Preston Sprinkle hosted a fascinating panel discussion with Pastor Josh Butler, author of forthcoming book titled Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and (Sort of) Explains Everything. Readers may remember that TGC posted an excerpt of the book on their website in early March. Controversy erupted almost immediately, and TGC ended up taking down the excerpt and apologizing for it. You can read my comments on the whole brouhaha here.
Unfortunately, in the immediate aftermath of the controversy, Butler wasn’t given an opportunity (or perhaps didn’t take advantage of an opportunity?) to have a reasonable conversation about his views and his book. Preston has hosted the kind of conversation that would have been helpful when this whole thing originally blew up. I am sympathetic to how difficult it is to be in the eye of a Twitter storm, but I wish someone had seen clearly enough to host this conversation with Josh and critics weeks ago.
To be sure, I don’t agree with the views of everyone in this podcast. Indeed, I have some really significant and profound differences with some of the perspectives expressed in this conversation. Nevertheless, they at least have a substantive discussion about the issues, and I appreciated that much. I also appreciated hearing from Butler himself for the first time since this whole thing started in early March. You can watch the YouTube video or listen to the podcast version. I’m posting both below.
