Bible Dyke Deep Dive: Romans

Reclaiming the Garden

In this episode, we get down and dirty and nerdy with Paul’s long Epistle (letter) to the Romans (more specifically, the early Christian community there). This text has been used to justify bigotry towards LGBTQ+ people and the awful doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, and to manipulate people into converting, but it also has empowering passages about the love of God, and guidance on how to live in community in the midst of conflicts of belief–the church has been in theological disputes since the very beginning. The very passage that is used against LGBTQ+ people in Romans 1 is a set-up of Paul’s message that we should not judge or hold ourselves up as being superior to others! Paul also talks about how our salvation is from the faithfulness of Jesus, not necessarily faith “in” Jesus. Yes, you can’t necessarily get away from the language Paul uses about sacrifice and Jesus’ death, but this is his interpretation and what he believed would be the best way to present the Gospel to his audience. The beauty of the Gospel is that it can mean multiple things across different cultural contexts, but it all connects back to the goodness and love of Jesus.

Resources:

James Brownson’s book Bible, Gender Sexuality (take what you want, leave the anti-polyamory and anti premarital sex stuff)

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Our social media: @reclaimingthegarden on Insta, @RtGardenPodcast on Twitter, and Reclaiming the Garden on Facebook. Our personal accounts: @thatpunchabletheaternerd, @April_TheWriter (April is on Twitter and Insta). Also, our podcast account follows a bunch of awesome folks + podcasts in the exvangelical/deconstruction world and progressive Christian world, so if you’re looking for more resources, that’s a great place to start!