• Christianity,  News

    Eugene Peterson will always exist

    Eugene Peterson has revealed that he now embraces homosexuality and gay marriage as consistent with the Christian faith. In an interview with Jonathan Merritt, he writes: I wouldn’t have said this 20 years ago, but now I know a lot of people who are gay and lesbian and they seem to have as good a spiritual life as I do. I think that kind of debate about lesbians and gays might be over. People who disapprove of it, they’ll probably just go to another church. So we’re in a transition and I think it’s a transition for the best, for the good. I don’t think it’s something that you can…

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Pastors, don’t be a jerk. Be a shepherd.

    The venting of the proverbial spleen seems to be the order of the day from cable news to social media and sometimes even in interpersonal interactions. We like to hear someone who agrees with our views “tell it like it is,” especially if the telling involves a few zingers against people whose views offend us. We thrive on this kind of outrage because it appeals to our sense of self-righteous indignation. It feels oh so good to be oh so right. And there’s nothing quite as satisfying as dressing down “those people” who don’t agree with us. This spirit is destructive wherever it is found, but it is especially destructive…

  • Christianity,  Culture

    It is not “character assassination” for the church to be the church.

    Last night, Jonathan Merritt penned an article for Religion News Service excoriating Christians who have distanced themselves from Jen Hatmaker. He writes: Hatmaker’s original sin is that she broke ranks with the evangelical powers-that-be on same-sex relationships. In an interview with me last October, Hatmaker stated that if she found out one of her children were gay, she would love that child just the same. If an LGBT friend of Hatmaker’s got married, she said she would attend the wedding. And Hatmaker said she believed LGBT relationships could be holy. In the interview, Hatmaker did not deny a line in the Apostles Creed. She did not promote a historical heresy.…

  • Christianity,  Politics

    Can the mainline be saved? Not in the way Douthat suggests.

    I’m a big fan of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, and I am really grateful for his voice at the old “gray lady.” So it is unusual that I would take issue with one of his columns. But over the weekend I read his column “Save the Mainline,” and I thought this one might be worth a little push-back. I should stipulate, however, that I agree with much of his analysis about the decline of mainline churches and about the ideological rootlessness of modern liberalism. Without some unifying principle, liberalism really has descended into a kind of “illiberal cult of victimologies that burns heretics with vigor.” Douthat is right…

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Why churches might need to excommunicate “affirming” members of the congregation

    Andrew Wilson has a really good article this morning about non-affirming Christians who affirm the Christian bona fides of affirming Christians. Wilson is interacting with Steve Holmes and Alan Jacobs on this point. Both Holmes and Jacobs claim that affirming homosexual relationships is an error, but not one that should call into question the authenticity of someone’s Christian faith. Andrew makes a number of good points in response to this claim, and I would like to add some more here. The question before us is whether gay-affirming sexual ethics are a first order issue or a second order issue. Is it an issue that distinguishes Christian from Christian (like baptism)?…

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Marrying Creed and Conduct

    “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” -2 Timothy 3:16  To say that scripture is “profitable” has nothing to do with money. It simply means that scripture is useful, beneficial, or advantageous toward a certain end. In this case, Paul says that scripture is beneficial for four things: teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. John Stott suggests that these four are divided into two groups: creed and conduct. Paul now goes on to show that the profit of Scripture relates to both creed and conduct (16b, 17). The false teachers divorced them; we must marry them.…

  • Christianity

    Our message to “Christians” advocating gay marriage: “Repent and believe.”

    Fr. Lawrence Farley, an Orthodox priest, says that those “Christians” who revise the church’s teaching on marriage are preaching another Jesus, not the Jesus of the Bible. He writes: Groups that preach another Jesus and another Gospel are rightly regarded by us now as heretically non-Christian, and thus the Orthodox Church does not have an official ecumenical dialogue with Mormons (that I know of) or with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our message to them is simply “Repent and believe”; we do not meet with them for wine and cheese to discuss Christology at conferences or produce scholarly papers at symposia about the thought of Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russell. In the…

  • Christianity

    Is the church failing gay Christians?

    Over the weekend, I listened to a radio broadcast out of the U.K. hosted by Justin Brierley titled “Is the church failing gay Christians?” The program includes voices from all sides of the issue: Steve Chalke, Ed Shaw, Rosaria Butterfield, and Jayne Ozanne (Butterfield’s portion is pre-recorded). If you are familiar with these names, you know that the viewpoints represented here are widely divergent. On the one hand, you have Shaw and Butterfield arguing for the Christian view. On the other hand, you have Chalke and Ozanne arguing for a non-Christian view. You can download it here or listen below. . Two things struck me about this conversation:

  • Christianity,  Theology/Bible

    Michael Kruger’s Christmas Eve take-down of Newsweek’s preposterous cover story attacking the Bible

    Three cheers for Michael Kruger for exposing the outlandish Newsweek cover story attacking the integrity of the Bible. Released just two days before Christmas, the Newsweek article is riddled with basic historical errors and the author’s own prejudice against Christianity. I don’t know how this tendentious rubbish got into Newsweek, but there it is. Thanks to Kruger for taking time on Christmas Eve to expose this farce for what it is. He writes: Of course, this is not the first media article critiquing the Bible that has been short on the facts. However, what is stunning about this particular article is that Kurt Eichenwald begins by scolding evangelical Christians for…