By Russell Moore
From time to time we hear some telling us that evangelical Christianity must retool our sexual ethic if we’re ever going to reach the next generation. Some say that Millennials, particularly, are leaving the church because of our “obsession” with sexual morality. The next generation needs a more flexible ethic, they say, on premarital sex, homosexuality, and so on. We’ll either adapt, the line goes, or we’ll die.
This argument is hardly new. In the early 20th century, this was precisely the rhetoric used by liberal Protestant Harry Emerson Fosdick and his co-laborers. Fosdick was concerned, he said, for the future of Christianity, and if the church was to have a future we would have to get over our obsession with virginity. By that, Fosdick didn’t mean the virginity of single Christians but the virginity of our Lord’s mother.
The younger generation wanted to be Christian, the progressives told their contemporaries, but they couldn’t accept outmoded ideas of the miraculous, such as the virgin birth of Christ. What the liberals missed is that such miracles didn’t become hard to believe with the onset of the modern age. They always had been hard to believe from the beginning.
Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s announcement of her pregnancy, after all, wasn’t, “Well, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” He assumed that she had been sexually unfaithful. Why? Because he and his contemporaries knew how people get pregnant.
Read more at http://thegospelcoalition.org/mobile/article/tgc/can-we-trade-sexual-morality-for-church-growth
2 Comments. Leave new
I’m sorrry you missed it according to Matt 1:19-20 yes Joseph new how women got pregnant but he was a just man and did not want to make a public example out of her that he did comptemplate hiding her. Then the All Knowing GOD did a miraclous thing He filled Joseph in about what was going on. And God told this just man do not fear to take Mary as your wife for she has conceived by the Holy Ghost. Also the faithful Jews knew the prophet Isaiah had propeshied this Isa. 7:14 and I believe many good daddys wonder could it be my daughter. Yes in the decay of modern men minds it is hard to conceive but our Heavenly Father ask just to believe by faith and leave the rest to Him. I know I didn’t even touch on same sex marriage ( I hate to use the word marriage) I think that defiles what God intended for good between one man and one woman. Anyway same sex contract or partenership is nothing more than what is describe in Romans chapter one and that is pretty simple to understand. Thanks
The PCUSA, UU, ELCA, ECUSA, take your pick has been cultural accommodators and adaptors for 2 generations now. Gays, abortionists, feminist polytheists, the re-imagine crowd has found a warm acceptance and embrace in the denominational and church structures. What has it gained them? Empty churches, dead theology, and endless conflict, people are fleeing. So where are all the gays, abortionists, feminist polytheists, the writers of the Editorial pages from the “NY Times” who were suppose to usher the church into a new dawn? Oh, they are all walking their dogs and drinking coffee on Sunday mornings. Well done PCUSA, well done indeed.