Writing in First Things, Ryan T. Anderson proposed a course of action for religious conservatives to defend traditional marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision striking down state rules barring same sex marriage.
What caught my eye was not his article’s provocative main title, Same-Sex Marriage and Heresy, but rather its subtitle, The Importance of Anthropology.
Because if there’s one thing the article doesn’t discuss at all, it’s … anthropology.
This is a shame, because for a moment I thought, fascinating, he’s going to draw upon the discipline of anthropology to make a case in the public square for supporting the nuclear family.
But it quickly becomes clear that this is not what Anderson means by anthropology. Nor anyone else that he quotes. He’s talking about a theological understanding of human nature, drawn entirely from scripture and Christian tradition. Not from science.
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The late Nobel-Prize winning biochemist Christian de Duve wrote an entire book on what he called The Genetics of Original Sin. De Duve was not a theist, but he was huge believer in the notion of humanity’s dangerously imperfect nature. He based his case on evolution, not scripture—but his arguments were assembled to defend what was an essentially theological doctrine about human nature.
Anderson and others who want to defend a fundamental truth about marriage will need to take a similar approach. They need to go much further back in human history—to explore the origins of human monogamy—and draw upon the science behind it to make their case.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Defending Marriage: Where’s The Anthropology?
