According to Bishop Gene Robinson, the Bible is a lot like baseball. You can read its rules all you want, but unless you understand the context of the game, some things will be lost on you. The phrase "out in left field," is an example, Robinson said. The cliché would have little meaning if we knew nothing of baseball and even less if we didn't understand it was a metaphor.
Such is the case for people who have interpreted the Bible as condemning homosexuality, said Robinson, who discussed his book God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage Oct. 3 in Chicago.
Robinson is the out gay Episcopal bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire who made history in 2003 when he became the first openly gay Anglican bishop. His book, just released by Knopf, is a primer on homosexuality and scripture.
Approximately 75 people attended Robinson's talk and book-signing event that Women & Children First bookstore hosted at St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Lincoln Park.
Robinson argued that today's literal interpretations of the Bible fail to take into account the time in which they were written.
"I believe that the Bible is the Word of God," Robinson explained. "I don't believe that the bible is the words of God."
Some things have been lost in translation, Robinson argued. And some newer Bible text translations have inserted the word "homosexuality" where it never was.
"So if you're one of those people reading that Bible, and you pick up your Bible, it condemns homosexuals," he said.
But Robinson believes that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality and that scripture only goes so far in discussing current realities. Robinson's interpretation of Bible is that God supports love.
He said that religion-based efforts that discriminate against LGBT people are often more based in politics than they are in faith. Further, he believes that many who believe homosexuality to be a sin have not read the Bible but been told by their church leaders.
The Episcopal Church in the United States takes a difference stance. In July, the U.S. Episcopal Church became the largest church in the country to bless same-sex unions. The church also voted to ordain transgender people at that time.
Robinson believes that other religious people and institutions are also at that turning point, pulled between an interpretation of the Bible that condemns homosexuality and their own positive experiences with LGBT people.
It is for those wishing to reconcile their faith with their support for LGBT people that Robinson wrote the book, he said. But the book also functions as a "script for activists," who want to challenge religious discrimination, he added.
Lastly, Robinson is trying to combat the anti-gay discrimination propagated in the name of God.
"It's literally in the air we breathe," he said. And we religious people have put it there. And we religious people are going to be the ones that have to undo it."