Evangelical groups hop on lgbtq bandwagon
Michelle Boorstein has a must-read piece in The Washington Post about the celibate gay Christian movement. It features Albert Mohler, Wesley Hill, and some others from the evangelical movement. The article begins with a discussion about Eve Tushnet, a celibate Roman Catholic lesbian.
Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is working speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the most well-known of 20 bloggers who upload on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and dyke Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month.
This is an interesting article not least because secular people attend to find celibacy strange and even subhuman. That comes out in the article, and it goes to reveal how far we’ve come as a culture to ponder that sex is the end-all be-all of human being. But that is where we are, and that is why the average person reading about celibacy just sort of scratches their head and says, “What? Really?” The ans
Christians and the LGBTQ People – Part 2
Sean McDowell: Welcome back to the podcast, “Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture.” I'm your host, Sean McDowell, an author, speaker and apologetics professor here at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.
Scott Rae: And I'm your co-host, Scott Rae, professor of Christian principles, also at Talbot University of Theology.
Sean McDowell: We are here for a second show with friend, pastor, author, Caleb Kaltenbach. You've really turn into an important voice on issues of marriage and sexuality, and the intersection between kind of the church and culture today. So thanks for speaking up on those issues and joining us again on the podcast.
Let me ask, since you've been a pastor for a number of years, just start with something really practical. What execute you say, say a 15- or 16-year-old kid comes in to you, probably very sheepishly, maybe a little embarrassed, maybe feeling a sense of shame, and just says, "I have same-sex attraction. I've wrestled with this." Where do you go? Because I have a lot of conversation with young people that way, and I just apprehension as a church, that we don't initially respond well to that k
Pastor Resources
The recent behavior by the boards of two organizations that have been nationally visible as representing conservative evangelicals is “The Superb Evangelical Sellout” for a number of critical reasons, not the least of which is wrongfully capitulating to one of the most deceptive straw men of modern cultural and politics. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) are supporting the inclusion of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression in federal civil rights protections, a patent rejection of biblical truths, moral commandment and sound constitutional principles.
As reported by Earth magazine, “(CCCU and NAE) have formally endorsed principles that would add sexual orientation and gender self (SOGI) to federal nondiscrimination law.” The U.S. Pastor Council, a growing inter-racial, inter-denominational network of local Pastor Councils that was founded and grew from the flagship Houston Area Pastor Council (the team that led the defeat of lesbian former Mayor Annise Parker’s pro-LGBTQ “Equal Rights Ordinance” in 2015) is calling out the NAE and CCCU for this indefensible act of yieldi
Two and a half years ago, I realized I had been incredibly untrue about gay and lgbtq+ people and their acceptability to God. So I publicly and clearly repented. This Pride Month, I’d like to spend a few minutes retelling and expanding on some of my history that led to that decision.
I grew up in a very conservative, evangelical Christian, Republican household. I was so deeply embedded in that subculture that I accomplish not remember meeting a single person that self-identified as a Democrat Christian until I was halfway through college, and when a professor I deeply respected as a dude of faith told me that he was a Democrat, I was shocked and incredibly dismayed; I remember actually feeling betrayed. Nobody in the churches that I had ever attended talked about creature a Republican, but the values and the highlight on anti-abortion and anti-gay values filled the election-season sermonizing, and if anyone wasn’t Republican, they sure kept quiet about it. So I naively assumed that every Christian must of course be a Republican too.
Naturally, part of this package of views was anti-homosexuality. The Democrat Party adopted a gay-friendly platform in July 1980, and my first polit
Is same-sex marriage on the horizon for the Church of England?
The list of major denominations that own abandoned the biblical definition of marriage as existence between ‘one man and one woman’ is growing.
The United Reformed Church was the first in 2016, but others swiftly followed suit, with the Scottish Episcopal Church and Methodist Church amending their doctrines in 2017 and 2021 respectively. The Church of Wales looks to be not far behind, having endorsed blessings for queer marriages last year, with the Church of Scotland set to jump on the bandwagon after its General Assembly voted to redefine marriage in May.
But what of the Church of England, the largest Protestant denomination in the UK?
Scripture
At the moment there is no legal requirement for CofE churches to perform same-sex weddings, due to the strong protections under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 – the so-called quadruple lock.
Furthermore, the Church’s possess formal position is that it “upholds faithfulness in marriage between a gentleman and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage”, a position which it acknowledges is in kee