I didn’t quite get through my response to the first part of Michael Brown’s rejoinder in my previous article, hence the continuation of part 1 in this article. In my original review, I noted that Brown attempts to argue that gay-affirming Christians errantly allow their experience to shape their reading of the Bible and understanding […]
homosexuality
Is gay culture necessarily promiscuous? A response to Michael Brown (Part 1)
A few years ago, I posted a four-part review of Dr. Michael Brown’s book Can You Be Gay and Christian? A couple of weeks ago, on June 11th, Brown responded to my review on his nationally-syndicated radio show The Line of Fire. He later stipulated to me that he intends to offer a fuller response to my review in […]
Should evangelicals be denied the right to adopt?
Today the courts in Alberta reversed a decision that denied an evangelical Christian couple the right to adopt a child based on their views of gender and sexuality. Initially, it all seemed very promising. Government workers had provisionally concluded that the couple would provide a stable and loving home for a child. (Notably, the couple […]
Promiscuous Gay People
Back in the mid 1990s my vision of apologetics involved memorizing lists of factoids on countless issues I deemed relevant to the defense of Christianity. When it came to homosexuality, I memorized some facts about the high rates of promiscuity among gays that I learned from the Bible Answer Man. So if the topic of […]
The “Nashville Statement”: Three Problems with the Preamble
Yesterday the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood issued “The Nashville Statement“. I’m sympathetic with many concerns of The Nashville Statement and I believe many of the statements in the document are well-crafted and fundamentally correct. Unfortunately, I also have significant concerns with the document and they start at the beginning. In this article I’m going […]
In a Heartbeat: Changing Attitudes among Christians Toward Same Sex Attraction
For years now attitudes toward homosexuality have been shifting in society generally and among Christians in particular. According to statistics published by Pew Research in 2015, significant majorities of the following Christian groups now accept the morality of homosexuality: Catholic, mainline Protestant, and Orthodox. In addition, a slight majority of “historically Black Protestants” also accept […]
More than half of American Christians are now gay-affirming
I’ve been speaking a lot recently to various church and parachurch groups on issues pertaining to the LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual) community. To be sure, this isn’t because I’m an expert on such matters: far from it (indeed, very far from it). Rather, it is simply because these issues are among the most […]
What does gay marriage have to do with packing Christmas boxes?
A growing number of Christian parachurch ministries are demanding that their paid employees and volunteers denounce homosexuality and gay marriage. For example, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) recently attracted international attention with its request that all its employees who do not affirm its traditional prohibition on same-sex relationships voluntarily resign from the ministry (Source). It seems […]
Which is a bigger threat to the church: homosexuality or greed?
In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul describes several habituated behaviors that he warns will keep people from God’s kingdom: 9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards […]
Swinburne and Homosexuality: A Response to Jason Thibodeau
Jason Thibodeau offered this comment in response to my article, “Homosexuality, Academic Freedom, and the Swinburne Controversy”: “A good person, seeing that his worldview has committed him to claiming that a group of people are defective just because of the kind of person that they are attracted to, takes this as a reason to question […]
Homosexuality, Academic Freedom, and the Swinburne Controversy
Whoa, have things gotten heated among the Christian philosophers recently. It all started a couple weeks ago when esteemed philosopher Richard Swinburne was invited to give an address to the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers Conference (September 22-24). Swinburne is arguably (or inarguably!) one of the two most influential living Christian philosophers (Alvin Plantinga being […]
A Quick Review of the Gagnon-Kirk Debate on Homosexuality
I have followed the debates over homosexuality and the church for some time now. Frankly, it’s difficult not to given that the furor over homosexuality is turning churches against one another and rending denominations into pieces. While I strive to approach all matters with an air of detached objectivity, I must say that in the formal debates […]
Two Conferences, One Busy Week
As you may have noticed, things have been relatively quiet at The Tentative Apologist for the last few days. There’s a good reason for that. On Wednesday-Thursday I spoke at the National Convention for the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies on the topic of Homosexuality, Trangender and Christianity. On Wednesday night I delivered a plenary address […]
Should we shun Christians that we believe are living an immoral life?
Christians disagree on a range of important ethical issues. Consider, for example, the fact that some Christians accept just war theory and believe that the call to follow Christ can be reconciled with the call to fight and kill state-enemies. Meanwhile other Christians disagree in the strongest terms whilst emphasizing the call to follow Christ […]
