The more you look into the “gay but celibate” movement advancing rapidly into once theologically orthodox Christian churches, the more disheartened you become by church leaders who have been slow to counter it, or worse, are embracing it.

The conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a small but influential denomination that separated from liberal mainline Presbyterianism in the early 1970s, is at a tipping point because of Revoice, a ministry that claims to be “observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality” but whose inaugural conference last summer included workshop titles like “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure.” An ecumenical effort that’s primarily Protestant but open to Catholics, Revoice was not organized by the PCA, but Revoice leaders and supporters include pastors and others in the PCA.

While disavowing homoerotic acts, Revoice leaders sound like secular LGBT activists in portraying “gay Christians” as oppressed minorities who deserve the right to define themselves on their own terms, no matter how bizarre or disruptive to the larger Christian community. In defiance of logic, they celebrate “gay” identity and aspects of “gay” culture while promising never to engage in homoerotic sex.

Revoice conference speaker Eve Tushnet, a Catholic, has written approvingly of celibate “gay Christians” joining the festivities at homosexual pride parades. Her Twitter bio says her “hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.” Even Episcopalians might find it tacky to name sin as a hobby, but apparently, it’s to be cheered as harmless fun by evangelicals if they want to appear sensitive to those struggling with homosexual attraction.

While Revoice primarily promotes “gay but celibate,” some involved in Revoice are in what they call “mixed-orientation marriages.” They are married to someone of the opposite sex, but continue to publicly identify as gay and talk openly about their persistent homosexual desires. In the world of Revoice, this is vulnerability worthy of praise. For others, it is a sickening disregard for marital vows and the respect owed one’s spouse.

Revoice held its second annual conference in early June. So far, the PCA has not disciplined PCA leaders and promoters of Revoice for their role in perversely trying to blend traditional Christian teachings with a worldly LGBT mindset. At its annual general assembly June 25-28 in Dallas, the PCA approved the Nashville Statement as a document of biblical fidelity to share as a discipleship tool. But the statement, released by an evangelical coalition in 2017 to bolster orthodoxy on sexual matters, will likely not be binding within PCA church courts. The PCA at its general assembly also approved a study committee to examine its own confessions as they pertain to sexuality. The Chicago Metro Presbytery was among those asking for a study committee.

If the words “study committee” sound familiar, that’s because the mainline denominations set up study committees when they were hit with debilitating brain fogs about their long-held beliefs related to sex, marriage, and family. They went on to approve homosexual “marriage” and help the culture usher in transgender pronouns and drag queens as children’s entertainment. It’s also noteworthy that on their way to giving full approval to homosexuality and homosexual “marriage,” mainline denominations endorsed “gay but celibate,” including among clergy.

The storm in the PCA has become especially fierce because one of its pastors has come out as a celibate “gay Christian.” Greg Johnson hosted the first Revoice conference at his St. Louis church last year but didn’t publicly wear the “gay” label himself until May when he wrote a revealing piece for Christianity Today. At the denomination’s recent general assembly, Johnson took to the floor to deliver a speech, both self-pitying and self-glorifying, in which he denounced Article 7 of the Nashville Statement, which says, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Johnson, who likened people with homosexual desires to paraplegics and infertile women, said Article 7 “hurts” him. While Johnson has at times described homosexual desires as sinful, these comparisons in his speech underscore a profound lack of consistency and clarity in doing so.

Johnson’s speech was applauded by many at the general assembly and praised by others on social media. Even Denny Burk, a Southern Baptist academic critical of Revoice who overall has written commendably on sexuality from an orthodox perspective, wrote that Johnson “spoke powerfully of his own experience, and I was genuinely moved by what he said.” One thing that has slowed the gears in addressing the “gay but celibate” movement is the insistence of leaders in the evangelical world to give credit where it’s not due. Johnson’s speech was disturbing. It’s genuinely moving when someone fighting unwanted homosexual attraction, or any sinful desire, humbly seeks help at his church to walk closer with God. It’s deeply troubling when a pastor pleads at his church body’s annual meeting for recognition of a sinful identity as part of a divisive movement that threatens a denominational split.

To his credit, Burk identifies where Johnson goes wrong in his interpretation of Article 7:

Adopt means to embrace or endorse. The point of the article is simply to say that it is out of bounds to embrace an understanding of oneself or one’s sin that is at odds with God’s design in creation and redemption. This is not a controversial point, or at least it shouldn’t be among Christians.

Johnson’s own presbytery in Missouri investigated Revoice and released a report shortly before the PCA general assembly with words of caution for the “gay but celibate” ministry. But the report had sharper words for critics for supposedly making snap judgments about Revoice leaders and failing to appreciate the “nuance and complexity” of the issues they raise. The Missouri Presbytery, like the Chicago Metro Presbytery, asked for a denominational study committee. As onlookers wait to see if the PCA will take meaningful action to stamp out the contributions of its leaders to the “gay but celibate” movement, activists with Revoice and similar efforts will undoubtedly march on, pushing into more conservative churches of various affiliations to further desensitize believers to “queer” culture with a Christian spin.

Revoice conference speaker Pieter Valk, an Anglican, is the founder of EQUIP, a Nashville advocacy group whose mission is to “equip the church to better love sexual minorities.” EQUIP wants to remove any shame associated with homosexual lusts and is adamant that homosexual orientation is fixed, holding out no hope for Christians who want to be rid of homosexual desires. On the “Beliefs” page of its website, EQUIP says that “while we affirm and teach from a traditional sexual ethic, we respect all people’s right to follow their own paths.” Not exactly a robust statement of Christian orthodoxy. But it’s in keeping with what others in the “gay but celibate” movement sometimes say. They insist they are against homoerotic sex. But unlike Christians who believe such acts are categorically wrong, they make it sound like this belief is something to be subjectively determined based on the intensity of one’s religious sentiments.

EQUIP has little to say about sin and repentance, except in its shaming of the church for alleged past mistreatment of homosexuals. Its website even suggests a prayer for the church to pray in which the church repents of “destructive theology”:

Most merciful God, we, Christians, confess that we have sinned against you and LGBT+ people in our homophobia, with our destructive theology, and by treating LGBT+ people as problems – by the ways we have actively mistreated LGBT+ people, and by doing nothing to make the Church better for LGBT+ people as ourselves. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved LGBT+ people as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent that our sin has led many LGBT+ people to lose their faith or commit suicide. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that LGBT+ people may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen

Even more troubling is the participation of Revoice speakers in LOVEboldly, a Kentucky-based group that reaches out to church staff, including youth pastors, on behalf of both celibate gays and those who see nothing wrong with homoerotic acts. The group promotes “reconciliation and healing” between homosexuals and Christians with traditional beliefs.  The LOVEboldly website explains, “We are deeply persuaded that agreement with one another’s political and theological perspectives on sexuality is not essential for moving towards loving one another boldly.” Imagine if Christian marriage counselors were to partner with an organization that believes adultery and open marriages are acceptable. The sympathy Christians feel for people in difficult marriages would not be seen as justification for linking arms with advocates of views so strikingly at odds with orthodox Christian beliefs.

