Reasoning Together: A Conversation on Homosexuality

by Mark Thiessen Nation

This book emerges from a series of public conversations on homosexuality by two Mennonite theology professors with clearly different perspectives on the issue. Reasoning Together expands on these conversations. The first section sets the context for the conversation, identifying the key issues and describing the differences among Christians on these issues. The second section contains the main constructive presentations from each writer along with each responding to the other. Here we have extensive theological and biblical reflection. In the third section, each writer asks the other two questions, triggering extensive give and take. The book concludes with a short chapter sketching areas of agreement amidst the disagreements that have been the focus of the earlier chapters and two annotated bibliographies.

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Mark Thiessen Nation (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and has authored several books.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The concept behind the book in terms of honest and open dialogue on a difficult subject (homosexuality) is wonderful. The co-authors both do a fantastic job of naming the issues for Mennonites, and it’s clearly a book for Mennonite readers. (But I think it has a market beyond Mennonites as well.)

In Part 1 (“Getting Oriented”) both authors restate and summarize what others have said. While I knew the book was a dialogue between two authors, I found it a bit hard to tell in reading this first part where each author would end up in the debate. That kept me reading because I wanted to figure out where each author was heading.

Part 2 (“The Main Statements and Responses”) is where each author’s viewpoint really comes through in a main chapter.

Part 3 (“Discussing Key Issues”) is where the authors posed questions to each other. This last section, to me, was the most illuminating because it gave them less of a chance to talk around each other. Instead they really had to engage each other.

[Sagely · Rating 2 out of 5]

The churches' conversation around LGBT sexuality creates so much noise and heat. Even in my congregation, I sense people reaching for their rhetorical brass knuckles when this topic surfaces. In the ensuing brawls, we discover a lot about how people fight and very little about where the Spirit leads us with respect to gay Christians.

A mentor recommended Ted Grimsrud and Mark Thiessen Nation's volume as a potential example of these conversations done right. Collegiality, it promises, not sucker punches. But RT failed to deliver on its promise.

Particularly, Thiessen Nation hits below the belt. (I wish it wasn't this way, but it often seems the conservative proponents fail to keep things friendly, start fights, and then fight dirty. If we know people by their fruits, this doesn't bode well.)

RT cites a sizable catalogue of scholarship, but I walked away not feeling any more enlightened regarding which scholarship is worth reading and which isn't. I mostly just heard two people mishearing one another (sometimes culpably) and shouting louder and louder.

I did like Tony and Peggy Camplo's introduction. That, perhaps, was the book's high point.

[Wade]

The authors, both faculty at Eastern Mennonite, take differing views on the full inclusion of gay & lesbian persons in the [Christian, Mennonite] church. They do this is a series of alternating chapters, followed by chapters in which each can ask direct questions of the other (along with responses). The tone is civil, but sometimes they seem to be speaking 'past' each other. Grimsrud, who argues for the inclusive position, maintains that the starting position must be full inclusion with the onus being on conservatives or traditionalists to make the case that certain people should be excluded. He also argues that any argument that maintains the inherent sinfulness of same-sex relationships must be able to sustain it's logic to apply to all such relationships, including faithful, committed, monogamous, mutual (marriage) relationships. Thiessen-Nation, on the other hand, argues that centuries of church tradition and traditional methods of biblical interpretation retain the 'reasonable doubt', and the other side must convincingly argue why what traditionalists see as direct, Biblical teaching that homosexuality is sin should be modified.

[Lizbry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn't interested in showing who is theologically correct but instead displaying the different perspectives and their interpretations of the same issue.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the concpet of two theologians with different views dicussing a hot topic (homosexuality) but in practice, I found the format confusing.