Conservative Protestantism’s continuing antigay agenda “is likely to mean saving fewer souls.” This is a conclusion of American Grace authors Robert D. Putnam of Harvard and David E. Campbell of Notre Dame. Writing in the Los Angeles Times (Oct 17), they confirm a continuing cultural finding: that “intolerance of homosexuality” is proving to be “the single strongest factor” in church alienation on the part of Americans who came of age since 1990. “Just as this generation moved to the left on most social issues – above all, homosexuality – many prominent religious leaders moved to the right, using the issue of same-sex marriage to mobilize [politically]. … Increasingly, young people saw religion as intolerant, hypocritical, judgmental and homophobic.”
Concurrently, Putnam and Campbell find, as do other researchers, that these younger Americans are “actually more uneasy about abortion than their parents.”
Among John Shore’s “Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian” is: “Too fixated on homosexuality”. This award-winning author blogs at The Huffington Post: “Can we Christians stop already with the gay and lesbian fixation? I know many of us understand our stance on the matter to be unassailably Biblical. I know a great many of us are deeply concerned about the ‘homosexual agenda.’ I know. We all know. Maybe Christians could just give that issue a rest for a while. It’s not like gay and lesbian people are going anywhere. They’ll all be there when we get back. Maybe – for just a week, a day, a month – we could concern ourselves with something else, and let them be.”
Religious Right leaders respond to the rising rate of gay teens bullied into suicide.
Southern Baptist Seminary president Al Mohler insists: “The church cannot change its understanding of the sinfulness of homosexual acts” and gay activists are wrong to say Christian objection to homosexuality is homophobic. “Yet,” he adds, “when gay activists accuse conservative Christians of homophobia, they are also right. Much of our response to homosexuality is rooted in ignorance and fear. We speak of homosexuals as a particular class of especially depraved sinners and we lie about how homosexuals experience their own struggle. Far too many evangelical pastors talk about sexual orientation with a crude dismissal or with glib assurances that gay persons simply choose to be gay.”
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly asserts: “The truth is, some self-described Christians do not act in Christ-like ways toward those who are different than they are. Some think God sets certain behaviors aside as ‘super sins’; homosexuality, they believe, is a higher (or lower) order than adultery or covetousness or lying or gossip; put more generally, they save their harshest judgments for the sins they don’t struggle with themselves. That is not biblical Christianity in practice.”
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins faults “the homosexual movement”. It’s his notion that, “Some homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal – yet they have been told by the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment, that they are ‘born gay’ and can never change. This – and not society’s disapproval – may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.”
Mike Adams of American Family Association offers an inexplicable series of fictional tales of Christian teens bullied by gays into killing themselves. And, while calling for our “refrain[ing] from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to sexual immorality,” Chuck Colson warns that, “the gay lobby may well use [gay teen suicides] to try to further its agenda and silence those who oppose them.”
Philosophy professor John Corvino discusses the “that’s terrible, but …” response of Christians to the spate of bullying and gay teen suicides. On his blog he grants that, “reasonable, decent people can disagree on homosexuality and marriage without being bigots.” But he reminds antigay Christians that, “it doesn’t follow that every conversation about homosexuality is an opportunity to showcase your theological position on marriage (as opposed to, say, your theological position on the dignity of all persons).” Corvino writes: “If Christians would spend even half as much time denouncing antigay violence as they do denouncing gay marriage, I might have more sympathy for [those whose] denunciations of violence are usually tepid, and … too often followed by a ‘BUT’. BUT we want to make it clear that we still think gay sex is wrong.” He suggests: “If you really love the ‘sinner’, the best way to show it would be to prioritize the fight against the sins that are killing him.”
“I’d like to see Christian kids, youth group kids, become leaders against bullying.” With this goal in mind, Grove City College psych professor Warren Throckmorton has helped to create a five-page curriculum on the Golden Rule. Noting that we don’t have to agree on the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality, Throckmorton says we can all agree on the Golden Rule, on “mutual respect.” The curriculum focuses on biblical accounts of Jesus’ relating to two social outcasts of his day.