That the “gay but celibate” movement has made so many inroads with such a morally compromised agenda reflects the degree to which far too many conservative Christians have been emotionally manipulated to see LGBT people as victims who must be treated with special sensitivity, even if that means giving celibate “gay Christians” exemptions to biblical teachings about personal holiness. Well-meaning Christian leaders have wanted to assume that activists have good intentions when they should have been more concerned about protecting their flocks from wolves.

Revoice leaders would have you believe that if it weren’t for them, there would be no one to help Christians with homosexual desires. But that’s far from the truth. Organizations and individuals sympathetic to the challenges posed by homosexual attraction have been around for years to help such Christians. But their message of leaving “gay” identity and culture behind is one many in Revoice want to silence. At the recent Revoice conference, a speaker mocked Rosaria Butterfield, a Christian writer and former lesbian now married to a man. (After getting pushback from some at the conference, the speaker later apologized.) Butterfield is controversial among many Revoice leaders and supporters because she doesn’t believe Christians should embrace a homosexual identity. As Butterfield puts it, “How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate?”

The insidious “gay but celibate” movement has started to drown out voices like Butterfield’s because activists have deftly exploited the fears of Christians who don’t want to be called haters. The message of Revoice and similar efforts is tailor-made for people-pleasers who want to be Christian and LGBT-friendly in a way that might lessen cultural pressure to go along with LGBT pride and delay or make unnecessary the taking of a costly stand in defense of orthodox convictions. But going along with the drift in the church on this critical issue is cowardly and unloving. True love rejoices in the truth and the time to stand for truth is now.

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

In stunning semi-secretive decisions motivated by fear of religious persecution, the boards of two major evangelical organizations, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), have voted to pass motions that represent an unacceptable compromise with homosexuals and the science-denying “trans” cult. These two influential organizations passed motions that would ask the government to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in federal anti-discrimination law in exchange for religious liberty protections that many people know would merely be stepping stones yanked out from under people of faith eventually.

According to World Magazine, in October, the NAE board unanimously passed its motion, titled “Fairness for All” (first discussed in Christianity Today in 2016), which asks “Congress to consider federal legislation consistent with three principles,” the problematic one which says this:

No one should face violence, harassment, or unjust discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Of course, no one should face violence on the basis of any condition. So far, so good. But the rest of this principle is a theological, philosophical, political, and rhetorical mess. To illuminate the mess, here are a few questions for the Christian leaders who passed motions based on it:

1.) While this compromise may—for a short time—protect Christian colleges and universities, how might the religious liberty of ordinary Christians in, for example, wedding-related businesses, be affected if under federal law, homosexuality becomes a protected class?

2.) How are the terms “harassment” and “unjust discrimination” defined now? Could they be redefined or “expanded” later? Would a refusal to provide goods or services for the unholy occasion of homoerotic faux-marriage constitute unjust discrimination? Would opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms constitute unjust discrimination? Would refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to those who masquerade as the opposite sex constitute harassment?

3.) Would those Christian leaders who voted for these motions have done so if, instead of the euphemisms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” in which are embedded false assumptions, the motions had used plain-speaking or even biblical terms? Let’s give the Fairness for All statement above a less-sanitized whirl:

No one should face unjust discrimination on the basis of their volitional choice to exchange natural sexual relations with persons of the opposite sex for unnatural relations with persons of their same sex, or for choosing to appear as the sex they are not.

How would that more accurately phrased statement have sat with the Christian leaders?

4.) Unlike other protected classes that are constituted by objective conditions that are in all cases immutable and carry no behavioral implications (e.g., sex and nation of origin), homosexuality, bisexuality, and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective and often fluid feelings and volitional acts with moral implications. Therefore, what other conditions similarly constituted will eventually be deemed protected classes? Why should homosexuality be included and polyamory or Genetic Sexual Attraction (aka incest) excluded?

To fully grasp the magnitude of the potential effect of these motions requires knowledge of the size of the organizations that passed them. The NAE “is an association of evangelical denominations, organizations, schools, churches and individuals. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from nearly 40 different denominations and serves a constituency of millions.”

The CCCU “is a higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions around the world,” including Bethel University, Calvin College, Colorado Christian University, Dallas Theological University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Houghton College, Houston Baptist University, Judson University, Messiah College, Moody Bible Institute, Regent University, Taylor University, The King’s College, Trinity International University, and Wheaton College.

To be clear, we must not assume any of these colleges and universities supported the motion passed by the CCCU board. For example, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, president of New Saint Andrews College, which is a CCCU member, explained that “I’ve registered my opposition to this move, as have several other CCCU presidents.” 

While the CCCU and NAE boards capitulate to the Left’s relentless demand to have disordered sexual desires and deviant sexual behavior deemed conditions worthy of special protections, 75 prominent religious leaders oppose capitulation to such demands.

A document titled “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” signed by religious leaders including Ryan T. Anderson, Rosaria Butterfield, Charles Chaput, D.A. Carson, Jim Daly, Kevin DeYoung, Tony Evans, Anthony Esolen, Robert A. J. Gagnon, Robert P. George, Timothy George, Franklin Graham, Harry R. Jackson Jr., James Kushiner, John MacArthur, Eric Metaxas, Al Mohler, and John Stonestreet explains why SOGI laws are dangerous:

In recent years, there have been efforts to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications in the law—either legislatively or through executive action. These unnecessary proposals, often referred to as SOGI policies, threaten basic freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association; violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to significant legal and financial liability for practicing their beliefs in the public square. In recent years, we have seen in particular how these laws are used by the government in an attempt to compel citizens to sacrifice their deepest convictions on marriage and what it means to be male and female….

SOGI laws empower the government to use the force of law to silence or punish Americans who seek to exercise their God-given liberty to peacefully live and work consistent with their convictions. They also create special preference in law for categories based on morally significant choices that profoundly affect human relations and treat reasonable religious and philosophical beliefs as discriminatory. We therefore believe that proposed SOGI laws, including those narrowly crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms, and any ostensible protections for religious liberty appended to such laws are inherently inadequate and unstable.

SOGI laws in all these forms, at the federal, state, and local levels, should be rejected. We join together in signing this letter because of the serious threat that SOGI laws pose to fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every person.

