The Episcopal Church, Homosexuality, and the Context of Technology
Foreword by Craig G. Bartholomew
Imprint: Pickwick Publications
The aim of this book is to promote more serious theological discussion in the Church, especially in the mainline Protestant churches and the Episcopal Church, on the issue of homosexuality. George Hobson provides a theological perspective informed by biblical insights, on the one hand, and by analysis of the development and significance of the all-encompassing reality of science-technology, on the other. The question of technology is the determinant issue in the lives of modern men and women, for whom virtually every aspect of daily existence is controlled and oriented by technological imperatives. The central argument of the book is that reflection on the sexual revolution of our day, including the issue of homosexuality, cannot be carried forward effectively without consideration of this context of technology. A constructivist ideology, rooted in our technological power, underlies the fashionable notion that sexual behavior, even gender identity, is entirely culturally determined. Hobson opposes this notion on theological grounds and argues that the liberal disposition in the Protestant churches prevents them from seeing how the authentic Christian gospel is being subverted by this constructivism and the technologically driven quest for total control over every feature of reality that it represents.
George Hobson is an Episcopal priest and Canon to the Bishop for Theological Education in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe. He has taught theology in seminaries and theological colleges in many developing countries, including Rwanda, Burundi, Haiti, Armenia, and Pakistan. He is author of a volume of poems and photographs, Rumours of Hope (2005), and contributor to a collective book of poetry, Forgotten Genocides of the Twentieth Century (2005).
"George Hobson's essay The Episcopal Church, Homosexuality, and the Context of Technology is as courageous as it is compassionate. The book offers a fresh and constructive contribution that sheds much-needed light on a complex topic without creating undue heat. The analysis of technology as the matrix of modernity is as compelling as is the theological reading of the Scriptures. Hobson's work should elicit much-needed thoughtfulness about the gravity of the matters at stake."
--Reinhard Hutter
author of Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
"A lucid and searching exposition of the collision between modern philosophy and the theology of the Church which has brought the moral crisis of homosexuality to bear upon the Christian conscience. With economy of language, keen insight, and pace, the author analyzes Western thought since the Enlightenment and relates the current moral confusion in the Church to the 'spectralization' of human beings and the rise of secular technologism as the prevailing thought structure. An exhilarating and thought-provoking read, full of 'Hobson moments' in which an insight or idea is memorably expressed with an apposite turn of phrase."
--Kevin Scott
author of ReCreatable: How God Heals the Brokenness of Life (forthcoming)