Evangelical support of same-sex marriage is on the rise. Among white evangelical Protestants, it rose from 11 percent in 2004 to 29 percent in 2019, according to the Pew survey. It also found that 4 in 10 of those who attend religious services once a week now favor same-sex marriage. Stanley’s public statements that conflict with Scripture, as well as his ties with groups such as Embracing the Journey, are emblematic of a wider problem, Kidd said.

As attendees at a sold-out parenting conference at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., streamed out the doors into the parking lot, twin lines of blue-shirted volunteers cheered and held signs that read, “You are loved,” “You’ve got this,” and “You’re not alone.”
North Point held the conference, called “Unconditional,” at the end of September for “parents, ministry leaders, and counselors who want to love and support the LGBTQ+ community well.” Attendees snapped up every available ticket weeks in advance, even though some cost well over $500. The event’s 14 speakers included Andy Stanley, North Point’s founder and senior pastor, as well as two men, Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, who are married to other men. Lee believes God blesses same-sex marriages, and Nietzel co-founded Renovus, a nonprofit that aims to create “a world where no one has to choose between their faith and sexual orientation.”
The conference was billed as an approach to supporting parents and their gay and transgender children in churches “from the quieter middle space.” But within evangelicalism, that space is one in which ministry leaders either subtly or blatantly assert that homosexuality and transgenderism are compatible with Christianity. It’s also a space that’s growing—fast.
Nearly a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, church leaders face intensifying pressure to adopt current cultural language and messages about sexuality and gender. More pastors are capitulating, nudging evangelicalism down the same road that has gutted mainline Protestantism.
Until the 1960s, more than half of all American adults aligned with one of the seven mainline Protestant denominations, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. It’s a grouping scholars use for denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Methodist Church. Since then, those denominations have been on a downward spiral. Today, they represent only about 10 percent to 13 percent of the population, according to surveys compiled by researcher Ryan Burge.
While other factors have contributed to that decline, congregants and churches have broken ranks in droves as mainline denominations take steps to affirm same-sex marriage and ordain homosexual and transgender clergy. Many who stayed approve the shift away from Biblical orthodoxy. Roughly two-thirds of white mainline Protestants now support same-sex marriage, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
Church historian Thomas Kidd argues that evangelical churches, including nondenominational congregations, have become the new mainline: “They’re the big churches in the South and Midwest now. They’re the culturally respectable churches.”
Between 2010 and 2020, nondenominational churches added 9,000 congregations and 2 million attendees, according to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census. Now, nondenominational churches represent the nation’s third-largest religious group after Catholics and churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Part of the appeal of nondenominational churches is that they carry less institutional baggage. But many emphasize individualism and lack theological accountability, making it easier for church leaders to adopt changing cultural messages, such as those about sexuality and gender.
Kidd, a research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, says evangelical churches that hold to traditional views on marriage and sexuality will face increasing scorn: “What price are they willing to pay to maintain their status?”
PARENTS LIKE GREG AND LYNN MCDONALD, the couple behind the Unconditional Conference, have become a driving force in evangelicalism’s shift. The McDonalds’ own shift began on the darkest day of their parenting experience. They were on their way out the door to a farmers market, but Greg couldn’t escape a nagging thought. He told Lynn he’d be a few minutes and ran down the steps to their 17-year-old son’s bedroom. The computer was on, and Greg pulled up the search history. He found what he’d feared—pornography—and something even more alarming: The images that filled the screen didn’t include women, only men.
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The depths of the ocean are a frequent metaphor for the immensity of God. It makes perfect sense when we realize how big the ocean is and how little of it we actually know. Samuel Francis utilized this imagery in picturing the love of Jesus. It was only the greater depths of Jesus’s love that were able to overwhelm the rivers of depression experienced by the teenaged Francis.

During one of my first chapel services as a student at RTS-Orlando, Dr. John Frame played the organ to accompany our hymn singing. The first hymn we sang was “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.” I don’t know if it was the first time I had heard that hymn, but I remember how the organ absolutely filled the chapel with the deep, somber, sonorous notes. As I sang out the lyrics, the awe and gravity of God’s love swallowed me whole. The melding of instrument, music, and lyric was a wonderful experience of worship.
This song was written by Samuel Trevor Francis (1834-1925) after a serious bout with depression. As his biographers tell the story, one winter night as a teen, Francis was walking across the Hungerford Bridge over the River Thames. He paused and stared down into the depths of the river below. He contemplated plunging into the icy waters and ending everything. But instead, John 3:3 came into his mind, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Francis repented and this reformation of heart prompted him to begin writing poetry and lyrics. One of the songs that came from this was “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.”
Initially, this song had four verses, though since its appearance in the 1911 The Song Companion to the Scriptures, it is usually shortened to three. The text echoes the Apostle Paul’s description of the strength required to “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18). The picture is of a limitless ocean.
Herman Bavinck spoke of God as, “an immeasurable and unbounded ocean of being.”[1] The Puritan John Flavel (1627-1691), who ministered in the seaport of Dartmouth, often contextualized his ministry to the many seafaring men in the city. He wrote, “Another resemblance you have from the sea, the great abyss, that vast congregation of waters, whose depth no line can fathom.” [2]
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O The Deep Deep Love Of Jesus—Indelible Grace
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It is an irony that the very devices that are causing us so much stress—through non-stop social media, doom-scrolling the latest pandemic or war news, the fear of missing out on what is going on right now—have also become pacifiers that make us less likely to actually do something.

(LifeSiteNews)—A Saturday column in the Washington Post posed an unsettling question: “Are smartphones serving as adult pacifiers?” It begins with the story of a UPenn assistant professor observing that while working on her PhD, she often reached for her phone when she was stressed. “Just holding it made me feel good,” Shiri Melumud said. “It gave me a sense of ease or calm. It was similar to children who seek out their pacifiers when they are stressed. For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much as a security blanket or teddy bear does for a child.”
At first glance, the comparison doesn’t seem apt. After all, our smartphones often cause us active stress — social media companies intentionally use anger, fear, division, lust, or loneliness to monetize our attention and drag our eyeballs past more ads to keep their tabs running higher. But Melumud’s comparison went further. Like children, she noted, we often “become frantic” when we misplace our omnipresent smartphones, which serve as digital security blankets. We use them constantly, and for everything. We route our lives through these devices.
But as it turns out, the role of smartphones in our lives may be even larger than we thought. According to the Post: “[S]cientists studying the relationship between people and their smartphones also have come up with additional insights in recent years about how people behave when using them, including discovering that people can draw needed comfort by their mere presence.” In short, we genuinely form “a deep personal connection with our phones” that become, in some senses, extensions of our personalities—and we open up more on our phones than in other spheres of our lives.