• Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Evangelicals meet to discuss sexual orientation in San Diego this week

    This week the 66th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) will be held in San Diego, California. I will be there to participate in a special session on sexual orientation. As I have said elsewhere, I think that we evangelicals have not yet thought our way through to biblical clarity on this issue. Among evangelicals who are otherwise close to one another confessionally, there is still a range of opinions about how to think biblically about sexual orientation. There are some who recognize same-sex orientation as an identity category that is beyond moral scrutiny. There are others who deny that Christians can even make faithful use of the…

  • Christianity

    Albert Mohler comments on KBC decision to oust church

    Yesterday, the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC) voted to sever ties with the historic Louisville congregation Crescent Hill Baptist Church. The KBC moved to disfellowship because the church has recently announced that it no longer believes homosexuality to be a sin. Albert Mohler commented on the move yesterday to a reporter from our local NBC affiliate. See above.

  • Christianity

    Russell Moore explains why couples shouldn’t write their own wedding vows

    Russell Moore explains why he declines to marry couples who write their own wedding vows. To get the full rationale, you should read or listen to all of it. But here’s a snippet of his argument: And when a couple writes his or her own vows, or when a couple together writes their own vows, what’s happening is that couple is suggesting somehow that their vows are unique. The vows are not unique; as a matter of fact, as a friend of mine who is a pastor puts it often, what makes the wedding, any particular wedding, significant is not what makes it different from every other wedding but what…

  • Christianity

    Gushee is no martyr

    Matthew Franck excoriates David Gushee’s coming-out in favor of gay marriage. In particular, Franck criticizes the suggestion that Gushee is some kind of a martyr. He writes: Gushee gives us bad anthropology, shallow theology, and uncharitable ethics, but impeccable social fashion for today’s world. He also—and this is not central to his argument, but appears to be essential to his opinion of himself—makes a repeated comparison of himself and his like-minded Christian friends to the brave leaders of the American civil rights movement a half century ago, and even to the martyred hero of Christian resistance to Nazism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. That is simply appalling, coming from a man who is…

  • Christianity,  Culture,  Entertainment

    My thoughts on “Interstellar”: It asks all the right questions but gives all the wrong answers.

    I saw the movie Interstellar a couple nights ago, and I’m still thinking about it now. It’s a mind-bending meditation on the meaning of life set within an epic intergalactic journey to save humanity. Superficially, it’s a sci-fi flick. But most fundamentally, it’s about metaphysics and theology. Here’s the plot in a nutshell. At some point in the not too distant future, the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable to humans. The food supply is afflicted by blight, and the world becomes a giant dustbowl. America no longer has a military and has ceased to lead the world in innovation and technology. In this dystopian future, the decline of American greatness seals…

  • Christianity

    Gushee will allow no one to challenge him

    David Gushee has written a piece for the Washington Post today explaining his recent shift away from a biblical view on sexuality (which I wrote about here). He also singles-out me and Robert Gagnon as being inappropriately focused on biblical interpretation. He writes: Evangelical Christians, such as Denny Burk and Robert Gagnon, are criticizing me because I’m now “pro-LGBT.” They want to shift the discussion immediately to the debate on same-sex relationships and the proper interpretation of those six or seven most cited Bible passages. I would not presume to speak for Gagnon. I haven’t even read his entire post. For my part, I didn’t really address “the proper interpretation”…

  • Christianity,  Politics

    Rogue pastors endorse candidates, but IRS looks away

    It looks like things might get a little bit dicey. According to a report in Politico, some pastors are daring the government to sue them. Here’s an excerpt: A record number of rogue Christian pastors are endorsing candidates from the pulpit this election cycle, using Sunday sermons to defiantly flout tax rules. Their message to the IRS: Sue me. But the tax agency is doing anything but. Although the IRS was sued itself for not enforcing the law and admitted about 100 churches may be breaking the rules, the pastors and their critics alike say the agency is looking the other way. The agency refuses to say if it is…

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Transgender: When Psychological Identity Trumps Bodily Identity

    Earlier this week, I spoke at the ERLC National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I was asked to address the topic of transgender. An adapted excerpt from my manuscript is below. The full video is below. ————— Now that the gay marriage cause is all but won, sexual revolutionaries are turning their attention to the “T” in LGBT. Both Newsweek and Time have written cover stories in the last two years arguing that the transgender cause is the next phase of the LGBT revolution. There seems to be evidence confirming this in headlines across the country. From the city ordinance in Houston that led to the subpoena of pastors’ sermons to…

  • Christianity,  Culture

    How to wage culture war and win

    Peter Leithart has a great little piece over at First Things about the rapid shift in public opinion on gay marriage. He concludes with a sage word about how Christians should “wage war” in the midst of a majority culture that stands decidedly against what God has revealed about human sexuality. Leithart writes: I will be accused of demonizing opponents, but my argument leads to the opposite conclusion. If “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and rulers in heavenly places,” then flesh-and-blood persons are not our principal adversaries. They are victims—willing victims, perhaps—of demonic deceit. But we should focus on fighting the real enemies,…

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    What David Gushee’s change of heart really means

    Jonathan Merritt reports for Religion News Service that David Gushee no longer believes homosexual, bisexual, or transgender behavior to be sinful. Who is David Gushee? He is an ethicist that has been a part of the evangelical movement for many years—which is why Merritt has splashed his story. Merritt puts forth Gushee’s change of heart as a decision of great consequence for the evangelical movement saying, “It is difficult to overstate the potential impact of Gushee’s defection.” Several thoughts come to mind in response to this report: