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…

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:

Andrew Sullivan calls the news out of the Vatican yesterday a “pastoral revolution.” That point is being vigorously contested right now by the likes of Robbie George, George Weigel and R. R. Reno, who point out that the statement in question has no official status. Some reports say that the report reflects the sentiments of a plurality of bishops participating in the synod. Still, it is significant that a synod of Bishops has even released an interim report affirming the church’s traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality while calling for “courageous pastoral choices” that include valuing gay “sexual orientation.” At least some of these bishops wish to maintain the language…

The headlines coming out of the Vatican yesterday are nothing less than eye-popping. Here’s just a handful: Washington Post: Vatican stuns Catholic world with greater openness toward gays and lesbians USA Today: Catholic bishops show new tolerance toward gays ChristianToday.com: Synod on the Family: Could the Catholic Church be liberalising on divorce, contraception and homosexuality? Huffington Post: Vatican Proposes Dramatic Shift In Attitude Towards Gays, Same Sex Couples New York Times: At the Vatican, a Shift in Tone Toward Gays and Divorce What is going on here? Did the Roman Catholic Church really just nullify its 2,000-year old teaching on the nature of marriage and sexual ethics? If all you…

Well, I suppose I would be better off letting Mark Jones’ essay attacking close communion go by without comment. I am reminded of the Proverb, “Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own” (Proverbs 26:17). Jones’s post wasn’t addressed to me specifically. Still, I do feel like this is as much my quarrel as anyone’s. I am a Baptist pastor who holds to close communion. That is the position of my denomination, and it is the position of my church. I happen to believe that it is the position of scripture as well.

The main reason that I am a Baptist Christian is because that is what my parents raised me to be. The faith that they passed on to me involved (among other things) a conviction that baptism is for believers alone and that the church’s polity is congregational. The Bible honors this kind of inheritance, and I am happy to own it (2 Tim. 3:14). It was only after I entered seminary that I really began to press into other ecclesiological perspectives and to wrestle with their interpretations of scripture. Elder-rule polity and paedobaptist paradigms were particularly challenging to my congregational and credobaptist upbringing. More than anything, I wanted to be…

Wayne Grudem has to be one of the most significant figures in the evangelical movement. He has published more books than I could attempt to count off the top of my head. But the one that he is known best for is his Systematic Theology, a text where innumerable young students have cut their theological teeth. That has certainly been the story on the campus of Southern Seminary and Boyce College where I teach. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of Dr. Grudem on an entire generation of theological students. That is why I am so excited that Dr. Grudem will be in town later this month to…

The integrity of God’s word has always been under assault, from “hath God really said” until now. For this reason, Jonathan Akin highlights two recent instances in which well-known Christians have made statements that cast doubt on that integrity. He writes: First, Andy Stanley tweeted a link to an article where a young lady who has renounced Christianity talks about how much she misses being a Born-Again Christian. Along with the link, Stanley tweeted, “Why we must teach the next generation the FOUNDATION of our faith is an EVENT not a BOOK.”

Matthew Vines appeared on MSNBC last week promoting his book God and the Gay Christian (video above). There is nothing new here in terms of argument, and I still stand by my previous critique of this work. Having said that, it is interesting to see that Vines’ views are received as unassailably obvious. The interviewers give no place to the entire 2,000-year consensus of the Christian Church on sexuality. Instead, Vines’s recent revision is treated as if it were the only plausible perspective to reckon with. The ground is moving beneath our feet.