Jim Wallis of Sojourners, responding to the spate of gay teen suicides, says: “The fact that bullies target gay and lesbian people should mean that Christians give extra attention to protecting and standing up for them.” Wallis protested the bullying and stood in solidarity with the bullied on “Spirit Day”, October 20, by wearing a purple ribbon. “I wear purple because I am a follower of Christ”, he said.
“What is a Catholic response to gay suicide?”, asks James Martin of the Jesuit weekly, America. He calls on Catholics to do a better job of reaching young gays and lesbians and recommends the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ document, “Always Our Children”. Martin closes with a prayer he wrote: “Loving God, … Help me remember … that you have a way of making things better, and that you can find a way of love for me, even if I can’t see it right now. Help me remember all these things in the heart you created.”
Openly gay Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns shares his personal story in an effort to prevent more gay teen suicides. On October 12, he addressed both his council colleagues and the bullied teens who may be contemplating suicide. Since then, thousands have viewed his moving remarks on YouTube and several teens say he dissuaded them from killing themselves. The video is at www.joelburns.com.
In October, Georgia megachurch pastor Jim Swilley, 52, told his congregation that the suicides of gay kids prompted his acknowledging his own long struggle with homosexual orientation. Video of the church meeting in which he speaks of that and of his gay celibacy, his two marriages and two divorces and his desire to continue in the ministry, is at the church website: www.churchinthenow.org. Debye Swilley, his wife of 21 years (they’re now divorced) and co-pastor, tells of her whole-hearted support for him and for their continuing to build their ministry together. (He’d told her of his same-sex attractions when they first dated.) During the very moving hour-and-a-quarter meeting of the congregation, a few people walked out but most gave the Swilleys several standing ovations. At one point he asked people to stand if they know they have gay relatives, whether or not these relatives have come out. Many rose from their seats. The meeting concluded with prayer for support for these relatives.
Creflo Dollar, J. Lee Grady, Ken Silva and other antigay religionists were quick to heap scorn and caricature on Swilley. Silva warns that Swilley is part of “a very dark and threatening same-sex storm that is right now approaching hurricane force.” Grady, of Charisma magazine, counters Swilley’s witness by mocking: “ ‘Gay Christian’ advocates insist that if you are gay, then it’s fine to go out and have all the sex you want. … If you have same-sex desires, just go ahead and indulge.” Grady equates homosexual orientation with an “inclination” for shoplifting and claims that “countless people” have found “freedom” from homosexuality. But, he adds: “discipleship requires self-denial”.
Exodus, the “ex-gay” association, has discontinued its sponsoring of the so-called “Day of Truth” counter-event to the gay-supportive “Day of Silence”. Says Exodus president Alan Chambers: “All the recent attention to bullying helped us realize that we need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace while treating their neighbors as they’d like to be treated, whether they agree with them or not. We want to help the church to be respectful of all its neighbors, to help those who want help and to be compassionate toward people who may hold a different worldview from us.”
Tony Campolo calls reparative therapists’ “absent father” theory of homosexuality “the dumbest thing I ever heard.” Citing statistics on boys reared without fathers, the veteran sociologist says that, if the theory were true, “Camden, New Jersey, would be the gay capital of the world.” This popular preacher made his remarks at a fundraiser for a Canadian-based ministry that aims to be a “bridge builder” for various views on homosexuality.
A longtime “reparative” therapist writes of purgatorial pleas for Masses for the dead to hasten them on to heaven. In his new book, Gerard van den Aardweg, claims that burn marks are left behind from the hand touches of these tormented visitors as they beg for prayers and sacrifices to shorten their misery in purgatory.
A Mormon mother has written an antigay book for children. Janice Barrett Graham, wife of the head of an LDS “ex-gay” organization, has written Chased by an Elephant to warn children away from homosexuality. Her son, she says, was lured into “homosexual tendencies” via gay Internet porn and the influence of other young men at Brigham Young University. He’s now married to a woman.
