Evangelical and LGBT+ Ally: Why You Can’t Be Both
As Christians have been pointing out for more than 2,000 years, the reason Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is that his views on sexuality were already so clear that it wasn’t necessary…serious-minded people didn’t argue that Jesus would endorse homosexual relationships, much less same-sex marriage.
“Some words, like strategic castles, are worth defending, and evangelical is among them,” Michael Gerson wrote. “While the term is notoriously difficult to define, it certainly encompasses a ‘born-again’ religious experience, a commitment to the authority of the Bible, and an emphasis on the redemptive power of Jesus Christ.”
Gerson wrote those words in an article for The Atlantic in 2018. He ends his essay by saying, “This sets an urgent task for evangelicals: to rescue their faith from its worst leaders.”
Gerson, who previously served as a top aide and speechwriter for George W. Bush and is the author of Heroic Conservatism and coauthor of City of Man (a book edited by Collin Hansen and Tim Keller), has been an evangelical voice in the public square. It’s unfortunate, then, that he now uses arguments about sexuality that contradict Scripture and the church’s historic witness. As he notes, being an evangelical means being committed to the Bible’s authority—a position he seems to have now abandoned.
Has the LGBT+ Movement Harmed Anyone?
During Pride Month, Gerson used his forum in The Washington Post to write about “how the gay rights movement found such stunning success.” The article’s key thesis is that “in the conflict over gay rights, supporters have asserted a compelling view of human dignity, while opponents have struggled to explain how broadening rights harms others.” To support his claim, Gerson provides three examples.
For his first example, Gerson writes, “Some conservatives claimed that gay marriage would somehow weaken the institution of straight marriage. But the evidence that same-sex marriage increases rates of divorce, child poverty or children living in single-parent homes appears nonexistent.” His criteria reveals that he never truly understood the argument for how heterosexual marriages would be weakened by same-sex marriage.
Consider, for example, the issue of the redefinition of marriage. For almost all of human history, marriage has been considered the comprehensive union of man and woman that unites them for the purposes of procreation, family life, and domestic sharing. By simply redefining the term, it automatically devalued the institution.
If Gerson is looking for a more direct harm, he could look at the rise of nonmonogamous relationships. As I wrote nine years ago, being “monogamish” (i.e., when a couple is emotionally intimate only with each other yet engages in sexual infidelities or group sexual activity) has long been considered acceptable, even normative, within homosexual communities. As our nation embraces the acceptance of same-sex marriage, the idea that fidelity isn’t required within marriage has also been increasingly accepted.
A poll taken in 2021 found that the generation of adults most influenced by LGBT+ culture is adopting this view of fidelity. Four in 10 millennials (41 percent) said they’d be interested in having an open relationship. Among millennials who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or other, 52 percent would be interested in open relationships. Among married couples from every generation, 30 percent of husbands would be interested, while fewer wives (21 percent) feel similarly.
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A Big PCA Correction by a Small Text
Written by David H. Linden |
Friday, November 19, 2021
Great reluctance exists in the PCA to embrace the simple truth that all of God’s people are being made holy in sexual desires, and that believing in this powerful grace is our duty. In this life, we have the covenanted hope of moving holiness in the direction of completion…To exclude such change in the category of sexual feelings is to say that Paul is wrong…“BUT our holiness has not been brought to completion!” I reply, “No one in the PCA says it has been or will be in this life.” We simply say with Paul that it is being completed. Bringing holiness to completion cannot mean that holiness is already complete. So let us stop reducing sanctification concerning sexual attraction to select persons, select sins, and a time later than the present.One little text should settle the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) debate. When applied to Side B homosexuality, 2 Corinthians 7:1 speaks directly and with plainness. Here it is in 25 words:
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
Advocates of the current error esteem abstinence from overt sexual sin, yet they accept its unchanging influence in the heart and soul of celibate homosexuals. Greg Johnson said in a recent SemperRef article, The Gay Threat to the PCA, that for 31 years he has daily turned from homoeroticism to Jesus. In he said further: “I believe in mortifying indwelling sin and in progressive sanctification.” This makes many of us in the PCA ask what effect progressive sanctification has on unchanging indwelling sin.
We also have TE Johnson’s word on a YouTube interview that his homoerotic orientation has “not shifted a millimeter.” [1] He testifies often that he has never fulfilled his same sex desires. Yet this sinful tendency, which he admits is sinful, has lived in his heart undiminished for decades. Greg tells us that God has not changed his same-sex attraction. But did not the Lord say, “… The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6)? In other words, the Lord is active to develop his children into the image of Christ.
