A Different Kind of Christian Demonstration at Gay Pride

Thank you, Soni! That means a lot. I put a lot of time and effort into Tuesday Tours so it’s great to know that people like you appreciate it.

This comment was originally posted on Metropolitan Mama

So glad you included the demonstration. It makes me heart sing.

This comment was originally posted on Metropolitan Mama

JAKE: Does the relationship between Christians and the gay community need to be improved? Absolutely! That’s why I argued for a different emotional response to gays in my blog post on disgust and its role in the same-sex marriage debate. Where there has been disgust, there should be love. Is the reputation of an abusive relationship between the church and gays exaggerated? Probably. The culture wars are responsible for this exaggeration. While I’m not trying to diminish the pain and alienation that many gays have experienced because of the church, I would like to see empirical proof (studies) of how the church has persecuted the homosexual minority in America. Would we find out, as William Cavanaugh tells us in his new book, that the reality of religious violence is a myth? Let’s face it: gay activists have a stake in the myth of religious violence while they pursue legal equality.

I’ve researched Andrew Marin and The Marin Foundation. His incarnational ministry (being “a little Christ” to gays) is admirable, but his equivocation on the ethical and theological questions seems irresponsible and misleading. Progressive evangelicals (Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Brian McLaren) dodge the straightforward questions – Is homosexuality a sin? Should the church/state support same-sex marriage – because they claim justice requires them to bracket those questions until the rights are wronged. In the meantime, there aren’t guides through the sexual wilderness we’re living in. Instead of clarity, there’s confusion, Instead of healing, there’s a “conversation.” Does a moratorium on the straightforward questions hurt or help the situation?

Marin envisions himself as a “bridge-builder” but as far as I can tell he’s only got the vote of confidence from progressive evangelicals whose position on homosexuality is no different than liberal mainline Protestants. Where are Marin’s endorsements from R. Albert Mohler, James Dobson, and John Piper?

All that said, I do think it’s an unfortunate sign of the times when the straightforward questions mentioned above are used as a litmus test to determine whether the interrogated is “with us” or “against us,” as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes in his essay “Knowing Myself in Christ”:Ours is a time in which it is depressingly easy to make this or that issue a test of Christian orthodoxy in such a way as to make wholly suspect the theology of anyone disagreeing on the issue in question; in other words, the possibility is neglected that Christians beginning from the same premises and convictions may yet come to different conclusions about particular matters without thereby completely voiding the commonness of their starting-point. It is really a matter of having a language in which to disagree rather than speaking two incompatible or mutually exclusive tongues. Of late, attitudes to sexuality have come to be seen as a clear marker of orthodoxy or unorthodoxy in many circles; and it is true that there are plenty of people for whom the casting off of “traditional” or even scriptural norms to do with certain kinds of sexual behavior is part of a general program of emancipation from the constraints of what they conceive to be orthodoxy, part of a package that might include a wide-ranging relativism, pluralism in respect of other faiths, agnosticism about various aspects of doctrine or biblical narrative, and so on. However, it seems to me that the [St. Andrew's Day] Statement, beginning as it does with proposed principles for theological discussion, recognizes that the assumption that revisionism on one question entails wholesale doctrinal or ethical relativism is dangerous for the future of reasoned Christian disagreement of a properly theological character (qtd. from The Way Forward?: Christian Voices on Homosexuality and the Church, edited by Timothy Bradshaw). Here’s the key question: Does The Marin Foundation begin with “the same premises and convictions” as the “Great Tradition” of the Church? If we don’t have a common starting-point, we’re in trouble.

You and I probably agree that a change of method – not message – is needed. The change offered by Marin doesn’t really seem like a change because it conforms to the Christian Left way of doing things. I’m no advocate for the Christian Right way of doing things either. Is there a third way? Following James Davison Hunter’s argument in To Change the World, the third way is what he calls “faithful presence” – faithful to scriptural truth, faithful to love the neighbor, faithful to the mercy and justice of God.

NOTE: I encourage the Mere O audience to read the St. Andrew’s Day Statement (1995) that Williams references. Matt Anderson, a fan of Oliver O’Donovan, may or may not be aware that he signed this statement. Do a Google search on “St. Andrew’s Day Statement” and a PDF is available to read. I would sign the document.

This comment was originally posted on Mere Orthodoxy