The Latter Day Saints’ official historian was profoundly moved by the stories of the hurt experienced by gay and lesbian Mormons over LDS antigay activism. Listening to their testimonies brought Marlin K. Jensen to tears and an apology: “To the full extent of my capacity, I say that I am sorry. I know that many very good people have been deeply hurt, and I know that the Lord expects better of us.”
Alveda King says gay marriage amounts to “genocide” and will lead to the “extinction” of the human race. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to be extinct,” she said at a National Organization for Marriage rally in Atlanta. She is the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. Referring to her uncle and “his lovely wife”, she made no mention of Coretta Scott King’s outspoken support of gay marriage.
“When all this is over, one thing is for sure – somebody, if not everybody in it, is going to need the blood!” This was TD Jakes’ statement to his Potter’s House congregation in Dallas in the immediate aftermath of accusations of sex abuse made by four young men against prosperity preacher Eddie Long of the Atlanta area’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Long, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the most virulently homophobic black leaders in the religiously based antigay movement”, denies the charges. Since all these young men were at least 16 at the time of the alleged sex acts, the charges do not involve illegalities. Jakes says that, until the situation at New Birth is clarified, “There’s nothing to say [but that], we’re just standing in the corner with a blood bucket. And whoever needs some, can get some.” Jakes went on to say: “I don’t know about you, but before sprinkling some on anybody else, I want to put a little bit of this on myself … the blood, the blood, the blood!” – to which his congregation voiced hearty agreement that they all needed the blood of Jesus.
Alex Haiken, reared in a Jewish home, met Jesus Messiah at 29. Then, before he integrated his Christian faith and his homosexuality, he was a leader in the “ex-gay” movement and appeared on The 700 Club. Eventually he concluded that the “ex-gay” route was “a scripturally unsound mirage, a specious illusion that deceitfully draws people, not to a life-giving oasis but deeper and deeper into a spiritual desert.”
Haiken, a 2010 graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, recently presented a series on messianic prophesy as well as on the integration of Christian discipleship and homosexuality at New York’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Haiken attends the weekly Evangelicals Concerned Bible study in Manhattan.
Philip Yancey will keynote the 2011 Gay Christian Network conference in Denver. This bestselling Christian author is outspoken on the love and grace that must be shown to gay folks, though he’s unconvinced on arguments for revising interpretations of Bible texts purported to address homosexuality. GCN welcomes both “Side A” and “Side B” Christians—the former supporting committed gay partnerships and the latter supporting celibacy for gays. GCN keynoters in the past have included Jay Bakker, Ray Boltz, Tony Campolo and Ralph Blair. The conference will be held January 6-9, 2011. For more information and registration, go to: www.gaychristian.net.
Robert Bratcher, 90, has died. He was the translator of the popular Good News Bible, now called Today’s English Version (TEV) with over 100 million copies published to date. A veteran Southern Baptist biblical scholar, he was living in a retirement community in Chapel Hill when he passed away. A strong proponent of justice for the oppressed, Bratcher was a longtime subscriber to EC’s Review & Record.
Vernon Grounds, 96, has died. The longtime leader of Denver Seminary, Grounds was a psychologist who, as a seminary colleague puts it in his Christianity Today tribute, “lived pastoral care [and during] seven decades of ministry, helped shape contemporary evangelicalism in significant ways … challeng[ing] fortress-minded evangelicals to combine social action with personal conversion.” Grounds corresponded with Ralph Blair from the beginnings of EC and he once wrote: “I appreciate your kind remarks. Even when individuals disagree, they ought to be gracious and humbly recognize their finitude and fallibility as I struggle to do – not always successfully. In eternity, if probably not before, the darkly ambiguous will be made luminously clear.”
Robert N. Wennberg, 75, has died. He taught philosophy at Westmont College for 37 years and was named Westmont teacher of the year a record five times. He was a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Fuller seminaries as well as Bob Jones University, where Ralph Blair knew him in the late ‘50s. Last year, before his battle with pancreatic cancer, he expressed his keen interest in keynoting the 2011 EC conference in the west.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips issued a worldwide injunction halting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on October 12th. The DADT policy was passed during the Clinton Administration. Judge Phillips declared the law unconstitutional after a two-week trial in federal court in California. The pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans had filed the lawsuit in 2004. Log Cabin’s Christian Berle hailed the decision: “No longer will our military be compelled to discharge service members with valuable skills and experience because of an archaic policy mandating irrational discrimination”. But the Obama Administration immediately appealed Phillips’ decision and, on October 22nd the Ninth Circuit Court granted the President a temporary administrative stay.