I write wondering how such claims can be made by a Christian role model with high office in the church when 2 Corinthians 7:1 speaks so directly of cleansing not only the body but also from defilement in our spirits. But let us begin where the text does.
Seeing we have these promises This is a throwback to 2 Corinthians 6, where God promises to be our God, and declares that we are his people. In new covenant promises we are assured of the cleansing of our hearts, and of a soft heart in the place of the hard heart of an unregenerate person (Ezekiel 36; Jeremiah 31). Further, the Spirit writes his law on our hearts and produces real obedience to it in this life. When Paul said that we have these promises, he spoke of what supports a hefty transformation. We should believe these promises and expect this kind of change in persons who are called to be “ministers of a new covenant.” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Such change we must teach and exemplify.
Beloved Paul expresses his love for the Corinthians in this epistle as vigorously as in any other letter, and here maybe even more so. In that church, and more precisely in that location, sexual sin was rampant. He speaks strongly of it in other writings, but in Corinth he battled it. And still he loved them – a vibrant evidence of his own transformed heart. Calling for their pursuit of holiness in 2 Corinthians 7:1 was just one more way that Paul loved them.
Let us cleanse ourselves Usually, when sin is the topic, we think of the cleansing being done by the Lord. In regeneration he does the washing, as does the Word ever after. Forgiveness is not a lonely gift; cleansing from all unrighteousness always accompanies confession in 1 John 1:9. Cleansing from every kind of sin is a wonderful promise. Our Confession rightly insists that sanctification is “throughout the whole man.” This includes our sexual nature and all our secret sins. We cannot really believe that there is the active work of the Spirit in our hearts if there is not a millimeter of progress, as in the case of Pastor Johnson. The Holy Spirit does better than that. Progressive sanctification has progress, or it is not progressing. Such an unbearable contradiction indicates either the Spirit’s failure – an impossible thing – or that salvation has not begun in that minister. Salvation absent would explain the absence of progress.
Paul calls on us to cleanse ourselves. His exhortation assumes realistic fear of the power of sin, and our need for confession and renouncing every form of our depravity. Sin snares; if we give it an inch, it will take a mile. So we, properly warned and authoritatively instructed, fight every dirty thought, every temptation, every source and opportunity of defilement, as we dutifully cleanse ourselves from it by resorting to the blood of our Savior. He can cleanse; he does; he will; and he will not mock us for our weakness. Through our Lord we find great grace at the throne with that name, because our great high priest has offered for us. We find not forgiveness alone, but grace to help even in our internal battles. This is just gospel, plain and simple. The cleansing is there, and we are to help ourselves to it by repentance, faith, and the means of grace.
Simply fighting our sins is not in itself terribly encouraging. Relishing the promises, works, and kindness of God comforts our hearts. The Lord said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). This is a cheerful word indeed. But we must not forget that bringing holiness forward requires cleansing our defilements, even though such cleansing will take a lifetime, and awaits the Lord’s appearance to complete it. It is an enormous inconsistency to have praise for partial cleansing, while leaving in place the defilement of unlawful sexual feelings, as if offset by good behavior. In spite of this discrepancy, some Side B apologists consider celibate gays to be outstanding models of Christian discipline – models, please note, which report no progress. Under such fiction, a veneer of no-sexual-follow-through has under it a core of corruption. Peter urged souls to be purified by obedience to the truth so that love can proceed earnestly from a pure heart (1 Peter 1:22).
From every defilement I am saddened to read that the Missouri Presbytery has adopted a novel distortion of the sovereignty of God the Spirit. (See here and here.) In contrast, we have these promises and are assured that we may be cleansed, and we may cleanse ourselves, and we must. Such sanctification goes on in every believer every day in some way whether we see it or not. So it is with alarm that we discover that God supposedly has some inscrutable and undisclosed right to leave a child of his to wallow in sexual sin, as he may chose. We are told of a divine choice not to sanctify, a divine right exercised now and then concerning some (or many, or most?) who suffer from same-sex attractions. That is a mockery of genuine sanctification, because it has God breaking covenant. (That presbytery needs to repent.) Our cleansing is supposed to be from every defilement, not just most of them. No minister should broadcast that he has no change in his spiritual growth away from sinful sexuality, and then have his presbytery defend that defilement as the Lord’s secret prerogative in his particular case. We do not believe is some oh so special sin. Let us never overturn 2 Corinthians 7:1 by slogans which present God as unresponsive, such as the Lord’s failure when some seek to “pray the gay away.” Such arguments shock the angels, none of whom ever had a sin forgiven. They must now marvel at the patience of God while some in the PCA neglect cleansing grace and cleansing duty as they churn up justifications for sins not being weakened.
