‘Christians don’t use Joseph and Mary to explain child molesting’: Bible story is no defence for Roy Moore, scholars say
Alabama state auditor Jim Ziegler suggested that Moore acted in a divine tradition if he did in fact make sexual advances towards a 14-year-old girl
An Alabama state official has cited the Bible to defend Republican US Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused of sexual advances on young girls.
State auditor Jim Ziegler said “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter”, suggesting that Moore acted in a divine tradition if he did in fact make sexual advances towards a 14-year-old girl.
Theologians and pastors, among others, expressed revulsion that Mary and Joseph would be used to counter allegations of sexual misbehaviour with a minor. They also said Ziegler got the facts wrong and ignored the cultural context of the time in which Jesus lived.
“If this is evangelicalism, I’m on the wrong team,” the evangelical commentator Ed Stetzer wrote in Christianity Today. “But it is not. Christians don’t use Joseph and Mary to explain child molesting accusations.”
We have no idea about the exact ages of either the Virgin Mary or St. Joseph at the time of their betrothal or marriage
Moore, a 70-year-old former state Supreme Court justice, flatly denied allegations of decades-old sexual advances on girls, published on Thursday in a Washington Post story. The accounts by multiple women prompted Republican lawmakers to say he should end his candidacy for the December 12 special election if the allegations are true.