When Matthew Vines published God and the Gay Christian a few years ago, I agreed with Vines’ critics that he is wrong theologically but predicted that his view would prevail.
I think Vines’ argument is specious, theologically, but his case for acceptance of gay relationships by Christian churches is going to prevail in the majority of both black and white churches. The straightforward fact is that churches that won’t adapt are going to find themselves with small, aging congregations, and in a sea of hostile young people. Pastors as a class may be dim, but they’re not suicidal; they will hold their nose and make peace with gays, agree that it has all been a terrible, Terrible!, misunderstanding, and find some other group to demonize.
What do you know? Something called the Revoice Conference will take place later this month in St. Louis, with the understanding that …
But a historic, or traditional, sexual ethic in itself is not automatically a Christian sexual ethic. Simply abstaining from sex outside of marriage does not make one a faithful and thriving disciple and follower of Christ. Furthermore, LGBT people who remain faithful to the Bible’s teaching about sexual expression do not automatically thrive as Christians in their local church. A Christian sexual ethic that is life-giving for all people, including LGBT people, is not something that we can simply assume we already possess, but must instead be a goal that all Christians—straight and nonstraight—continually attempt to construct and refine anew in their own cultural context. Settling for less than this results in a version of the traditional sexual ethic whose cultural relevance might not be immediately apparent to populations of people who live at the margins of our society. For these individuals, a culturally irrelevant sexual ethic simply doesn’t feel livable.
Some Southern Baptists are supporting this conference, with the result that folk like Albert the Pious are sounding the alarm.
Language is very important here. And so we really need to ask the question, do we want biblically and theologically to refer to individuals as LGBT people, especially when we’re talking about Christians, or do we want to talk about, especially as we talk about Christians, believers who may be struggling with one form of temptation or with one set of issues or another?
Ho-hum. Revoice is a model of what Christian thought is evolving toward, no matter how anxious that makes such as the Southern Baptists. It won’t save Christianity, because Christianity is untrue, but we should all hope it helps to mitigate the Pious’ indecent intrusions into the lives of others. We should hope, too, that it contributes to the undoing of the Christian insistence that marriage is merely a sexual relationship whose purpose is procreation in order to grow the cult.
Marriage is, or should be, about building satisfying lives together, not glorifying an Invisible Wizard Who Lives In The Sky — and that understanding of marriage is open to same-sex couples, too.
Meantime Franklin Graham, a Southern Baptist and a man of such squalid character that he admires Donald Trump, is having fits because Jimmy Carter recently said that Jesus would probably be a supporter of same-sex marriage. Well … who knows? That strikes me as unlikely. I do know that only a bona fide idiot cares what some Bronze Age anonymity had to say about the subject.
I have to respectfully disagree with former President Jimmy Carter on this one. He is absolutely wrong when he said Jesus would approve of gay marriage. Jesus didn’t come to promote sin, He came to save us from sin. The Bible is very clear. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. God defines sin in His Word – it’s not up to our opinion, the latest poll, or a popular vote. What is very troubling is that some people may read what President Carter has said and believe it. God loves us and gives us the truth in His Word.
I understand of course that many people are comforted when they are told by Holy Men that Our Invisible Friend has settled every moral question and relieved them of the burden of having thoughts, but … No. A bellowing Holy Man, no matter how LOUD, cannot relieve you of moral responsibility.