The mere abstinence from sodomite conduct – while at the same time speaking about, attending conferences focused on, and writing about one’s sodomite lust – is hardly to be considered “above reproach” (cf. 1 Tim 3), to “adorn the profession of the gospel” (cf. BCO 21-5, 24-6), or to be “free from all taint of what is lewd or salacious.” Bare abstinence from all sexual conduct does not meet the minimum standard for Christian behavior. All Christians – whether single or married – are called to chastity, so the claim of celibacy is not enough to show oneself called and qualified for church office.

In the Presbyterian Church in America, it seems we disagree on where “the line” is to be drawn for church officers and what it means to be “above reproach.” Our presbyteries are debating whether to ratify Overture 15 (Item 1) which reads:
Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
I believe the debate centers on the extent to which worldly concepts and ideas are permitted to shape the way potential officers conceive of and describe themselves. We disagree on how closely a man may come to describing himself according to his unnatural desires and still be qualified to serve Christ and His people in ordained office. It seems some see this debate as centered on simply, how worldly can a man be and not be disqualified?
I. The Main Debate: “homosexual”
Some argue there is nothing wrong with an officer who experiences sodomite lust being described by the national media as “gay.” They see nothing necessarily wrong with a man who conceives of himself as a homosexual ministering as an ordained officer in Christ’s Church. One side of the PCA insists a man who confesses to be homosexual is simply acknowledging unwanted same-sex attraction, which is no worse than a man acknowledging an unwanted attraction for a woman not his wife.
But others insist that while we may name our sins, we are not named by our sins. They argue for a man to describe himself according to his sinful lusts disqualifies him from ordained ministry. Their concern is that describing oneself as “gay” or “homosexual” indicates the man has bought into – or at least is unduly influenced by – a Post Modern Worldview in which the self and sexuality are virtually indistinguishable. Carl Trueman’s diagnosis is helpful to explain the concerns of many of those in the 54% of the General Assembly who voted to pass Overture 15:
The idea that sexuality is identity is now basic and intuitive in the West, and this means that all matters pertaining to sex are therefore matters that concern who we are at the deepest level. Sex is identity, sex is politics, sex is culture.1
As Trueman explains, the culture in which we minister views sex as fundamental to identity. Thus, many in the PCA argue a potential officer who describes himself according to a disordered and unnatural sexuality crosses the line of propriety and reveals such a man has succumbed to the disease Trueman has diagnosed in the wider society.
But there is another, less considered, part of Overture 15 (Item 1).
II. An Overlooked Aspect of the Conversation: “celibacy”
One recent author has claimed2 the PCA and other Bible-believing denominations have had same-sex-attracted ministers for generations who have ministered faithfully to the church in a lifestyle of celibacy.3
But the PCA constitution requires more than celibacy for faithful Christians and especially of men called to be officers in Christ’s Church. Celibacy for unmarried Christians is only the beginning of sexual faithfulness.
I am aware in our Post Modern Age that appealing to a dictionary for a definition is a rather risky proposition, but nonetheless: Merriam-Webster defines celibacy as follows:
not engaging in or characterized by sexual intercourse; abstaining from marriage and sex especially because of a religious vow.
But our confessional standards require more than celibacy, but rather chastity:
The duties required in the seventh commandment are, chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior; and the preservation of it in ourselves and others; watchfulness over the eyes and all the senses; temperance, keeping of chaste company, modesty in apparel; marriage by those that have not the gift of continency, conjugal love, and cohabitation; diligent labor in all our callings; shunning all occasions of uncleanness, and resisting temptations thereunto (WLC138).
In our hyper-sexualized society, it might be easy to conflate celibacy and chastity, but they are not strictly synonyms.4 While they do have significant definitional overlap, they are different, yet related concepts. Merriam-Webster on chaste:
implies a refraining from acts or even thoughts or desires that are not virginal or not sanctioned by marriage vows; innocent of unlawful sexual intercourse; pure in thought and act; free from all taint of what is lewd or salacious.
Single Christians and married Christians are alike called to chastity. Chastity includes not simply abstinence from fornication, but also the setting of a guard over our thoughts, desires, and company that they all be chaste.
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1 Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 299.
2 n.b. the author’s use and appropriation of historical sources has recently been called into question by M. D. Perkins and the Presbytery of the Ascension (PCA).
3 Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021). See also this podcast episode for a similar claim.
4 Indeed Merriam-Webster does seem to note the words are becoming conflated. But our Confessional Standards nonetheless recognize a difference between the requirements of chastity versus celibacy.
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She was convinced that suffering was part of the Christian life. “If the master suffered, his disciples could not expect anything better,” she wrote. “I have experienced, and I know, that this world means nothing to me anymore. I live for eternal life. Everything revolves around that. The Lord alone is our hope.”[5]Tsehay was finally freed ten years after her arrest. A while later, she began to write her memoirs with the help of a Norwegian missionary, And Saeveras.

