In one of the more fascinating explorations of the liberal mind, a woke immigrant pastor declared he found evidence of God and the Bible supporting marriage outside the traditional Christian view that it is limited to just one man and one woman. The self-described recipient of European theological and anthropological education suggested the Bible defended a “variety of family models.”
The pastor, a man named Andrew Stehlik, immigrated from the Czech Republic around 1999 and since 2009 has been a pastor at Rutgers Presbyterian Church. As if an association with the Presbyterian Church weren’t enough proof of how a sermon would dovetail into some arrogance-fueled diatribe against what many Americans would simply call traditional teachings, a page dedicated to him on the school’s website tellingly says he was “attracted” to the school “by its inclusive spirit.”
“Pastor Andrew,” the page continues, “having grown up in church under a totalitarian regime, considers the quest for truth, justice, and peace to be an essential part of church’s calling. At the same time, he knows that curiosity, playfulness, and creativity are integral parts of a living faith.” That’s a lot of words to say he is a man committed to leftist causes.
Addressing a congregation in early December 2009, Stehlik proclaimed that the Bible produced evidence of polygamy, matrilocal arrangements, homosexual relationships, and even bizarrely commented on the creation of some lineages owing to a relationship between master and slaves. While everything he referenced is true in the technical sense, it’s his interpretation of these stories that is so fantastical. There is a huge difference between description and prescription that this man knowingly omits or simply can’t wrap his head around.
“When I came to America, I came as someone educated in theology and anthropology from continent, from Europe. It was an European education, and I was completely ignorant and unprepared for the local evangelical and cultural political discourse, and then I heard some very loud politicians and preachers and cultural experts, if you wish, talking about biblical family values.”
“Well, I must admit, I was mystified, what do they mean by biblical family values, because I know that in the Bible there are plurality of those models and values, variety of family models in the Bible. For instance, you would probably know, if you open the Hebrew scripture, you will know that polygamy is definitely more common than monogamy, certainly in the Hebrew Bible.”
“Just remember patriarchs and their multiple wives. Furthermore, patrilocal marriages might be the most common patrilocal means simply that wife joins the family of her husband. Patrilocal But there are also prominent matrilocal marriages.”
“For instance, Moses joins the family of his father in law, and even when marriage is first instituted in the book of Genesis, first book of the Bible we read, therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife. That’s matrilocal marriage, and to broader our spectrum, even further beyond marriage, I can mention children from the slave surrogate mothers, for instance. Without that kind of arrangement, there will be not 12 tribes of Israel, but only eight.”
“The pity it would be God and Asher and Dan and Naphtali are from surrogate mothers, Zilpah and Bilhah there were even SAME GENDER family households, and again, one is right there in front of our eyes, Naomi and Ruth and then David and Jonathan are male counterparts of the same gender relationship.”
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