In a recent interview, John Stonestreet used the recent firing of a Virginia high school French teacher for his refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to a “trans”-identifying student to illustrate the potential danger SOGI laws pose to Christians in the work place:

Every version of the Fairness for All proposals that I have seen would not help Peter Vlaming at all. In fact, it would put us on the wrong side of that…. Here you have a government employee working at a public school who serves the public interest that has already been defined by Fairness for All and SOGI legislation as including “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as a category of human being, and that basically sets Peter Vlaming up for failure.

It’s astonishing that time and again the experts—people like Ryan Anderson, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, Robert George, and Doug Wilson—who have been writing presciently for years on cultural/political issues related to disordered sexuality are ignored by those who spend far less time thinking and writing about them.

Shirley Mullen who is president of Houghton College and a member of the NAE Board, wrote that “the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections to be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community.” What are the “human rights” of which members of the “LGBT” community are currently deprived? Near as I can tell, they are deprived of no human or civil rights. (Anticipating an objection, I will add that no man has a human or civil right to access women’s private spaces—not even if he pretends to be a woman.)

On his American Conservative blog, Rod Dreher quotes a pseudonymous friend called “Smith” who has been working behind the scenes for years on the Fairness for All compromise with “LGBT” activists. Smith argues that this compromise is necessary because conservatives—who have lost the cultural battle on sexuality—cannot count on either statutory or judicial protections of their free exercise of religion. But Smith revealed something more troubling:

[T]here really is a question of justice within a pluralistic society that conservative Christians have to face. We may sincerely believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but at what point does the common good require that we agree that gay people have a right to be wrong?

First, since when do conservatives deny that “gay people have a right to be wrong”?

Second, since Smith isn’t really arguing that the common good demands that conservatives agree that gay people have a right to be wrong, what specifically is it he believes the common good demands of conservatives? In a consistently dismissive tone, Smith suggests that conservatives demonstrate an absolute rigidity but fails to identify the specific ways conservatives are being intolerantly inflexible and in so doing harming the public good. He seems to be suggesting that standing firm against SOGI laws—which put at grave risk religious liberty and constitute complicity with both moral and scientific error—is the issue that threatens the common good and on which we must capitulate compromise.

Smith continues:

If pluralism is about accommodating deep difference—if conservative Evangelicals are going to ask for accommodation of difference, then they can’t turn around and say in every single case when they are asked to accommodate sexual minorities, ‘No, we will fight to the death.’ That’s not pluralism if all you’re doing is protecting your own rights and saying error has no rights when it comes to you. Pluralism has to be seen by others who disagree with you as fair.

Yes, pluralism is about accommodating differences, but there are differences on which accommodation is impermissible for Christians. I doubt Smith would have made such an ambiguous claim about Christians who rigidly refused to compromise on the nature and intrinsic worth of enslaved blacks or who will not accommodate Planned Parenthood’s views of humans in the womb. The nature, meaning, and value of biological sex, marriage, and children’s rights are other issues on which it is impermissible for Christians to compromise, even if that inflexibility results in persecution.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SOGI_Compromise1.mp3

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, thanks to amazingly generous Illinois Family Institute partners, we have an end-of-year matching challenge of $100,000 to help support our ongoing work to educate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your tax-deductible contribution will help us stand strong in 2019!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477

Before the sexual revolution took root in America’s cultural institutions, there existed pervasive agreement—both explicit and tacit—about sexuality, marriage, children’s rights, and religious liberty. Sexual immorality of all forms existed but was appropriately stigmatized. Fornication; consensual adult incest; homosexuality (including pederasty and pedophilia); pornography; bestiality; stripping (i.e., exhibitionism) and its corollary, voyeurism; sadomasochism (now referred to positively as “kink”), and anything else the darkened minds of fallen humans can think of could be found but in the closet, on the fringes, and after dark. Now such forms of immorality are not merely out of the closet, in city and suburban centers, and in broad daylight but in our schools and even houses of worship.

We cannot trust our civic leaders, educators, and storytellers (novelists, essayists, playwrights, journalists etc.) to speak truth. And increasingly, pastors and priests who claim to be Christ-followers are suspect. That’s why it’s critically important that theologically orthodox Christian leaders speak with utter clarity on matters related to sexuality. Unfortunately, too often their voices are ambiguous, and that ambiguity exacerbates both confusion and division. The recent and controversial Revoice Conference (already scheduled for 2019), hosted by the theologically orthodox Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), included several speakers who have used language or expressed ideas that unnecessarily confuse and divide.

All the Revoice speakers and writers mentioned in this article have written valuable, encouraging, wise words from which both Christians who experience unchosen, unwanted homosexual attraction and the church at large can benefit. But it is their roles as cultural leaders in this fraught area that makes the need for clarity critical. In many instances that necessary clarity has been  missing.

For example, celibate, theologically orthodox Catholic lesbian Eve Tushnet, who is a central figure in the “spiritual friendship” movement and keynote speaker at the Revoice Conference, was asked what “accepting sexuality” means in the title of her book Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. Her response was unhelpful at minimum:

It means not separating out your sexuality and your sexual orientation by saying they need to be repressed or destroyed in some way.

Since she is by her own admission sexually oriented toward women, meaning she experiences desires to engage in sinful activity, how does she reconcile her answer with Colossians 3:5 which says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry”?

Another Revoice speaker, Nate Collins, who is a former instructor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a same-sex attracted man who is married to a woman, said this in an interview on the conference published in Christianity Today:

Even the phrase “sexual orientation” can be unhelpful because it puts sexuality at the center of orientation. We are sexual beings; God created us to have sexuality; we will inevitably at some point experience our orientation as sexual. But that doesn’t mean that the orientation itself is a sexual orientation. Now what it is exactly I don’t know—that is something that we Christians have a vested interest in thinking about theologically….

I think that a straight man’s desire, the way he experiences desire for intimate friendship with other men, that is obviously real and is a very valid way of experiencing the God-given need for relationships not to be alone.

It’s important to distinguish, though, between the way that a straight person would experience that desire and the way that a non-straight person would experience that desire. Because when gay people experience a desire for intimate relationships, they do it in the context of their orientation. Which, again, I want to say is not intrinsically sexual.

So we’re trying to understand what is at the center of orientation, which I admit requires more thinking. But at this point, what I personally think [is] that at the center of orientation is the perception and admiration of personal beauty. God created us to recognize beauty in other image bearers. When we notice that beauty and when there’s a pattern for that beauty then I think that raises the level of orientation.

Say what? For a moment I thought this was Professor Irwin Corey. I can’t make heads or tails out of this, except for agreeing that it requires more thinking—a lot more thinking.

