I read the news with horror two days ago after I saw the headline from The New York Times: “Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says.” If you haven’t been following this story, you need to. It is simply horrific. And all this in the wake of the disturbing revelations about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexual abuse of young boys and seminarians. The scope of the problem in the Pennsylvania is staggering. What struck me when I read the Times article, however, was that the words “gay” and “homosexual” appear nowhere in The New York Times’ coverage. I understand why it wasn’t mentioned. This is a kind of third…

I could not have predicted the Revoice conference would become the catalyst for controversy that it has now indeed become. Debate about the celibate gay identity movement has been going on for years. Both in print and online, the controversy was joined years ago about sin, temptation, desire, concupiscence, etc. And yet, it has been a controversy largely ignored by many evangelicals. That’s why I couldn’t have predicted that a conference featuring speakers whose views have been widely known for years would somehow change evangelical indifference about problems within the celibate gay identity movement. Even last Fall when celibate gay identity proponents were some of the most strident critics of…

This is the last post I will write in response to readers who have asked questions about a piece that I co-wrote with Rosaria Butterfield for The Public Discourse titled “Learning to Hate our Sin without Hating Ourselves.” You can read my answers to the first two questions here and here. The third question is about the tenth commandment in Exodus 20:17. Here is the reader’s question in his own words: In your reference to the desire of the 10th commandment (different than the action of the 7th), isn’t the sin desiring something that another person has?  I could desire a piece of cake, and that would be fine, gluttony…

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been getting a number of questions from readers about a piece that I co-wrote with Rosaria Butterfield for The Public Discourse titled “Learning to Hate our Sin without Hating Ourselves.” Rather than trying to answer each reader individually, I am addressing these questions individually in a series of blog posts. I answered the first question yesterday. The second question is about the interpretation of James 1:14-15. Here is the reader’s question in his own words: I had a question about James 1:14-15. You referenced this verse in one of the essays and commented, “If we do not drive a fresh nail daily into this aspect…

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from readers about a piece that I co-wrote with Rosaria Butterfield for The Public Discourse titled “Learning to Hate our Sin without Hating Ourselves.” Rather than trying to answer each reader individually, I am going to try and address these questions individually in a series of blog posts. The first question is this: Is temptation sinful? Some readers wonder how temptation fits into a paradigm in which desire for sin is itself sin. They object that such a framework makes temptation into a sin. Since we know that not all temptation equals sin (e.g., Heb. 4:15), the thesis of our article fails because…

Rosaria Butterfield and I have published an essay dealing with controversy surrounding the Revoice conference and the Spiritual Friendship project. Among other things, we try to show that a great deal of this controversy is due to conflicting theological commitments between Protestants and Catholics. To that end, we write: The current debate about gay Christianity traces back to a centuries-old dispute between Protestants and Catholics about the doctrine of man and the doctrine of sin. Roman Catholics do not regard involuntary desire for sin (i.e., “concupiscence”) to be sinful. Reformed Protestants do. We go on to state that the differences between Protestants and Catholics on these points go back for…

One of the besetting difficulties surrounding discussions of sexuality is terminology. Many of us are simply not on the same page when it comes to the meaning of the terms we use to frame the discussion. Also, many of the terms we use are loaded with baggage from secular theory that does more to confuse than to illuminate. I’ve been thinking recently about one of these terms and how its current usage does indeed confuse rather than clarify. That term is attraction. Many people who write about sexuality tend to use “attraction” and “desire” as synonyms. Thus to say that someone experiences “same-sex attraction” is just another way of saying…