Defilement of body and spirit We encounter an intractable contradiction in the Side B homosexual position. Its supporters drive a wedge into salvation from sin by hailing holiness in external life, while sinful sexual desires sit in the inner man as unchanged as ever. This partitioning of a Christian’s life disparages the wonderful work of the Holy Spirit whose primary strategy is to change the heart. They downgrade God’s promise to produce Christ’s likeness in us. They decline relevant new covenant promises, which are the foundation for cleansing ourselves from every defilement of spirit. Instead they offer a lesser cleansing which overlooks sexual sin in the human spirit. External holiness is not real holiness. Reducing promises by limiting their application is just old fashioned unbelief. God does not know how to break a promise, and we cannot teach him. If the Son sets us free, we do become free indeed (John 8:36).
Satan whispers that cleansing in our spirits is not needed, that sexual desire is unchangeable, and that only in behavior can cleansing be expected. Further that relief from it is so rare, we may give up hope and let it go for this life. After all, it is only an attraction, and God will fix it later, not now. Such teaching in the PCA is disgraceful.
In this context, it is indefensible to describe ministers as faithful who have not found any cleansing from this defilement. When a minister has a lifelong sexual appetite for another male we are not supposed to question whether he is a holy man. This is theological baloney. When no progress within is even claimed, the debate is over, or it should be.
Sin in the heart will emerge; it is not so weak as to have no effect on us. All the sins in us will find expression, but our Savior died to deliver us from our evil “inclinations,” no matter how much a part of us they may be. Meanwhile many men, who tried so hard to be just good Side B gays, succumb and become the husband (or wife) of some male partner. Sexual sin in the pressure cooker of the heart will find a way to get loose. 2Corinthians 7 teaches cleansing must reach into the inner man.
Bringing holiness to completion Our view of the Christian life is so out of whack these days that if you say to some that personal cleansing of ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit is part and parcel of bringing holiness to completion now – they will wonder what you have been drinking. Words like perfectionism, the error of Wesley, and triumphalism will erupt. You will be told that you fail to account for remaining sin, and that your doctrine of sanctification is over-realized. Sentences like “cleanses us from all unrighteousness,” though resisted, will not be objected to when recognized as Scripture. What causes heartburn is the idea that every believer is being strengthened to some degree, and every sin is being weakened to some degree. Arguing for this essential element of reformed doctrine irritates the enablers of homosexuality in the pulpit.
Great reluctance exists in the PCA to embrace the simple truth that all of God’s people are being made holy in sexual desires, and that believing in this powerful grace is our duty. In this life, we have the covenanted hope of moving holiness in the direction of completion. This is just good Westminster and Biblical thinking. To exclude such change in the category of sexual feelings is to say that Paul is wrong. At this point fervent objection may rise, such as: “BUT our holiness has not been brought to completion!” I reply, “No one in the PCA says it has been or will be in this life.” We simply say with Paul that it is being completed. Bringing holiness to completion cannot mean that holiness is already complete. So let us stop reducing sanctification concerning sexual attraction to select persons, select sins, and a time later than the present. The same man who wrote 2 Corinthians 7:1 wrote, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). That is not triumphalism; it is just Paul on the extent of our salvation.
In the fear of God We should fear that a publicly proclaimed testimony of unmitigated sin (as in not “a millimeter” of improvement) contradicts salvation itself. The Lord warns, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8). (Greg, you should pay attention to that verse.) To some he will say one day, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of iniquity.” God will not be mocked by anyone boasting of no change in any sin and getting away with it. We have a deficient fear of God. In our day, our majestic God has become a lightweight in our minds. But the Lord who made heaven and earth says, “… This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2). In the fear of our holy God, let us be about cleansing from all of our defilements. The verse is short but says much. Here again are these 25 words from the Lord: “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
David Linden is a retired Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America; he lives in Delaware.