Perhaps after he thinks more about this issue, he can explain how a non-straight person like himself can know with certainty that the way a straight person experiences the non-sexual desire for friendship is different from the way a non-straight person experiences a non-sexual desire for friendship. Perhaps the non-sexual desires of “straights” and “non-straights” for friendship are really not so different, and perhaps he is attributing too much to homosexual orientation.

Joel Belz, founder of World magazine, recently wrote that “offering, or even allowing, positions of church leadership to people who embrace and celebrate sexual disorders, all on the promise they will be chaste, is foolhardy [emphasis added].” In response, Wesley Hill, Revoice speaker, author of Washed and Waiting, “spiritual friendship” blogger, and associate professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, tweeted this:

Every time I read something like this, I wonder how the writer imagines someone like me living my day to day life. I would genuinely love to hear them explain how the vision is other than, ‘Make your peace with the closet.’

It’s absurd to contend that prohibiting men who, while committing to celibacy, also “embrace and celebrate” homosexuality constitutes shoving them into the proverbial closet. One could argue that theologically orthodox churches should not only prohibit such men from leading but also exercise discipline over members who “embrace and celebrate” homosexuality. Again, Hill’s tweet is at best unhelpful.

Hill wrote a more helpful summary of Revoice for First Things, but questions still remain because of statements like this:

Appearance-wise, many of the attendees wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Boystown or Brighton. Rainbow bracelets and body piercings abounded (one friend of mine sported rainbow-colored shoelaces to match the rainbow Ichthus pendant on his lapel)…. Might there be some divine design, some strange providence, in my homosexuality? Might my sexual orientation be something God does not want to remove, knowing that its challenge keeps pulling me back towards Him in prayer? Might it even be something through which more empathy and compassion for fellow sufferers are birthed?

Do the accouterments of the “gay pride” movement like rainbow bracelets and shoelaces signify a biblical attitude toward sin or do they signify a troubling unbiblical, worldly attitude? Does Hill mean that God works all things together for good—including our sinful desires—for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, or does Hill mean that God’s divine design could include his intentional creation of desires for acts that he detests and which violate his own design for sex? It is this kind of confusion that plagues much of the writing that emerges from the “spiritual friendship”/“celibate gay Christian” movement.

The importance of language

And then there’s the issue of terminology.

In the face of much criticism of Revoice organizers’ and speakers’ word choices, Greg Johnson, senior pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church that hosted Revoice, offered a weak justification for their use of terms like “gay,” “gay Christian,” “LGBT+,” “cisgender,” and “sexual minorities,” implausibly citing 2 Timothy 2:14 as a justification for acquiescing to the controversial and confusing terms that Revoice organizers chose. It is noteworthy that with every term Johnson mentioned as eliciting debate among Revoice organizers, they decided to go with the “progressive” choice. One wonders what biblical warrant they found for always choosing language denuded of implications of sin when dealing with serious sin. The issue of language is critical because language is one of the most powerful and effective tools “progressives” use to transmogrify culture into anti-culture.

Johnson said that “Since the Bible says not to quarrel about words and since we see that there are no perfect options, we’ve followed” a “recommendation to respect freedom in terminology.” Is Johnson applying 2 Tim. 2:14 correctly? In 2 Tim. 2: 14, Paul writes to Timothy, “Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.” What is the context? Is Paul saying that words never matter? Paul is writing to Timothy to urge him to handle correctly the Word, which is to say Scripture. Paul instructs Timothy to avoid “irreverent babble” (ESV), “godless chatter” (NIV), or “profane and vain babblings” (KJV). Paul in no way suggests that words don’t matter. Words matter enormously, which is why “progressives” continually invent new words, redefine existing words, and insist that everyone use them in their unholy quest to advance cultural affirmation of sexual deviance. While the left continually invents and redefines language, insisting that everyone use their terms, conservatives—including Christian conservatives—continually capitulate to leftist language as if it’s trivial. If it were trivial, the left wouldn’t be so insistent that everyone use it. If Pastor Johnson didn’t learn about the critical importance of words from God’s Word, didn’t he learn about it from Orwell?

New Testament scholar Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon corrects Johnson’s misapplication of 2 Tim. 2:14:

[T]he interpretation of “not fighting over words” offered by the pastor who hosted the Revoice Conference is a significant misapplication of the text. He was using the passage to justify the appropriation of unorthodox secular terminology (“gay,” “sexual minorities”), terminology commonly used to affirm sexual immorality, in order to silence orthodox complaints about the use of such terms in the church for faithful believers. Paul in context meant by “not fighting over words” the complete avoidance of heretical spins on words found in the OT Scriptures. Paul was arguing against unorthodox interpretations of words, not telling his churches to give a pass to Christians using sexually tainted terminology that carries unorthodox baggage. It is those bringing into the church terms like “gay” and “sexual minorities,” terms that imply affirmation of the homosexual and transgender life, who are “fighting over words” by introducing language that is in tension with orthodox teaching about sexual ethics.

Rob Rienow, pastor at Gospel Fellowship Church in Wheaton, Illinois, offers this clarification of Paul’s instruction to Timothy:

God reveals Himself to us in words. Words mean things. That is why when we study the Bible, we always want to know what the words that God chose to give us mean. Verse 15 gives us a clue into verse 14: God calls his people to “rightly handle the word of truth.” So, instead of “words are not important,” we are told to pay attention to the words, dig deep into them, understand their correct meanings, and teach them to others. Verse 16 further illuminates and clarifies the instruction from verse 14: “avoid irreverent babble,” that is, silly words, irreverent words, careless words because those kinds of words can actually lead people into “more ungodliness.” So rather than communicating that “words don’t matter, don’t worry about them,” Paul doubles down on the importance of using true words and using words that matter.

