I have expressed my own concerns about reparative therapy on this blog in the past. But Heath Lambert has perhaps the most thoroughgoing critique from an evangelical perspective that I have yet seen. He focuses his attention on the work of Joseph Nicolosi and writes, I am convinced that one of those unbiblical approaches to change is reparative therapy. Reparative therapy (RT) is infamous in the current cultural context. It has received scorn in the media, politics, and psychology. Many people, including Christians, have embraced it because of the promise of change it holds out to homosexual men and women. Because of the controversial nature of the therapy it is…
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The Pope affirms the “Complementarity” of Marriage
Six videos have been released in conjunction with the Vatican’s colloquium on complementarity—an event being held now in Rome. I have not yet seen all six, but I have viewed the first one (see above). It is really well done. In fact, I would say that this is a must-watch video. It bears an international, timeless perspective on the fundamental “complementarity” of marriage—that is, that marriage is fundamentally a heterosexual union. It includes testimonials from N. T. Wright, Peter Kreeft, and many others. I think that this video is expressing what Pope Francis himself declared today in his opening remarks to the colloquium. In a translation provided by the Vatican…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Federal Appeals Court upholds laws banning gay marriage
From Robert Barnes at The Washington Post: A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld same-sex marriage bans in four states Thursday afternoon, creating a split among the nation’s appeals courts that almost surely means the Supreme Court must take up the issue of whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry. The panel ruled 2 to 1 that while gay marriage is almost inevitable, in the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, it should be settled through the democratic process and not the judiciary. The decision overturned rulings in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, and makes it the first appeals court to…
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What does the “Republican wave” mean for social conservatives?
I am not a political scientist nor the son of a political scientist. So feel free to take the following reflections with the appropriate grain of salt and not as the definitive analysis of last night’s election results. Having said that, I think it might be helpful to think about what the “Republican wave” means for social conservatives. I am a social conservative, which for me means that I put a high value on public policies relating to the sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, and religious liberty. These aren’t the only things I care about, but they are on the top shelf for me. What does last night…
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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”…