibition in Leviticus had to do with what homosexuality meant then, not an absolute. (He makes other arguments too; all interesting, IMO.) Greenberg is an openly gay, Orthodox rabbi (not accepted as the later by many other Orthodox rabbis, though). He’s great. If you don’t know his work it might interest you.

SF