Another Gospel Fellowship Church pastor, Michael Johnson (unrelated to Greg Johnson), elaborates further:

The kind of “word-battle” that Paul has in mind is a useless quarreling over words that is more about displaying the intelligence of the debater than bringing edification to others. We must avoid that kind of argumentation over words. It does no good. It’s been seen over time that words drive thinking and culture. So, for example, I would never use the made-up pro-noun “ze” or the generic pronoun “they” to refer to an individual that is claiming a false identity like “gender-non-binary.” Doing so cedes too much intellectual ground and gives implicit credibility to a false idea. It is by definition ceding Scriptural truth because it is contrary to God’s Word. This we cannot do. The point is, standing ground in these cases is not a “quarreling about words” that “does no good” and “only ruins the hearers”; on the contrary, it is an example of “rightly handling the word of truth.” To stand and defend this truth is not only right, but it is what edifies and keeps people from falling into ruin. So, we have an obligation to fight for some words because that is what maintains the truth, brings clarity, and builds people up in the faith. If we keep reading, Paul has in mind “foolish, ignorant controversies” that “breed quarrels.” Defining our terms in the great debate of our time—that is, human sexuality—is most definitely not a useless argument or a waste of time.  In fact, not only are we to “rightly handle the word of truth” but we must also teach and correct our opponents with gentleness, praying God will grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

The terms “sexual minorities,” “gay,” and “gay Christian”

Pastor, author, and theology professor Kevin DeYoung points out the problematic nature of one of the terms Revoice organizers chose, “sexual minorities”:

[I]n our culture, “minority” does not simply mean “less than the majority.” Minorities are considered an aggrieved group in our society. Because of the heroism of many in the civil-rights movement, and because most Americans recognize that non-whites have been mistreated in our nation’s past, any new identity that can achieve minority status is automatically afforded moral weight and authority. The term “sexual minority” is prescriptive, not merely descriptive.

Johnson defended the use of “sexual minorities” on the basis of its inclusion of “all those whose experience of sexuality is significantly different from the norm.” Would the Revoice organizers include those whose experience of sexuality includes multiple partners, close relatives, animals, children, pornography, pain, or exhibitionism?

Revoice’s commitment to “sexual minority” inclusion was promoted through one of the breakout sessions titled “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure” that aimed to answer questions about the value of “queer” culture:

For the sexual minority seeking to submit his or her life fully to Christ and to the historic Christian sexual ethic, queer culture presents a bit of a dilemma; rather than combing through and analyzing to find which parts are to be rejected, to be redeemed, or to be received with joy, Christians have often discarded the virtues of queer culture along with the vices, which leaves culturally connected Christian sexual minorities torn between two cultures, two histories, and two communities. So questions that have until now been largely unanswered remain: what does queer culture (and specifically, queer literature and theory) have to offer us who follow Christ? What queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time.

It seems Revoice organizers have it backwards. Whatever good is found in “queer culture” has nothing whatsoever to do with queerness. “Queer treasure,” “queer honor,” and “queer glories” are oxymorons. That is not to say there is no creativity, beauty, or honor to be found in the midst of grievous sin. But if it’s there, it’s there despite sin. And it’s polluted, marred, and scarred by sin. While treasure, honor, and glory may be birthed in the midst of homosexuality, no treasure, nothing honorable, nothing glorious is birthed by homosexuality or any other form of disordered sexuality.

Johnson also defended the use of “gay” claiming that “To most of us Reformed evangelicals, the term ‘same sex attracted’ seems safer [than ‘gay’], but it is terminology not used and not understood by our surrounding culture.” Really? The term “same-sex attracted” is neither used nor understood by our surrounding culture? Even if it were true that it’s not used in our culture, it’s self-explanatory. An average middle-schooler could understand it on first hearing.

Former English professor, writer, and pastor’s wife, Rosaria Butterfield, who, after accepting Christ, left a long-term lesbian relationship, warns about the dangers of adopting the term “gay Christian” and the assumptions embedded in it:

How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate? Hating our own sin is a key component to doing battle with it. At the same time, we need to separate ourselves from the sin we hate.  This can be a very challenging issue for a Christian who experiences SSA, an issue that becomes exceedingly more challenging if one assumes the social identity of “gay Christian.”

Is there any other besetting sin that we continue to attach to ourselves after we become one with Christ?

Revoice worship leader, Greg Coles, who identifies as a “gay Christian,” writes in his memoir this strange description of his sexual orientation—strange, that is, for a theologically orthodox Christian:

I began to realize that my sexual orientation was an inextricable part of the bigger story God was telling over my life. My interests, my passions, my abilities, my temperament, my calling—there was no way to sever those things completely from the gay desires and mannerisms and attitudes that had developed alongside them….

Is it too dangerous, too unorthodox, to believe that I am uniquely designed to reflect the glory of God? That my orientation, before the fall, was meant to be a gift in appreciating the beauty of my own sex as I celebrated the friendship of the opposite sex?… What if God dreamed it for me, wove it into the fabric of my being as he knit be [sic] together and sang life into me?

Professor of Biblical Studies Denny Burke, wonders how it’s possible for a theologically orthodox Christian to hold such a view as Coles holds:

I do not know how to reconcile this perspective with scripture or with the natural law. Same-sex orientation is not simply a “creational variance”….  Scripture teaches explicitly that homosexual desire and behavior are “against nature”—meaning against God’s original creation design.

In his book Is God anti-gay?, British pastor Sam Allberry, who experiences unwanted, unchosen same-sex attraction, illuminates the theological problems with Christians identifying as “gay”:

When someone says they’re “gay” … they normally mean that as well as being attracted to someone of the same gender, their sexual preference is one of the fundamental ways in which they see themselves. And it’s for this reason that I tend to avoid using the term. It sounds clunky to describe myself as “someone who experiences same sex attraction”. But describing myself like this is a way for me to recognize that the kind of sexual attractions I experience are not fundamental to my identity. They are part of what I feel but are not who I am in a fundamental sense. I am far more than my sexuality…. What Jesus calls me to do is exactly what he calls anyone to do….:

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

Is “shame” bad?

Johnson understandably worries about teenagers who feel “crushed by the shame of a sexual orientation” they have “acknowledged to no one.” The church should be thinking deeply about how to address with grace and truth both sin and the shame associated with sin—a shame that is particularly isolating when it comes to sexual sin.

The Bible teaches that sexual sin—sin against the body—is of a different character and more serious than many other forms of sin. Doesn’t it make sense that we would experience guilt and shame from sexual sin differently than when we, for example, gossip? The intimate nature of sex renders confession or revelation of sexual sin to others extraordinarily difficult, but there are many forms of sin that are difficult to confess. Should this difficulty result in the church seeking to eradicate shame? Are we not supposed to feel shame about sin?

If someone’s besetting sin were compulsive stealing, which might be difficult to share and accompanied by deep shame, should we invent new terms to make them feel less ashamed—terms imbued with positive connotations; terms that suggest that, although stealing per se is wrong, the impulse to steal is attended by other positive qualities, attitudes, or ways of viewing life?

What about zoophilia? I imagine those who struggle with attraction to animals feel even greater shame than those who experience same-sex attraction. Should we use the term zoophile Christians? Should we have workshops to discuss which zoophilic treasures, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem?

I think not.