[1] Rev. Johnson often speaks of a shift to heterosexual desires, and he can claim that in his case that that has not occurred. My point is that the desires he would change from are sinful desires and are current according to his own confession of a homoerotic inclination. It is not a sin when a man is not attracted to a women. It is evil for a man to be sexually attracted to another man. -
The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism
Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Evangelicalism has successfully adapted to new media, with various groups creating huge online and social media followings. It has adapted to the rise and fall of evangelistic strategies such as revivals and street preaching. Christians may indeed be a declining and unpopular moral minority, but that is no reason to assume that evangelicalism’s day is done.American evangelicalism is deeply divided. Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church’s racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going “woke” and having failed their flocks. Some elites are denounced for abandoning historic Christian teachings on sexuality. Others face claims of hypocrisy for supporting the serial adulterer Donald Trump. Old alliances are dissolving. Former Southern Baptist agency head Russell Moore has left his denomination. Political pundit David French has become a fearsome critic of many religious conservatives who would once have been his allies. Baptist professor Owen Strachan left an establishment seminary to take a leadership position in a startup one. Some people are deconstructing their faith and leaving evangelicalism, or even Christianity, behind. Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.
These divisions do not only represent theological differences. They also result from particular strategies of public engagement that developed over the last few decades, as the standing of Christianity has gradually eroded.
Within the story of American secularization, there have been three distinct stages:Positive World (Pre-1994): Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man remains part of being an upstanding citizen. Publicly being a Christian is a status-enhancer. Christian moral norms are the basic moral norms of society and violating them can bring negative consequences.
Neutral World (1994–2014): Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status but is not disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on one’s social status. Christianity is a valid option within a pluralistic public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect.
Negative World (2014–Present): Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.The dating of these transitions is, of necessity, impressionistic. The transition from neutral to negative is dated 2014 to place it just before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which institutionalized Christianity’s new low status. The transition from positive to neutral is less precise, though the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in 1989 was clearly a point of major change. I selected 1994 for two key reasons. It represents the high-water mark of early 1990s populism, with the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives (and, arguably, the peak of evangelical influence within U.S. conservatism). And it was the year Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City, signaling the urban resurgence that would have a significant impact on evangelicalism.
For the most part, evangelicals responded to the positive and neutral worlds with identifiable ministry strategies. In the positive world, these strategies were the culture war and seeker sensitivity. In the neutral world, the strategy was cultural engagement.
The culture war strategy, also known as the “religious right,” is the best-known movement of the positive-world era. The very name of its leading organization, Moral Majority, speaks to a world in which it was at least plausible to claim that Christians still represented the majority of the country. The religious right arose during the so-called New Right movement in the 1970s, in part as a response to the sexual revolution and the moral deterioration of the country.
Up to and through the 1970s, evangelicals and fundamentalists had voted predominantly for the Democratic party. Jimmy Carter, a former Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, was the first evangelical president. He won the Southern Baptist vote, 56 to 43 percent. Newsweek magazine proclaimed 1976, the year of his election, the “Year of the Evangelical.” As late as 1983, sociologist James Davison Hunter found that a plurality of evangelicals continued to identify as Democrats. But under the leadership of people like Jerry Falwell, this group realigned as Republican during the 1980s and became the religious right. Evangelicals remain one of the Republican party’s most loyal voting blocs, with 80 percent supporting Donald Trump in 2016.
The religious right culture warriors took a highly combative stance toward the emerging secular culture. By and large, the people we associate with the religious right today were those far away from the citadels of culture. Many were in backwater locations. They tended to use their own platforms, such as direct mail and paid-for UHF television shows. They were initially funded mostly by donations from the flock, a fact that imparted an attention-grabbing, marketing-driven style. Later, groups such as the Christian Coalition began to raise money from bigger donors, having become more explicitly aligned with the GOP.
Major culture war figures include Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority (Lynchburg, Virginia), Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network (Virginia Beach), James Dobson of Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs), Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition (Atlanta), and televangelists Jimmy Swaggart (Baton Rouge) and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Portsmouth, Virginia).
A second strategy of the positive-world movement was seeker sensitivity, likewise pioneered in the 1970s at suburban megachurches such as Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek (Barrington, IL) and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church (Orange County). This strategy was in a sense a prototype of the neutral-world movement to come. But the very term “seeker sensitive” shows that it was predicated on an underlying friendliness to Christianity; it’s a model that assumes that large numbers of people are actively seeking. Bill Hybels walked door to door in suburban Chicago, surveying the unchurched about why they didn’t attend. By designing a church that appealed to them stylistically, he was able to get large numbers to come through the doors.
Seeker-sensitive churches downplayed or eliminated denominational affiliations, distinctives, and traditions. They adopted informal liturgies and contemporary music. Seeker sensitivity operated in a therapeutic register, sometimes explicitly—the Christian psychologist Henry Cloud has become a familiar speaker at Willow Creek. They were approachable and non-threatening. Today, there are many large suburban megachurches of this general type in the United States, which to some extent represent the evangelical mainstream.
