Anthony Esolen has a prescient essay in which he demonstrates that homosexuality undermines male friendships. He argues that the removal of the taboo and the openness of homosexual relations in the modern age cast a shadow over male friendships in general. He writes: Imagine a world wherein the taboo has been broken and incest is loudly and defiantly celebrated. Your wife’s unmarried brother puts his hand on your daughter’s shoulder. That gesture, once innocent, must now mean something, or at least suggest something. If the uncle were wise and considerate, he would not make it in the first place. You see a father hugging his teenage daughter as she leaves…
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Church Clarity ought to be about biblical and theological clarity
@DennyBurk Issuing a call to all #NashvilleStatement signers: Y’all want be advocates for #ChurchClarity? Link here: https://t.co/NTc7A2OfR6 — Church Clarity (@churchclarity) October 18, 2017 On Wednesday, the website ChurchClarity.org appeared online. Its stated mission: to pressure churches to make clear on their websites whether or not they affirm homosexual immorality and transgenderism. The leadership team that runs the website is comprised exclusively of those who affirm homosexual immorality and transgenderism. And they seem to be focused on forcing evangelical megachurch pastors to clarify where their churches stand on the issue. I looked through the website and found a number of problems with it. Here are several of them in no…
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Spurgeon on the “reproach” of believer’s baptism
“If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up, and become what I believed to be right… If we could find infant baptism in the word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us,—that we are odd, and do not as other people do. But we have looked well through the Bible, and cannot find it, and do not believe that it is there; nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put it there.”…
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Book Review of “Single Gay Christian”
I just finished reading Gregory Coles’ moving memoir Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity (IVP, 2017). In many ways, there is much to admire about this book. Coles is a great writer and has put together a real page-turner. This is not a boring book. Coles’ honesty and vulnerability come through in just about every page. Coles is telling his own story—warts and all—and he’s gut-wrenchingly honest about his emerging awareness of himself as a same-sex attracted man. Coles’s story is a very human story, and just about anyone (same-sex attracted or not) can resonate with the humor and the pathos that he narrates. By…
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Archbishop of Canterbury on Homosexuality: “I can’t give a straight answer”
GQ published a short interview with Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby last week. In it, Alastair Campbell asks Welby a series of pointed questions about the morality of gay sexual activity. Welby’s response is astonishing. I am not surprised that Welby fails to defend what the Bible teaches about sexuality. I am surprised that he is so honest as to why he won’t give a straight answer. Welby admits that his obfuscation is essentially political. Here’s an excerpt: Alastair Campbell: Is gay sex sinful? Justin Welby: Do you know, we have done religion, we have done politics, why am I surprised we are on to gay sex? Because I feel sorry…
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Getting downwind of ourselves
A wise preacher once said that it is good to get downwind of yourself whenever you can. Sometimes we don’t smell our own B.O. when everyone around us wishes that we would. It’s an odiferous metaphor for the way our lives sometimes unfold. Sometimes our self-perceptions do not match the perceptions that others have of us. And even if other people’s perceptions are wrong, we do well to understand what their perceptions are. Sometimes they are right. I thought about that as I read the Texas Monthly profile of Jen Hatmaker. If anything, the article helps evangelicals to get downwind of themselves—to see where self-perception may not match the perception…
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Should intersex infants be subject to “corrective” surgeries?
The Washington Post has published a long-form piece featuring a number of heart-rending stories about intersex persons. For those unfamiliar with intersex, it is term used to describe a variety of conditions which involve some physical disorder of sex development. The Post article focuses on the debate about “corrective” surgeries for intersex infants. An older protocol pioneered by John Money favors such surgeries. Intersex activists are against them. The thing that comes out so very clearly in the article is the emotional turmoil and uncertainty often suffered by intersex persons—especially those who underwent surgeries as infants that permanently impaired them in some way. Our thinking about the intersex experience is…
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Alastair Roberts: “Hugh Hefner, the Logic of Porn, and the Homosexualization of Sex”
Alastair Roberts has written long form piece about an article that Christianity Today reprinted some years ago. The original article included some countercultural salvos against pornography. Roberts says that the CT version seems to have downplayed those details: The striking thing about the CT version is the way in which it reworks the original article in a way that removes much of the bite of Prof. Schuchardt’s thesis on two fronts: carefully downplaying his masculinization of women and feminization of men claims and also his claims about the homosexual character of the culture of porn. Both claims make some appearance in the CT article, but in a form that are…
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Kenwood Music: “Hope of Every Promise”
Kenwood Music is a ministry of the church where I serve as associate pastor. Under the direction of Matt Damico, they have just released a new album titled Hope of Every Promise. Matt Damico wrote the words and music for most of the songs on the album with one credit going to singer Bethany Breland. This really is an outstanding set of worship songs Matt has put together, and I highly recommend it to you. You can watch and listen to the lyric video for the song “Good to Know the Father” above. But even better than that, you can buy and download the entire album from iTunes, Amazon, or…
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Jimmy Scroggins: “Jesus Is the Multiplier”
Yesterday was unusual for me in Southern Seminary’s chapel. I sat in my seat on the verge of tears for nearly the entire sermon. The preached word is always powerful and transforming in ways that we do not always detect. But sometimes the Lord lands in special power in ways that we can quite clearly detect. That is how Jimmy Scroggins’s message landed on me yesterday. The message is titled “Jesus Is the Multiplier,” and the text is the feeding of the five thousand in Mark 6:30-44. There are four simple points: (1) Start where you are, (2) Use what you have, (3) Do what you can, and (3) Trust…