What the church urgently needs is less worldly influence and more biblical influence. We should concern ourselves less about the complicated, confusing contours and nuances of sexual sin as articulated by the world and concern ourselves more with the truths taught in Scripture and expressed by Pastor Allberry:

It is the same for us all…. I am to deny myself, take up my cross and follow him. Every Christian is called to costly sacrifice. Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behavior here and there. It is saying “No” to your deepest sense of who you are for the sake of Christ. To take up a cross is to declare your life (as you have known it) forfeit. It is laying down your life for the very reason that your life, as it turns out, is not yours at all. It belongs to Jesus. He made it, and through his death, he has bought it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lauries-Chinwags-Ambiguous-Christian-Leaders.mp3

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Prager University (PragerU) was started in 2009 by Dennis Prager as a way to circumvent the left-leaning educational universe and bring conservative ideas to the public in general but especially to young people. This week, PragerU released a deeply disappointing video featuring Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall Magazine and frequent contributor on Fox News Channel.

Guy Benson is immensely gifted. He is a bright, thoughtful, articulate young man with a quick mind and a gracious, winsome manner. He is also telegenic, which makes him a perfect spokesperson in a culture mediated by visual media. But those very gifts and his appeal to young people will enable him to have a corrosive effect on some conservative values.

Book-ending his five-minute PragerU video, Benson says, “I’m a Christian; a patriotic American, and a free market, shrink-the-government conservative who also happens to be gay.”

The phrase “happens to be gay” is an attempt to diminish the significance of his choice to affirm homosexuality as central to his identity. Please note, I did not say Benson chooses to experience same-sex attraction. Rather, he has freely chosen to place his unchosen homoerotic feelings at the center of his identity, and that is not something that just “happens.” Nor is it something trivial.

Benson goes on to say that “Far too often people are sorted by their gender, or their skin color, or their sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic that has nothing to do with ideas or values.”

This short sentence contains a number of troubling propositions.

Like “progressives,” Benson suggests that “gender”—and by “gender,” I assume he means biological sex—and skin color are analogous to “sexual orientation.” First, “sexual orientation” is a Leftist rhetorical construction intended to communicate the false idea that heterosexuality and homosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin and morally equivalent. In contrast, others argue that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse.

Second, homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to sex or skin color. Biological sex and skin color are genetically determined and carry no behavioral implications, thereby rendering moral disapproval of them irrational.

In contrast, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, whose cause or causes are unknown, and volitional activity for which moral assessment is both rational and legitimate—no matter what the cause or causes for the feelings.

Third, what does Benson mean when he refers to homosexuality as an “immutable characteristic”? Is he referring to the powerful, persistent, and seemingly intractable nature of his desires? If so, in his view is it morally acceptable to act on all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings? If he doesn’t believe the powerful, persistent nature of feelings confers automatic moral legitimacy on actions impelled by such feelings, how does he determine which ought not be acted on?

And how does he respond to the brilliant Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist English professor and lesbian who has written eloquently about her spiritual conversion and rejection of a lesbian identity?

Fourth and most intellectually dishonest, Benson makes the remarkable claim that the affirmation of a homosexual identity “has nothing to do with ideas or values.” Does Benson really believe that his (or anyone else’s) homosexual attraction has anything to do with his ideas about and support for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages?

And does he really believe that his homosexual attraction has nothing to do with his hermeneutics (i.e., methods of biblical interpretation)? Benson claims he is a Christian and that his Christian identity sits at the tiptop of his list of personal identifiers. For him to identify as a homosexuality-affirming Christian, Benson must have first embraced a very late 20^th Century revisionist hermeneutic that rejects the plain reading of Scripture and 2,000 years of church history, and which emerged not from newly discovered documents but from the mid-20^th Century sexual revolution.

Arguably the preeminent theologian writing on the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, writes this in response to Benson’s PragerU video:

Marriage is the single most significant structure in society. Radically redefining it at its very foundation so as to make gender differentiation irrelevant is a decisively non-conservative political stance, not to mention an unfaithful anti-Christian position that tacitly rejects the God of Abraham and Moses as well as the lordship of Jesus Christ. There can be no negotiation on this point without upending the rug on which the conservative table is set. It takes more courage to hold the line here than on any other position. Conservatives should be known for courage, not cowardice; clarity, not confusion.

In an unsuccessful attempt to prove that his homosexuality does not affect his “ideas or values,” Benson points to the relatively small amount of time he spends addressing “LGBT issues”:

To be candid, in my day-to-day life and work, I spend a lot more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare, for example, than I do about LGBT issues.

But that’s a non-sequitur. It does not follow that because he spends more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare than he does about “LGBT” issues that his homosexual “identity” does not affect his ideas or values. Thinking and writing less on “LGBT” issues than Obamacare means precisely nothing about whether his homosexuality affects his ideas and values on “LGBT” issues.

Benson supports “narrow exemptions for small businesses adjacent to the wedding industry” and he “chafe[s]” at the idea that “all opposition to expanding marriage is framed as ‘hate.’” Since he is a rising star in the GOP, I guess we should be thankful for that.

The talented Guy Benson and others like him pose a threat to conservatism and Christianity. Widespread cultural approval of the homosexuality-affirming ideology threatens the foundation of any society. And if the church affirms heresy, we put at risk the eternal lives of people like Guy Benson.

Since Dennis Prager is committed to the free exchange of ideas, perhaps he’ll invite someone to appear on another video to debate the ideas expressed by Guy Benson, whose embrace of a “gay”  identity suggests that homosexuality—not Christianity—sits at the tiptop of his identity list.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Prager-Universitys-Troubling-Video-with-Homosexual-Christian-Guy-Benson.mp3

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“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter
the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will
of my Father who is in heaven.”  ~Matt. 7:31

Two influential bloggers who “identify” as Christians have rejected biblical orthodoxy in order to affirm homoeroticism as holy. Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle Melton have chosen to reject two thousand years of church history to embrace heretical views of homoerotic activity and marriage.

Jen Hatmaker and her husband Brandon assure their followers that they studied the Bible closely using established hermeneutical principles; “engaged in hours of conversations with theologians, bishops, pastors, authors, and church leaders”; engaged in “a ton of prayer”; kept “a journal full of notes”; and even “researched the claims behind the Kinsey Scale” before they concluded that the Bible actually affirms the views that the Hatmakers were embracing before they embarked on their deep Scriptural studies.

The Hatmakers concluded that those theological views that emerged in the latter half of the latter half of the 20^th Century—views impelled not first by close study of Scripture but by the cultural movement to normalize homoeroticism—are correct. Like liberal theologians, the Hatmakers have concluded that only abusive homoerotic relationships are condemned by Scripture:

Every verse in the Bible that is used to condemn a “homosexual” act is written in the context of rape, prostitution, idolatry, pederasty, military dominance, an affair, or adultery. It was always a destructive act. It was always a sin committed against a person. And each type of sexual interaction listed was an abuse of God’s gift of sex and completely against His dream for marriage to be a lifelong commitment of two individuals increasingly and completely giving themselves to one another as Christ did for the church. But not one of these scriptures was written in the context of marriage or civil union (which simply did not exist at this time).

