Abstract
Hermeneutics is about more than homosexuality. But for many members of the Christian community the issue of biblical interpretation is defined in recent experience by such issues as whether to ordain people in an active homosexual relationship and, just slightly less recently, whether to ordain women as bishops or women at all. The list could be extended with the ever present caveat that such issues of dispute have a way of making themselves more central than they should be, creating not only problems of hermeneutics but also crises of identity. This is nothing new. Arguably early Christians' disputes over circumcision redefined the heart of Judaism for some then and since into unrecognisability...