I’ve gotten quite a bit of pushback on a thread I posted on Twitter a couple days ago to resist the abominable observance of “Pride Month.” I was inspired to post the thread in part by Carl Trueman’s excellent column marking the first day of this month-long celebration of sin. (If you haven’t read Trueman’s piece yet, I highly recommend it.) My thread was simply a list of Bible texts dealing with sexual perversion and God’s grace to sinners. You can read the entire thread here, but the push-back I’ve read focuses on the text from Ezekiel 16: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom… they were haughty…
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Gay Is Okay at Baylor after All
On Tuesday, an announcement appeared on Twitter about the formation of a new LGBTQ+ student group at Baylor University: IT’S OFFICIAL!!! PRISM is Baylor University’s first chartered LGBTQ student organization! Thank you to all the alumni, friends, administrators, and supporters who helped get us to this historic day. #care #community #connection – #PRISMatBaylor #Baylor #LGBTQ pic.twitter.com/RVW5kbafv2 — PRISM at Baylor (@PRISMatBaylor) April 20, 2022 This announcement was no surprise. Students had been lobbying for the University to sanction such a group for years but had been rejected time and again by the board of regents. A year ago, the board finally relented and signaled that change was coming. The Texas…
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Advocating and Not Merely Adhering
Last week, Dr. Jason Allen delivered an extraordinary lecture on leadership on the campus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (see video here). In that lecture, he called Southern Baptist leaders to be advocates of their doctrinal commitments rather than mere adherents. He applied that first and foremost to the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, but also to other “clarifying” standards that some SBC institutions use (like the Chicago, Danvers, and Nashville statements). This week, Mike Bird criticized Dr. Allen’s lecture on social media. I think that criticism merits a response. I do not speak for Dr. Allen but only for myself. Having said that, I’m confident that Dr. Allen…
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Engaging CT’s Piece on “Side B Christians”
Christianity Today has published an article by a “Side B Christian” named Bekah Mason. For those unfamiliar with this terminology, so-called “Side A Christians” are those who believe that they can follow Christ while affirming homosexual identity and practice. “Side B Christians” are those who believe that following Christ means affirming gay identity while eschewing gay sexual behavior. Mason’s article is about the plight of “Side B Christians” who feel rejected both by LGBT folks on their left and by “orthodox churches” on their right. Mason argues that “Side B Christians are not a threat but an asset to orthodox churches.” Readers would do well to reckon not only with…
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Crucial Questions with Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Over the weekend, I had an important exchange with Kristin Kobes Du Mez on social media. I won’t rehash the entire back and forth here. Some of it is linked below for your reference if you are interested in following the threads. If you boil it all down, she asked me a question, and I asked her one. She asked me whether I thought her book Jesus and John Wayne contains false teaching (to which I answered “yes”), and I asked her if she believes that homosexuality is sinful (to which she answered that she doesn’t know yet). In this post, I simply want to comment on her answer to…
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Biden’s Promise to Pass “The Equality Act” in His First 100 Days as President
President Biden promised last year to work on passing The Equality Act during the first 100 days of his presidency. If you are not familiar with “The Equality Act,” you need to be. Until the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision, sexual orientation and gender identity were not protected classes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But through a tortured reading of the statute, the Court decided to read those protections into the statute. It is a terrible decision that ignores what the authors of the statute meant when they wrote it. Some have argued that the passage of The Equality Act would be a moot point in light of Bostock. They…
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PCA Report Names Sin While Not Being Named by It
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has been facing a great deal of internal controversy over the last couple years because of the Revoice Conference which was hosted by a PCA church in St. Louis. Last summer, the PCA General Assembly addressed the controversy with two crucial decisions. First, the General Assembly voted to affirm the Nashville Statement and to use the Nashville Statement in discipleship materials produced by the denomination. Second (and I believe more consequentially), the General Assembly voted to appoint a committee to draft a statement of belief on gender and sexuality. Kevin DeYoung and Tim Keller are among those who were tasked with drafting the report.…
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Florist takes her case to the Supreme Court… again
If you aren’t familiar with Barronelle Stutzman’s case, you need to be (watch above). Barronelle is a 74-year old grandmother and florist who was sued by Washington State and by the ACLU after she declined to participate in a gay wedding. She serves gay people in her store. She has even hired gay people to work in her store. But she is a Christian and cannot in good conscience lend her talents to help celebrate a gay wedding. So when a gay man whom she had served for nine years in her store asked her to participate in his gay wedding, she told him that she could not because of…
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Beware of a “Test the Fruit” Hermeneutic
When Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian came out in 2014, I could hardly have imagined how much of an impact it would have among evangelicals. Nevertheless, it has had an impact. Some of the high-profile evangelicals (e.g. Jen Hatmaker) who have come out affirming gay marriage have done so on the basis of arguments found in Vines’ book. Among the ideas from Vines’ book that I still see gaining purchase among evangelicals is a particular hermeneutical oddity that Vines draws from Jesus’ teaching about “trees” and “fruit” in Matthew 7:15-20, where Jesus says, Every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A…
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The de facto “affirming” church
Wesley Hill has waded into the discussion about the proper deployment of the term “orthodoxy” when it comes to current controversies about sexuality. I won’t rehash the whole debate here. But to summarize, James K. A. Smith and Alan Jacobs have recently made the case that those who affirm homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage can nevertheless be “orthodox” Christians. An affirmation of untraditional sexual behavior need not nullify an affirmation of the creeds. Hill basically agrees with them about this. Hill is always thoughtful and reasonable, and his post yesterday is no exception. He also has been a consistent opponent of homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage, and I am very…