When, on July 28, 1979, the Lutheran pastor Gudina Tumsa was abducted at the end of a church service, the troubles for his wife were far from over.[1] Kidnapped at the same time, Tsehay Tolessa was left outside the city walls without any explanations. She was never told what happened to her husband, and his body was not found until 13 years later.
But Tsehay had little time to mourn. Six months after the abduction, she was arrested, hung upside down, and beaten until her bones broke. sent, with no medical attention, to a prison cell that was so crowded that prisoners had to take turns sleeping. Even Tsehay, with her broken bones, had to stand. There were no beds or mattresses – only cold, dirty floors – and no windows or other means of ventilation.
She had barely recovered when she was tortured again three months later. The pain was worse than before. “’Won’t he come and help you, your little Jesus?’ they taunted.” They only stopped when they believed she was dead. This time, her wounds never healed up completely.
Childhood Sorrow
Editing the writings of her mother, Lensa Gudina proposed that “Born to Suffer” could have been an appropriate title. Born in 1931 to a relatively comfortable family of merchants, the fourth of five children, Tsehay was barely four when Italy declared war on Ethiopia. In 1936, Italian troops invaded her hometown of Nekemte, northwest of Addis Ababa. After taking over her father’s business, the Italians killed him for refusing to transport grenades on his truck.
The invading troops left Ethiopia in 1941, burning everything in their path. Barely surviving, Tsehay’s family was then attacked by a group of slavehunters who kidnapped Tsehay and her brother along with other children, releasing the two only when they couldn’t keep up with the fast march.
Soon, Tsehay’s mother, worn out by constant moving, stress, and lack of food, died of typhus. Some of the children contracted the same disease. Tsehay’s case was so serious that she was taken to the hospital run by a Lutheran mission. After expressing her desire to learn to read and write, she was admitted to the mission’s school, where she stayed for six years and became a Christian.
After graduation, she worked in a home for children whose parents had contracted leprosy – a widespread illness at that time – under the supervision of Pastor Allen Stefansson and his wife Signe. It was there that Tsehay met Gudina Tumsa.
For Better and for Worse
Tsehay was a beautiful woman and had already received plenty of suitors. Yet, Gudina was the only one who captured her heart. Besides their bond of love, they shared a strong faith and the same roots (they were both from the Oromo tribe, a traditionally mistreated people of southwest Ethiopia). They married and were soon graced with the birth of a son, Emmanuel.
Their joy turned to mourning when Emmanuel choked on a piece of corn that couldn’t get dislodged. His parents reached the nearest hospital (which was hours away from their home) too late to save his life.
Gudina and Tsehay had four more children and lived in relative peace for some time. Gudina continued his chosen career as surgeon’s assistant until he received an outward call to gospel ministry – a call he could not ignore. This change of plans caused some hardships for Tsehay, since money was scarce and she was left alone during Gudina’s frequent educational journeys – including three years at Luther’s Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
But the real trials started in 1977, when Gudina, then General Secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY – with the two last words meaning “Jesus’s dwelling place”), stood up against Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Communist regime and its tyrannical attempts to claim absolute power, eliminating any opposition and keeping all churches under state control.
Gudina was first arrested in 1978 and placed on a “black list” for his refusal to work with the regime, then agtain in 1979 and held for three weeks on the charge of preaching against the ideals of the revolution.
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Conservatives wish to conserve traditional institutions, so unless an organization or publication is avowedly conservative it will inevitably drift Leftward.

In April of 2001 I began my monthly Skeptic column at Scientific American, the longest continuously published magazine in the country dating back to 1845. With Stephen Jay Gould as my role model (and subsequent friend), it was my dream to match his 300 consecutive columns that he achieved at Natural History magazine, which would have taken me to April, 2026. Alas, my streak ended in January of 2019 after a run of 214 essays.
Since then, I have received many queries about why my column ended and, more generally, about what has happened over at Scientific American, which historically focused primarily on science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM), but now appears to be turning to social justice issues. There is, for example, the August 12, 2021 article on how “Modern Mathematics Confronts its White Patriarchal Past,” which asserts prima facie that the reason there are so few women and blacks in academic mathematics is because of misogyny and racism. Undoubtedly there are some misogynists and racists in mathematics, as there are in all walks of life, but we know that the number and percentage of such people throughout society has been decreasing for decades (see Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and my own The Moral Arc). As well, this may be another example of base rate neglect: before indicting academic hiring committees as hotbeds of misogyny and racism, which they most assuredly are not (academics are among the most socially liberal people in any profession), we need to know how many women and blacks are applying for such jobs compared to whites. The percentage is lower, and according to a 2019 Women in Mathematics survey “senior faculty composition both reflects the BA and PhD pipeline of prior years, and also influences the gender composition of new graduates.” If “structural” causes are the culprits—for example, if base rate comparisons do not match population percentages because of differential educational opportunities or vocational interests—such variables should also be factored into any scientific analysis of causality, especially in a popular and respected science publication. Again, there is no denying that some bias against some women in some fields exist, but that this is the only explanation on offer is unscientific.
