Steve Chalke and Corrupting Scripture

On Friday evening, 6 November 2015, Baptist pastor Steve Chalke went to Grosvenor House, Glengall Street, Belfast, to speak on the subject, ‘A Matter of Integrity – The Church, Sexuality, Inclusion, and an Open Conversation.’ This meeting was sponsored by ‘Changing Attitude Ireland,’ a gay advocates group which describes itself as, “working for the full affirmation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons within the Churches in Ireland.” On the lead up to this appearance, Chalke was interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence programme (1 November 2015). In effect, the BBC granted him a ‘free run.’ No one was present to represent the Scriptural position on the subject of homosexuality (a position fomulated through thousands of years of consistent biblical interpretation). During the course of answering questions posed by the programme host, Chalke applied himself to the task of deconstructing every reference to homosexual practice in the Bible, performing spectacular exegetical somersaults in a vain effort to make the biblical text say what it plainly does not say. Corrupting Scripture I was first introduced to this kind of abuse of scripture interpretation many years ago. Gay issues had pushed their way into the public forum by means of the publicity generated by the granting of civil partnerships in our country. While browsing through the online version of The Derry Journal at this time, a link to an external website caught my attention: ‘What The Bible Says About Homosexuality.’ Produced by ‘gay theologians,’ this website did its utmost to perform the impossible: force the Bible to endorse what it consistently opposes. It is notable these ‘gay theologians’ employed exactly the same specious and spurious arguments that were regurgitated by Steve Chalke on Sunday Sequence.

The Missing Ingredient: Integrity It is both tragic and ironic that this professed ‘evangelical’ is prepared to corrupt the Holy Scriptures in such a blatant manner. “A Matter of Integrity” he says – but there is no integrity in what he is doing. By his own confession, homosexual actor Ian McKellen tears Leviticus chapter 18 out of every Bible he finds in hotel rooms. He realises that the only way to ‘stop’ Scripture stridently speaking against the lifestyle he practises is to physically remove the reference that opposes it. (He does not seem to know that the sin of sodomy is condemned from start to finish in Scripture; e.g. Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:25-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9&10, Jude 7).

His action, though reprehensible in itself, still places Ian McKellen on a level of integrity higher than that occupied by Steve Chalke.