MOUNT VERNON — New Testament scholar and Cornell College alumnus Victor Furnish will lecture on “Homosexuality and the Bible” on Thursday, Oct. 14, at 11 a.m. in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons at Cornell. Admission is free.
Furnish is a 1952 graduate of Cornell, ordained United Methodist minister and University Distinguished Professor of New Testament emeritus at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology in Dallas.
From 1988 to 1992, Furnish was a member of the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality, and he has spoken and written widely on the topic of scripture and homosexuality. He was one of the expert witnesses asked to prepare an affidavit for the Canadian appeals court whose 2003 decision led to the legitimizing of same-sex marriages in Ontario. He will serve as an expert witness in an upcoming church trial of a United Methodist minister for being a partnered lesbian.
A world authority on the Apostle Paul, his writings and theology, Furnish is teaching a course, “The Epistles of Paul,” during Cornell’s current term, which ends Oct. 20. On Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time academic calendar, students take a single course for 3 ½ weeks nine terms a year.