CNN reports that 31 percent of self-identified gay voters supported Republicans in the 2010 U.S. House midterm contests. Pro-gay GOProud’s director Jimmy LaSalvia comments: “This should be a wake-up call for the out-of-touch so-called leadership of Gay, Inc. in Washington, D.C.” R. Clarke Cooper of the Log Cabin Republicans explained: “Everyone needs a job – doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight.”
Florida’s law against adoption by same-sex couples violates the state constitution according to a unanimous District Court of Appeal ruling overturning a 33-year-old ban. Florida’s Republican Senator-elect Marco Rubio (a Tea Party favorite) embraces both homosexual unions and allowing gays to adopt children.
Lexington, Kentucky has elected an openly gay Democrat, Jim Gray, as mayor. Gray, CEO of his family’s international heavy construction company known for its Golden Rule operation and award-winning safety record, won with very little opposition over his being gay. He’s a trustee of Berea College, a Christian college founded by abolitionists as the first interracial college in the South. Lexington now joins Portland, Oregon and Houston on the list of U.S. cities with gay mayors.
Loyola Marymount University joins two other Jesuit universities in providing an office for support to LGBT students. LMU follows the lead of Georgetown and Gonzaga universities. The new LMU office will promote “equality, visibility and inclusion of LGBT students [and engage in] regular dialogues about the intersection of sexual orientation and gender identity with issues of faith, religion and culture”, according to the Student Affairs senior vice president. Says philosophy chair, Sr. Mary Beth Ingham: “Not only does the University community have something to learn from the LGBT office, staff and students, but there is also an opportunity here for education about the Church’s broader position on sexual morality, and on its pastoral support and outreach to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons in particular.”
An editorial in a leading French gay magazine calls for LGBTs to “support, morally and financially, the Middle Eastern Christian communities who live in daily fear of harassment, attacks, even murder.” In the November 6 issue of Tetu, GayLib president Emmanuel Blanc writes: “Middle Eastern Christians undergo, today as in the past, and without prospect of improvement in the short term, the same professional and social discriminations, the same physical and emotional abuse, that we [LGBTs] suffered in the past and still sometimes suffer today.” Blanc goes on: “These communities, some of which still celebrate Mass in Aramaic (the language of Christ), are as ancient as Christianity and existed well before the arrival of Islam. … The Middle Eastern Christians have become the dramatic symbol of societal intolerance that we, the LGBT community, must fight everywhere in the world, no matter its origin.”
The Jewish Standard apologizes for running a same-sex marriage announcement. The New Jersey weekly printed the announcement in September and a “firestorm” of protest followed. According to the Standard, rabbis “conveyed the deep sensitivities within the traditional/Orthodox community to this issue [and] subsequent discussions with representatives from the community have made us aware that publication of the announcement caused pain and consternation, and we apologize for any pain we may have caused.” There will be no “such announcements in the future.”
AND FINALLY
Calvin College cancelled a New Pornographers concert on campus. The school granted that this acclaimed rock band “makes good, thoughtful music” and doesn’t “endorse pornography. However, the name of the band unfortunately creates some unintended misunderstanding. … Calvin College mistakenly is being associated with pornography [and] explaining the irony has become impossible for Calvin College.”
The band’s frontman, Carl “A.C.” Newman, said it was the first time his group’s been cancelled due to its name. But, he said: “It’s hard to have hard feelings about it. They were very nice about it. It got built into something bigger than it is. … I wouldn’t want to say anything negative about them. It happened innocently.”
Far less charitably, someone else said the band should have cancelled on Calvin so as not to be associated with a school named for a man who consented to burning another man to death at the stake.