Christianity survived the demise of slavery and segregation without the slightest harm to any doctrine, teaching, or passage of scripture of any significance. Indeed, the end of those unjust institutions freed Christians from the temptation to construct embarrassingly flimsy scriptural defenses of them. By contrast, from a Christian theological perspective, the consistent and longstanding teaching on marriage and homosexual sex, speaking to individual morals, could hardly stand in starker contrast to the New Testament’s condemnation of racial distinctions and its relatively laissez-faire approach to the existence of slavery and the resulting gradualism of Christian opposition to slavery. As noted in Part I, Jesus and St. Paul are both explicit and insistent on the subjects of marriage and sex.

In fact, if you read the Gospels and the epistles, you will note that several of the critical themes are, to a modern ear, liberalizing. Jesus rails against the excessive focus of the Pharisees on ritualistic rules at the expense of care for one’s fellow man, and declares the old Mosaic Law to be superseded. He preaches engagement with sinners and mercy towards the repentant. He reaches out across cultural and gender lines to elevate the basic dignity of all people.

But if there is one area of moral teaching in which Jesus is more rather than less strict than the Mosaic Law, it is in the area of sexuality and, in particular, marriage—the abolition of permissive divorce, the insistence on elevating lust to the level of adultery. He explains the comparative laxity of earlier teachings on marriage and sex as a nod to primitivism: “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.” Thus, the Mosaic Law’s regulation of divorce, like its “eye for an eye” principle of proportionate vengeance, sought to take the world as it was and improve it. Thus too did the New Testament and the early church do for slaves.

Down through the unbroken chain of centuries of Christian teaching and practice, while economic and social arrangements like slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude, monarchy, and feudalism have come and gone, marriage has always had a central place in Christian moral teaching and Christian community life.