The Hatmakers evidently assume that the only reason Jesus defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman was that homoerotic “marriage” did not exist. They evidently believe that Jesus’ understanding of marriage as a sexually differentiated union was limited by his culture. In their view, Jesus’ understanding of marriage was a product of his limited knowledge.  The Hatmakers presume that if same-sex “marriage” had existed, surely Jesus would have defined marriage in the Bible as a union of any two people with their sexes being utterly irrelevant.

But if the sex of marriage partners is irrelevant, then what is the reason for limiting marriage to two people? Can’t three people love each other?

And since the Bible teaches that marriage is a picture of Christ—the bridegroom—and his church—the bride, are the Hatmakers saying there is no distinction in role or function between Christ and the church?

When asked if she would attend a friend’s “marriage” to a person of the same sex, Jen Hatmaker said, “I would attend that wedding with gladness, and I would drink champagne. I want the very best for my gay friends. I want love and happiness and faithfulness and commitment and community.”

Every Christian desires love, happiness, and faithfulness for their loved ones. But knowing what love is requires knowing first what is true. And no Christian should desire that an unholy relationship endure. Permanence does not mitigate the moral offense of homoerotic relationships. Commitment can no more transform an intrinsically immoral homoerotic relationship into a moral one than it could transform an intrinsically immoral incestuous relationship into a moral relationship.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, arguably the foremost authority on the Bible and homosexuality, has critiqued the late 20^th Century revisionist position that only exploitative, abusive homoerotic activity is condemned in Scripture. In his book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, Dr. Gagnon refutes the Hatmaker’s claim that the only homosexual acts condemned in Scripture are condemned were abusive or exploitative:

The prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 are unqualified: any man who lies with another male in the manner men lie with women (i.e., engaging in sexual intercourse) has committed an abomination. There are no exceptions. One finds no specifications regarding age of either participant. Neither is there any mention of the exploitative character of the relationship. If homosexual relationships were wrong primarily because they were exploitative, why would Lev. 20:13 specify a death penalty for both participants, the exploited as well as the exploiter?

The Hatmakers were motivated to critically reexamine what Scripture teaches about homosexuality by seeing “so much pain among the LGBTQ community: Suicidal teenagers. Divided families. Split churches. So. Much. Pain.” Let’s pray the Hatmakers don’t notice the pain of “zoophiles,” adulterers, and sibling-lovers. Let’s also pray that the Hatmakers do notice that church splits are largely caused by biblical revisionists like them and that the pain that results is felt not just by homosexuals but by the theologically orthodox as well.

While Jen Hatmaker until recently embraced theologically orthodox views, self-indulgent “Christian” blogger Glennon Doyle Melton has long made her unorthodox theological views known on her blog Momastery.

Melton, a recently divorced mother of three known for such faux-pearls of wisdom as “Life is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it,” announced on Sunday night that she is “deeply, finally, FINE. Fine through my bones and soul and mind and just every fiber of me.”

And what is the cause of this deep, final bone and fiber-penetrating fineness? Could it be a renewed relationship with Jesus Christ? Nope. It’s her newfound homoerotic relationship with lesbian soccer star Abby Wambach.

For those who are unfamiliar, Melton, who has 645,000 Facebook followers, is a professional confessor in the mold of self-indulgent professional confessor Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Interestingly, Gilbert left her second husband for a homoerotic relationship with her best friend.

Oprah-esque/Gilbert-y Doyle rationalizes her self-indulgent, relativistic worldview to her children—a worldview manifestly non-Christian—arguing that through her selfishness she is a brave, empowering, feminist role model:

Now we are entering a new time which calls for a different type of leadership. And now it is my job as a leader not to concern myself too deeply about what you think and feel about me- about the way I live my life. That is what I want to model now, because that is what I want for YOU: I want you to grow so comfortable in your own being, your own skin, your own knowing – that you become more interested in your own joy and freedom and integrity than in what others think about you. That you remember that you only live once, that this is not a dress rehearsal and so you must BE who you are. I want you to refuse to betray yourself. Not just for you. For ALL OF US. Because what the world needs — in order to grow, in order to relax, in order to find peace, in order to become brave—is to watch one woman at a time live her truth without asking for permission or offering explanation.

When it comes to homoerotic activity, there is no such thing as “her truth.” There is only objective, eternal transcendent truth. And the betrayal revealed by Melton, who claims to be a Christian, is her betrayal of her commitment to Christ and rebellion against the will of the Father.

Those who care about Melton’s children and the temporal and eternal lives of both Melton and Wambach should pray that they will be called to Christ like Rosaria Butterfield who was deeply entrenched in a life defined by homosexuality and recently wrote this:

I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. I didn’t swap out a lifestyle. I died to a life I loved.

The worldly view of “identity” stands diametrically opposed to a biblical view of identity. As I wrote in an earlier article, “progressives” always in thrall to subjective feelings have redefined “identity” to render it immune from moral judgment:

Homosexual activists began transforming the concept of “identity.” They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

Identity in its former incarnation was merely a way of saying that a thing is itself. Identity when applied to individual persons simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, affirmed, or experienced by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the divers elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

In contrast, Christians should find their identity in Christ which means we must die to ourselves. Butterfield writes about the meaning and challenge of being a new person in Christ:

Conversion to Christ made me face the question squarely: did my lesbianism reflect who I am (which is what I believed in 1999), or did my lesbianism distort who I am through the fall of Adam? I learned through conversion that when something feels right and good and real and necessary—but stands against God’s Word—this reveals the particular way Adam’s sin marks my life. Our sin natures deceive us. Sin’s deception isn’t just “out there”; it’s also deep in the caverns of our hearts.

How I feel does not tell me who I am. Only God can tell me who I am, because he made me and takes care of me. He tells me that we are all born as male and female image bearers with souls that will last forever and gendered bodies that will either suffer eternally in hell or be glorified in the New Jerusalem. Genesis 1:27 tells me that there are ethical consequences and boundaries to being born male and female.

While the world tells us that our identity is found and secured by yielding to our emotions, Christ tells us that our identity is found in obedience to him through which our feelings will be redeemed from their fallen distorted state.

These women, Hatmaker and Melton, influence people—particularly women. These two attractive women use flowery rhetoric to describe pseudo-love. It is pseudo-love in that it is severed from truth. By promoting sexual deviance as holy, Hatmaker and Melton are wolves in adorable sheep costumes.