In the neutral world, by contrast, the characteristic evangelical strategy was cultural engagement. The neutral-world cultural engagers were in many ways the opposite of the culture warriors: Rather than fighting against the culture, they were explicitly positive toward it. They did not denounce secular culture, but confidently engaged that culture on its own terms in a pluralistic public square. They believed that Christianity could still be articulated in a compelling way and had something to offer in that environment. In this quest they wanted to be present in the secular elite media and forums, not just on Christian media or their own platforms.
The leading lights of the cultural engagement strategy were much more urban, frequently based in major global cities or college towns. The neutral world emerged concurrently with the resurgence of America’s urban centers under the leadership of people like Giuliani. The flow of college-educated Christians into these urban centers created a different kind of evangelical social base, one shaped by urban cultural sensibilities rather than rural or suburban ones. These evangelicals tended to downplay flashpoint social issues such as abortion or homosexuality. Instead, they emphasized the gospel, often in a therapeutic register, and priorities like helping the poor and select forms of social activism. They were also much less political than the positive-world Christians—though this distinction broke down in 2016, when many in this group vociferously opposed Donald Trump. In essence, the cultural-engagement strategy is an evangelicalism that takes its cues from the secular elite consensus. Sometimes they have attracted secular elites or celebrities to their churches.
The political manifestation of the cultural-engagement approach is seen in politicians like George W. Bush, who touted “compassionate conservatism” and an evangelicalism less threatening to secular society. The vitriol directed at Bush by the left should not obscure the differences in Bush’s own approach. For example, less than a week after 9/11, he made the first-ever presidential visit to a mosque to reassure Muslims that he did not blame them or their religion for that attack. He opposed gay marriage but supported civil unions and pointedly said he would not engage in anti-gay rhetoric. It is important to stress, however, that pastors and other cultural-engagement leaders within the evangelical religious world were typically studiously apolitical. They consciously did not want to be like the religious right.
Most of the urban church world and many parachurch organizations embraced the cultural engagement strategy, and some suburban megachurches have shifted in that direction. Major figures and groups include Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City), Hillsong Church (New York City, Los Angeles, and other global cities), Christianity Today magazine (suburban Chicago), Veritas Forum (Boston), Sen. Ben Sasse (Washington, D.C.), contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura (New York City), and author Andy Crouch (Philadelphia).
These different movements represented different responses to the three worlds. But they also reflected other theological, sociological, and cultural differences among the various camps. The culture warriors had a fundamentalist sensibility, and often came from that tradition. Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer both had fundamentalist backgrounds, for example. The seeker sensitives and cultural engagers had a more evangelical sensibility.
Fundamentalism prioritized doctrinal purity and was frequently separatist and hostile to outsiders or those who would compromise on biblical fidelity. Evangelicalism developed, beginning in the 1940s, as an attempt to create a kinder, gentler fundamentalism that could reach the mainstream. Its priorities have been more missional than doctrinal. If we view it in terms of sensibilities, we will find that this split—between doctrinal or confessional purity and missional focus or revivalism—has manifested itself persistently throughout American religious history.
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An Overlooked Cause of Rome’s Decline
Americans should absolutely continue to work for the (non-coercive) betterment of men, but they should be under no illusions that this work can provide an impregnable bulwark against their society’s decline and collapse. For, as history shows, the collapse of America is a certainty. Much less certain is when and why it will happen.
There’s a general feeling out there that America is in decline.
This feeling has been accompanied by numerous comparisons between modern America and what has become the famous prototype of all societal decline: Ancient Rome.
When we hear about the causes of Rome’s decline, we’re usually treated to a list of human causes: moral vice, a corrupt government bureaucracy, class struggle, oppressive taxation, a debased currency, and costly wars.
Man has a tendency to focus on the human causes of societal decline—some of which are authentic contributors—out of a belief that his own society’s collapse can be delayed by reversing course on similar policies. Thus, today, some assume that if America would experience a great moral awakening, or if she would adopt more equitable tax policies, then perhaps she could hold off the “barbarian hordes” for a few more centuries.
But societies do not decline solely as a result of lax morals and poor political decision-making. There are usually external causes, too, that are beyond the scope of human control and ingenuity.
For instance, a significant and often overlooked cause of Rome’s decline was the epidemic—thought to be smallpox—that afflicted the empire from 165-180 A.D. This epidemic is known as the “Antonine Plague.”
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