And, unsurprisingly, reverse asymmetries never warrant explanations of reverse biases. To wit, this same study reported that “women earned 57%, 60% and 52% of all Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in the U.S. in 2013-14,” but proposed no reverse biases against men to account for such imbalances. Neither did a 2019 Council of Graduate Schools study that found for the 11th year in a row women earned a majority of doctoral degrees awarded at US universities (41,943 vs. 37,365, or 52.9% vs. 47.1%). Our attention is drawn to the lower percentages of female doctorates in engineering (25.1%), mathematics and computer sciences (26.8%), physical and earth sciences (35.1%), and business (46.7%), followed by discussions of systemic bias, but no such structural issues are on offer for the lower percentages of male doctorates in public administration (26.4%), health and medical sciences (29%), education (31.6%), social and behavioral sciences (39%), arts and humanities (48.1%), and biological sciences (48.6%). When the data is presented in a bar graph rank ordered from highest to lowest percentages for females earning doctorates (below), the claim that the fields in which women earn lower percentages than men can only be explained by misogyny and bias is gainsaid by the top bars where the valance is reversed, unless we are to believe that only in those bottom fields are faculty and administrators still bigoted against women whereas those in the top fields are enlightened.
Then there is the July 5, 2021 Scientific American article that “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy.” Because we are all from Africa and thus black, the author Allison Hopper avers, evolution deniers (AKA creationists) are ipso facto white supremacists. “I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies,” she begins. “The fantasy of a continuous line of white descendants segregates white heritage from Black bodies. In the real world, this mythology translates into lethal effects on people who are Black.” Setting aside what, exactly, Hopper means by “lethal effects”, or that the vogue reference to “Black bodies” seems to reduce African Americans to nothing more than mindless matter, her thesis is verifiably wrong. As I and other historians of science have documented extensively (see, for example, Edward Larson’s Summer for the Gods, Eugenie Scott’s Evolution and Creationism, Ronald Numbers’ The Creationists, Robert Pennock’s Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, and my own Why Darwin Matters), the primary motivation behind creationism is religious (and secondarily political), not racist. Again, no doubt some creationists in the first half of the 20th century were also white supremacists, as were many more people throughout America then compared to today, but the chain of reasoning Hopper employs—that the Genesis story of Cain and Able suggests that “the curse or mark of Cain for killing his brother was a darkening of his descendants’ skin,” ergo the Bible endorses white supremacy—is not an argument made by mainstream creationists then or now. In any case, the hypothesis is gainsaid by the fact that polls consistently show a larger percentage of blacks than whites hold creationist beliefs. Apparently they didn’t get the white supremacist talking points. Finally, since anecdotes are often treated as data these days, let me add that I personally know a great number of creationists and I can attest that they would be horrified at the accusation. They are creationists not because they are white supremacists who wish to perpetuate “violence against Black bodies” but because they believe that God created the universe, life, humans, consciousness, and morality, and that the design inference to a designer makes the most sense to them (however wrong in their reasoning I believe them to be).
The most bizarre example of Scientific American’s woke turn toward social justice is an article published September 23, 2021 titled “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ is Problematic for Describing Programs that Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” Apparently, some social justice activists have embraced the Star Wars-themed acronym JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) as a martial reference to their commitment, and is now employed by some prominent institutions and organizations such as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The JEDI acronym is clearly meant to be uplifting and positive. It isn’t, opine the authors of this piece that is clearly not in the satirical spirit of The Onion or Babylon Bee. Make of this what you will:
Although they’re ostensibly heroes within the Star Wars universe, the Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.). The Jedi are also an exclusionary cult, membership to which is partly predicated on the possession of heightened psychic and physical abilities (or “Force-sensitivity”). Strikingly, Force-wielding talents are narratively explained in Star Wars not merely in spiritual terms but also in ableist and eugenic ones: These supernatural powers are naturalized as biological, hereditary attributes.
One may be forgiven for thinking that anyone who sees in a lightsaber duel clashing penises has perhaps been reading too much Freud…or watching too much three-way porn. Nevertheless, the authors grouse about “Slave Leia’s costume”, Darth Vader’s “ableist trope”, alien “racist stereotypes when depicting nonhuman species,” and too many white men in the galaxy, no matter how far away or long ago they are. Worst of all, the authors propose, is that the Star Wars franchise is owned by a for-profit company. “How ready are we to prioritize the cultural dreamscape of the Jedi over the real-world project of social justice? Investing in the term JEDI positions us to apologize for, or explain away, the stereotypes and politics associated with Star Wars and Disney.”
It’s hard to know what this piece has to do with Scientific American’s commitment to STEM issues, and readers have sent me other such essays and articles whose connection to science seems tenuous at best. Perhaps some insight might be gleaned from the British historian and Sovietologist Robert Conquest, who observed in what became an eponymous law that “any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” The reason, I surmise, is straight out of John Stuart Mill: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” Conservatives wish to conserve traditional institutions, so unless an organization or publication is avowedly conservative it will inevitably drift Leftward, a hint of which I noted creeping into the editorial process for my final columns.
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