Taiwan Church News
3384 Edition
January 2 – 8, 2017
Church Ministry
PCT Itinerary Seminar On Same-Sex Marriage Kicked Off
Reported by Lin Yi-yin
To encourage a rational dialogue and a civilized debate on the issue of same-sex marriage within PCT, four itinerary seminars, entitled as “PCT on the Issue of same-sex marriage” and organized by PCT General Assembly Office, are going to be held island wide starting from 31 December 2016 to 11 March 2017.
Moderated under Rev Hsuei Bor-chan, Secretary of PCT General Assembly, the first ever PCT seminar on same-sex marriage was kicked off at Chi-nan Presbyterian Church on 31 December 2016 with two background reports explaining to the audience about PCT’s stance on this issue: first by Rev Ng Tiat-gan, Director of PCT Research and Development Center, reporting the genesis and content of PCT’s 2004 official docuemnt entitled as “Studies and Proposals on Homosexuality Issues”, and second by Rev Cheng Yin-er, PCT Associate General Secretary, delivering the points of “PCT Pastoral Letter On Same-Sex Marriage” released in 2014. Later, within an eighty minutes forum, about 80 people, including PCT pastors, evangelists, and laymen, expressing their various opinions on LGBT marriage in pros and cons.
Mrs Yu Mei-nu, the most renown DPP lawmaker campaigning for amending civil code to include same-sex marriage, also came to the PCT seminar on same-sex marriage to explain her major three amendment of civil code: “Same-sex marriage couple can possess the same equal rights and obligation as the hetero-sex couple do”; “The contract of marriage is sealed by both parties(not man and woman)”; “The court’s ruling on child’s adoption should not base on any discrimination against the gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual characteristics, and other reasons etc. of the adopters”.
As her version of same-sex code will be compliant to all the laws required of the hetero-sex couple stipulated in the original civil codes, Yu assures that there will be no confusion or chaos happened in our familiar relationships between the naming of father/mother, husband/wife, and other consequent relationships. Even the behavior of adultery in same-sex marriage will be punished according to the related laws in her amended version of civil code, says Yu.
Prof Cheng Yang-en, church historian of Taiwan Theological Seminary and College, expresses that LGBT people have gone through a process of depathology in the fields of psychology and psychiatry and started to be recognized as a normal group by western societies since 1970s. Yet, in the field of theology, the biggest challenge is how to re-interpret the Bible, Cheng says, adding that a better solution could come from the method of “accommodation”, proposed by John Calvin, meaning that a suitable re-interpretation of the Bible could be done, based on a reference to contemporary culture and anthropology, applying the wisdom, reason, and revelation given from God.
Cheng also stresses that no need to worry about that same-sex marriage will destroy the traditional marriage institute, as the hetero-sex marriage will still be the mainstream in any human society. We Christians should not distort the idea of “sexual liberation”, as the essence of this social movement is multi-dimensional, says Cheng, adding that Taiwan church should take part into this social movement as she used to fight for the Taiwanese on democracy and human rights.
Assistant Prof Hsu Mu-yen, an elder of Tog-seh Presbyterian Church and a faculty of NCCU Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation, and Intellectual Property Management, remarks that since the Bible has clearly declared homosexual behavior as a sin, no alternative theological explanations are allowed to confuse the laymen and engender a chaos further inside the church.
Hsu emphasizes that the church should not accept any homosexual behavior, as it is a sin deemed by the Bible, but a special code of same-sex companion proposed by secular society can be tolerated by the church only if the same-sex couple are “sexually faithful to each other” and “pledged to run a family compliant to the law”. Instead of making a hasty decision on whether the civil code of marriage should be amended or not, the church should have a “panoramic perspective” to understand the direction where the amendment of civil code heading for and the problems lurking under the phenomenon, remarks Hsu.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