Warn your loved ones about them and their false teachings, and please have conversations with your children about the differences between fallen man’s view of identity and Christ’s.

Listen to this article HERE.

Save the Date!  Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are very excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Saturday, February 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:  Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Click HERE for a flyer.

I just read with interest a “news” story on Wheaton College that reported that Wheaton College has been listed as the “worst” college on the Princeton Review’s list of “LGBTQ-Unfriendly” schools and included on the “Shame List” by Campus Pride, an organization committed to normalizing homoeroticism. The unbiased news reporter Leonor Vivanco neutrally reports that the “Shame List” is composed of campuses that have “applied or received a Title IX exemption to allow institutions to discriminate against LGBTQ persons, or that have a demonstrated history of anti-LGBT actions [emphasis added].” These are reporter Vivanco’s “unbiased” words—not Campus Pride’s.

Read more here…

“For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.”
~ 1 Corinthians 3:19~

I just read with interest a breaking  “news” story on Wheaton College that reported that Wheaton has been listed as the “worst” college on the Princeton Review’s list of “LGBTQ-Unfriendly” schools and included on the “Shame List” by Campus Pride, an organization committed to normalizing homoeroticism.

“Objective” news reporter Leonor Vivanco neutrally reports that the “Shame List” is composed of campuses that have “applied or received a Title IX exemption to allow institutions to discriminate against LGBTQ persons, or that have a demonstrated history of anti-LGBT actions [emphasis added].” These are reporter Vivanco’s “unbiased” words—not Campus Pride’s.

Translated, this means that Wheaton College, a theologically orthodox college whose motto is “For Christ and His Kingdom,” makes distinctions based on the Bible between licit and illicit sexual behaviors.

Campus Pride cites as evidence for the inclusion of Wheaton on its Shame List Wheaton’s invitation to Rosaria Butterfield to speak on campus. Butterfield is a former feminist English professor who formerly identified as a lesbian and is now a follower of Christ, wife, and mother. For those unfamiliar with Butterfield, she is a compassionate and erudite speaker who has written two books about her conversion: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ.

Vivanco quoted two Wheaton alumni who affirm homosexual identities and who describe commitments to theological orthodoxy as creating an unwelcoming, unsupportive, and dangerous place. There were no quotes from Wheaton alumni who affirm theological orthodoxy and who disagree with the implied proposition that in order to be welcoming, supportive, and safe, Wheaton must abandon the clear teaching of Scripture on matters related to homoeroticism.

Vivanco also mentioned an unusual and uncivil incident that took place last year at Wheaton when “a student threw an apple at a classmate who questioned the school’s president about LGBT people at a school event.” Two of my children and their spouses graduated from Wheaton College, and one of them also received a master’s degree in Systematic and Historical Theology from Wheaton, so I have some familiarity with the character of Wheaton students and the climate of the college. The apple-throwing incident was an unfortunate and remarkable aberration that I’ve heard offended the vast majority of Wheaton students and alumni—including those who affirm theological orthodoxy. It’s also unfortunate that Vivanco failed to report on the aberrational nature of the apple-throwing incident and how offensive it was to students and former students. Perhaps she would have known that if her research had extended beyond those who reject theological orthodoxy.

By being ranked the “worst” school by those who choose to place their unchosen homoerotic attraction at the center of their identity, Wheaton College is revealed as among the best colleges for those who place Christ at the center of their identity—including some who experience unchosen homoerotic attraction.

Affirming theological orthodoxy on sexual matters is not mutually exclusive of deeply loving those who believe differently and make choices based on those beliefs. In fact, those who value divers peoples and demonstrate tolerance of their beliefs do it every day.

“And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’”
~Luke 9:23~

Presenting “Laurie’s Chinwags”

IFI is pleased to announce a new feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags.” In light of changes in the way many Americans prefer to access information, we’re adding podcasts to our articles. Podcasts will accompany both our new articles as well as previous articles that are of particular importance and relevance. As we add podcasts to previous articles, we will republish them for our subscribers’ convenience.

There is encouraging news to be found in the midst of what is most assuredly a culture darkening and coarsening as it moves away from Christ. It’s difficult to discern the encouraging news because our dominant news disseminators obscure it, but it’s there. Perhaps this glimmer of light is what Russell Moore calls the “prophetic voice” of the church whose contours are illuminated more brightly when the darkness threatens to engulf.

Here’s one of the glimmering tidbits of encouraging news: Former lesbian, atheist, and post-modern feminist professor Rosaria Butterfield spoke recently at a Wheaton College chapel service about her religious conversion and the subsequent (and ongoing) transformation of her life (She is now married with children). If that’s not encouraging enough, at the end of her testimony 2,000 college students gave her a standing ovation. That countercultural event should cause the most dispirited Christians to don their Ray-Bans.

Some Wheaton students who affirm anti-biblical beliefs about homosexuality staged a demonstration outside of the chapel service to protest Butterfield’s invitation. What warranted public notice, however, was not that some current or former Wheaton students who have drunk deeply from the slop trough of cultural relativism would abandon the teachings of Scripture, but that 2,000 young Christians who have been force-fed slop in their television shows, films, advertising, music, newspaper and magazine articles, and public schools would be able still to discern truth.

And perhaps you missed the news about the organization Young Hoosiers for Marriage who earlier this month traveled 100 strong to the Indiana Statehouse to oppose the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages. This fledgling organization is composed of college students and young adults “who are committed to rebuilding culture to ensure that children are not intentionally deprived of a mother and a father.”

According to a survey from Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research, these young Hoosiers are not alone. This survey showed that 54 percent of Hoosiers between the ages of 18 to 34 support a proposed Indiana amendment defining marriage as a sexually complementary union.

For conservative Baby Boomers and their elderly parents who find it uncomfortable to express their moral and political beliefs on matters related to homosexuality, imagine how difficult it is for Gen Xers and Millennials.

Baby Boomers who claim a Christian identity may have long ago proved their countercultural bona fides (or boneheadedness) in the service of free love, but they’ve done little to model countercultural courage in the service of truth about sexuality since then. Part of the reason is our own ignorance, part is selfishness (Christian Boomers seem to have little interest in looking honestly at their own acquiescence to or participation in the unbiblical divorce culture or the fornication culture), but the primary reason for our silence is cowardice.

We have modeled cowardly cultural conformity and thus helped create not just the sexual confusion and suffering such confusion entails, but also the oppressive climate our children and grandchildren will now inherit.

The encouraging news is some of our children and grandchildren will stand as watchmen on the walls.  Let’s come alongside them. We owe them that, and we owe Christ so much more.

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